Origin of TIDE

 Did Rav Hirsch initiate TIDE? Sounds like the Rambam did it centuries before. Consider these statements from Menachem Kellner, "Today’s Perplexed: Between Maimonidean Promise and Peril," TRADITION 53:4/2021.

Had not Rambam invested his considerable authority behind the project of integrating science and “secular” studies with Judaism, how much room would the Jewish world have made for rationally-oriented Jews in the Middle Ages and today? For Rambam, God, as it were, “wrote” two books: Torah and Cosmos. The truly devout Jew realizes that he or she must study both books, or only have access to half of God’s works. 

Finally, had Rambam not enunciated a universalist vision of Judaism would almost all Jews today be even more particularist than they are? It is my distinct impression that most secular Israeli Jews, and almost all Israeli Orthodox Jews, as well as some secular Jews (to one degree or another) in the Diaspora and almost all Orthodox Jews there, are convinced that there is something inherent, intrinsic, metaphysical, or mystical that distinguishes Jews from non-Jews; on this view the difference between Jew and non-Jew resides in their “hardware,” and not only in the different software they “run.” In this, knowingly or not, they reject Rambam, one of Judaism’s most outspoken universalists. He held that all human beings are truly created in the image of God, period, and insisted that there is no essential difference between Jews and non-Jews.

Rambam emphasizes that Jews and nonJews are all created equal by God and formed “in the same womb,” i.e., there is no essential difference between Jews and non-Jews. 

 Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Slaves 9:8

Similarly, we should not embarrass a slave by our deeds or with words, for the Torah prescribed that they perform service, not that they be humiliated. Nor should one shout or vent anger upon them extensively. Instead, one should speak to them gently, and listen to their claims. This is explicitly stated with regard to the positive paths of Job for which he was praised Job 31:13, 15: "Have I ever shunned justice for my slave and maid-servant when they quarreled with me.... Did not He who made me in the belly make him? Was it not the One who prepared us in the womb?"