Letter 7: Yisrael Among the Nations
The role of the Jewish People: What are we here for?
Summary
Now that we understand:
The original goal for Creation (Circle of Life, with God at the center)
Man’s role in Creation (Conductor of the symphony)
What went wrong (Gaavah and Taavah)
we can explore the next step: the selection of Avraham and the creation of the Jewish People.
This letter conveys one of Rav Hirsch’s most fundamental points about understanding the full picture of Judaism: The Jewish People exist to assist the rest of humanity, rather than their existence marking the negation of the rest of humanity. To use the language that Rav Hirsch has been using throughout the last few letters, we are not the end in itself, we are the means to the original end of all mankind fulfilling the original goal of creation:
Thus this people came to constitute the cornerstone on which humanity could be reconstructed. Recognition of God and of man’s calling found a refuge in this nation and would be taught to all through its fate and its way of life, which were to serve as a manifest example, a warning, a model, an education.1
In order to accomplish this goal, the Jewish People need to remain distinct from the nations of the world. Becoming too closely connected would expose them to the values and perspectives that they were created to educate against.
Diving Deeper
The Ideal of the End of Days
At the end of Letter 6, Rav Hirsch quoted from Yeshayah 2’s vision of Yemos Hamashiach:
At the End of Days, the mountain of the Lord will be firmly established upon the peaks of the mountains, and borne by the hills — and to it all people shall stream. And there shall go go great nations and speak, “Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the House of the God of Yaakov, and He will teach us His ways and we shall walk in His paths; For from Zion shall come forth the Law, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” He will judge between the nations and teach mighty peoples, that they shall beat their swords into into scythes and their spears into pruning hooks, that no people shall lift up the sword against another, and they shall learn war no more. O House of Yaakov, go before us so that we may also walk in the light of the Lord!
For Rav Hirsch, the vision expressed here is not limited to Yemos Hamashiach; instead, it expresses the eternally applicable ideal that will only be fully actualized in the time of Mashiach. Therefore, it is something that we should be conscious of, and to a certain extent working towards, as part of the process of bringing about the geulah.
By way of analogy, this can be compared to the machlokes between Rashi and Rambam about the third Beis Hamikdash. According to Rashi,2 the third Beis Hamikdash will fall from Heaven fully built; while we hope and pray for it now, we are not meant to build it ourselves. For the Rambam, though, we are meant to build the Mikdash ourselves as part of bringing about geulah.3 It is an ideal that we should be actively involved in facilitating.
We’ll bring more sources for this understanding of the Jewish People in the next letter, where Rav Hirsch connects this theory to the Torah’s storyline from Avraham through the Jewish People entering Eretz Yisrael.
Rav Hirsch and Dirah B’tachtonim
This seems like a good place to bring up a central source that (surprisingly, to me) doesn’t feature in the Letters, but recurs throughout Rav Hirsch’s Commentary on the Torah. In Bereishis 3:8, 9:27, 28:10, 28:13, and Vayikra 16:14 (and there are more that I don’t have written down), Rav Hirsch makes reference to the following Midrash, even calling it “an entire worldview folded into a single line.”4 While there are a number of different versions of the Midrash,5 they all express roughly the same idea in slightly different ways:
The Shechinah originally existed down below [in this world]. In response to the sin of Adam and Chavah, Hashem removed himself to the first rakia; after Kayin killed Hevel, He retreated to the second, and so on until He reached the seventh rakia. At that point, Avraham came on the scene and brought Him from the seventh to the sixth; Yitzchak brought Him from the sixth to the fifth; and so on until Moshe. When the pasuk says that “Hashem descended on Har Sinai” to give Moshe Rabbeinu the Torah for the Jewish People, that marked Hashem’s return to His original ideal of existing with us in this world. The Midrash concludes by saying that the Jewish People building the Mishkan and Hashem descending to “inhabit” it also marks His return to our world.
