Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch

A Book Review.

Lately, I have been reading some shorter books, that I can actually finish, enjoying it more than I can explain. My husband read this book, more than once, years ago. I don’t know why I hadn’t read it yet. Our paperback edition belonged to my husband’s grandfather, who passed away seventeen years ago. His name and address are on a label in in the inside cover. Reading it now against the backdrop of my other interests gave it extra texture and placed it in more vivid historical context. The book is succinct and meticulous¹, easy to read, and captures a pivotal time period with clarity.

The book is Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch by Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Klugman, published in 1996. Rav Hirsch lived in Germany from 1808 until 1888. His best known legacy emerged from his time as the Rabbi of Frankfurt am Main.

Rav Hirsch was born on June 20, 1808, 24 Sivan 5568². He was his parents’ first child. He was known as Samson as a Shem Chol, secular name, used except for being called up to the Torah in the synagogue and similar times. Rav Hirsch’s father changed his name to Hirsch after his own grandfather, Rav Zvi Hirsch Frankfurter. Shamshon [the Hebrew version of his name] later followed a custom of the period and joined his father’s name Raphael, to his own.³

Rav Hirsch is best known for his strong response to the burning question of his time, when the emancipation of the Jews was new and unprecedented:

Can a way of life and a system of beliefs associated with the history of the Judengasse⁴, the ghetto, the forcibly insular world, can such a system thrive-is such a system necessary or compatible- with living in a world where Jews were allowed to live openly, mixed with non-Jews, were able to be employed in various professions, to be taken seriously by the non-Jewish world?

Can ancient rituals and the beliefs our ancestors died for rather than violate- can these same principles still serve the same function? Do they still have purpose in an open world, a world with Enlightenment values, where science makes life better and safer, where all of nature is on the cusp of being mapped and studied?

In Germany, the Reform Movement was established to answer this question in the negative. The Reform Movement saw Jewish Law and ritual as archaic and anachronistic at best, barbaric and shame-inducing at worst. Reform set out to fundamentally change the nature of Judaism in order to update Judaism to the times.

Rav Hirsch was not embarrassed of traditional Judaism’s ‘backwardness.’ He was proud of the enlightenment of the Torah⁵ way of life.

He made no apologies for supposedly outdated rituals. He imbued them with their original symbolic meaning.

He modernized Judaism by instituting forms of organization which were both less necessary and less available than before.

He authored his works in a polished High German, and not the Judeo-German idiom in Hebrew characters traditionally employed for religious works.⁶ He studied briefly at the University of Bonn⁷ where he met Abraham Geiger, a future Reformer, and studied Torah with him there. He used the language of modernity to prove, point by point, why traditional Judaism- Torah Judaism-in its original form-was the most enlightened way of life.

Rav Hirsch showed tremendous concern for Jews all over the world,⁸ especially Russia and Israel. He even corresponded with rabbis in the US.⁹

Rav Hirsch viewed non-Jews as part of G-d’s greater plan.

The Jew knows that the good and the righteous men among nations are working alongside him to build the Kingdom of G-d on earth.... He welcomes each new truth as a valuable contribution to the ever more penetrating revelation of G-d in nature and history.... The Jew will not be opposed to any science, any art form, any culture that is truly ethical, truly moral, truly contributing to the welfare and progress of man. He will measure everything by the eternal, inviolable yardstick of the teachings of his G-d. Nothing will exist for him that cannot stand up before the Divine Will... Never at any time will the Jew sacrifice one iota of his Judaism, at no time will he bring his Judaism in conformity with the times. But he will gladly accept all values that his time will have to offer, as long as they conform with the spirit of Judaism. In every age he will regard it as his task to evaluate the time and its conditions from the Jewish viewpoint....¹⁰

Rav Hirsch viewed beauty as an intentional aspect of Creation.

“Not for naught did G-d clothe the world with the garment of beauty, form the law of harmony into shapes and sounds, and open the eyes and ears of mankind to grasp these harmonies and to enjoy them intellectually and spiritually. Every perception of the loftiness as demonstrated by a star-studded sky, by the rays of the rising or setting sun, every joy experienced by the grace and beauty of a flower elevates man to the level of lofty concepts and ideals.”¹¹

Rav Hirsch didn’t defend Judaism, he lauded it, without apology, in its own terms, with concrete and specific proofs and reasons, and with moral clarity. He was unafraid to speak his mind. “You may be able to destroy the man, but you can never destroy truth.” ¹² '“Even if thousands will forsake the cause of life and light, if thousands will turn their back on the destiny and name of Yisrael — whose way they abandoned long ago — the cause of truth is not concerned with the number of its adherents. Even if only one remains — one single Jew holding the book of life in his hand, Yisrael’s teachings in his heart and Yisrael’s radiance in his spirit — that one Jew suffices, and the cause of Yisrael will not be lost.” ¹³

In modern terms, Rav Hirsch exuded the message: Be proud, not ashamed, of who you are, a people that prizes kindness, that shares a reverence for honesty and meticulousness, that implements the traditions of their forefathers with loyalty, that follows the word of G-d regardless of world opinion- a people, am seridei charev,¹⁴ that after repeated banishments and incidents of mass murder carries our holy books close to the bosom, a people that, am medushnei oneg,¹⁵ maximize the potential of the material world when history allows us the opportunity.¹⁶

It is deeply ironic that Jews in a moral fog idolized the behaviors and manners of future Nazis, assuming their culture to be more enlightened, more cerebral and more advanced than G-d’s word.

