[Avodah] RSRH - History in Aggadah is Beyond Critical Examination

[Michael Makovi]

At the moment, I'm reading Schorsch, Ismar. "Zacharias Frankel and the
European Origins of Conservative Judaism." Judaism 30 (Summer 1981):
344-354.

On page 353, we read, "For Hirsch, statements of historical fact
preserved in Rabbinic literature were pronouncements of dogmatic truth
beyond critical examination." The footnote reads "Jeschurun, VII
(1860-1861): 441-442."

This statement regarding Hirsch sounds suspicious. Rav Hirsch was
asked by Geiger whether he'd accept the Talmudic etymology for
prozbul, when in reality, the word is obviously Greek, not Aramaic.
Rav Hirsch replied that the historical etymology is not so important
as the meaning the Rabbis assigned it (presumably since the meaning
they assigned it is related to the halakhic view of those same
Rabbis). It is not that Rav Hirsch considered the historical facts to
be "beyond critical examination", but rather, he simply questioned the
relevance of thos historical facts. Prozbul may be a Greek word, but
so what? I'd compare this to Rav Hirsch's question: all those scholars
who study the piyyutim, how many of them actually recite the piyyutim?

Moreover, Rav Hirsch's teshvua on aggadah clearly accepts the
Gaonic/Rishonic view that midrash is umdena. If so, then Rav Hirsch
would presumably accept that all historical facts in the aggada are
the Rabbis' own subjective and human understanding of those historical
facts, and not objectively pure historical accounts given at Sinai.
Furthermore, Rav Hirsch accepts that some of the historical tales in
the aggadah may be inventions designed to teach morals and theology
and not history. (Cf. Rabbi Azaryah de Rossi's proposal that the story
of the mosquito in Titus's brain is a conscious and deliberate
invention designed to teach about G-d's Providence and reward and
punishment. Rabbi Chaim Eisen, "Maharal's Be'er ha-Golah and His
Revolution in Aggadic Scholarship", Hakira 4,
http://www.hakirah.org/Vol%204%20Eisen.pdf - after examing the
Gaonic/Rishonic understanding of aggadah, Rabbi Eisen shows that de
Rossi's proposal would meet with Rav Hirsch's approval, as both Rabbi
Hirsch and de Rossi follow that same Gaonic/Rishonic approach,
notwithstanding that the Maharal, departing from the Gaonic/Rishonic
understanding of aggadah, viewed de Rossi's suggestion as heresy.)

For these two reasons, that quoted statement about Rav Hirsch from
Schorsch's article on Frankel seems quite erroneous. Unfortunately, I
cannot check that reference to Jeschurun. Can anyone add anything to
this? Thank you.

Incidentally: From this article about Frankel, I can definitely see
that Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner's and Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits's
view has much in common with Frankel and Conservative. However, I
still side with Rabbis Glasner and Berkovits against Rav Hirsch. I
also - perhaps like Rabbis Hildesheimer and Hoffman contra Rav Hirsch
- see nothing wrong with critical historical scholarship. However,
this article of Schorsch's details Frankel's understanding of the role
of the Volksgeist in halakhah, similar to Schechter's Catholic Israel.
As far as I can recall, Rav Hirsch never levels any criticism against
this notion, but as far as I'm concerned, it is this precisely
reliance on the Volksgeist that is ultimately pernicious if not
heretical, not to mention intellectually tepid and pathetic. (Frankel
seems to have had a reverence for history, such that history alone,
and its role in the creation of the Volksgeist, was enough to command
reverence and adherence to halakhah, in his opinion. Frankly, I find
this notion extremely wanting. Conservative Rabbi Dr. Daniel Gordis
notes that most American Jews would agree with me; see his "Positive
Historical Judaism Exhausted: Reflections on a Movement’s Future",
http://danielgordis.org/sitefiles/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Positive-Historical-Judaism-Exhausted-Reflections-on-a-Movements-Future.pdf
. Rav Hirsch criticizes Frankel for making the Rabbis the creators of
halakhah, but I see no problem with this. On the other hand, even
though Rav Hirsch never discussed the following, I think that Frankel
and Schechter put halakhah into the hands of the laity, and made it
legitimate only insofar as the people preferred being halakhic. This,
and precisely this, is I think what makes Conservatism heretical, and
not what Rav Hirsch criticized. My analysis largely agrees with Dr.
Daniel Gordis's analysis (op. cit.) - already in the first opening
pages, Dr. Gordis calls for the unequivocal rejection and abandonment
of the concept of Catholic Israel. I wrote a letter to Dr. Gordis,
reproduced at http://michaelmakovi.blogspot.com/2009/08/positive-historical-judaism-exhausted-r.html,
and Dr. Gordis's response to me indicated that he mostly agrees with
what I said there.

