More Victorian Jewish Miscellany: hats, secession, and Schone Aussicht

1. In high school, I searched earnestly online for the paintings of Moritz Oppenheim, and found only tiny, blurry reproductions.

Today I searched again and lo! Quite a number of them are on Wikipedia, in extremely high resolution – yay!

You know in vol. VIII, where a man in the train pokes fun at a young woman for having her hair covered? – I always wondered, How could he tell? – because in the pictures of Rav Hirsch's family all the women look (to my untrained eye) perfectly à la mode in their headdresses, such that a stranger would have a hard time telling whether a woman was covering her hair or not – well! here is the answer. You can see in the Oppenheim paintings that those beautiful frothy bonnets are worn over a sort of under-cap, which was not the case in the non-Jewish population.

this young lady is also standing under a tallis, at her chassuna.

  

2. Q. What did the rabbanim of the time have to say about the US Civil War?

A. IIRC somewhere in Rav Hirsch, after slavery ended in the South, he mentions its end with some relief.

Today I re-found a website that I misplaced years ago, which has --among a great many other curios -- lectures on the subject from American rabbis. Here, for one thing, is R' Illowy's lecture on States' Rights, which apparently pleased the secessionists of New Orleans so much when it was published that they invited him down to become rabbi of that city.

 

3. Schopenhauer lived in the same building as Rav Hirsch and at the same time, but apparently there is no evidence that the two ever met. I always thought that fascinating, wow, like a particle accelerator gone awry.

Anyway, because Schopenhauer also lived in that (now vanished) house on Schone Aussicht, it is a famous house and there are loads of pictures and a virtual tour of it online – here.

“It is but a single step from the profound to the ridiculous.”

I found this line in Rav Hirsch a few months ago and was immensely pleased with it, finding it a clear expression of one of my biggest concerns in extra-curricular education; and I went round quoting it to anything that would stand still long enough.

And I would have kept citing it in the name of Rav Hirsch to every teacher, student, and doorpost, had it not shown up a couple of weeks ago in “an old School-boy's” memoirs of Dr. Arnold's influence at Rugby.

?!

I could not get over the coincidence, and made a mental note to look up what common source Rav Hirsch and the “old School-boy” could possibly have been reading, and promptly forgot all about it...

...Until it showed up again last night in Edith Hamilton.

??!

A guest kindly looked the quotation up for me and reported that the phrase first appeared in a late 18^th century French philosophical work, and was subsequently publicized further by Thomas Paine and Napoleon, among others.

I'm going to guess that it was making the rounds of high society drawing-rooms by the mid-19^th century. But it is tempting to sit here and speculate about what could have been on Rav Hirsch's reading list.

(...or not, unless the phrase itself is to serve as the single step it speaks of.)

I still like it.

“Bring me that horizon!”; or, random thought of a Thursday

I really think that the odd little essay toward the end of Vol. VIII may be my favorite of Rav Hirsch's essays. One seldom gets to see much of the rav himself in his writings; this essay is an exception: there he is, leaning on a ship railing, looking at the stars.

Anyway, at one point in this essay (which meanders like Iyar itself) he observes that Torah may be sailed through any weather, under friendly colors (that is, it applies in every era, to all that is good and noble in contemporary culture, and should be presented as such).

In his time, contemporary culture meant romanticism and science.

In our time, contemporary culture means the sort of fragmented idealism that gives us such interesting things as organic vegan GMO-free “strawberry cupcake popcorn,” of which we just received three bags for Purim.

Strawberry cupcake popcorn?

Actually, I rather liked it; and I like the fragmented idealism behind it; and yes, I called the day the list came out to put my name down for a swath of the PDX airport carpet.

But I like history so much that there are days when the “friendly colors” I would be inclined to hoist while sailing through contemporary culture would be the stateless and idiosyncratic colors of a pirate.

...however, stateless and idiosyncratic pirates are a flourishing part of contemporary culture. So it's all good.

Ha, look at what I just found in Rav Hirsch

Describing a man met on a boat.

“...He was one of those people who, as their life's treasure, carry an ideal in their heart and would not let it be robbed by the sophistication and tension of a desperate time, who would not let themselves be deprived of their faith in the present, of the possibility of a better present. Because of their ideals, these same people carry an immeasurable pain in their breast, because it is clear to them in every situation what it could be like, what it should be like, and what profoundly grievous contrast the ideal presents to what the situation really is. Unknown, ignored and lonesome, they walk this earth. Nobody suspects the pain and nobody suspects the bliss that lies in their warmly beating hearts. Narrow-minded pity shrugs its shoulders about the kind-hearted romantic who does not know how to fit into today's situation. 'Look here, look at the fools of the past,' the clever people of the present say. And they do not know how precisely those that they call the fools of the past are truly men of the future.”

