R. Hirsch and the Details of Mitzvot Rav Yitzchak Blau

 Shiur #09: R. Hirsch and the Details of Mitzvot

In last week’s shiur, we noted that R. Hirsch rejects practical or hygienic explanations for mitzvot, as well as historically contextual explanations.  He is also critical of explanations that ignore the details of mitzvot or the Oral Law’s elucidation of the mitzvot.  In this shiur, we will move from the general overview to concrete examples of his method.

Ta’amei ha-mitzvot (rationales for commandments) play a major role in R. Hirsch’s commentary on the Torah, in his Horeb, and in a long essay he wrote on “Jewish Symbolism” that appears in the third volume of his Collected Writings (Feldheim: New York, 1984).  In that essay, he explains the commandments of brit mila, tzitzit, tefillin and the mishkan.   The difference between R. Hirsch’s and Rambam’s approach emerges quite sharply.

Rambam explains that tefillin and tzitzit belong to a category of commandments that remind us to acknowledge God and to love and revere Him (Guide of the Perplexed 3:44).   He views circumcision as a commandment intended to weaken sexual desire and to provide a bodily marker of Jewish identity (Guide of the Perplexed 3:49).   Questions such as why circumcision must take place during the daytime or why we put on the tefillin shel yad (the tefillin worn on the arm) before the tefillin shel rosh (the tefillin worn on the head) do not interest him in the slightest.  Indeed, as we saw in the last shiur, Rambam writes that we should not search for reasons for the details of mitzvot (Guide of the Perplexed 3:26).

In contrast, R. Hirsch insists that an adequate explanation must work out the details as well.  According to his understanding, the tefillin shel yad represent dedicating our actions to God, while the tefillin shel rosh represent dedicating our thoughts to God.  We lay phylacteries on the hand first to demonstrate that in Judaism, religious actions are more significant than theoretical speculation.  We have already encountered the primacy of practice as an important theme for R. Hirsch.   

In the same vein, seemingly technical details teach important messages.  The four passages in the Torah that mention tefillin comprise the text that is found inside the boxes of the tefillin.  All four passages are in one compartment in the shel yad but in four separate compartments in the shel rosh.  R. Hirsch writes that this indicates that our thoughts incorporate a variety of distinct and important themes but those disparate themes must be united in one purposeful life of Jewish practice.  We place the parchment in batim (literally = houses, the term in halakhic literature for the boxes of the tefillin) because a house symbolizes stability and permanence.   Those batim must be square because while nature can produce round items, only the human being called upon by tefillin is capable of producing square objects.   

The Torah explicitly says that tzitzit remind us to adhere to the commandments.  R. Hirsch points out that humanity adopted garments as a result of the first sin.  Thus, garments appropriately remind us to keep God’s word.  The fringes of the tzitzit unite the white of universalism with the blue of Jewish particularism.  Each fringe has a knotted section and a part that hangs loose to symbolize that the Torah restrains humanity but also allows for human freedom to flourish. 

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not by your own power

 The land that He is now giving to you so that you may take possession of it was already promised to your fathers. You are receiving it only as an inheritance from them so that you may pass it on to your children. You did not gain possession of it by your own power. You owe the land solely to your forefathers loyalty to their covenant with God, and only if you will transmit this same loyalty to your own children as a spiritual heritage will you be able to bequeath to them also the land as an inheritance. 

R. Samson R. Hirsch, Devarim 25:19

Judith Grunfeld

Judith Grunfeld born Judith Rosenbaum (18 December 1902 – 14 May 1998) was a Hungarian born Jewish German teacher who spent much of her life in the United Kingdom. She was a pioneer of the revolutionary Bais Yaakov girl's education movement.^[1] She taught teachers in Poland and then led a Jewish school of girls, which was evacuated throughout the war to the small town of Shefford.

