Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Warning About Emancipation

from the Jewish Action Article by Leo Levi

"Rabbi Hirsch lived in a time of great upheaval, when Jews were being granted progressively greater rights. It was easy to become intoxicated with the feeling of freedom, and such indeed was the spirit of the time. Reading Rabbi Hirsch’s works, one is impressed by the low-key terms in which he refers to the emancipation. Far from being swept up in the fervor, Rabbi Hirsch repeatedly warns his fellow Jews not to be deceived by the unprecedented liberality they were experiencing. Renewed anti-Semitism could well be lurking around the corner. “Who knows?” he wrote. “Perhaps it is just those who are blinded by their exaggerated vision, idolizing emancipation and equality, who will be the cause of reviving the danger of renewed enslavement [of the Jews].”"  16

16. In passages where the ultimately anticipated improvement of human morality is discussed—a context which virtually begs for a reference to the rising level of morality among the nations at his time— there is no such reference. (Cf. Nineteen Letters, Letter 7; Collected Writings, vol. 6, pp. 240-255; Commentary, Leviticus 26:42. The quote is from Harav S. R. Hirsch: Mishnato VeShitato, Yonah Emanuel, ed. [Jerusalem, 5722], 300, “On Anti-Semitism”)

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