[Avodah] Seeing the Alps

[Michael Makovi]

I think the way to understand Rav Hirsch's seeing the Alps, is in
light of his other writings.

It is a major theme in his writings, the correspondence between nature
and Torah. For example, in his 19 Letters, in the Tehilla we say on
Shabbat about the heavens declaring Hashem's glory, that switches
halfway through the psalm to extolling the Torah, Rav Hirsch comments
that we can learn of Hashem's existence and mastery, etc, from nature,
but Torah is of course a higher method of this.

In From the Wisdom of Mishlei, to perakim 3 and 8 (about Hashem used
wisdom to create the world), Rav Hirsch says that just as the world
runs according to its laws (of nature), humans run according to their
laws (of Torah), only the former is by compulsion and the latter is by
free will.

In R Klugman's biography of Rav Hirsch (Artscroll), there is a story
of Rav Hirsch dreaming that all of nature obeys Hashem's decrees, and
yet man refuses to do so - how can he disobey when the grass and the
trees and the animals all obey??!!

So Rav Hirsch mamash was a country man. In From the Wisdom of Mishlei
on how to manage finances (Mishlei speaks of agricultural finances),
one sees that Rav Hirsch in truth desired a quiet rural lifestyle. In
his chumash to the laws of yovel, one sees this even clearer. He was a
country man at heart. If he had been able to find himself to a
kibbutz, I think he would have been the happiest man on earth.