Samson Raphael Hirsch

Samson Raphael Hirsch was born in Hamburg in 1808 on June 20. His parents were Raphael Mendel Hirsch and Gela Hirsch. The Hirsch and Frankfurter family had lived in Hamburg for eight generations. On December 31, 1888 Hirsch died in Frankfurt am Main.
Hirsch was raised Jewish and with a good general education. His father Raphael Mendel Hirsch belonged to the Hamburg merchant class and later ran his own lottery business.
The grandfather of Samson Hirsch, Mendel Frankfurter, founded the Jewish religious school Talmud Torah in Hamburg. Likewise, he was an honorary assistant rabbi in the Altona community. Both his uncle Moses and his great uncle Löb Frankfurter were not unknown men: Moses was a poet and Hebrew writer, Löb Frankfurter was also a writer of several works, among others he wrote a Torah commentary entitled "Harechasim le-Bik'ah". To pray, Hirsch often went to the Old Synagogue on the former Elbstraße, now Neanderstraße.

Samson Raphael Hirsch himself had little choice at the beginning but to start a commercial apprenticeship, because not many professions were open to Jewish women*Jews in those days . However, he did not become a merchant, because both through his teacher and through his biblical and Talmudic education through his father and grandfather, he decided to pursue the career of a rabbi. Despite that his parents wished for him to follow in his father's footsteps, Hirsch nevertheless left Hamburg in 1823 to study.

After studying Talmud with his father and grandfather, Hirsch first went to Mannheim to deepen his Talmudic studies with Chacham Bernays and with the later Chief Rabbi Jakob Ettlinger.
From here Hirsch moved to Bonn in 1829 to study classical languages, history and philosophy at the university. He remained in Bonn until 1830, when he was offered the position of Landesrabbiner in Oldenburg.
While studying in Bonn, Hirsch befriended Abraham Geiger, who would later champion the Reform movement. They founded a Jewish student fraternity in which they taught homiletics to the students. The real purpose, however, was to bring them closer to Jewish values.
Hirsch's and Geiger's friendship fell apart after graduation, when Hirsch published his Nineteen Letters on Judaism (1836) under the pseudonym Ben Usiel, which Geiger sharply criticized. Nevertheless, he continued to respect Hirsch as a theologian.
Although many addressed Hirsch as "Dr. Hirsch," he never received a doctorate because before he began his doctoral studies, he had already received an offer from Nathan Marcus Adler to take over the state rabbinate in Oldenburg and wanted to focus on his passion for helping people.

After studying in Bonn and Mannheim, Hirsch went to Oldenburg in 1830 to take up the recently vacated position of state rabbi, for which he was recommended directly by his predecessor Nathan Marcus Adler . It was in Oldenburg that he met his soon-to-be wife, Johanna Jüdel, with whom he had eleven children and whom he would often describe as an important support in his daily life and a beloved spouse.
During his time in Oldenburg, Hirsch lived in the synagogue at Mühlenstraße 5, which Nathan Marcus Adler founded in 1829. This was initially only a house rented by Adler, but was purchased by the Jewish community in 1833.
Hirsch set himself the goal of drastically improving the education of Oldenburg's Jewish population by testing teachers* and dismissing inadequate teachers. Unfortunately, Oldenburg denied him the financial support he needed to do this, as his income was regulated by the small "Judensteuer" (Jewish tax), which was also often paid to him too late. When he asked for a salary increase, he even received the answer that Oldenburg felt the position of state rabbi was unnecessary and that he might as well leave it.
For this reason, he could not work very much in Oldenburg and spent most of his time with his studies. In Oldenburg he also wrote what are probably his most important works, the Nineteen Letters on Judaism, which first appeared in 1836, and Horeb, Attempts on Yisroel's Duties in the Dispersion, which appeared in 1837, extensive works on the dogmatics and ethics of Judaism.
These works quickly gained notoriety in the Jewish communities of Germany, whereupon Heinrich Graetz, later a famous Jewish historian, even moved to Oldenburg in 1837 and lived with Hirsch for four years before the latter moved to Emden to take over the state rabbinate there.

