480 A History of Judaism
the divide between orthodox and Reform has hardened greatly in recent
decades over issues of Jewish identity, with orthodox refusal to accept
the validity of Reform marriages, divorces and conversions. Since the
adoption of the patrilineal principle by some Reform communities, many
members of Reform congregations would not be considered Jewish
according to orthodox halakhah unless they submit to an orthodox con-
version. Hence intense disputes over the status of non- orthodox converts
to Judaism who wish to settle in Israel under the Law of Return.^1
Modern Orthodoxy
The response by traditionalists to the Reform agenda was swift and
blunt from the start. In 1819, Eleh Divrei haBrit (‘These are the Words
of the Covenant’), a volume of responsa by twenty- two leading Euro-
pean rabbis published under the auspices of the Hamburg Rabbinical
Court, condemned unequivocally the reforms of the Hamburg Temple,
and in 1844 no fewer than 116 rabbis contributed to the diatribe
Shelomei Emunei Yisrael which asserted, in opposition to the Brunswick
Assembly of Reform Rabbis, that ‘neither they nor anyone else has the
authority to nullify even the least of the religious laws’. From such
uncompromising opposition emerged the haredim, whose determin-
ation to retain the mores of the eighteenth century down to the
twenty- first will be examined in Chapter 19 below, but so too did the
form of traditional Judaism that came, over the nineteenth century, to
define itself as ‘orthodox’ – although, as Samson Raphael Hirsch, one of
the pioneers of orthodoxy (and not to be confused with his younger
contemporary Samuel Hirsch, the Reform rabbi and philosopher (see
Chapter 17)), observed in 1854, ‘it was not the “orthodox” Jews who
introduced the word “orthodoxy” into Jewish discussion. It was the
modern “progressive” Jews who first applied this name to “old”, “back-
ward” Jews as a derogatory term. This name was at first resented by
“old” Jews. And rightly so. “Orthodox” Judaism does not know any
varieties of Judaism. It conceives Judaism as one and indivisible.’^2
Samson Raphael Hirsch was born and educated in Hamburg, in the
shadow of the intense debates over the establishment of the Reform
Temple in the city in 1818, and the form of orthodoxy he espoused
(called ‘ neo- orthodoxy’ by some historians, to distinguish it from the
Judaism of the haredim ) can be seen as a direct product of the polemical
atmosphere of the city in his youth. In 1821 Hirsch was at bar mitzvah