Zecharias Frankel - Controversy

Controversy

Frankel was chosen president of the new rabbinical seminary at Breslau (10 August 1854). Geiger, who had inspired Jonas Fränkel, the president of his congregation, to found this institution, opposed the appointment vigorously, and when the examination questions given by Frankel to the first graduating class appeared, Geiger published them in a German translation with the evident intention of ridiculing the casuistic method of Talmudic instruction (Geiger, "Jüd. Zeit." i. 169 et seq.).

Samson Raphael Hirsch, immediately on the opening of the seminary, addressed an open letter to Frankel, demanding a statement as to the religious principles which would guide the instruction at the new institution. Frankel ignored the challenge. When the fourth volume of Grätz's history appeared Hirsch impeached the orthodoxy of the new institution (1856), and his attacks became more systematic when Frankel in 1859 published his Hebrew introduction to the Mishnah. The first attack began with the letter of Gottlieb Fischer, rabbi of Stuhlweissenburg, published in Hirsch's "Jeschurun", 1860. Hirsch himself began in the following year a series of articles in which he took exception to some of Frankel's statements, especially to his definition of rabbinical tradition, which he found vague; he further objected to Frankel's conception of the rabbinical controversies, which were, according to Frankel, improperly decided by certain devices common in parliamentary bodies.

It can hardly be denied that Frankel evaded the clear definition of what "tradition" meant to him. He contented himself with proving from Rabbenu Asher that not everything called a "law", and reputed as given by Moses on Mount Sinai, was actually of Mosaic origin. Hirsch was seconded by various Orthodox rabbis, such as Ezriel Hildesheimer, Solomon Klein of Colmar, and B. H. Auerbach, while some of Frankel's supporters, like Salomon Juda Rappoport, were half-hearted. Frankel but once published a brief statement in his magazine, in which, however, he failed to give an outspoken exposition of his views ("Monatsschrift", 1861, pp. 159 et seq.). The general Jewish public remained indifferent to the whole controversy, and Frankel's position was gradually strengthened by the number of graduates from the seminary who earned reputations as scholars and as representatives of conservative Judaism.