the Tafel to the Ikkur

“…Other disciplines are to be regarded as auxiliary; they are to be studied only if they are capable of aiding Torah study and are subordinated to it as the tafel to the ikkur. The Torah’s truths must remain for us what is absolute and unconditional, the standard by which to measure all the results obtained in other branches of knowledge. Only that which accords with the truths of the Torah can be accepted by us as true. The Torah should be our sole focus: All that we absorb and create intellectually should be considered from the perspective of the Torah and should proceed along its paths. Accordingly, we will not adopt ideas that are not in consonance with this perspective; we will not accept conclusions derived from others’ premises and mix them with words of Torah." (Vayikra 18:4-5)

This quote silences the notion that R' Hirsch viewed Jewish and secular studies as being of equal importance. So what about his educational program as described in the articles in Judaism Eternal. I have to propose that the heavy emphasis there on secular studies, the apparent 50/50 split, was a result of government and community pressures. The former were much more significant than people may realize and the latter were too. R' Hirsch was trying to build a community that started with a few dozen people and had only non-religious to drawn from. He wasn't dictating rules to the Borough Park community, building a shul there and trying to attract frum people from other shuls. He was doing kiruv in an environment of wild and ferocious assimilation.

I think that this quote serves also to rebut the article "A Peculiar Point in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch's Essays on Education". What that article does is focus on the general terms that R' Hirsch uses in some of his exhortations about the importance of education and take it to mean that he valued Torah and secular equal. I would propose that language choice may simply have been different in R' Hirsch's day. We live in a world so drenched with secular education that we are more careful to throw the word Torah in front of our sentences. Also, R' Hirsch was doing kiruv so he may have not wanted to press his point too bluntly. But the quote about ikur and toffel should show us that while he saw some value in secular education the value was clearly secondary and servile to that of Torah.

My own view is that much of secular studies is unnecessary for frum kids as they get the particular educational disciplines from their Torah studies. While people need a sense of history, they don't need to be experts in American history. Jewish kids get plenty of history from Jewish studies. Same with law and literature. Nobody needs to read F. Scott Fitzgerald. They need to know about metaphor and characters. Frum kids get that from Tanach. I'd say that math, science, and business are the only liberal arts style material frum kids really need. Of course, who is teaching business, maybe the most relevant of all secular subjects? That would violate what seems almost a world-wide plot to keep the masses ignorant about money. But that's another discussion.

Hirsch verses the Musar Movement

Interesting post on torahhalacha.blogspot.com about the modern battle against assimilation with a special reference to R' Hirsch:

"Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch took a different tack for his place and time. His approach was to beat the opposition at its own game. Rav Hirsch went out to the assimilated youth to challenge their adherence to the ways of non-Jewish society. Whereas in the past non-observant Jews tried to diminish Torah observance by attempting to poke holes in the logic of Torah observance, Rav Hirsch poked holes in the logic of assimilation. Rav Hirsch armed Jews with rhetorical weapons to fend off the assimilationists. Jews could now venture into fields of employment that brought them into contact with the world at large, without severing their ties to the Torah."

I often mull over the differences and similarities between R' Hirsch and R' Miller, two influences in my life. A paragraph on the Musar movement captures some of the differences:

"Rav Yisrael Salanter had another approach. He taught that one's goal is not to be superior to the next man by diminishing him. One's goal is to be better than oneself. The message of the Mussar movement was self-perfection."

I think that this quote captures another one of the differences which is that German Orthodoxy is more outwardly focused in some respects, more community minded like the Chassidim. Musar is individualistic, which could be dangerous to Americans for even as it tries to fix our decadence it could play into our selfishness.

As we know, R' Salanter and R' Hirsch had great respect for each other so we needn't see the differences as requiring a choice and right verses wrong.

Very Fine Jews

"Now when you see German Jews here you recognize them as German Jews. They are very fine Jews, frum Jews. But those German Jews who are not frum Jews, you don't recognize them because they are lost, they are assimilated."

Rabbi Avigdor Miller, Beginning of Holocaust2, 25:00

Caution

People don't associate Rabbi Avigdor Miller with Torah Im Derech Eretz. Nevertheless, I often see an overlap between TIDE and his outlook along with other Litvish rabbanim such as R' Yaakov Kamenetsky. Their teachings can be useful in working with TIDE in our times.

Rabbi Miller said the following, "Everything that non-Jews say must be taken with utmost caution, because the sheker (falsehood) is much more than the emes (truth)." — The Refutation is at Hand (#2) . So I get two things from this, one is that not everything from the non-Jews is sheker. That point is obvious to some but one often hears talk of the gentile world as if "it's all narishkite" or "it's all emptiness and lies". Of course Chazal tell us that if somebody tells you that gentiles have chochmah believe them. The second point is, as he says, that we need to approach gentile information with caution, with a critical mind. As R' Joseph Soloveitchik observed, Americans are naïve. His statement is as follows: 

 [Many religious people today]"...act like children and experience religion like children. This is why they accept all types of fanaticism and superstition. Sometimes they are even ready to do things that border on the immoral. They lack the experiential component of religion, and simply substitute obscurantism for it....After all, I come from the ghetto. Yet I have never seen so much naïve and uncritical commitment to people and to ideas as I see in America....All extremism, fanaticism and obscurantism come from a lack of security. A person who is secure cannot be an extremist." From a talk given to social workers, in A Reader's Companion to Ish Ha-Halakhah: Introductory Section, David Shatz, Yeshiva University, Joseph B. Soloveitchik Institute in Wikipedia.org. From a talk to social workers.

So we, who are raised to sit in our little chairs at school and believe everything our teachers tell us, or our doctors, or anybody who assumes authority roles similar to our teachers, must remember to use the mind to size up what we are hearing. This is true especially in these days before Moshiach where the sheker is so thick. This takes mental discipline and we have such a mentally lazy society. So a little German Jewish style self-discipline can go a long way in this effort.  

Program for cornerstone laying in which R' Hirsch participated : from the On the Main Line blog

Normally, I'd just link to it but the image is so relevant to this blog, I want to post the document too.

Program