When secular intellectuals embrace new ideas, many of their Jewish counterparts try to “update” Judaism accordingly. They even justify their behavior, claiming that Judaism is supposed to evolve with the times.
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch rails against this assertion in his commentary on this week’s parsha. “The loudest protest against it is the first Jewish command: lech lecha. Was Avraham’s first stand in accordance with the spirit of his times? In the midst of Chaldea, Babylon, Assyria, Phoenicia, and Egypt! Idolizing sensuality and power was the contemporary doctrine there – worshipping the life of the senses in Asia, worshipping human power and killing freedom in Egypt.”
G-d placed Avraham in these societies, not to fit in, but to stand in opposition to them. In that sense, Avraham was “the first ‘Protestant,’” writes Rav Hirsch. His very life served as a protest against his surroundings.
“While everybody in the whole world was making every effort to establish themselves, to settle securely, [Avraham was] to give up his homeland and his rights as a citizen – of his own free will to make himself a refugee – to throw a protest in the face of the gods worshipped by all the nations.”
Going with the flow is a natural impulse. And under normal circumstances, we’re supposed to honor our home and country. But “stronger than the bond that attaches us to fatherland and family should be the bond that attaches us to G-d.”
“Everybody is responsible to G-d for himself. If necessary, alone – with G-d – when the principle worshipped by the majority is not the true godly one,” Rav Hirsch writes.
“How could we have existed, how could we continue to exist, if we had not from the very beginning received from Avraham the courage to be a minority!”
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) – head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, Germany for over 35 years – was a prolific writer whose ideas, passion, and brilliance helped save German Jewry from the onslaught of modernity.
Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the host of “The Elliot Resnick Show” and the editor of an upcoming work on etymological explanations in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Chumash.