Vol. VIII, p. 677.

Reprinted with the kind permission of Feldheim Publishers.

(Thank you, yay Feldheim, everyone support this great publishing company, no they didn’t ask me to say that.)

The Adventures of Ikkre and Tuffle

Tuffle: I want to throw myself into the woods!
Ikkre: Why?
Tuffle: Because everything in the world is hopelessly beautiful! But I don't know where to place myself in it.
Ikkre: Is it so hard to figure out?
Tuffle: Yes.
Ikkre: What do you have in mind?
Tuffle: Moss and Keats and the Sugar Plum Fairy!
Ikkre: What do you find beautiful about moss and Keats and the Sugar Plum Fairy?
Tuffle: They are all so intense... moss is so very soft and green and gives the whole atmosphere to the forest; and Keats - well, I haven't read much of him; but I liked what I did; and Tchaikovsky just reminds me of wool coats and the possibility of snow. (Realizes) It's a shallow line-up, I know, but my thoughts are disorganized today and those three are what's on top.
Ikkre: Can't you learn a commentary on Psalms?
Tuffle: Aww, Ikkre, can't you come up with something poetic to do?
Ikkre: (bangs head on wall)
Tuffle: (Realizes) I mean... yeah. (blushes)
Ikkre: I think it's a Zohar that says that when the text says King David had beautiful eyes, it means that he had every color in the world in his eyes. And that means that he experienced every possible emotion. And he put every one of them into the Psalms. You want to do something emotionally intense, all mossy and poetic and like an unopened present, go learn Rav Hirsch on Tehillim.
Tuffle: Why are you posting this on the blog? The main drama of the story is not this conversation, but what I went to read afterwards.
Ikkre: I know, but Rav Hirsch is still under copyright.

Iyar, cont.

This is the follow-up to this post.
I think the one sentence I'd pick to summarize the month of Iyar is this:

"The way to Sinai lay, and still lies, only through the wilderness."
(Collected Writings of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Vol. I, p.158, with the permission of Feldheim Publishers)


I'm not going to elaborate on how this plays out in the different eras of Jewish history and in our own feathery era, simply because I don't have time to do it justice.

I'll just throw another line of Rav Hirsch at you.

"When we gather together in peaceful houses of God in the early summer evening hours to count our days and weeks until the joyful day of our Torah festival, we probably reflect very little on the completely different circumstances and atmosphere under which our fathers counted these days. How often did they begin the counting and then wonder whether they would live to complete the counting at all and, if so, where they would complete it!"
(p. 163)


He's talking about the era of the Crusades.

It isn't about the persecutions; it's about
The devoted, the just, and the blameless,
The holy communities that gave up their lives for the sanctification of His Name,
Who in life were beloved by Him and devoted to Him,
And who even in death did not separate themselves from Him...
(p. 141)

Blessed Is He Who Revives the Dead!

...is the blessing recited upon seeing a dear friend you haven't seen in ages, if you had no way of ascertaining whether s/he was still among the living.
I wonder if this is because the overwhelming joy of seeing that friend again gives you some hint to what the revival of the dead will be like.

Can I just say that Feldheim totally made my day year decade life something, two weeks before Pesach, by releasing -
are you sitting? -
Volume IX.
Of Rav Hirsch's Collected Writings.

I couldn't believe it when they told me. I honestly thought they were kidding.
Volume VIII came out 17 years ago.

Get Out

"I almost believe that all you homebodies would one day have to atone for your staying indoors, and when you would desire entrance to see the marvels of heaven, they would ask you, 'Did you see the marvels of God on earth?' Then, ashamed, you would mumble, 'We missed that opportunity.'"

Vol. VIII of Rav Hirsch's Collected Writings, p. 259, in 'From the Notebook of a Wandering Jew'. Cited with the kind permission of Feldheim Publishers.

Springtime for Cynics

When I was a terribly cynical middle-schooler, the choir director taught us a song in four-part harmony, which I could never sing like I meant it:
Now is the month of Maying, when merry lads are playing, fa la la la la la la la la - no, they're not, they're either in math class or doing its homework -
...a-dancing on the grass - what grass? we live in a city, where open spaces are rationed and landscaped,
fa la la la la la la la la. The Spring clad all in gladness/doth laugh at winter's sadness - Spring? Winter? I haven't noticed a change in seasons. I think I need to get out more,
and to the bagpipe's sound/ the nymphs tread out the ground - What era was this composed in, that people had time to frolic in unspoilt meadows, and the peace of mind to do so wholeheartedly?
fa la la la la, fa la la la la la la, la la la la la. Where is that legendary Spring?


