Translation versus Teaching: Competing Agendas in the Work of Samson Raphael Hirsch

Translation versus Teaching: Competing Agendas in Samson Raphael Hirsch

Is Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Pentateuch better described as a translation or a teaching? The case against the former are manifold: Hirsch consistently rendered hendiadys as offering two distinct teachings. He inconsistently rendered the vav-consecutive. He stuck more closely to the Hebrew word order than Moses Mendelssohn, but not as consistently as Buber-Rosenzweig. The resulting translation can be called cumbersome but never exciting. Despite ‘fidelity’ to the Masoretic text, Hirsch frequently added clarifying words unsupported by this text, committing what Robert Alter terms the “heresy” of explanation masquerading as translation. Hirsch placed unwarranted emphasis on vocalization and on cantillation. Above all, Hirsch used his theory of phonetic relationship (Lautverwandtschaft) to derive teachings from Hebrew roots that have little to do with each other. But academics err by ignoring the needs, motives, and -- hermeneutics -- of the large number of devotional readers. I argue on behalf of Hirsch’s pedagogic goal by reading his translation in light of: 1) his conception of the Relationship of Written Torah and Oral Torah 2) the role of Bible in modern Jewish practice enunciated in Horeb and The Nineteen Letters 3) his stressing the Hebrew-ness of Hebrew Bible’s language, 4) his psychologically modern evaluations of biblical characters, and 5) his openness toward acculturation. Hirsch stands squarely in the German-Jewish tradition of elevating the Hebrew Bible and its religious teachings, his idiosyncrasies as a translator notwithstanding