Germany and Poland

Grunfeld was born in Budapest in 1902, but she was educated and raised in Frankfurt where she attended the Hirsch Real Schule before going on to Frankfurt University.^[2]

In 1924, Jacob Rosenheim of Agudat Yisrael persuaded Grunfeld to abandon her dreams of going to Palestine and instead to go to Krakow, Poland and join Sarah Schenirer's fledgling school that was trying to teach girls from Jewish backgrounds.^[2] Schenirer did not have an extensive Jewish education but she was to change the way that women were regarded within Jewish culture.^[3] They aimed to teach girls and their teachers and get them to appreciate their culture and religion. For five years from 1924 she was involved with teaching teachers at the Beit Yaakov teachers' Seminary. She also had to raise the funds and this would involve some travel. In 1929 the school was adopted by the Orthodox "Agudat Yisrael" now that Rabbi Jacob Rosenheim was its President.^[2]

The Beit Yaakov teachers' Seminary in Kraków today

She married lawyer Isidor Grunfeld on 22 November 1932. He was a lawyer in Würzburg until 1933.^[4] The Nazis' rise to power prompted them to move to Israel, they moved to London in 1933 because they struggled to find work in Israel.^[5]

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Philosophy, Categorization of Mitzvot, and Rationales for Mitzvot Rav Yitzchak Blau, etzion.org.il

 MODERN RABBINIC THOUGHT

By Rav Yitzchak Blau

 

Shiur #08:

Philosophy, Categorization of Mitzvot, and Rationales for Mitzvot

 

 

One of R. Hirsch’s most significant contributions to Jewish thought is his intensive effort to find rationales for every aspect of each mitzva.  He outlines the foundation for such a project in The Nineteen Letters and carries out this project in great detail both in Horeb and in his commentary on the Torah.  The Nineteen Letters and Horeb, R. Hirsch’s two early works, both set forth R. Hirsch’s unique and innovative six-part classification of mitzvot.[1]  

 

            The choice to focus intellectual efforts on analyzing the reasons for mitzvot fits R. Hirsch’s general worldview.  R. Hirsch had little interest in metaphysical speculation about God, favoring more practical kinds of philosophic activity.  “Judaism has no regard for the kind of speculation that does not aspire to contribute to active productive life” (The Nineteen Letters, letter 15, trans. Karin Paretzky, revised by R. Joseph Elias).  In letter 18, he criticizes Rambam for introducing foreign modes of thought into Judaism, rather than analyzing it from within.  For example, according to Rambam, “Knowledge of God was considered an end in itself rather than a means toward the end.”  Clearly, for R. Hirsch, knowledge of God is not the end goal. 

 

            This practical bent emerges clearly from his analysis of the eighth chapter of Tehillim.[2]  The second verse of that chapter says: “O God, our Lord, how glorious is Your name in all the earth.”  One would expect the subsequent verses to outline in detail God’s grandeur; instead, they turn to a discussion of humanity.  R. Hirsch argues that this psalm reflects a characteristic Jewish truth. 

 

Knowledge of God is not a metaphysical insight into the existence, essence and metaphysical attributes of God.  The true knowledge of God is the ethical insight into the essence of man, his calling and his task rooted in the concept of God and His relationship to the world.

 

            Moreover, R. Hirsch contended that any knowledge of divinity is rooted in revelation and that human speculation could tell us very little about God (commentary on Shemot 19:4).  Letter 15 states that “we are warned against misconceiving our intellectual powers and probing into bottomless depths, no matter what glittering constructions and theses such a quest may produce.”  According to R, Hirsch, the eighth psalm mentions “out of the mouths of babes” to teach that the mind of every child is sufficient to understand what we need to know about God.  “The maturest mind of a philosopher knows no more about the essence of God than the simple mind of a child” (cited in I. Grunfeld, page xlii).

 

            The above idea finds powerful expression in an essay written by R. Hirsch about Shavuot and revelation.[3]  There, he objects to calling Judaism a “religion” or a “theology.”  He rejects the former term because “religion” refers to the inner thoughts of man rather than to outward physical expression.  Other religions are made by man and their external religious acts merely attempt to realize those inner thoughts.  In the case of Judaism, however, God gave us the commandments and we try to understand the divine thought manifest in those commandments.  The commandments constitute the primary essence of Judaism. 

 

R. Hirsch continues to explain that Judaism is not a “theology” either:

 

For, whilst theology contains the thoughts of man on God and things Divine, the Torah contains the thoughts of God on man and things human.  There is little said in the Torah which refers directly to God and things Divine; and of the inner essence of the Godhead and the supernatural we find in the Torah nothing at all….  The Torah does not want to tell us how things look in heaven, but how they should look in our hearts and homes (ibid., p.189).

 

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Letter to Jewish Action about R. Hirsch's view of evolution