Tonight and tomorrow is the 138th yahrzeit of Rabbiner Hirsch. According to the Zohar, on a yahrzeit a tzadik is more present in the world than he was in his lifetime. Not only that, but he is elevated with each passing year. You can connect to this through love of the tzadik. Also, when you study his Torah, you are transported to his gravesite where you can daven for salvation in his merit.
Before the war:
I just bought the new Hirsch Siddur. They did a terrific job. The width is a bit less than the thick paper version so easier to carry, but the pages are thick enough to turn, unlike the thinner paper version. Most importantly, the font is bigger. In a few sections like the end of Amidah, the font is tiny. I would have preferred that it all be kept the same.
I appreciate the occasional Minhag Ashkenaz instructions such as informing the reader that birchos hatorah should come before korbonos. Also, the word lishma in birchos hatorah is in brackets.
The cover is attractive too.
So what you have here finally is an English language siddur that approximates German minhag that isn't such a strain on the eyes or fingers. For example, tallis and tefillin are before korbonos where they belong. As for birchos hatorah being there too, there's a note that tells you so, so there's a bit of page flipping. Baruch shimei is shown as being only in some communities, etc. There's many changes from true German minhag of course, such as the bracha concerning heretics. But this is the closest I have seen yet to a siddur in English that can be used by Minhag Ashkenaz people.
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?"
Anyone who decides to be engaged in Torah [study] and not to work, but, rather, to be supported by tzedukah, this person desecrates G-d’s name, degrades the Torah, extinguishes the light of our faith, brings evil upon himself and forfeits life in the next world, since it is forbidden to derive benefit from the words of Torah in this world.
