Sunday, October 23, 2011

Yated Ne'eman on R. Solomon Judah Rapoport (Shir) and Wissenschaft des Judentums.

This is what appeared in the Jewish History page in a recent Yated Ne'eman. The column is basically arranged by Yahrzeit:


The missing final words are "a camouflaged attempt to empty Judaism of its kedusha and eternal relevance."

The entry in this column is a little strange. After all, one doubts that they'd acknowledge Zunz's yahrzeit. What gives? The best guess is that Shir was an Orthodox rabbi, however much whomever wrote this can't bear to call him that, even putting quotes around "rabbi," and whatever books are the source of this column's yahrzeit listed Shir. It's unclear what is so terrible about the biographies of Rav Saadiah, Natan Ba'al Ha-aruch, etc. The reference to Gans is out of place, and the charge that Prague's "authentic Judaism" declined under him in the 1850s is a cheap shot, and factually wrong - as if Orthodox Judaism in Prague hadn't declined in the first half of the century, before he came on the scene.

The reference to Hirsch exposing, or not exposing as the case may be, "Rapoport's scientific scholarship as a camouflaged attempt to empty Judaism of its kedusha and eternal relevance" is to the critical review essay of Shir's דברי שלום ואמת (Prague 1861) in defense of R. Zecharia Frankel, from attacks by R. Hirsch and R. Gottlieb Fischer in Jeschurun. The essay was translated into English in Volume 5 of the Collected Writings of Rabbi Hirsch, "On Chief Rabbi Rapoport's דברי שלום ואמת" (pp. 315 - 330; link to the original). The essay is not, in fact, an expose on Rapoport's scientific scholarship, but a critique of this particular essay, although it does contain some scholarly points.

On a happier note, here's an image of Shir that I only saw recently (from here:

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