counter- reform 483
some of his practices, such as wearing a robe during services, the rejec-
tion of casuistry (which held no appeal to someone of his theological
bent) and his insistence on study of the Bible, and in 1851 he moved to
Frankfurt, where he remained until his death in 1888.^5
In the 1830s and early 1840s, Hirsch had tried hard to avoid a break
with the Reform movement as it threatened to become the mainstream
within German Jewry, but in 1844 he wrote to the Reform synod in
Brunswick declaring that if they decided to annul the dietary and matri-
monial laws he and his followers would have to secede: ‘Our covenant
of unity will no longer endure and brother shall depart from brother in
tears.’ In the second half of the nineteenth century, such secession was
complicated in Germany by the requirement of the state that all mem-
bers of a religion must belong within the communal structure of that
religion, so that no one uncomfortable within a structure dominated by
one type of Judaism could leave except by declaring themselves ‘without
religion’. It is an indication of the domination of Reform within Ger-
man Jewry that Hirsch pressed the Prussian authorities from the early
1870s for the right of orthodox Jews ‘to leave their local community
organization for reasons of conscience’, following the example of Hun-
garian Jews in 1868– 9. Likewise it is significant that in July 1876 the
Austrittsgesetz (‘Law of Secession’) passed by the Prussian Landstag
permitted all orthodox Jews in Germany to join Hirsch’s congregation
in Frankfurt, along with small orthodox congregations in Berlin and
elsewhere, in a separate orthodox Austrittsgemeinde (‘secession com-
munity’). But it is also symptomatic of the desire for Jewish unity that
most orthodox Jews preferred to remain within the traditional Jewish
communal structure, relying on the good faith of the Reform- minded
communal leaders to allow the orthodox to fulfil their religious needs
unhampered by interference.^6
Despite his extensive secular learning and the literary power of his
writings, Hirsch rigorously confined his erudition to what might con-
tribute to living a Jewish life. Menschentum (‘humanity’), as conceived
by the classic German philosophers, was for Hirsch merely an inter-
mediate state on the road to the Israeltum of the Torah- observant Jew.
Hirsch’s translations of the Pentateuch and Psalms deliberately adopted
an artificial German to demonstrate faithfulness to the original Hebrew.
The historical studies of the Wissenchaft des Judentums scholars were
deemed of no value if they did not contribute to understanding the com-
mandments and (crucially) to carrying them out. ‘How many of those
who study the selihot [penitential prayers] ... still rise early in the