[Avodah] R' Samson Raphael Hirsch and the Imrei Emes (Gerrer Rebbe)

[Prof. Levine]

At 08:29 AM 6/24/2008, Rn T. Katz wrote:
>
>It is noteworthy that Rav Shimon Schwab related that the Imrei Emes once
>told him that "the Tzaddik of Frankfurt [Rav Hirsch] was a liebidige mussar
>sefer [a living mussar sefer]."  The Gerrer 
>Rebbe's assessment and awe of  Rav
>Hirsch should now come as no wonder.
>
The Imrei Emes was not the only rebbe to hold RSRH is high esteem.

On one occasion, while he was attending the 
shiurim of Rabbi Simcha Bunim Schreiber (1843 - 
1907), a grandson of the Chasam Sofer and author of Shevet Sofer,

         Reb Shraga Feivel found himself the 
object of criticism when he was seen studying 
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch’s works. Because 
Rabbi Hirsch wrote       in German vernacular, 
his works still occasioned suspicion within the 
deeply conservative Hungarian yeshiva world of 
the day. Reb Shraga Feivel was     summoned to 
appear before the yeshivah administration. At his 
“trial” he enlisted the assistance of an old Jew 
living in Pressburg, who testified that 
thirty   years earlier, when his first wife’s 
mental disability forced him to seek permission 
from one hundred rabbis to take a second wife, 
the Divrei Chaim of         Sanz had advised him 
to travel to Frankfurt-am-Main to obtain the 
signature for Rabbi Hirsch, telling him, “What I 
am to Galicia, he is to Germany.”[i]


[i] Reb Shraga Feivel, the Architect of Torah in 
America by Yonoson Rosenblum,  Mesorah Publications, Ltd. 2001, pages 34 – 35.


Yitzchok Levine 
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