(Foremost Orthodox Rabbi in Germany, 1808-1888) “Ein Wort an Herrn Kirchheim.” Autograph Manuscript in German, with occasional use of Hebrew, with corrections in the same hand, signed and dated by Samson Raphael Hirsch.

The controversy between Orthodoxy and Reform Judaism in the middle of the 19th century resonates strongly in the manuscript at hand. The manuscript is part of the wider scholarly debate about the importance, relevance, and trustworthiness of Heinrich Graetz’s pioneering 11-volume study of the History of the Jews. This debate reflects the breech between Samson Raphael Hirsch, rabbi of the secessionist Orthodox “Israelitische Religions-Gesellschaft” in Frankfurt am Main, and his former student and protégé Heinrich Graetz, who in 1854 had accepted a teaching position at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau, the first modern rabbinical seminary in Central Europe, a move which Hirsch considered to be a personal betrayal and a betrayal of the Orthodox cause. Heinrich Graetz’s fourth volume of the History of the Jews, was published first in 1853, beginning with the period following the destruction of Jerusalem. This volume was extensively reviewed by Samson Raphael Hirsch in a series of 12 articles between 1855 and 1857 in Jeschurun, an Orthodox monthly periodical that was edited and published by Hirsch himself. More than 200 pages of objective critique revealed Graetz’s methodical weaknesses and scholarly flaws, such as careless fabrications of dates and quotes out of context. In the autograph manuscript at hand Samson Raphael Hirsch harshly criticizes an article by Raphael Kirchheim in the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums. Raphael Kirchheim (1804-89), a German-Jewish scholar who lived in Frankfurt, supported Graetz’s deliberations and had in turn strongly criticized Samson Raphael Hirsch’s first two reviews of Heinrich Graetz’s work. The topic of the debate between Hirsch and Kirchheim is Graetz’s portrayal of the sage Yochanan ben Zakkai who opened a Talmudic Academy in the town of Yavneh following the destruction of the Temple in the year 70 CE. Yavneh became the center of Jewish learning for centuries and replaced Jerusalem as the seat of the Sanhedrin (rabbinical court). Graetz claimed that Yochanan ben Zakkai had redefined and reformed the importance, meaning