Samson Raphael Hirsch - Themes in His Work

Themes in His Work

Hirsch lived in the post-Napoleonic era, an epoch when Jews had been granted civil rights in a large number of European countries, leading to assimilation and a call for reform. A large segment of his work focusses on the possibilities for Orthodox Judaism in such an era, when freedom of religion also meant the freedom to practice Torah precepts without persecution and ridicule.

The principle of "Austritt", an independent Orthodoxy, flows naturally from his view on the place of Judaism in his epoch: if Judaism is to gain from these civil liberties, it has to be able to develop independently - without having to lend implicit or explicit approval to efforts at reformation.

His other major work involves the symbolic meaning of many Torah commandments and passages. Indeed, his work "Horeb" (1837) focuses to a large degree on the possible meanings and symbols in religious precepts. This work was continued in his Torah commentary and his articles in the Jeschurun journal (Collected Writings, vol. III, is a collation of these articles).

A final area of his work, which has only recently been rediscovered, was his etymological analysis of the Hebrew language. Most of this work is contained in his Torah commentary, where he analyses and compares the shorashim (three-letter root forms) of a large number of Hebrew words and develops an etymological system of the Hebrew language. This approach is based on the idea that letters that share a phonetic similarity, have similar meaning. For example the words Zohar (light), Tzohar (translucent window), and Tahor (purity) are related words because the letters Zayin, Tzadie, and Tet are phonetically similar. This is an approach used in many places by the renowned biblical commentator Rashi as well. Although this effort was, in his own words, "totally unscientific", it has led to the recent publication of an "etymological dictionary of the Hebrew language".

Although Hirsch does not mention his influences (apart from traditional Jewish sources), later authors have identified ideas from the Kuzari (Yehuda Halevi), Nahmanides and the Maharal of Prague in his works. Nevertheless, most of his ideas are original.

In a 1995 edition of Hirsch' Nineteen Letters, commentator Rabbi Joseph Elias makes an extensive effort to show Hirsch' sources in Rabbinic literature, parallels in his other works and those of other post-Talmudic Jewish thinkers. Elias also attempts to refute particular interpretations of his philosophy, such as the notion that much of his thinking was rooted in Kantian secular philosophy.

While the Zionist movement was not founded during his lifetime, it is clear from his responses to Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, and in several places in his commentary to the Bible and Siddur, that although he had a deep love for the land of Israel, he opposed a movement to wrest political independence for the land of Israel before the Messianic Era. In later works, he makes it clear that Jewish sovereignty is dependent only on Divine Providence.