Rabbi Shimon Schwab (1908-1995) was the long-time spiritual leader of a transplanted  Frankfurt Orthodox Jewish community centered in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood. He succeeded Rabbi Joseph Breuer, a direct descendant of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, who established that community on the basis of  “Torah in Derech Eretz” (lit; Torah with the way of land i.e. respect/comportment/education/ethical behavior/sophistication.) Hirsch’s philosophy sought to meld Orthodox fundamentalist rigidity with Western acculturation.

For nearly a century, Hirsch’s philosophy prevailed, producing several generations of Jews who were Teutonically punctilious in their adherence to halachah while pursuing university degrees and careers that required a higher education.  These “yekkes”  were refined, understated, decidedly un-showy despite often significant personal wealth, and as likely to attend a concert of Beethoven’s Middle Quartets as attend a class  on halacha at their large, austere synagogue in “the Heights”.

Rabbi Schwab, who is today considered to have been a gadol, a leading light in the  emerging black hat-haredi yeshivish society, was the first leader of the yekke community to lack a university education. He compensated for this lacuna with the fact of his having studied at the decidedly un-yekkish  Lithuanian yeshivas of Telshe and Mir in pre-war Europe.  One can question whether this distinction played into his insecurities or whether it made him feel superior to the ethos that he was ostensibly appointed to spearhead. Perhaps both.

What we do know – and which no latter-day yekke progeny would ever admit – is that Rav Schwab single-handedly decimated his own kehillah by steering it forcefully into the yeshivish way. College became anathema, supplanted by Lakewood as the summum bonum of contemporary Orthodox life. Today one would be hard put to find recognizable American-born Orthodox yekkes, certainly not at a Beethoven recital.

Some 30 years ago I attended the annual dinner of Yeshiva Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch – already by then a sad shadow of its intended self.  These dinners would feature two speakers. The first, the dinner’s honoree, would be a surviving member of the original German emigres. The second speaker would be a representative of the alumni then celebrating their  25th graduation anniversary.

It was a sad spectacle.

The elderly guest of honor was eloquent to a fault. His precise but accented English spoke volumes for his education, culture, sophistication and, yes, fealty to Hirsch’s ideas.

The alumnus........

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