Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer and the Creation of a Modern Jewish Orthodoxy: and the Creation of a Modern Jewish Orthodoxy

Notes

Notes Preface 1. Hermann Schwab, The History of Orthodox Jewry in Germany (London : Mitre Press, 1950), p. 11. 2. Samuel C. Heilman, "Constructing Orthodoxy," Transaction (MayJune 1978): 32. 1. The Man and the Challenges of His Times 1. Meir Hildesheimer, "Toward a Biography of Our Rabbi," in Esriel Hildesheimer , The Responsa of Rabbi Esriel (Hebrew), 2 vols. (Tel Aviv, 1969, 1976), 1:11-15. 2. Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance (New York, 1969), pp. 48-63, and Out of the Ghetto (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), p. 1. 3. Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis (New York, 1971), p. 33. 4. Joseph L. Blau, Modern Varieties of Judaism (New York, 1966), pp. 1-12, provides a discussion of the increasing participation of individual Jews in the cultural, economic, political, and social life of central Europe from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Katz, Tradition and Crisis, pp. 231-44, and Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York, 1971), discuss the emergence of Hasidism and the antinomian challenge posed to the Jewish community by the followers of Shabbetai Zvi and the Frankists. Especially consult Scholem's "The Crisis of Tradition in Jewish Messianism" and "Redemption through Sin," which are included in this volume. Scholem writes: "The Sabbatian 'believers' ... represent the extreme consequence to which a Messianic crisis of tradition erupting in the very heart of Judaism could lead. The old mystical Kabbalistic symbols in 171 which the crisis was formulated disappeared. What remained was a wild revolt against the old traditions" (p. 77). Salo W. Baron, "Ghetto and Emancipation ," Menorah lournal14 (1928): 515-26. 5. Katz, Tradition and Crisis, pp. 87, 173. The rabbi preached in the vernacular , Yiddish or Judeo-German, on Shabbat Hagadol, the Sabbath preceding Passover, and on Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath preceding Yom Kippur. 6. Salo W. Baron, The lewish Community, vols. 1 and 2 (Philadelphia, 1942). 7. Ibid., 2:228-36. 8. Katz, Tradition and Crisis, pp. 168-98. 9. Ibid., pp. 183-98, quote pp. 190-91. 10. Mordechai Eliav, lewish Education in Germany in the Period of Emancipation and Enlightenment (Hebrew) (Jerusalem, 19601, pp. 35-36, 110. 11. Katz, Tradition and Crisis, pp. 191-92. 12. Ibid., pp. 193-96. 13. Ibid., pp. 135-48; Ehav, lewish Education in Germany, p. 169. 14. Esriel Hildesheimer, The Novellae of Rabbi Esriel on Tractates Yebamot and Ketubot (Hebrew) (Jerusalem, 1984), p. 14. 15. M. Hildesheimer, "Toward a Biography of Our Rabbi," pp. 11-12. 16. See Jacob Katz, "Contributions toward a Biography of the Hatam Sofer" (Hebrew), in Studies in Mysticism and Religion Presented to Gershom G. Scholem, ed. E. E. Urbach, R. J. Werblowsky, and Ch. Wirszubski (Jerusalem, 19671, pp. 115f£. Hildesheimer's appreciation of the rabbis' lack of understandmg is evidenced in several critical comments he made regarding the employment of invective and excommunication by the Orthodox rabbinate of his day against those they considered "deviants." For example, see Mordechai Eliav, ed., Rabbiner Esriel Hildesheimer Briefe (German and Hebrew) (Jerusalem, 1965), p. 47, 96-97 (Hebrew section). Cited hereafter as Hildesheimer Briefe. Also Hildesheimer's letter to Hirsch Plato, pp. 230-31 (German section), in which he similarly attacks Orthodox "extremists" who employ the weapon of excommunication in the nineteenth century. 17. Katz, Out of the Ghetto, pp. 197-98; Encyclopaedia 'udaica, s.v. "Emancipation." See also Ismar Freund, Die Emanzipation der luden in Preussen, vols. 1 and 2 (Berlin, 1912). 18. Isaac Unna, "Ezriel Hildesheimer," in lewish Leaders, ed. Leo Jung (New York, 1953), p. 218. 19. On this law, see also Salo Baron, "Freedom and Constraint in the Jewish Community," in Essays and Studies in Memory of Linda R. Miller, ed. Israel Davidson (New York, 1938), pp. 9-24. 20. Moshe Samet, "Orthodox Judaism in the Modem Era," (Hebrew), in Daat, vol. I, pamphlet 6, The Haskalah and Its Impact on lewish Philosophy in the Modern Age (Jerusalem, n.d.), p. 278. 172 Notes to Pages 3-10 21. Katz, Tradition and Crisis, p. 266. 22. Katz, Out of the Ghetto, p. 157. Mendelssohn was not as extreme in the reforms he advocated as was one of his greatest students, Naftali Herz Wessely. In Words of Peace and Truth, his response to the Hapsburg Emperor Joseph II's Edict of Toleration, Wessely outlined a practical program for the advancement of Jewish acculturation into German intellectual society. Drawing a distinction between the Torah of Man, "educational values common to all human beings...