Between east and west

Descripción

Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg (1884-1966) received his early education in the yeshivot of Lithuania and later served as a rabbi there. During World War I he moved to Germany, where he came to identify with the ideology of the German Orthodox, in particular the Berlin variety which encouraged the scientific study of Judaism in a religious context. While in Germany he became known as an outstanding halakhic (Jewish legal) authority and is currently regarded as a central ideologue of modern Orthodoxy's approach to Jewish law. Weinberg's life, because it was so variegated, is also the mirror through which a number of significant social and intellectual trends are treated, several of which have not received much scholarly attention. Foremost among these are the yeshivot in Lithuania, the Mussar movement, the state of the rabbinate in Lithuania, Eastern European Jews in Weimar Germany, varying conceptions of Torah im Derekh Eretz (the synthesis of religious and secular), Orthodox Jewish attitudes towards Wissenschaft des Judentums, and the special problems of Orthodox Jews in Nazi Germany. Weinberg's major claim to fame is his halakhic writings. This dissertation illustrates perhaps the most significant facet of these writings, namely, how Weinberg integrated aspects of the modern world into the halakhic system. This approach was based on the notion that reform, within limits, is a crucial element to the success of Orthodoxy. Weinberg is shown to follow in the path of his predecessors in Germany who believed that when confronted with faltering religious observance, traditional Orthodox practices must be modified in a liberal direction in order to increase their appeal. Chapters five and six discuss the halakhic decisions Weinberg issued during the Nazi era, when German Orthodoxy was faced with unparalleled hardships in its struggle to maintain religious tradition in the face of persecution. Using a great deal of unpublished material, including Weinberg's private correspondence, this dissertation is able to illuminate various aspects of Weinberg's career during this time and draw conclusions which are quite different than what is presented in recent historical treatments of the period. Many of these unpublished documents are included in the appendix.