Commentators:R. Samson Raphael Hirsch/0

R. Samson Raphael Hirsch – Intellectual Profile

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R. Samson Raphael Hirsch

Name	R. Samson Raphael Hirsch
Dates
Location
Works
Exegetical Characteristics
Influenced by
Impacted on

Background¹

Life

• Name – 
  • Hebrew name – ר' שמשון בן רפאל הירש 
  • German name – - Samson Raphael² Hirsch
• Dates – 1808-1888
• Location – R. Hirsch was born and raised in Hamburg, and later lived in Oldenburg, Emden, Nikolsburg, and Frankfurt.
• Education and Occupation – After attending yeshiva in Mannheim, R. Hirsch went to the University of Bonn, studying philosophy, history, classical languages, and physics,³ and later served in several rabbinical positions.⁴ His rabbinic activities focused on battling Reform Judaism and developing the Torah im Derekh Eretz school of Modern Orthodoxy.⁵
• Family – R. Hirsch was the son of Raphael and Gella Hirsch. His great uncle was R. Yehuda Leib Frankfurter Spira, who authored the Torah commentary HaRekhasim Levikah.⁶
• Teachers – Chakham Isaac Bernays,⁷ R. Yaakov Ettlinger,⁸ R.Mendel Frankfurter.⁹
• Contemporaries – Abraham Geiger.¹⁰
• Students – 
• Notable events
  
  • 1810 – France annexes Hamburg, commencing a process of emancipation of the Jews and the opening of general society to broader Jewish participation.
  • 1817 – Reform congregation organized in Hamburg. The Hirsch home was a center of anti-Reform activity, which left a deep impact on the young Samson.
  • 1844 - Reform rabbinical synod of Brunswick, where radical reforms were adopted, such as annulment of dietary and matrimonial laws. In the aftermath, R. Hirsch moved towards support for organizational separation between the Orthodox and Reform communities.
  • 1848-49 – Emancipation of the Jews of Austria and Moravia. R. Hirsch was a leader of the struggle for emancipation.¹¹
  • 1876 – Prussian "Law of Secession" passed, which provided a legal basis for creating a separate Orthodox community.

Works

• Biblical commentaries – R. Hirsch authored an extensive 5-volume Torah commentary in German,  published together with his own translation into German,¹² as well as a commentary on Tehillim.¹³ A commentary on Yonah, based on R. Hirsch’s lectures, has recently been published.¹⁴
• Rabbinics –
  
  • Responsa and Talmudic novellae – ספר שמש מרפא : שאלות ותשובות, חידושי הש"ס, אגרות ומכתבים¹⁵
• Jewish thought – The Nineteen Letters,¹⁶ Horeb: A philosophy of Jewish laws,¹⁷ The Hirsch Siddur,¹⁸ Collected Writings of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.¹⁹
• Commonly misattributed to – 

Torah Commentary

Characteristics

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Methods

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Themes

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Textual Issues

• Manuscripts – 
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• Textual layers – 

Sources

Significant Influences

• Earlier Sources – 
• Teachers – 
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Occasional Usage

Possible Relationship

Impact

Later exegetes

Supercommentaries

¹ This section incorporates material from S.Z. Leiman, “Rabbinic Openness to General Culture in the Early Modern Period in Western and Central Europe”, in J.J. Schacter (Ed.), Judaism’s Encounter with Other Cultures (New Jersey, 1997): 143-216, M. Hildesheimer, "Historical Perspectives on Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch", available at http://seforim.blogspot.co.il/2009/08/meir-hildesheimer-historical.html, and the Encyclopedia Judaica entry "Hirsch, Samson (Ben) Raphael."

² R. Hirsch adopted his father's name as his own middle name, a common custom at the time.

³ See Leiman, Rabbinic Openness: 183, note 94.

