The Nineteen Letters was authored by Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, zt"l. In this volume, Rav Hirsch addresses a fictional correspondence between a young rov named Naftali and his youthful friend, Binyamin, who inundated the Rav with questions. This little book attempted to address the challenges faced by Jewish youth at the time in 19th century Germany, where the "enlightenment" was a major challenge to the Klal. This book was written in German, and today, you can find it in English.
Here was a rov, writing in impeccable German, addressing all of the religious issues that youth grappled with and debunking all of the common misconceptions and excuses being used to justify the abandonment of a life devoted to Torah and mitzvos. -- Source: Addressing Our Youth With “Old Wine In A New Vessel”The Nineteen Letters has been translated by Karin Paritzky into English and published with a comprehensive commentary written by Rabbi Yosef Elias, available at Feldheim Publishers.
Recently, I saw an article that tried to claim that Rav Hirsch was the first espouser of what is today called “Modern Orthodoxy.” When one reads The Nineteen Letters, it becomes crystal clear that this claim is hogwash. Sadly, those who desire to foist the kelayim of the Modern Orthodox/Torah Umadah viewpoint are guilty of historical revisionism of the first order. It is a waste of time to try to answer those who want to twist and revise Jewish history to serve their aims.
“…Other disciplines are to be regarded as auxiliary; they are to be studied only if they are capable of aiding Torah study and are subordinated to it as the tafel to the ikkur. The Torah’s truths must remain for us what is absolute and unconditional, the standard by which to measure all the results obtained in other branches of knowledge. Only that which accords with the truths of the Torah can be accepted by us as true. The Torah should be our sole focus: All that we absorb and create intellectually should be considered from the perspective of the Torah and should proceed along its paths. Accordingly, we will not adopt ideas that are not in consonance with this perspective; we will not accept conclusions derived from others’ premises and mix them with words of Torah.
“The Torah is not to be considered an equivalent of the other sciences as though the Torah is just one branch of knowledge among others. We should not imagine that just as there is Jewish knowledge and truths, there is also non-Jewish knowledge and truths of equal importance and authority, and that when we absorb our fill of Torah wisdom, we should then turn with the same spirit to the wisdom of the nations. If we do so, placing in our minds one field of knowledge next to the other, truth beside truth, we shall be devoid of uniform convictions and views, and we shall be lost because of the discordance of our ideas and conceptions.
“Rather, just as we are sure that the Torah comes from G-d, and all other branches of knowledge discovered by man are merely human products containing results of man’s limited insight into the nature of things, so are we sure that there is only one truth, only one discipline that can serve as our yardstick and evaluator of all the other disciplines which are valid only conditionally.”
Source: Addressing Our Youth With “Old Wine In A New Vessel”
