Raphael Hirsch (with postscript by Rabbi Mendel Frankfurter). Autograph Letter Signed, written to his sons Samson Raphael Hirsch and Harry Raphael Hirsch, in Hebrew and Judeo-German.
AUCTION 83 |
Thursday, June 20th,
2019 at 1:00pm
Printed Books, Manuscripts, Autograph Letters, Holy Land Maps, Ceremonial Objects, Fine & Graphic Art
Lot 136
(HIRSCH, SAMSON RAPHAEL)
Raphael Hirsch (with postscript by Rabbi Mendel Frankfurter). Autograph Letter Signed, written to his sons Samson Raphael Hirsch and Harry Raphael Hirsch, in Hebrew and Judeo-German.
(Altona): n.d (but approx. late-1810’s from internal evidence)
Est: $4,000 - $6,000
<<Provenance:>> By direct family descent from Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, to the consignor.
This letter was written to the two young Hirsch boys in Hamburg while their father was visiting their grandfather in Altona.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the founder of German neo-Orthodoxy, grew up in a particular modern, yet rigorously Orthodox home. His father, Raphael Aryeh Hirsch (1777-1857) imbued his family with values that combined Torah with pursuits such as a European cultural education. Raphael was a businessman, whose deep piety left a great impression on his son Samson. The Bible, wrote Hirsch, was his father’s zweite Seele, or second nature. See Noah H. Rosenbloom, Tradition In An Age of Reform: The Religious Philosophy of Samson Raphael Hirsch (1976) pp. 48-50.
Raphael Hirsch himself grew up in a home that was also oriented toward a modern religious direction. His father, Rabbi Mendel Frankfurter (1742-1823), although a Dayan in Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbeck, communicated with Mendelssohn, and in his later years developed a Talmud Torah in Hamburg that was organized along lines somewhat similar to Wessely’s educational ideas.