I have been following for years the public sales of “Judaic Jerusalem.” Abraham Israel Frohlich, the director of the firm has discovered many an unknown or little known Jewish book or booklet in the possession of private persons, and he has brought these to the attention of collectors, Jewish researchers and bibliographers.
His auctions have attracted many people. His forthcoming public sale, to be held next Wednesday, October 6, [1999] in Jerusalem’s Laromme Hotel, will certainly arouse great interest.
More than 500 lots of rare books, manuscripts, documents and Jewish objects d’art, including medallions of Jewish interest issued in various cities in Europe and in the U.S. will come under the hammer.
In this article, I would like to write about some of the unknown or little known writings by or about Rabbi S.R. Hirsch which are to be offered at the auction.
From the sales catalog we learn that a certain Frankfurt Jew, whose name is not given but who had an acute sense of history in the making, collected notes, documents and booklets authored by Rabbi S. R. Hirsch or relating to his life and activities as rabbi in Oldenburg, Emden, Nikolsburg and Frankfurt. By the end of the 19th century, he had assembled a unique collection which included inter alia, material about the regulations, particular customers and institutions of the “IsraelitscheReligionsgssellschaft,” Rabbi Hirsch’s independent Orthodox Jewish community in Frankfurt, as well as about its struggles and disputes with opponents.
The catalog states that the collector lovingly bound “each individual page, each document and each booklet in uniform, green-colored cloth binding decorated with gold lettering in German… All the items in the collection are extremely rare. They are all in excellent condition.”
Following are descriptions of some of the nearly 40 Hirsch items to be offered. In 1841, when Rabbi Hirsch was still serving as rabbi in Oldenburg, the principal of a local school published anonymously an anti-Semitic book attacking the Bible and the Jews. Hirsch wrote a booklet called Juedische Ammerkungen. The title page didn’t carry his name. It just said: “Von Einem Juden” (“Authored by a Jew”). The booklet made a great impression throughout Germany. When it became known that Rabbi Hirsch was the author – it happened on a Friday —-hundreds of Jews and Christians including an emissary of the Duke of Oldenburg, streamed to the rabbi’s house to express to him their appreciation. According to the catalog, the rabbi’s young wife had to ask the visitors to leave so that should could prepare the Sabbath table and light the Sabbath candles.
The catalog states that the biographers of Hirsch never saw the booklet, which is exceptionally rare. They only wrote about it on the basis of hearsay. The copy offered at the auction is apparently one of the very few which have survived.
Another exceptionally rare publication is Ateret Zvi, a description, in German of the festive installation in Nikolsburg, in June 1847 of Rabbi Hirsch as Chief Rabbi of Moravia. The booklet was written by Hermann Bing of Nikolsburg and was printed in Vienna in 1847.
Among the items offered at the auction, there is one manuscript. It deals with specifications for the building of a Mikveh in Frankfurt and is written in German in Hirsch’s own hand- circa 1855- on two leaves of stationery of the periodical Jeschurun, which Hirsch founded and edited.
Divrei Emet—Worte der Wahrheit (“Words of Truth”)-is a Halakhic dissertation in Hebrew addressed to members of the “IsraelitischeReligiongesellschaft” regarding the secession of Orthodox Jews from the general Jewish community which did not respect Jewish law and tradition. The catalog states that the anonymous writer of this 41 page booklet, which was published in Frankfurt in 1879, was certainly a great Talmudist, but he does not identify himself. He apologizes in advance for the fact that his work contradicts the views of the late Rabbi Seligman Baer Bamberger, the rabbi of Wuerzburg (who was against seceding from the general Jewish community) and supports the ruling of S. R. Hirsch.
The catalog poses the question: Is it possible that the author of the booklet is Rabbi Hirsch himself? It also notes that the booklet is not mentioned at all in the relevant literature regarding the secession of the Orthodox from the established Jewish community.
Other Hirsch items to be offered at the auction include the eulogy delivered by a son of Rabbi S.R. Hirsch, Dr. Mendel Hirsch, the director of the community’s school, on the occasion of the Shloshim of his father’s death as well as memoirs of Emanuel Schwarzchild about the founding of the “IsraelitischeReliongesellschaft” and its development until 1876 (Frankfurt, 1896). Schwartzchild was one of the founders of the Autstrittsgemeinde, as this separate community was called, and eventually became its chairman.
The Jewish Press, Friday, Oct. 1, 1999