Speaking of that letter of mine to Dr. Gordis, and speaking of my
siding with Frankel against Rav Hirsch, let me quote from that letter
of mine to Dr. Gordis, explaining how I can be a Hirschian and yet
side with Frankel. In short, I (and perhaps Frankel) am siding with
Rambam, while Rav Hirsch is siding with Rashba. To quote myself:
"I'm quite aware that Rabbi Hirsch's conception of halakhah is quite
different from Rabbi Berkovits's! I cannot be both a Hirschian and a
Berkovits-ian without accounting for what Rabbi Hirsch said about
Frankel. For a long time, in my ignorance, I had no choice but to
throw up my hands and say that with all due respect to Rav Hirsch, I
had to disagree with him regarding the nature of the Oral Law. Dr.
Elliot Bondi told me that in truth, my disagreement with Rav Hirsch
was very small, and that notwithstanding my support for Rabbi
Berkovits, I still mostly agreed with Rav Hirsch as well, but I failed
to understand how Dr. Bondi could be correct. But later I came to
understand: my personal answer now is based on footnote 42 in
Rationality and Halacha: The Halacha L’Moshe MiSinai of Treifos
(http://www.hakirah.org/Vol%204%20Buchman.pdf), by Rabbi Asher Benzion
Buchman. There, Rabbi Buchman says that the difference between Rambam
and Rashba in tereifot is not such much a different conception of how
halakhah works, and it's not even primarily due to their radical and
far-reaching disagreement regarding naturalism and supernaturalism
(for that, see David Guttmann's Avodah Zarah as Falsehood - Denial of
Reality and Rejection of Science
(http://www.hakirah.org/Vol%206%20Guttmann.pdf) and Rabbi Buchman's
U-Madua Lo Yeresem (http://www.hakirah.org/Vol%202%20Buchman.pdf));
rather, there's is a difference in how much (quantitatively) of
halakhah was revealed at Sinai. For Rambam, Sinai revealed a few
general principles that were left for humans to expand upon; for
Rashba, revelation revealed far many more details, leaving less for
humans. I'd say that my disagreement with Rav Hirsch is the same; both
of us agree with Frankel that new hiddushim can be made and new facets
of halakhah revealed over time, etc., but the question is one of
quantity, of how much of halakhah, how much (quantitatively) of the
Talmud and Shulhan Arukh can be explained by tanur akhnai and Moshe
seeing Rabbi Akiva's lecture. According to this, Hirsch, Frankel, and
I are all mostly on the same page, and have merely a quantitative
disagreement. If so, wherefore Rabbi Hirsch's vehement denunciation of
Frankel as a heretic? I once said, in a private conversation with
Rabbi Alan Yuter, that I thought it was simply an issue of polemic
knee-jerk reaction; Rabbi Hirsch, quite simply, with all due respect
to him, was on edge and was hypersensitive, due to the time in which
he lived. (I'm being overly simplistic and bombastic, but I trust I
don't need to elaborate for you what I mean, as I'm sure you know more
about what I just said than I myself do.) I later saw the exact same
explanation by Professor Marc Shapiro in “Review Essay: Sociology and
Halakha”, Tradition 27:1, Fall 1992. I'm not an adequate enough
scholar to determine if my explanation here is completely historically
correct, but it personally satisfies me, at least as a theoretical
paradigm, even if ahistorical. It is certainly close enough to the
historical truth, and conforms closely enough to the respective
positions of the various authorities in question, for it to be valid
in the world of theology, even if it wouldn't pass muster in the world
of objective academic historical scholarship. For my own personal
purposes, I have reconciled Rabbi Hirsch with the historical school
sufficiently for me to be a Hirschian Berkovits-ian. Perhaps a bit of
post-modern critical literary method is called for - Post-Modern
Interpretation of Texts
(http://michaelmakovi.blogspot.com/2009/06/post-modern-interpretation-of-texts.html)."

Michael Makovi