In 1840, Hirsch was then offered the position of state rabbi in Emden, which he accepted in 1841, as he was provided with more financial resources in Emden, which is why he was able to realize his goals more quickly.
While he had rather a work deficit in Oldenburg, the exact opposite happened in Emden. After the community became comfortable with Hirsch as rabbi, much of the Jewish community and even some of the Christian community came to him regularly to ask Hirsch for advice. Gaining this trust, however, took some time, as Hirsch was considered too young by many of the older citizens*. Furthermore, Hirsch delivered many of his sermons in German, since many of the congregation's Jews were no longer fluent in Hebrew, which in turn was also a cause for skepticism among the less modern members of the congregation.
Hirsch also set up an almost free credit loan for Jewish citizens*in Emden, which provided only one groschen weekly as repayment for each thaler lent. Due to Hirsch's popularity, there is no documented case of payment arrears.
Throughout his time in Emden, Hirsch worked for the emancipation of Jews* in Emden and the entire German area. In 1843, Hirsch founded a Jewish Boys' School as well as Girls' School in Emden to further his goal of advanced education. It is not known, however, whether Hirsch actually founded the girls' school himself or whether his wife set the foundation in motion.
Hirsch's great popularity and authority was also reflected in the amount of rabbinate offers he received, not only from Germany, but also from England, for example, but he turned them all down, except for Nikolsburg (Czech Republic) in 1847.

In Emden, Hirsch finally received an offer in 1847 to take over the provincial rabbinate in Nikolsburg, today's Mikulov in the Czech Republic. Hirsch accepted, whereupon he moved with his family to Nikolsburg on June 09, 1847. Since he was by now well respected within the Jewish community, every congregation greeted him enthusiastically on his way to Nikolsburg, and in Nikolsburg, despite a conflict between the Orthodox and the Reformers, all the Jews*Jews of the town welcomed him warmly.
Similar to Emden, however, at first especially the older members of the community were skeptical of Hirsch, the reasons being the same as in Emden, and, just as in Emden, after a little while the skeptics in Nikolsburg began to like Rabbi Hirsch.
Nevertheless, tensions existed, allegedly, between Hirsch and the other rabbis of Moravia. Nikolsburg was the Jewish center of Moravia at the time of Hirsch. Almost every provincial rabbi of Nikolsburg was also at the same time chief provincial rabbi or grand rabbi of Moravia, whereby Hirsch, upon taking office in Nikolsburg, was also directly entrusted with great powers of disposal over Jewish life in the rest of Moravia.
Despite any tensions, Hirsch continued to try to act as a mediator between all streams of Jewry and also between non-Jewish residents of Nikolsburg, since he was also highly respected by them. He also tried to improve Jewish education and Jewish life in general. In April 1851, an old student friend asked Hirsch to come to Frankfurt am Main to rebuild the Jewish community there, since Frankfurt, once one of the first German cities with Jewish inhabitants, was now home to only about 100 Jews. Hirsch agreed and in May 1850 left one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe to mediate in Frankfurt am Main.

From 1851 until the day of his death, Samson Raphael Hirsch lived in Frankfurt am Main. Here he joined as a rabbi the Israelite religious community, which was newly founded and split off by his leadership, and which was not particularly large at the beginning. It was an "exit congregation" with which he created what the law-abiding Jews needed. Hereby he distinguished himself from the "unity congregation". During his time in the community, it grew to 500 families. In 1853, Samson Raphael Hirsch founded a Jewish Realschule of the Israelite Reform Society; this was later named after him. He led this school as a director for more than twenty years. Subsequently, the school system he founded prevailed and was considered a prototype for what was called a "modern-Orthodox school," in which the focus was on uniting two cultures. Meanwhile, he also published the journal "Yeshurun. A Monthly Journal for the Promotion of Jewish Spirit and Jewish Life, in Home, Community and School," and in it translated and expounded Psalms and also the Pentateuch.
In the 1880s he founded the first organization for support as well as free association for the interests of Orthodox Judaism. In addition, he supported oppressed Russian Jews through active activities. This organization was called "Free Association for the Interests of Orthodox Jewry" and later served as the basis for the "Agudat Yisra'el" movement.
According to stories told by his family, he became infected with the disease malaria in Emden. This was probably also the reason why he died in Frankfurt am Main at the age of 80. He was buried in a Jewish cemetery, which today is located in Rat-Beil-Strasse.