The Torah Im Derech Eretz Society

Thursday, October 9, 2025

Minhag Ashkenaz Kenes, Bene Brak, Thursday Oct 9, Mincah 5:50 PM

Also available online via Google Meet

https://meet.google.com/bfm-qjvh-xxs

Followed by talk in Hebrew by Rav Hamburger, followed by Maariv, followed by Chazanus.

Also available online via Google Meet

Tuesday, September 30, 2025

A great quote from Amira Hass

"Israel and its collaborators from right-wing organizations have drummed it into the public that all Palestinian resistance is terrorism and every means of resistance is an illegitimate, actually antisemitic, weapon. It's not just bombs and rocks that constitute terror, but also diplomacy and popular protests, lawsuits in international courts, agriculture, hooking up a water line, building a tent, expanding a school, adding a balcony, speeches and mere words."

Opinion | The Oslo Accords Are Alive and Well and Perpetuating the Israeli Occupation, Haaretz

Fantastic quote except that it's not just right wingers. Most Israelis and all Zionists talk this way. And so do nearly all Orthodox Jews. Why? Because that's what they were taught as kids, so it must be true. They never question it. The assumption is built in part on notions of Jewish superiority in all matters. But it's not just an assumption of superiority, it's absolutism. We are good; they are bad. It's self-worship. Nationalism allows for that. Nationalism, as Yaakov Shapiro explains, was a European invention that first replaced the Pope with the King and then the King with the people. We don't obey a religious figure anymore. We rule. Identity went from being a Catholic to being a Frenchman, which is laden with all kinds of mythology. It's all a kind of self-worship. So while the Tanach talks about how low Jews can go, Zionism uses the Tanach to say the opposite, that we are always wonderful. Even after a two-year onslaught in Gaza, we still are wonderful. Evidence doesn't matter. Facts don't matter. Even reports from soldiers don't matter. We are always right, always good, no matter what. The notion is taken as a kind of religious faith. So what nationalism did to Europeans - secularize them - Zionism has done to us. We now worship ourselves. We are infallible. Or so we think.

Monday, September 22, 2025

Rav Schwab on Sefer Melachim

Thursday, September 18, 2025

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.

continue

Monday, September 15, 2025

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

One drop of innocent blood shed

The land of the Divine Torah is there for the people who live in it. Its most valuable product, the purpose and goal of the whole of God's Blessing directed to it, is every human life nourished by it, through its means able to dedicate itself to making God's Torah into a realisation. The land is only given on the condition of every human life respected as being unassailably sacred to the Torah. One drop of innocent blood shed and no notice taken of it drops a stitch in the bond which connects the land with the nation and both with God. (see verses 33 and 34). This holding human life to be so sacred is to be made evident immediately on taking possession of the land in the division of it by instituting the arrangement which the Torah had already referred to in the fundamental laws of Torah social life. (Ex. XXI, 13). Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch on Bamidbar 35:10

R' Joseph Breuer, zt'l, 1882-1980

"Anyone who has but a fleeting insight into the life and work of Rav Hirsch will realize that his Torah im Derech Eretz formula was never intended by him as a Horo'as Sho'oh....As for us let us do our best to promote and fulfill the Torah im Derech Eretz ideal in its true spirit and let us protect it from regrettable misuse and interpretation. A personal footnote: on the day before he passed away, my father told me: 'I am firmly convinced that the way shown by Rav Hirsch will be mekarev ha'geulah.' A sacred testament." ("The Relevance of the Torah Im Derech Eretz Ideal")

"The definition of a gadol be'Yisrael is one who is great in Torah and great in piety, one whose personal views and conduct are based exclusively on those twin pillars. Such a person is acknowledged as a peer by the other great men of his era. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch was revered by the Chassidic leaders of Galicia and by the rabbis of Lithuania. That his views did not accord with theirs was immaterial; his philosophy grew out of his G-d-fearing understanding of Torah, and therefore it was legitimate for him. So it was with Rabbi Salomon Breuer and so it was with Rabbi Joseph Breuer. Their greatness transcended community. They belonged to Klal Yisrael, so they were honored by Klal Yisrael, all of it."

R' Shlomo Wolbe

Full article

The brave German Jewish communities

"...in Germany where there was so much assimilation, a number of German Jews decided they are going to fight for the preservation of the Torah. And they built up an Orthodox kehilla that was excellent in every detail. They were machmir in everything. In some respects, they were more frum than the Jews in Russia and Poland were. And they had organized kashrus. Strict hashgacha. Not rabbanim who gave heksherim and were paid for it. No. The kehillias gave hashgacha and were very strict in every detail. And so the minority that withstood the test were a glorious fulfillment of the prophecy that the Am Yisroel will continue forever despite any circumstances."

Rav Avigdor Miller, Recording #855 - "The Kiss of Esav," 11:48

R' Miller on Great Kehillas

"Satmar they are devoted to avodas Hashem. They go all out to serve Hashem. Lubavitch, all out to serve Hashem. No question about that. They are not the only kehillas. I have plenty to say about the German kehillah. I love the German kehillah. As a boy I davened every Shabbos in a German shul. I can sit four hours in the afternoon, Shabbos afternoon, in a German shul. These kehillas we have to appreciate. And all the things that are said against them we have to learn how to refute. Vehitzidku es ha tzadick." R' Avigdor Miller, Loving His People 2, #528 1:06.