⁴ Chief Rabbi of Oldenburg (1830-1841), Chief Rabbi of the Aurich and Osnabrueck districts in Hanover (1841-1846),Chief Rabbi of Nikolsburg and Landesrabbiner of Moravia and Silesia (1846-1851), and rabbi of the Orthodox community in Frankfurt (1851-1888). R. Hirsch adopted this last position - in a small, nascent Orthodox community in a city dominated by Reform – after receiving an “appeal from Frankfurt to go to the aid of a tiny group, whose very founding is, in my view, given the goals I had all my life, the most promising development that has occurred in Jewry within the last several decades. For now, for the first time, a Jewish community has been formed, which is openly and proudly dedicated to a most holy principle, in an area which has been successfully conquered by the faces of confusion. What can I do! This holy cause is the very one to which I have consecrated my life.” See Hildesheimer, “Historical Perspectives”.

⁵ Sometimes termed "neo-Orthodoxy". This school encourages general education along with traditional Jewish education, as well as involvement in general society and culture.

⁶ See his commentator page at: http://alhatorah.org/Commentators:R._Yehuda_Leib_Frankfurter_%28HaRekhasim_Levikah%29

⁷ Rabbi of Hamburg.

⁸ Author of the Talmud commentary Arukh LaNer and head of the yeshivah in Mannheim that R. Hirsch attended. R. Ettlinger encouraged R. Hirsch to attend university.

⁹ R. Hirsch's grandfather and the head of the Altona rabbinical court.

¹⁰ R. Hirsch was friends with Geiger at the University of Bonn, but Geiger later became a prominent Reform leader and one of R. Hirsch's most bitter antagonists.

¹¹ See Leiman, Rabbinic Openness: 184.

¹² Der Pentateuch uebersetzt und erklaert, 1867-78. The commentary was later published in an English translation in: The Pentateuch - with Translation and Commentary, Judaica Press, 1956-62. It was reissued in a new translation by Daniel Haberman as The Hirsch Chumash, Feldheim/Judaica Press, 2009.
This commentary, written for both popular and scholarly audiences, became the standard commentary used in German Orthodox communities, often to the exclusion of all other commentaries. See M. Breuer, “פירוש רבי שמשון רפאל הירש לתורה”, מחניים Vol.4 1993: 348-359. R. Hirsch’s commentary was part of his project to correct what he viewed as flawed study methods (focusing on “abstract and abstruse speculation”) that helped lead to the endangered state of traditional Judaism (see The Nineteen Letters, Breuer edition: 99-100, and R. Hirsch’s letter discussing this issue in: Leiman, Rabbinic Openness: 186-7).

¹³ Psalmen uebersetzt und erklaert, 1883. Published in English as The Psalms - with Translation and Commentary, 2 vols., Philipp Feldheim, 1960-66.

¹⁴ In S. Bolag, שמשון רפאל הירש, פירוש ספר יונה, HaMa’ayan 51(1) (2010). The manuscript published here consists of Hebrew notes of a student who attended lectures in German by R. Hirsch.

¹⁵ New York, 1992. Published from manuscript material by R. S. Schwab and E. Klugman. There exists much more unpublished Hebrew material, including halakhic responsa, in an archive at Bar Ilan University. See Leiman, Rabbinic Openness: 186, note 104.

¹⁶ Originally published in German in 1836, it was published in English translation in S.R. Hirsch,The Nineteen Letters on Judaism, ed. J. Breuer (New York, 1960), and later in a translation by Karin Paritzky, annotated by Rabbi Joseph Elias, Philipp Feldheim, 1994. A Hebrew translation (by Dr. Ephraim Porat), named אגרות צפון תשע עשרה אגרות על היהדות, was published by Mossad HaRav Kook in 1949. This work is an intellectual presentation of Orthodox Judaism expressed through an exchange of letters between two youths. It made a significant impact in German Jewish circles (including on a nineteen-year-old Heinrich Graetz, who requested that Hirsch serve as his mentor. See Leiman, Rabbinic Openness: 198).

¹⁷ Originally published in German in 1837, it was published in English translation by Soncino Press, 1981. This work contains R. Hirsch’s philosophy of the commandments.

¹⁸ Philipp Feldheim, 1978.

¹⁹ Philipp Feldheim, 1984-2012 (9 volumes).