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Nineteen Letters: The World of Rabbi S. R. Hirsch

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Rabbi Elias' commentary and footnotes shed much light and give in depth analysis of this damed work of Hirsch.As a reknowned Hirschian, He is certainly qualified for his work. The nineteen letters themselves are indubidibly one of the greatest treasures judaism possesses, as this landmark book makes abundantly clear the fallacies of attempting to contort religion to one's whims and clarifies and thereby brings out the beauty in true judaism.A masterpiece, with a tremendous and much needed commentary to boot.A must buy.

The basic structure of the book is as follows: at the beginning, a character invented by Hirsch expresses his disenchantment with Judaism, and Hirsch responds.

At this point, one might think that Hirsch argues in favor of the Torah being a Divine invention that Jews should therefore obey. Instead, Hirsch assumes this to be the case (thus immediately winning the argument by his criteria) and goes off in an entirely different direction.

Hirsch focuses on the reasons for the ritual mitzvos (that is, the details of the parts of Jewish law not obviously related to ethics). Why did God (according to Hirsch) command us to do all these things? Hirsch says that the overall purpose of Revelation was to make the Jews a role model, leading to the perfection of humanity. In particular, writes Hirsch, the purposes of non-ethical Jewish law are to isolate the Jews to keep them distinctive and to orient Jews towards divine service through symbolic acts; for example, the mezuzah aids in the "Consecration of our home as a sanctuary of God and of our life in it as service of God." (p. 182). Whether the world has in fact been significantly perfected is, of course, a difficult question.

Finally, Hirsch criticizes conventional Jewish education and other Jewish philosophers. As to the former, Hirsch asserts that Jewish educators do not focus enough on Bible (as opposed to Talmud), and that they often mummify the laws by not focusing on the spirit behind those laws. On the other hand, Hirsch criticizes Moses Maimonides and Moses Mendelsohn for not focusing enough on the reasons for the details of Jewish law, causing some people to misunderstand their works and move away from observance, which on turn caused an anti-intellectual counterreaction which contributed to the mummification of Judaism.

The commentary is far longer than the book itself, perhaps unnecessarily so. Although some of Elias's remarks do explain this book, others seem devoted to settling scores with other commentators who Elias thinks have misread Hirsch, or to tangents only slightly related to this particular work (e.g. Hirsch's attitude towards Kabbalah). Elias is especially interested in arguing that Hirsch is not the precursor of Modern Orthodoxy; although Hirsch, like Modern Orthodox Jews, believes that Jews should be integrated into modern society, Elias claims that Hirsch's interpretation of Jewish law was more rigid than that of most Modern Orthodox Jews.

First of all, people looking for this book should know that there is another translation out by Joseph Elias, published by Feldheim Publishers. This came out recently so it should be easier to find. In any case, Rabbi Hirsch's great writing skills come out through any translation of his works I have ever read. Not only is this a fabulous introduction to his theory of Judaism, it is so well-done that you'll keep going back to read certain phrases or statements of ideas. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about Judaism, including those who already know a lot.

This book opened my eyes to Judaism.