[Avodah] RSRH

[Alexander Seinfeld]

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>At 08:02 AM 12/20/2020, Joseph Kaplan wrote:
>>RYL reiterates (38/208):
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>>??? I maintain that if one truly wants to understand
>>Judaism,  then one has to be familiar with the
>>writings of Rabbiner Hirsch.???
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>>You mean no one truly understood Judaism before the 19th century?
>You left out the part where I said that R..
>Shraga Feivel Mendelovitz told a yeshiva bachur the same thing.
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>To gain a true understanding of Yahadus one needs
>the ability to comprehend the entire body of
>Torah knowledge.  The vast majority of Jews
>cannot do this and never did or will do this..
>RSRH does this for us in his writings.
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>An important point. Is Judaism a religion?  RSRH
>says it is not.  Do you know why Yahadus is not a
>religion? Rabbiner Hirsch explains why it is not.
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>If one does not know why Judaism is not a
>religion,  then one most certainly does not truly understand Judaism.
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>YL
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Here’s another way of looking at it - Rav Hirsch explains Judaism _for a
modern reader_ to understand in a way that no one else has done.

There is nothing in Rav Hirsch that I’ve ever seen that is conceptually
innovative, the innovation is his way of explaining both the big picture
and the details. 

If looking for a place to begin, I would suggest either his Chumash
commentary (the full one, not the abridged) or Horeb.

 
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