TIDE (from an Avodah post)

At 05:03 AM 6/23/2005, Eliyahu Gerstl wrote:

Rabbi Schwab was not an advocate of TIDE nor was he atypical. In twenties and thirties many young men from the German Jewish community decided to study in the east because that was where they could learn gemorah on what was generally a higher level than in Germany. At the same time the Orthodox Rabbiner Seminar in Berlin brought in a young Eastern European iluy, R. Elya Kaplan as its head and after his death R. Y.Y. Weinberg who was also from the east followed as the last head of the seminary.

The interesting thing about RAEK and RYYW is that both developed a quasi-TIDE philosophy during their respective tenures at the *Rabbiner Seminar*. This is, of course, in contradistinction to RYBS and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, whose sojourns at Western European *Universities* did not have that impact on them.

I recall reading R. Schwab's Elu ve-Elu when I was about to go to university when seeking some personal guidance. I was confused by it as it did not advocate general studies as having intrinsic worth and therefore as a lechatchila and it therefore contradicted what I had believed was the Hirschian position. Of course I did not know that R. Schwab as a young man was the person who had elicited the famous opinions of eastern European rashei yeshiva as whether general studies were muttar. A true Hirschian, IMO, and would not have therefore have doubted that general studies were not only muttar but rather le-chatchila and moreover he would not have needed the approval of rashei yeshiva of a different hashkafic orientation. He would have approached the rabbanim in his own community.

There is no doubt in my mind that R' Schwab was not a true advocate of TIDE and R' Gelley is certainly not. I once asked one of my cousins who is a grandson to R' Breuer how many true TIDEeans in the truest philosophical meaning of the word exist today and he answered (and named) four (I disagree about one of them).

As to TuM and TIDE, IMO the latter accords with much of TuM, BUT not an Orthodox form of Wissenschaft des Judentum as advocated at the Rabbiner Seminar begun by R. Hildesheimer. RSRH was generally against the employment of modern critical scholarship in Torah study and believed that Torah was an independent system and that there therefore was no need to employ outside methodologies. Thus RSRH did not support the Rabbiner Seminar of R. Hildesheimer.

As we have iterated many times here, there are vast differences between TIDE and TuM - at least as the latter was formulated by RYBS. TIDE sees life as a seamless whole, and seeks harmony and true synthesis of T and DE. TuM sees life as consisting of two paradoxical poles and bridging between the two, with no need nor quest to resolve the discrepancies.

As far as R. Elias' commentary to his new edition of RSRH's Nineteen Letters: it is correct that he views TIDE as a horaat shaah. But see a point-counterpoint series of two articles in 1996 in Jewish Action. In that series,R. Joseph Elias and R. Shelomo Danziger debated this issue. R. Danziger (who had previously taught at Breuers for over twenty years ) argued strongly that TIDE was not a horaat shaah but le-chatchila. R. Elias (who had been the principal at Breuer's) disagreed.

I do not know how anyone familiar with the writings of RD Joseph Breuer and RD Isaac Breuer can contend that they would acquiesce to the position that TIDE was an Horaas Shaah.

A detailed study of RSRH, his life and his ideas is that of Samuel Rosenbloom, Tradition in an age of reform, JPS, 1976. IMO the author of the latter book would strongly support Rabbi Danziger's opinion.

As a side comment, it is of interest that the Breuer's community has not associated itself with YU and in fact I was told by someone who grew up there that he when he was considering going to YU in the early sixties (?) that he was advised by the late long-time president of the community, that it was far better that he go to some other university. But of course that's not a proof as to RSRH's hashkafot but only the views of the leadership of the Breuer's community, and a proof that the community had obviously undergone many changes since the time of RSRH.

See above. Precisely because there are similarities between YU and KAJ it was important to negate the comparison. Hence the perennially (tragically) mostly abortive attempt to sustain a separate KAJ Beis HaMedrash.

A person named George D. Frankel has written a pamphlet decrying the changes in his community (mentioned in Avodah, 50:47,48)."Dan Shall Judge His People: 5 Essays on Torah im Derech Eretz and the Breuer Community Today."

My own opinion based admittedly on only a few observations and without an intimate knowledge of that community is that Breuer's is now a yeshivish community (with German minhagin) but one that is more open to Torah im Parnasah than some other yeshivish communities.

Accurate enough. It is a pity that it did not go the other way - better, IMHO, to have sustained TIDE and jettisoned the minhagim than to have sustained the minhagim and jettisoned TIDE.

YGB