[Avodah] R. Hirsch as a Modern Orthodox Leader

Thu Jun 30 13:06:22 PDT 2011

At 03:40 PM 6/30/2011, R. Micha  wrote:
>From: Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org>
>To: avodah at lists.aishdas.org
>Subject: Re: [Avodah] R. Hirsch as a Modern Orthodox Leader
>Message-ID: <20110630102136.GA21847 at aishdas.org>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
>On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 05:24:48AM +0300, Ben Waxman wrote:
>: From: Saul.Z.Newman at kp.org
>:>   1--R Hirsch  would clearly not be comfortable in a  DL/RZ  setting
>
>: Yes, Rav Hirsch opposed a movement back to Zion, but that does not
>: mean that he would feel the same after the Shoah, and when the medina
>: is a reality.
>
>This is empty speculation, but then so is opining about tzadiq vera lo...

I do not think that it is a stretch of the 
imagination to think that RSRH's views on Zionism 
and the State of Israel after the Holocaust would 
be similar to those of Rav Dr. Joseph Breuer and Rav Shimon Schwab.

Below are some thoughts regarding the founding of 
the Jewish State from A Unique Perspective: The 
Essays of Rav Dr. Joseph Breuer.

Page 358

Anyone who is imbued with the eternal truth and validity of
God’s Torah will have to be aware that a state on God’s holy soil
will only be able to endure if the conditions that God has set down
for a Jewish state on His holy soil are met. These conditions apply
to the Jewish entity and to the life of every individual who declares
himself a member of God’s People.

Every word in our Torah is ironclad testimony to these facts.

Page 359

We have expressed it repeatedly in all clarity and intensity: This
state will have a future only if, and as long as, it is organized as a
Jewish state, i.e., a state of God, rising on sacred soil. It will be a
state of God if it proclaims the Torah as the fundamental law of its
constitution and propagates its practical realization in the life of our
people.

Page 365

There must live in us this unshakeable conviction: This State
will last only if it will rise as God’s State on God-holy soil. This
alone will prevent it from suffering the fate of the previous Jewish
States. Will this State live up to this condition? It is still a question,
a source of terrible worry. We wished it were no longer a question!
As certain as it is that this State, the mere fact of its formation,
does not mean that the Ge’ulah has arrived, just as potent is its
ability as perhaps never before in our Galus-historyto hasten
the coming of the Ge’ulah. What a tragedy if this State, either by
delusion or folly, were to prolong the Galus and provoke new and
terrible catastrophes! May Hashem prevent this from happening.

Furthermore,  below are some selections from Rav 
Dr. Joseph Breuer's essay Israel  A Challenge 
that appeared in the Mitteilungen, Vol. 24, 
December 1962/January 1963 and is reproduced in A 
Unique Perspective: The Essays of Rav Breuer, 1914 -1973.

A trip to Israel has become routine in our time. The amazing
technological progress in the speed of air travel has helped in the
enormous rise of volume of travelers bound for Israel. The Holy
Land has become a focal attraction for the Diaspora. We would
rather not analyze whether it is longing for the ancestral land which
motivates the travelers’ plan  a longing which all but consumed
the heart of a Yehudah Halevi. Undoubtedly, the existence of a
Jewish state in the Holy Land, recognized by a majority of the
world’s nations, draws many thousands into its orbit, who then
return home warmed by the glow of the numerous achievements
which the State has accomplished in the brief period of its existence.

As for us Torah-true Jews, we must be permeated by the following
thoughts:

 From the beginning the Jewish people was assured possession
of Eretz Yisrael only as God’s nation. Every page of the Torah
proclaims this irrevocable truth. To deny it would mean a denial of
God’s Torah itself. Only he who no longer recognizes the truth of
the Divine creative pronouncement of “I shall take you as My
people” with which God called our people into existencewill
fail to grasp the absolute interdependence between the “I shall
bring you to the Land” (Shemos 6:8) and the emergence of the
Jewish people as God’s nation. The disruption of the sole tie that
bound this nation to its land inevitably sealed the fate of nation and
land.

Similarly, the future of this land is intimately and forever tied to
the future of this nation. Redemption of the Jewish people also
means redemption of the Jewish land. Thus, a true ingathering of
our people into its land is not possible without our return to God
and His life-shaping proximity. For the Land, too, longs for the
return of God’s Shechinah.

<snip>

For God guided His people, which His creative Will awakened
to life and which can exist only through Him, and implanted it “in
the Mountain of His heritage, in the site of His presence on earth,
in the Sanctuary founded by God’s hands” (Shemos 15:17). Through
God’s nation the Divinely sanctified soil was to be transformed into
one singular Mount of Sanctity, looming high above a humanity
estranged from God, as a symbol of the Divine claim of inheritance
to His realm of earth and mankind. Who can then measure the
gloom of the Prophet’s mourning (Yirmeyahu 2:7): “. . . but you
came and desecrated My land and turned My heritage into abomination”!

Have we who tread upon the soil of our homeland still an ear
for this stirring plaint? Do we feel shame for our brethren who
respond with derisive laughter to this heart-rending pain; who feel
no compunction to demonstrate to a world, which is familiar with
the Book of the Prophets, how the very descendants of this people
ridicule their own leaders?

<snip>

Let us face it: The Jewish State in its present form is far from
being a State of God. This realization is the basis for the desperate
struggle of Torah Jewry in Israel for the salvation of Torah in Israel.
Are not the establishment of the State and the resurrection of the
land from the decay of millennia Divine challenges to our people?
Are you ready for your ultimate redemption? That is why every
truly Jewish man or woman must tremble for the future of the State,
for the future of our land.

Yet we need not tremble for the future of God’s Torah. Our
anxiety is directed to our people and its God-willed destiny. Despite
the fateful significance of the tasks confronting Torah-true
Jewry in the Holy Land, it would be of even greater fateful consequence
were we to underestimate the importance of strengthening
Torah-true Jewry in the Golah.

We applaud him who chooses to make his permanent domicile
in Israel, in order to support and strengthen the cause of Torah in
the Holy Land. However, in view of the regrettable state of affairs,
a visitor to Israel will be burdened by the experiences which may
be expected in the Golah but which are unbearable in the Holy
Land.

See  Rav Shimon Schwab's article Zion or Zionism 
that appears in Selected Writings for his views 
on Zionism and the State of Israel. It may be read at

http://www.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/rsrh/zion_or_zionism.pdf

Yitzchok Levine 
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