European Judaism Started in Germany

"The Ashkenazic communities gradually spread to other parts of Europe. Torah students from the core communities of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz went on to become Torah leaders in neighboring lands. Some examples are France (Rashi and others), Bohemia and Austria (the Or Zarua and others), Poland (Maharam Mintz, R’ Yakov Falk, and others), and Italy (the Shibolei Haleket, Mahari Mintz, and others).

"In general, these communities continued to practice Ashkenazic customs in the lands they spread to. As a result, we refer to all European Jews — except the Spanish, Portuguese, and those Jews who came under their influence — as “Ashkenazim.” An indication of their Ashkenazic origin is the obvious linguistic link between Yiddish and German."

Machon Moreshes Ashkenaz
Rabbi Binyamin Shlomo Hamburger
Translated by Rabbi Reuven Poupko

Their criticism does not touch us

“Times may have changed. But the problems have remained essentially the same…. Only an un-wavering, straightforward course will lead to success. We neither look for nor require the agreement or approval of those who prefer a different course. Their criticism does not touch us.… As for us, let us do our best to promote and fulfill the TIDE ideal in its true spirit and let us protect it from regrettable misuse and misinterpretation."

 “A personal footnote: on the day before he passed away my father, zt”l, told me: ‘I am
firmly convinced that the way shown by Rav Hirsch will be mekarev hageulah.’ ”

R' Joseph Breuer

Encouragement from John Steinbeck

"So there went the magic formula, the secret ingredient. With no more than that, we were set on the desolate, lonely path of the writer. And we must have turned in some abysmally bad stories. If I had expected to be discovered in a full bloom of excellence, the grades given my efforts quickly disillusioned me. And if I felt unjustly criticized, the judgments of editors for many years afterward upheld my teacher's side, not mine. The low grades on my college stories were echoed in the rejection slips, in the hundreds of rejection slips."

Nobel prize winning author John Steinbeck discussing his early experiences as a writer. The lesson is clear: don't be discouraged by the failures in your life. Look how things started for Steinbeck and look what he became as a writer.

Linked post: Hand Washing Before Kiddush (Torah Musings)

by Gil Student

"In the old days, there was a very widespread custom that was stamped out by leading rabbis who felt that it did not sufficiently conform to the Talmud. This despite explicit approval of the practice by scholars of the highest tier.

No, I am not referring to any example of the so-called Haredization of the Jewish community in the twentieth century. I am talking about a development in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the practice is washing one's hands (with a blessing) prior to reciting kiddush over wine and then proceeding directly to reciting a blessing over the hallah."

continue

Not For the Jews Alone

"But the Torah has also taught us not to conceive of this our destiny and of the lot which awaits us because of it and for the purpose of its fulfillment, in terms of isolated phenomena. Even as it has taught us to acquire the proper, thoughtful appreciation for nature through God, and for the place of man in nature, so it also demonstrates to us that the founding and the destiny of our people is most intimately linked with the course of the history of mankind as a whole, which is no less guided by God than is our own. It teaches us to recognize that the purpose of our founding and our introduction into the midst of the nations was that we might teach mankind, and reclaim mankind for, the knowledge and recognition of God, and of its own destiny and task as assigned it by Him. At the very beginning, Abraham was appointed to be "the spiritual father of the multitude of the nations." It was through him, and through the generations that would follow him, that blessings were to come "to all the families of the earth." At the time of His very first intervention in the course of the history of the nations in behalf of Israel, God referred to the latter not as His "only son" but rather as His "first-born" son. In the same spirit, God declared the aim of the miracles He had wrought for the deliverance of His people in Egypt to be "that His Name might be proclaimed throughout the earth" (Exod. 9: 16). And it is repeatedly stated that a reason for the preservation of Israel among the nations was that all the nations might be brought back to a purer knowledge of God (Num. 14:13 ff)."

R' Hirsch, intro to commentary on Tehillim