Moadim Perspectives: Chanukah – Purim, by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Rabbi Dr. Solomon Breuer, and Rabbi Dr. Joseph Breuer, Feldheim Publishers, New York, © 2018, ISBN 978-1-68025-072-5, p. 241, $22.95
By Fred Reiss, Ed.D.
WINCHESTER, California – Moadim Perspectives: Chanukah – Purim is the third in a series of books on Jewish holidays by the Rabbi Dr. Joseph Breuer Foundation, the other two covering the High Holiday period through Sukkot, and the holidays of Passover and Shavuot. This newest work presents the reprinting of essays and exegesis on Chanukah and Purim for the first time in English from the illustrious and scholarly German family of Dr. Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888), his son-in-law Dr. Solomon Breuer (1850-1926), and his grandson Dr. Joseph Breuer (1882-1980).
Each of the two sections offers several articles from the rabbis, and each article presents their view of the holiday’s religious and practical meanings, as well as offers the reader an historical glimpse into orthodox rabbinic concerns at the time.
Rabbi Hirsch lived during Haskalah, European Jewish enlightenment, a time when segments of Germany’s Jewish population sought to integrate into secular society. His Chanukah writings, reflecting this concern, emphasize the importance of the home in Jewish education. He also weaves an interesting story by interpreting the word Chanukah as “dedication,” and then comparing and contrasting the celebration of a “Chanukah” in the time of Moses, Solomon, Zerubbavel, the Maccabees, and Chanukah of the future.
Rabbi Solomon Breuer, Hirsch’s son-in-law who lived in Germany during World War I, was a founding member of Agudat Yisrael, an orthodox political movement, and an opponent of Zionism because of fears that a Jewish state might replace Judaism. Regarding Chanukah, which celebrates a military victory for the Jewish people, he writes, “We, too, live in a time when… mankind must endure the trying phases of the developing acts of God…. Still, let us ask ourselves: what is our task as Jews in this stormy era?” He answers, “Let the storm pass over us as we engage in quiet, modest withdrawal… Let us subordinate ourselves unconditionally to the power of Torah ideal…. Let us live up loyally to our civic duties in the land that has granted asylum to us and our families, and which has allowed us to fulfil our Torah duties.”
Rabbi Joseph Breuer fled Germany for New York because of the Nazis and World War II. One of his Chanukah essays begins “More threatening than ever, night closes in on Zion.” In this composition Joseph Breuer tells the reader that the holiday is a reminder that the Chanukah menorah, symbol of the Maccabees, is mightier than the sword, “for the menorah overcomes brutality”.
The editors give us nine essays by Rabbi Hirsch, four by Rabbi Solomon Breuer and two by Rabbi Joseph Breuer in the Purim section.
In these essays, Rabbi Hirsch shifts his focus from home-centered to community-centered Judaism. He likens the contribution of the half-shekel to support the Temple during biblical times, to renewing “in us the Jewish communal feeling and consciousness that we all belong to the great Jewish Sanctuary… and that only in loyal devotion to this holy task can each of us find his position, his significance, his justification, his memorial, and his atonement and blessing.”
In the holiday of Purim, a fight between Persian Jewry and Haman, a high government official, Hirsch sees analogies between the struggles of Jacob and Esau and between the people of Israel and Amalek, Haman’s ancestor. He exhorts his readers that Jews bring misfortune to themselves, “Yet, every rude touch of Amalek’s finger should be a warning to Yehudah to look round his own circle and see where the Jewish will is slackening.”
Hirsch points out in another essay that just as the world needs the sun with its brilliant light and the moon with a diminished light, so does that world need a secular society, analogous to the sun, and a separate minority society, equivalent to the moon. They both have unique purposes. Writing in late nineteenth century Germany he notes, “The Jews are the only element that cannot be absorbed by the state; they are a problem for which political wisdom cannot find a solution.” He goes on to say that any government will ultimately conclude that Jews introduce “a foreign element into the orderly pattern of the host country’s development.” Finally, he presciently concludes, “As a consequence, the description of Israel’s future predicts…. The aim of the nations and their leaders will be Mtlkl, ‘to destroy them,’ to diminish them, to wear them down until they cease to exist.”
The editors selected two interesting papers from Rabbi Joseph Breuer’s writings. The first is his critique of an article, “Visit in Berchtesgaden [Hitler’s vacation residence near Munich], an Historic Vision,” by a Hillel Bernstein, appearing in Readers Digest and in the German-American newspaper Aufbau. Breuer, taking exception that a fellow Jew could possibly say anything positive about Hitler, writes “Hitler has fashioned the German people into a master race, a chosen people with the world as his subjects.” He concludes if the Germans appropriate the mantle of chosenness, they will suffer the same fate as the Jews, “becoming the most accursed nation in the world…. Who will find their eternal rest in being forgotten by the world.”
The book would have benefited from a better editorial review, as there are too many typos from its outstanding and well-known publisher. Also, an introduction explaining the significance of and why these compositions were selected would be very helpful. Nonetheless, this anthology clearly reveals the scholarship and erudition of the authors, and while the essays and exegeses presented in Moadim Perspectives: Chanukah – Purim were intended for a specific audience at a given moment in time, the messages they deliver are universal in nature and timeless in character. Moadim Perspectives: Chanukah – Purim is a worthy addition to the Breuer Foundation Moadim Perspectives series.
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Dr. Fred Reiss is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator. His newest works are The Comprehensive Jewish and Civil Calendars: 2001 to 2240 and The Jewish Calendar: History and Inner Workings. The author may be contacted via fred.reiss@sdjewishworld.com.