Hello, Trutharchivist speaking. This is my blog, I’m happy to see you here! This is my new (third so far) post about the history of Judaism during the Age of Enlightenment forward. Specifically I’m talking about the scale of conservation vs change in religion - so far I’ve talked about the Haskalah and the beginning of breaching the walls of the ghetto (that existed way before World War 2, calm down), and of how this breach led, eventually, to the forming of the Reform Jewish movement. In the post about Reform Judaism, I’ve name-dropped a couple of Jewish rabbis on whom I said I’ll elaborate later. Well, it’s still going to take a while, but I can promise we’ll reach all of them (assuming I’ll keep writing this, low feedback makes it a tad less probable).
This time, I wish to talk about Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. On the scale I mentioned it’s the exact other end from Reform - to go orderly on the scale would be to talk about Conservative Judaism; but since historically the forming of Ultra-Orthodox ideas came first, I decided to put it first.

What can you expect from this particular essay? Well, talking about the negative reactions to the Enlightenment and emancipation from some more traditional Jews, especially another Frankfurt-am-Main born rabbi - Rabbi Moshe Sofer, AKA Hatam Sofer. We’ll also get to see the Jewish Frankfurt before the time of Abraham Geiger. 

Speaking of which, a few additions to the previous installment: firstly, further research shows that Geiger’s father was a bit more traditional than I implied - young Abraham had to study history under his father’s nose, since the latter didn’t support of Jews studying secular sciences. He went to university to study Middle-Eastern languages, and though I might’ve been right about it being a requirement to be a rabbi, it rather seems that this wasn’t the most important part of it in Geiger’s mind. Regarding the critical Tanakh study, I’ve found out more about his specific opinion - he believed that Judaism evolves through the generations, and that as a part of this evolution, during the time of the Pharisees vs. the Sadducces the Pharisees edited parts of the Tanakh to fit better with their view - I hope it’s obvious enough why such opinions won’t be accepted by Orthodox Jews. If not, maybe it will be after this essay. I got this point from a book of his named “The Original Text and the Translations of the Bible”, originally published in German in 1857. (To be a tad more accurate, it was from the preface by Prof. Joseph Klausner to the Hebrew translation of the book from 1949; but it had a summary of the book, so I’ll go with that.)

Anyway, to start with a few things about Orthodoxy: it continues on, as best it can, the way Judaism existed way before the Age of Enlightenment came around. Yet, there is not much point to talk about Orthodoxy before the Reform and Conservative movements exist, so I’m going to refer to the reactions from traditionalist Jewish rabbis to the Reform as the founding of Ultra-Orthodox ideas. Now, all this is not to say different Jewish denominations didn’t exist before: Karaites aren’t exactly Orthodox and have existed for centuries… but they aren’t very sizable and many Jews never even heard of them. I might refer to them again later, but I’ll leave talking about them to another theoretical essay series, since they emerged at an entirely different era and for entirely different reasons - reasons that could be applicable against Reform and Conservative Judaism just as much, if not more so, than against Orthodox Judaism.

Hopefully that was comprehensible. Anyway, Ultra Orthodox Judaism. The thing is, emancipation and acceptance into gentile society weren’t necessarily things all Jews wanted or liked. For hundreds of years we lived among ourselves, with some autonomy to judge ourselves. We were detached from gentile society, and some people were completely fine with it. Emancipation included things they didn’t want to deal with - plus the fact all this scientific study led to secularity, and quite naturally there were Jews who didn’t want that. So they resisted it. Well, not all that much, but…

When Moses Mandelssohn - remember him? We talked about him in the first essay - wanted to be ordained as a rabbi in 1761, Rav Yehonatan Eibeschitz (who himself did study some general science - I know I’m being overly general, but I kind of have to) refused to ordain him, on the flimsy ground that before he got married he couldn’t get a certain title, but the other title possible was too low to fit him. Apparently scholars think it has more to do with him learning philosophy etc.

I’m not sure how much more I can find, because it wasn’t necessarily all that bad - Jewish rabbis were known to study the science of their time for centuries, with possible examples including a few Amoras (rabbis from the time of the Talmud, over 1500 years ago), Rambam (AKA Maimonides), Ibn Ezra, Rabeinu Tam and many more - those names might not mean much for non-Jews, but they are very prominent Jewish rabbis (mostly Sepharadic ones - meaning those who came from Spain. I give the credit to the Muslims). Things became more complicated later, when the Reform rose and Haskalah was seen as related. I can say that in stories told by Ultra-Orthodox Jews about rabbis of the time, the Maskil - a member of the Haskalah movement - is usually portrayed in a negative light.

Anyway, to better understand Orthodox Judaism I rather want to follow the example I set in the two previous essays and follow a prominent rabbi and thinker - this time the Hatam Sofer.
Rabbi Moshe Sofer was born in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1762 to an Orthodox family. The sharp-eyed among you will note this was later to be the origin city of Abraham Geiger, too - it was a prominent city for Judaism in that era, we’ll visit it again later. As a matter of fact, it ended up becoming mostly Reform - but we’ll get to it. For now, we’ll say that Rabbi Moshe Sofer studied there under both Rav Nathan Adler and Rav Pinchas Horowitz. In 1782, Rav Nathan Adler was banished from Frankfurt due to praying in a Sepharadi Hebrew accent and various other behaviors the local congregation deemed unacceptable, and when he left - Rabbi Moshe Sofer left with him. In a certain future essay, we’ll encounter more people who acted not dissimilarly to Rav Nathan, and we’ll see how such things were accepted in eastern Europe.

