482 A History of Judaism
God of Eternity, is not and never can be Reform. Judaism seeks to lift us
up to its height, how dare we attempt to drag it down to our level?Hirsch argued that the Jews, rather than Judaism, were in need of
reform, but not as the reformers imagined it. Jews needed to rise to the
eternal ideals of their religion, even if they are not always comfortable
to live with, and the current troubles relate to the emergence of a ‘Juda-
ism that recognises and understands itself’.^4
Hirsch thus recognized the pressures of modern life as much as his
erstwhile friend Geiger, but chose a wholly different solution. Accom-
modation to secular culture could include a choir in the synagogue
liturgy and preaching in German, but Hebrew must be the sole language
of prayer and alterations to the prayer book should not be lightly under-
taken. Crucially, the laws of the Bible and the rabbis must be treated as
the word of God and immutable:
What kind of thing would Judaism be, if we dared to bring it up to date?
If the Jew were permitted to bring his Judaism up to date at any time, he
would no longer have any need for it; it would not be worthwhile any-
where to speak any longer of Judaism. We should then seize Judaism and
cast it out among the other misbegotten products of delusion and supersti-
tion, and hear no more of Judaism and the Jewish religion! ... Let us not
deceive ourselves. The whole question is simply this. Is the statement ‘And
God spoke to Moses saying,’ with which all the laws of the Jewish Bible
commence, true or not true? Do we really and truly believe that God, the
omnipotent and holy, spoke thus to Moses? Are we speaking truth when,
in the presence of our brethren, we lay our hand upon the Torah Scroll and
say that God has given us this teaching, his teaching, the teaching of truth,
and in so doing has planted eternal life in our midst? If this is to be more
than lip service, more than verbiage and deception, then we must keep this
Torah and fulfil it without abridgement, without fault- finding, under all
circumstances and at all times. This word of God must be for us the eternal
rule, superior to all human judgement, to which at all times we must con-
form ourselves and all our actions, and, instead of complaining that it is
no longer suitable to the times, our only complaint must be that the times
are no longer suitable to it.Hirsch was treading a difficult middle path between reform and trad-
ition, and his influence depended as much on his personal spirituality,
and his fluency as writer and preacher, as on his specific ideas. The
orthodox community he served in Moravia from 1846 disapproved of