As Elli Benaiah wrote on Substack yesterday,

The Nazis were not interested in how successfully Jews had reconciled Jewish practice with German life. They did not care how German their language was, how long their families had lived in German towns, what they had contributed to German culture or how carefully they had negotiated the boundary between participation and difference.

Jewishness itself became grounds for persecution and exclusion.¹⁷

Torah Im Derech Eretz

Rav Hirsch’s core philosophy is called Torah Im Derech Eretz.

The Torah is the blueprint for Creation, the owner’s manual with complete and detailed instructions as to how man can create in this world a dwelling place for the Divine Presence. No aspect of life is outside of the Torah’s purview and there is no issue concerning which the Torah is not the final arbiter. As Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg aptly put it, the physical and social circumstances in which man finds himself is the matter — the Derech Eretz - upon which Torah imposes its form. And this is equally true in every historical epoch. “Torah Im Derech Eretz,” wrote Rabbi Hirsch, “means the realization of the Torah in harmonious unity with all the conditions under which its laws will have to be observed amidst the developments of changing times.”

It is the Jew’s task to demonstrate that the Torah contains the answer to every social and spiritual question confronting men as individuals and as social beings, to show that “that Judaism, this complete Judaism, Toras Hashem Temima, does not belong to an antiquated past but to the vigorous, pulsating life of the present.” In his every action, the Jew must bear the stamp of the Torah he received at Sinai and reflect the refining power of the Torah. ¹⁸

Rav Hirsch’s weltanschauung was innovative in its era, but also timeless. The book’s back cover shares the following:

“It is impossible to read his prescient words without amazement that they were not penned today. They have lost none of their force with the passage of time, a fact attested to by the new editions of his works that continue to appear a hundred years after his passing.”

This was true in 1996 when this book was published, and true in 2026 as well.

1. Page 193 discusses Russian Minister of the Interior Ignatyev, who in 1881 approved of the police standing down and not preventing a pogrom, refusing to prosecute the offenders and forbidding the return of plundered property to the owners. His ministry severely restricted ways Jews could earn a living and tried to banish Jews from parts of Russia. I looked up Ignatyev in the book I am currently reading, The Memoirs of Count Witte, Translated from the Original Russian Manuscript and Edited, in the index, it says: “Ignatyev, Count N.P., a Jew-hater,” (439).

2. This is the Hebrew date of his birth. Sivan is the name of the month, and 5568 is the year from Creation. For comparison, this year is 5786.

3. Klugman 4,5 How Rav Hirsch got his name.

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurter_Judengasse

https://family.rothschildarchive.org/estates/68-house-of-the-green-shield

5. The Jewish Bible.

6. Klugman, 65, the decision to write in literary German

7. Klugman, 43-44, Rav Hirsch studies at Bonn

8. “Born in Frankfurt to a prominent religious family, Jacob Schiff (1847-1920) was raised in the milieu of Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Frankfurt, before migrating to the United States in 1865. Rising rapidly in the investment banking world of Wall Street during the post Civil War economic boom, Schiff emerged as both an exemplary philanthropist, distributing his vast wealth to myriad Jewish causes in America and worldwide, as well as cementing himself as the undisputed leader of American Jewry. Particularly close to his heart was the plight of Russian Jewry under the brutal Czarist regime, and he lobbied for unrestricted immigration to the United States, assisting Jewish immigrants once they arrived. He also financed Japan in the Russo-Japanese War, which led to Japan defeating the Russian Navy. Jacob Schiff’s legacy in philanthropy and leadership is largely unmatched in the annals of American Jewish history.” https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-9auty-1b04c4e

Jewish History Soundbites, Jacob Schiff and the ‘The Schiff Era’

9. Klugman, 192, Hirsch corresponded with rabbis in America.

10. Klugman, 285

11. Klugman, 301 Beauty

12. Klugman, 257 Truth

13. Klugman, 63 Truth

14. Jeremiah 31:2, the nation that survived the sword

15. 330 Artscroll siddur, Friday night prayer after the amidah, the nation that is saturated in pleasure, very content

16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-up_Nation

17. Bird Food

18. Klugman 201, Torah Im Derech Eretz