On My Mind: A Voice to Our Time From an Old Archive

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May 20, 1994 - I recently acquired a very important archive of German-Jewish documents from the early decades of this century. It consists of three parts:

The first part is the correspondence of the Halachic Committee of German Rabbis from 1930 until 1935 and the beginning of the Hitler years. The Committee was made up of such outstanding rabbis as Josef Carlebach of Altona-Hamburg and Horovitz-Frankfurt; Freimann Klein, Y. Weinberg, E. Munk and Jakobovits, all of Berlin; Schlesinger of Halberstadt; Klein of Nurenberg; and others.

The second archive contains the important historic documents covering the famous controversy from 1924 on about the succession to the Orthodox rabbinate of Frankfurt am Main, involving Rabbis S. Breuer, son-in-law of Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch; his son, Dr. Rafael Breuer; and the heads of the community led by Jakob Rosenheim.

The former claimed chazoka (de facto right) to appoint his own son as his successor, while the Board of Trustees of the Community vehemently opposed this procedure. The archives show that the machlokes (argument) went on for over four years. Here and there, a voice made itself hears warning that such a controversy could not but damage the standing of Orthodoxy as a whole.

Unheeded, the controversy went on and did indeed undermine the image of German Orthodoxy. I will revert to this archive in detail in the future.

The Beginnings of the Agudah

To me the most pertinent document in the third archive, which holds miscellaneous documents, is a historic essay on the beginnings of the Agudah in Europe. The document was typewritten by Dr. Wilhelm Freyhan sometime in the 1930s. I translated and paraphrased some selected portions:

The impetus to the formation of an organization that would safeguard and defend the interests of the Orthodox Jews came in the beginning of the century when the German reform had reached such a horrendous degree of decline that one of its exponents published an article proposing that Christmas be accepted by Jews as a "Germanic Feast."

While the Zionists had made good inroads in Germany and were also opposed to the assimilationist Reformers, the Orthodox Jews had no way to ward off the inroads of Reform and assimilation. German Orthodox leaders contacted the great Torah leaders of Eastern Europe, who, however, were loath to subordinate themselves to an international political organization.

Especially in Hungary, the Orthodox leadership felt themselves secure under the protection of Royal-Imperial Austro-Hungarian rulers. Although before World War I occasional meetings took place in the summer, when the Torah greats came to German sanatoriums and health spas - especially in 1909 in Hamburg - these meetings led to nothing concrete.

Faced with the cleavage between Western European and Eastern European Jews, the Orthodox leadership in Germany, Switzerland and Austria - in other words, the German-speaking communities - decided to launch their own organization. The catalyst for this was Switzerland's Rabbi Dr. Arthur Cohn of Basel, who in 1911 published a courageous appeal in which he said Orthodoxy stood now five minutes before 12 and had to organize itself - if necessary, without Hungarian participation. If Orthodoxy does not unite at this time, another opportunity may not come back in our lifetime was his prophetic warning.

This appeal caused an immediate, enthusiastic response. Donations for the founding of such an organization started to come in. Three months later a preparatory committee was in place and met in October 1911 in a private home of Mr. Adolf Stern in Frankfurt, with the participation of 60-70 community leaders from Germany, Holland, Switzerland and Austria. They picked the name "Agudas Yisroel" for their new world organization.

A rabbinical council was also formed headed by Rabbi S. Breuer of Frankfurt, Rabbi Dr. W. Feilchenfeld of Berlin and Professor Dr. Hoffman of the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary.

First Knessio Gedolo 1912 in Kattowitz

The first world meeting was called for May 1912 in Kattowitz, Germany, under the name "Knessio Gedoto." While the Kattowitz meeting was going on, they sent a delegation to Krakow, Poland, to keep leaders of Eastern communities abreast of developments. This committee consisted of Rabbi Dr. S. Breuer; his son, Dr. Issac Breuer, a lawyer and philosopher; and Jacob Rosenheim, (later, the top Agudah leader in the world), Rabbi Daiches from England and Dr. Wilhelm Freyhan.

