[Avodah] Another View on How to Portray People of the Past

[Samuel Svarc]

The following comment is based solely on what was posted here on Avodah. Due
to the length of the quote and the completeness of the thought I'm quite
confident that I have understood his position clearly. If this is not the
case, my comment, likewise, will be incorrect. 

 
> The following is from  Haskalah, Secular Studies
> and the Close of the Yeshiva in Volozhin in 1892
> by Rabbi Dr. J. J. Schachter. ...
> 
> Rabbi Schacter writes, "In a recently published
> essay [R. S. Schwab, Selected Writings (Lakewood,
> 1988), 234], Rabbi Shimon Schwab justified this
> neglect of history on positive ideological
> grounds rather than simply considering it as
> reflecting an avoidance of bittul Torah. His
> comments are remarkable and deserve being cited in detail: ...
> 
...
> 
> Suppose one of us today would want to write a
> history of Orthodox Jewish life in pre-holocaust
> Germany. There is much to report but not
> everything is complimentary. Not all of the
> important people were flawless as one would like
> to believe and not all the mores and lifestyles
> of this bygone generation were beyond criticism.
> An historian has no right to take sides. He most
> report the stark truth and nothing but the truth.
> Now, if an historian would report truthfully what
> he witnessed, it would make a lot of people
> rightfully angry. He would violate the
> prohibition against spreading Loshon Horah which
> does not only apply to the living, but also to
> those who sleep in the dust and cannot defend themselves any more.
> 
> What ethical purpose is served by preserving a
> realistic historic picture? Nothing but the
> satisfaction of curiosity. We should tell
> ourselves and our children the good memories of
> the good people, their unshakeable faith, their
> staunch defense of tradition, their life of
> truth, their impeccable honesty, their boundless
> charity and their great reverence for Torah and
> Torah sages. What is gained by pointing out their
> inadequacies and their contradictions? We want to
> be inspired by their example and learn from their experience....

And therefore we should write about those times. "We should tell ourselves
and our children the good memories of the good people, their unshakeable
faith, their staunch defense of tradition, their life of truth, their
impeccable honesty, their boundless charity and their great reverence for
Torah and Torah sages." It is the parts by which no one gains that we should
gloss over, as "What is gained by pointing out their inadequacies and their
contradictions? We want to be inspired by their example and learn from their
experience...."

This seems to have eluded Rabbi Dr. Schacter, as he writes, "While it (R'
Schwab's argument) may explain why one should not write about the past, it
does not justify distorting the past when one does write about it."

This is mistaken, as what R' Schwab would consider "inspiration" (talking
about previous generations of Jews in Germany and mentioning only their
positive traits - his explicit example) would be considered "distortion" by
R' D' Schacter.

KT,
MSS