There is an interesting
footnote in Haym Soloveitchik's (seemingly) famous article
Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy Tradition, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Summer 1994).
...“Torah-true.”...86
86 This was a creative mistranslation of the German "Thoratreu" (faithful to the Torah), used by the neo-Orthodoxy of Germany. It was first used by modern Orthodoxy but subsequently attained far greater currency among, what is called, right-wing (though not haredi) Orthodoxy. See Jenna W. Joselit, New York's Jewish Jews: The Orthodox Community in the Interwar Years (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 4.
I know the latter point (that it "was first used by modern Orthodoxy," e.g., it is a ubiquitous phrase found in the writings from the 1930s by rabbis like Leo Jung). What I did not know what its origin in German neo-Orthodoxy, "thoratreu." I guess I always assumed it stemmed from the expression
תורת אמת.
Of course, it might have anyway.
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And I always assumed it stems from the Yiddish תורה טריי, which on second thought might actually be he same thing Soloveitchik is saying.
ReplyDeleteI don't really agree with him anymore. I don't think it's a "mistranslation."
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