And every Pesach, I get my answer.


The air warms up, the earth bursts into bloom, and where are the Jewish people?
Indoors or in the courtyard, scrubbing all the winter's crumbs out of the house, until G-d drags us by the ear out of Egypt, and says, "This month is for you!"
This month is for you the origin of all the months: you are a Spring nation, a people repeatedly revived from the dead.
Go and tell everyone, go demonstrate to all the despairing middle-schoolers (of any age or stage in life), that just as the earth is led each year out of winter, just as the Jewish nation was led out of the slavery of its body, mind, heart and soul in Egypt, so too humanity as a whole, and every individual, are given the Spring.
This month is not the exclusive provenance of things that bloom, creep, or fly; no matter how oppressive your circumstances, this Spring is for you!


Those with better things to read than this blog will recognize that this post is not original material - thank you Rav Hirsch.
And Rabbi Estuary, we'll see if I ever forgive the rav for making me try to paraphrase that :P

Another note on Rav Hirsch

Today, 27 Teves, is Rav Hirsch's yahrtzeit. So I will say a bit more.

I.
A rav here once observed that Rav Hirsch is directly or indirectly responsible for the five defining characteristics of Torah life in America:

1. Formal education for girls
2. The publication of Torah materials in the vernacular
3. The independent kehillah model of community structure (austritt)
4. Outreach to Jews
5. Formal "secular" education (needs a better name -- no part of a Jew's life is really "secular")

II.
On a personal note -- I discovered Rav Hirsch when I was twelve, in the footnotes of the Artscroll Chumash. I had been going through the parsha writing down all my questions ("why did he do that? That's not very nice, that's not consistent with human dignity, that's not remotely PC"), and Rav Hirsch caught my attention because he was always the commentator who addressed them -- and gave the most wonderful answers.
I am no longer twelve, I have lived in a few Jewish communities, and still Rav Hirsch is the one who addresses my questions, and gives the most wonderful answers.
And, better yet, gives them in the poetic style of nineteenth-century German literature -- if you are lucky enough to find the older translation.

III.
Rav Hirsch is still available through the Multnomah County Library system... The Nineteen Letters Yikes! I thought they had the whole Chumash. Well, start there.

A note on Rav Hirsch

Over Shabbos I was reading Rav Hirsch.
Yay! Rav Hirsch.
I once received an e-mail from someone saying, "I was just reading Rav Hirsch, and he said something very beautiful, which I am forwarding to you in the original language because it defies paraphrase and I thought you'd like it."
Thereupon followed several paragraphs.

Ha, I said, this has got to be this man's first time reading Rav Hirsch -- because if he keeps reading, he will discover that everything Rav Hirsch writes is stunning and beautiful and impossible to paraphrase, and although he will be desperate to forward it to everyone he knows because it is so exquisite, he will abandon the effort because Rav Hirsch was - lucky us - such a good friend to his pen that there is just too much to type up and mail to everyone we know.
It would be like someone e-mailing you two pages of The Tempest and saying, "I was reading Shakespeare and I am sending this to you because it is an impressive bit of English."
And to test my hypothesis, I looked to see which passage of Rav Hirsch this man had sent me.
And sure enough: it was the very first few paragraphs of the very first essay of the very first volume of Rav Hirsch's writings.
Yup.

Rav Hirsch -- Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch -- lived in the mid-1800's in Germany Prussia and wrote, among other things, the best explanation of Judaism in a nutshell I know (The Nineteen Letters) and the book on Judaism that I would take to a desert island if I had to pick one, since it was written for that purpose (Horeb), and a commentary on the Torah, and another on Psalms, and quite a lot more.

And you can please add him to the list of things I wish you'd go read instead of this blog.
The Multnomah County Library system has some copies.

Delicious Links

The English language needs new words for "friend".

There are the friends who can read you like a book, the girls in the next apartment whom you don't know as well as you should like, your former elementary school teacher with whom you now go out for coffee, and the people who so awe you that you can't bring yourself to address them in anything but the third person, even when speaking to them directly.

The Spilmans are what would be called "friends" of mine if it did not feel presumptuous to say that about people old and wise enough to be my parents.
http://jacobspilman.wordpress.com/ is Mr. Spilman's notes from learning Talmud with one of my favorite rabbis on the planet. It is delicious. It is my favorite website. Check it out.

http://devorahspilman.wordpress.com/ is films of Mrs. Spilman's storytelling, and something she calls "guided imagery", which I like when she is the one leading it.
She has always seemed to me like one of the characters in her stories: the holy Jew in the woods.