Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888), Talmudist, scholar, philosopher, prolific author and Rabbi of Frankfurt am Main, passed away on this date. He was instrumental in revitalizing German Jewry, bringing thousands back to the teachings of the Torah at a time when assimilationist trends threatened to extinguish Jewish life in Western Europe.
Man sees a tree and the tree says, “I am here, I was here, and I am nothing more but a thing that is here.”
Man ponders and answers, “No! I give you a name! You are ‘tree’! You have beauty and you have a soul. You point upwards and you say, ‘There is something higher, there is the One who gives me life and gives me my very being.’”
And so Man goes on, until he has brought the whole of creation down on its knees.
Man alone can accomplish what the angels cannot. Man alone can discover the spiritual within the material.