Wednesday, January 29, 2014

What Happens if German Orthodoxy Disappears?

So if you've seen my posts about KAJ NY and Monsey, you heard the happy tale of my discovering German Orthodoxy still living and breathing in our times. But as a German Jewish type, I'm not going to allow myself to exaggerate and wax romantic. I did indeed find elements of German Orthodoxy in the KAJs, but there's no denying that this is neither Frankfurt circa 1870 nor Washington Heights circa 1950 or even 1980.

So while you'll see at KAJ remnants of the old German Jewish decorum and Hirschian approach, you'll also see lots of Eastern Europeanism in there. You see one Hirsch chumash on the shelf and 50 Artscrolls. Same with the siddurim. However, you won't necessarily see even that in a Litvish shul.

I don't mean this as a criticism of the Eastern European approach but rather a lament for the waning of  pure TIDE alternative. Certainly, you see TIDE elements in the American yeshivish world where general studies are part of the educational curriculum if only due to government rules and most people get jobs eventually if only due to the high expenses here. You see elements in the MO world where the idea of compassion for the gentiles and contributing to the society are tangible. However, you don't see much of pure TIDE with Torah being central at the same time that positive general studies are embraced, where one has compassion for the world but practices Austritt.

German Orthodox in its pure form is leaving us rapidly I remember 25 years ago living in Monsey and hearing the term Breuers fairly often. I remember being captivated by the word. Today, you really don't hear it much.

So what happens to Hirschian concepts like tikun olam, contributing to one's society, caring about humanity, reasons for mitzvos, learning a trade?

Have no fear. The rock solid reputation of R' Hirsch is enough to keep them around. Of course, it's hard to be in a world that does one thing while you do your own with only books to back you up. That's one of the reasons I visit KAJ when I can, to feel that I"m not in this alone - Modern Orthodoxy not providing the support I need because of all the problematic pieces to it.

But you don't need just Hirsch for these concepts. The Netziv talks all about light unto the nations. See my prior post about that. The Duties of the Heart talks about actually following the nations in the areas where they act properly (Introduction to Duties of the Heart, near the end). He gets it from the Gemara. The Shulchan Aruch, according to R' Breuer, talks about dignity and order in the synagogue. The Rambam talks about getting faith from studying nature. The Sefer HaChinuch gives reasons for the mitzvos. The Kuzari talks about faith coming from history. Many talk about the point of Torah study being for keeping mitzvos (Ramban - letter to his son, R' Soloveitchik in the Rav Thinking Outloud). R' Hirsch was remarkable in how he packaged all this up and again you still have Hirsch and to see his approach demonstrated through people like R' Breuer and others in the old kehilla, certainly that makes life much easier. But these concepts are all just Torah concepts. They'll live on. Be strong.

Eastern Europeanism has transformed too. The old Litvaks are also gone. What we have today Haredism and Modern Orthodoxy. They offshoots of old Europe but not old Europe itself. And these will transform too. Life is ever changing. Torah is eternal. R' Hirsch packaged up Torah concepts and his package will last as long as it will last. Then it will go into the body of eternal Torah teachings by our great scholars. Spanish Jewry as practiced in Spain faded too and then the teachings of those greats went into the great body of work from which future generations drew.  No movement is immune from this. You just do the best you can and God will take care of the rest.

8 comments:

  1. One quick nit-pick: There's no one such thing as "German Orthodoxy." The combination of TIDE/Austritt is particular to one section of the late-19th century Frankfurt community. Many other Orthodox communities in Germany rejected one or the other. As someone who does not see the original Austritt doctrine as being relevant to 21st-century American life (since we no longer have government-defined religious communities), I'm a bit less pessimistic about the future of "pure TIDE." I think you can find it in R' Aharon Lichtenstein's writings about secular studies, and R' Jonathan Sacks's acceptance speech at YU, to name two sources.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for the comment. I guess on this blog when I say German Orthodoxy I mean that of the Frankfurt-Hirschian variety. You can tell how much of this I live from books as I miss the many nuances of Germany Judaism. Certainly, Berlin was something else. I would guess that R Lichtenstein and Torah u'Maddah in general is more of the Berlin type. That is fine. I personally like the Frankfurt style and that is one that is fading fast.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Take a second look at R' Lichtenstein's writings in "Leaves of Faith," particularly the essay (somewhat misleadingly) titled "A Consideration of Synthesis from a Torah Point of View" (you can find most of the essay in Google Books' preview here). I don't say that R' Lichtenstein is a pure Hirschean, but I don't think there's more than a handful of paragraphs in the whole 14-page essay that R' Hirsch would argue with.

    I'm not sure what "the Berlin type" is. Many personalities came through Berlin between the world wars, and they hardly correspond to any one type (if you can find commonality between R' Soloveitchik, R' Hutner, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Dov Eliezer Berkowitz, AJ Heschel, Morah Nechama Leibowitz, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and Harry Wolfson, more power to you). If by "Berlin type" you mean the Hildesheimer seminary and academic Jewish studies, then again, I don't think R' Lichtenstein or YU in general are really extensions of that idea. It's possible that YU planned to be that, but the post-WWII preponderance of Eastern European roshei yeshiva there made that all but impossible.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow. You are knowledgeable. I hope you keep posting here.

    I do largely mean Hildesheimer, but I realize that Berlin was full of diff. types. I am reading two books now: The Pity of It all, which is about Jewish intellectual life in Germany and Between Berlin and Slobokda, which is about Wolfson, Heschel, Lipovitz, et al. All kinds of people are described.

    So ultimately, I don't mean to say there was one type in Berlin. YY Weinberg was several types unto himself. I am saying non-Hirschian Frankfurt. It just so happens that I very much fit into the Hirsch-Breuer mold, Frankfurt Torah Im Derech Eretz. I became frum through high culture. Beethoven, Mozart, and the classical poets are very important to me. I learned religious faith through them. I imagine that R' Lichtenstein would understand that.

    I'll tell you a little story. 25 years ago I was suffering in my charedi BT yeshiva. I couldn't deal with the anti-secular studies, anti-goyim outlook. The janitor there recommended I go see his rav. I did and happened to be carrying a copy of Dicken's Bleak House with me. He looked at me and his first words were "why would you want to read a bleak book like that?"

    Pretty obnoxious huh. On my way out I was complaining to someone about his outlook and said, is everybody against secular studies? He said, there's one person that isn't. A Lichtenstein. He lives in the territories.

    I should have visited him but was too scared to go into the territories. This is 1988 and the rocks were flying.

    So I never got to know R. Lich. or his Torah. His recordings are kind of garbled.

    Hirsch is another matter. There are 1000s of pages of translation. So he is the TIDE figure I know best due to his writings. But I do gravitate to it as well. I am not much of a Zionist. I do believe in strict filtering of the secular material to allow in only the kosher stuff. TuM doesn't do that as we know, much as I adore R' Soloveitchik.

    Actually, I learned about TIDE from R' Soloveitchik.


    ReplyDelete
  5. "The Pity of It All" is one of the most fascinating books I've ever read, albeit a bit depressing.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Depressing because the end was the Holocaust or because how fry they all were or because of how they were all so frustrated trying to be accepted as Germans or something else?

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm not sure. A bit of 1 and 3, I think. Look, the author seems to agree with me based on the title he chose. It, indeed, was a pity.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think Kafka is on the cover. Can't quite remember, but that would be fitting.

      Delete