Rabbi Moshe Sofer later became the rabbi of various cities around Czechia and Hungary (after being ordained by both Rav Nathan Adler and the chief Rabbi of Moravia at the time), with the city he’s most remembered as the rabbi of being Bratislava - which back then was called Pressburg. He became a rabbi there in 1807. He wrote (at some point) a book on the Talmud called “Chidushei Torat Moshe” - it’s hard to translate, it basically means “new understandings in Moshe’s Torah”, more or less, referring both to the fact we call the Torah “Moshe’s Torah” and to his own name. He was called Hatam Sofer after this book - with Hatam being an acronym of the book’s name, and also incidentally meaning seal. 

So, what can we say about Hatam Sofer’s resistance to the Reform and somewhat to the Haskalah? I think I’ll start on that with a story. For some context, emancipation for Jews was discussed as a possibility in the Holy Roman Empire at the time, and possibly also in neighboring kingdoms.

They say that one Shabbat - a Saturday, the resting day in Judaism - Hatam Sofer went to say a Drasha, which is more-or-less a sermon but I’m not sure if this is a good comparison. In this Drasha, he told the following parable: 

Once, there was a king’s son who disgraced his father and disobeyed him. Thus, as a punishment he was sent to exile to a far-off land for an undetermined amount of time. After a while, the king asked after his son, because even in punishment - he still loved him. He heard that his son lives in the garbage, with hardly anything to eat or a good place to sleep. Once he heard that, the king sent his messengers to his son’s place of exile. The king’s son seemed excited to see his father’s messengers, at first, but then they started building him a good, steady house and bringing him money for provisions, and he started crying. The local men were surprised at that and asked the king’s son what he’s sad about. After all, it seems his father still remembers him and cares about him! The king’s son replied: how can I not cry? At first, when I lived in the garbage it was very uncomfortable, but at least I could draw comfort from knowing my father won’t leave me like that for long, and I’ll soon return home. But now that he’s making things easier for me, that he’s making sure I’m comfortable in my exile, I see that he intends for me to stay here for much, much more time, and how can I not cry over that?

As per usual in Jewish parables, the father/king is G-d, and the son is the people of Israel. Hatam Sofer said: it’s true life in exile wasn't good for us, we suffered and were prosecuted. But at least we knew G-d would eventually hear our prayers and deliver us. Now that He gives us emancipation and ways to live in comfort here, in our exile, it means we’re in this for the long run. Well, longer run than it was so far.

All that is just regarding emancipation for its pure idea. The results it usually led to are a whole different story - after all, it tended to lead to either secularity or conversion to Christianity. Generally, in relation to new things, Hatam Sofer’s opinion was clear: “Chadash Asur Min HaTorah!” meaning lit. “New things are forbidden according to the Torah!” This sentence was originally about the newly harvested grains - I talked about it in my SU about Shavuot, linked here. You see? When I tell you we’ll revisit something, I actually mean it! Bear with me for just a little while longer and we’ll touch on everything I promised I’ll touch on. Anyway, using this motto Hatam Sofer resisted any new innovations that tried to be made in Judaism. An elementary school for Jews in Pressburg trying to teach core studies? Not on his watch. A synagogue in Hamburg is trying to pray in German and change the prayers’ text? Not going to happen. Even if some of the changes could be supported by the Halacha, Hatam Sofer refused to start going down in this direction, fearing the slippery slopes that may be found there.

Now, regarding studying general science eventually - he actually accepted that. He himself studied at some point some math, astronomy, and philosophy. But in his view, studying the Torah always came first. He died in 1839… Leading to people taking his ideas to the extreme.

After Hatam Sofer’s death, his followers - who were called Ultra Orthodox by many, but referred to themselves as Hareidim or Yereim [both coming from words meaning they were G-d fearing, could be roughly translated to pious (or frum, in Yiddish)] - resisted the idea of teaching boys anything but Torah, even more than Hatam Sofer and his original followers. Though, oddly enough, they let girls study general science - but not Torah. This has led to an odd situation where wives were typically more well-educated in the general sense, but they knew nearly nothing from the Torah. 

I think I’ll leave the “nowadays” conclusion to the next essay, to summarize all factions of Orthodox Judaism together - plus I’ll have a better conclusion for that after I finish the essays on this topic.

A short summary: many more traditional Jews didn’t like the emancipation and studying secular sciences, so they tried to strengthen the falling walls of the ghetto as much as they could. First and foremost among them was Hatam Sofer, who coined the phrase “new things are forbidden according to the Torah!” He himself wasn’t completely opposed to studying science, though he did approach it warily, but his students and successors took it a bit further and forbade it almost entirely.
Well, hopefully that’s enough for now. Next time we’ll talk about Neo-Orthodoxy, and after that there’ll be a post about Conservative Judaism and a wrap-up of this topic. Thank you for reading and have a good day!