Their reception in Krakow was the greatest triumph that they could have imagined in their most hopeful dreams. Thousands upon thousands of Jews swarmed around them, from the moment of their arrival at the railway station in the Polish city, throughout their meeting at the Hotel deLondres, until they returned to Kattowitz.

This wise step of establishing immediate partnership with the Eastern communities established the full work capacity of the Agudas Yisroel to become a fully functioning political organization in all Orthodox communities in Europe.

The Third Knessio Gedolo took place in Marienbad in 1937. By that time there was perfect harmony between West and East in the Agudah. (My family witnessed the Third Knessio Gedolo, and I remember it very keenly. It is a tragic to think that soon thereafter many of the delegates were sent o Auschwitz...)

Agudah in America

I wish to insert something personal that was not contained in the Freyhan report. Right after Kattowitz it was resolved also to found an Agudah in America - a territory that was not known for Orthodoxy. It was decided to send Rabbi Meir Heldesheimer - son of the fabled Dr. Esriel Heldesheimer, founder of the Orthodox Berlin Rabbinical Seminary - to the United States to found an Agudah.

My own father, the late Hans Lehmann, had known Rabbi Hildesheimer in Berlin, and therefore, when my father sailed to New York to marry my mother, Fanny Taub, in December 1913 in New York, he asked Rabbi Heldesheimer to perform the marriage ceremony. Rabbi Heldesheimer gladly acceded to the wish of his old friend, my father, and so my parents were married on December 21, 1913, in the old Broadway-Central Hotel on Lower Broadway.

That ceremony, with the blessings of such an outstanding rabbi, would not have been possible if it had not been for the founding of the Agudah, first in Europe and, then, in America! Everything is providence.

Early Discord

After such an august beginning, with enthusiastic support for joint Orthodox action throughout the world to promote Torah-true Judaism, the beginning of the Agudas Yisroel, unfortunately, was soon tarnished by discord. There were people in the new organization who would not countenance the slightest admixture of worldly elements into the Agudah program. The Germany members of the movement, steeped in the teaching of Rabbi Sampson Rafael Hirsch's "Torah in Derech Eretz" ("Torah with Secular Knowledge") philosophy, saw nothing wrong in accepting worldly education and political methods.

The Eastern leaders objected. They added to their objections poisonous attacks against Zionists and anyone interested in the reestablishment of a Jewish State in Eretz Yisrael. The Western Agudah delegates became uncomfortable. Some soon defected and founded the Mizrachi with the slogan, "Eretz Yisrael al pi Torat Yisrael" ("The Land is Israel in Accordance with the Torah of Israel").

Many German Agudists felt that unnecessary energies would now be spent on fighting Zionism, instead of concentrating on the spreading of Orthodoxy in the European and American communities to confront the growing danger of Reform and assimilation. They called this a "two-front war," in geopolitical terms, against Zionism and Reform - a kind of war that is doomed to failure or at least heavy casualties from the start.

The reaction to this early dissent was a call in the 1920's in Germany to found a new organization called "Achuduth" ("Unity") to overcome disagreements rooted in the Katowitz confrontation. But soon the Hitler regime took over in Germany and all plans had to be shelved. Reb Chayim Oser Grodzinsky, the Lithuanian Agudah leader, confided to a German delegate: "If we in the East had had a Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch, things would be different today within Orthodoxy."

Dr. Feyhan's report over 60 years ago ends with the anxious question, "Is it too late today to unite all Jews standing on the ground of tradition into a world union?"

Call To Us Today

Today, 60 years later, we can evaluate history from the vantage point of so many decades of tragedy and triumph. Unity still escapes us. Orthodoxy is fragmented as never before. Political and religious shades of various stripes about within Orthodoxy.

But we all have one thing in common: We are opposed to Reform; to assimilation; to the dilution of Torah Judaism. And today, contrary to the situation before World War II, Agudah is a s much concerned with the building up of Eretz Yisrael as the rest of the Jewish people are.

Dr. Freyhan's final words, therefore, appeal to us as if uttered yesterday: "I do not wish to close my historic survey without expressing my wish and hope that very soon great personalities will arise within Orthodoxy who will be sable, before it is too late, to unite and guide the Jewish people together unto the true road of Torah."

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