For Rav Hirsch, this constellation of Midrashim expresses one of the most essential elements of the Jewish worldview:
ישכן. מושג אחר האפייני ליהדות הרי הוא: "שכינה"; אף הוא נזכר כבר כאן על ידי אבי האנושות החדשה. הדתות האחרות מורות, מה יעשה האדם - כדי להתקרב אל ה' בעולם הבא; ואילו היהדות מורה לנו, מה נעשה, - כדי שה' יתקרב אלינו בעולם הזה. היהדות מורה: "עיקר שכינה בתחתונים" (בראשית רבה יט, יג); היא אומרת: "ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם" (שמות כה, ח): יעשו את חייהם למקדש, ואני אשכון בתוכם. שליחות ישראל ומטרת תורתו היא לתקן עולם במלכות שדי - לא רק בשמים ממעל, אלא גם בארץ מתחת.
“He will dwell.” Another concept that is characteristic of Judaism is Shechinah, and this concept, too, is already mentioned here by the patriarch of the new humanity. Other religions teach what man must do in order to attain closeness to God in the next world; Judaism teaches what we must do so that God will draw near to us in this world. Judaism teaches that Ikar Shechina ba’tachtonim; God seeks, first of all, to dwell on earth together with man; He says: “V’asu li Mikdash v’shachanti b’socham — Let them make of their lives on earth a sanctuary to Me, and then I will dwell in their midst.” To perfect the world through the reign of the Almighty — not only in the heavens above, but also on the earth below — is the mission of Israel and the purpose of its Torah.6
Similarly, in Parashas Vayakhel:
The construction of the Mishkan is the greatest possible challenge to human craftsmanship — if not from an artistic standpoint, then certainly from the standpoint of the ideal and the purpose embodied by the Mishkan: “V’asu Li Mikdash v’shachanti b’socham.” Man’s mastery over the physical world, which comes to expression in the extraction of the world’s raw materials and their use in production and manufacturing, attains its highest purpose in the Sanctuary. Man subordinates the world to himself, in order to subordinate himself and his world to the Creator, and in order to transform his world into a home for the kingdom of Heaven, into a Sanctuary in which God’s glory will dwell on Earth.7
Elsewhere, I’ve suggested that this perspective is one of the, if not the, major fault lines dividing different Orthodox communities: Does Judaism focus our attention on this world, or on the World to Come? To be clear, neither perspective negates the realities of hishtadlus or reward and punishment in the World to Come. The question is what is considered ikar and imbued with essential value, and what is seen as tafel and plays more of a supporting role.
This worldview seems to be just behind the scenes in this letter. While I need to source this better, my sense is that alternative approaches to the role of the Jewish People that see them as the main characters in history and gentiles as more of a supporting cast are also more likely to emphasize sechar in Olam Haba (like Ramchal in the beginning of Mesillas Yesharim) or a Jew’s ability to imitate Hashem as a creator impacting all levels of the Upper Worlds (Nefesh Hachaim), both perspectives that downplay the importance of this world.8
This perspective also leads to Rav Hirsch’s understanding of the purpose of talmud Torah, namely instruction and guidance regarding the Divine values and ideals Hashem wants us, the Jewish People, to express through the society we create. This could be contrasted to views like Nefesh Hachaim’s Shaar Daled, discussing Torah’s ability to reach past the highest of the Upper Worlds to make the most significant, all-encompassing tikkunim, or Ramchal’s understanding of Torah and mitzvos preparing a person for d’veikus baHashem (to some extent in this world, and ultimately in the World to Come; see Derech Hashem 1:3 and 4:2). This leads to what could be called his magnum opus, Horeb, and one of his most significant and enduring contributions to the Torah — his exploration of the meaning and messages of the mitzvos, especially through his commentary to the Torah. This is what drew me to Rav Hirsch in the first place, as it gives talmud Torah specifically and the practice of mitzvos more broadly an entirely different character.
Pg. 106.
Sukkah 41a, d.h. “Ee nami.”
Hilchos Melachim 11.
Bereishis 28:10. See also Shemos 15:17, 20:23, 24:10, 35:1-2, 22.
Tanchuma Nasso 16; Tanchuma Pikudei 6; Bereishis Rabbah 19:7; Bamidbar Rabbah 13:2; Shir Hashirim Rabbah 5. For the related idea of “Hashem desired partners in this world,” see Bereishis Rabbah 3:9 and Bamidbar Rabbah 13:6, both of which place the Mishkan/Mikdash element in greater focus than the other sources.
Commentary to Bereishis 9:27.
Commentary to Shemos 35:1-2.