Part 5: The Rama

We find this mild tension going on, but then there was a big problem that has confronted German Jewry by the rise of the great posek, the Rama. The Rama did a wonderful work. He wrote the Shulchan Aruch for B’nei Ashkenaz. Now, his Ashkenaz was the Polish version. As we know, the vast majority is the same, but here and there, it is not exactly the same. The Rama became the ultimate posek. What happens to the German Jew who learns Shulchan Aruch? Does he have to go like the Rama, or does he have to go by his messorah? The first one to handle this was the chavrusa of the Rama, his friend from yeshiva who he learned with by Rav Shalom Shachna, and this is Rav Chaim of Friedberg. Rav Chaim of Friedberg was an interesting person. He was a great gadol and the brother of the Maharal m’Prague, himself a giant. He wrote several books on dikduk, halacha, and on other topics, and he keeps on arguing with the Rama. He says, “With all due respect, the Rama was not intended for b’nei Ashkenaz. You know what? I myself have learned in Poland. I was raised in Polish yeshivos, and I know exactly what is going on there. Later, I became a rav in Germany. First I came to Worms, and then I came to Friedberg, and I used to go to a very important town which was nearby, to Frankfurt, to learn their minhagim. I have good knowledge of both sides. I have the authority to say that you German Jews should not follow the Polish minhagim, because German Jews sat in the same place all the time. They did not emigrate from one country to another. They are still very loyal to the very old minhagim. They had yeshivos all the time. There were no generations that did not have a yeshiva. Just like we see that the Rama would not bow to the Bais Yosef…he did not say, we see you wrote a nice Shulchan Aruch and we will now all follow it…instead, the Rama wrote the Darchei Moshe, the Mapa to make sure that Polish Jews do not follow the Sefardishe minhagim but rather follow the Ashkenaz minhagim, there is even more a need for us in Germany not to follow the Rama.” This is a very extreme statement, because the difference between Polish Jews and German Jews was very, very minor. He says that “the Rama himself is not responsible for that because he never wrote that this book is meant for German Jews. Only the publisher, on the front page wrote that it is meant for all European Jews, and he mentions each by name: Poland, Russia, Bohemia, Moravia, and he then writes, wherever Yiddish is spoken. In his eyes (the printer), this was [who the Rama was for]. Wow. We speak the “proper” Yiddish. We speak Yiddish Deutch - the proper, old, antique Yiddish - and you are going to tell us how to practice from the perspective of Polish Jews?” This is all very interesting, because this comes from a Polish mouth!

Coming back to the Chasam Sofer, who was a very staunch yekke - He converted me to “Yekkishkeit”, as anyone who knows my biography is aware of - he says, “When somebody says anything against the yekkishe minhagim, my teachers and my rebbes, some of them were German such as Rav Nosson Adler…some were Polish, like the Hafla’ah, Rav Pinchas Horowitz, and Rav Zalman Chossid…all of my rebbes. Thank God, I have a lot of Torah knowledge. My rebbes were great masters… he learned [from others as well]. He learned from everybody. He was a super genius. He says, you should know that all of these German minhagim that we have come from Rav Amram Gaon… other Geonim, Rav Ephraim of Bonn, Rashi, the Ba’ale Tosefos, the Maharam of Rothenburg, the Rosh, Tur…and why should I continue? The list is endless! Their minhagim are quite different from what the Rama has brought down in the Shulchan Aruch! What the Rama said refers to Polish Jewry! German Jews did not change their minhagim, so please, do not speak against German minhagim.”

Seeing my time is over, I will finish with a short phrase from Rabbi Professor Dovid Tzvi Hoffman, the head of the Rabbiner Seminar, the Rabbinical Seminary of Berlin. He was a Hungarian Jew himself, learned in Pressburg, later he came to Frankfurt under Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, and then he came to Berlin under Rabbiner Dr. Azriel Hildesheimer, and eventually he became the head of the seminary after Rabbiner Dr. Hildesheimer passed away. He was a great gadol. He said, “If you mock those Frankfurters for what they say ‘Frankfurt is like this…Frankfurt is like that’” - [I remember myself …my aunt was from Nuremberg, and at one time she was arguing with my uncle who was from Frankfurt, and he said “In Frankfurt they did it this way, etc.”, and she said, “This is Frankfurter gaava (haughtiness)”. It wasn’t Frankfurter gaava. Nuremberg also kept the old minhagim, but Frankfurt had a certain priority because it was a community for 800 years with great yeshivos and they were very [conservative in their approach to guarding their minhagim]…they managed to keep it better than Nuremberg. Certainly better than Poland in the eyes of these German Jews]. So he said, “You ‘Berliners’ are ridiculing the ‘Frankfurters’. You should know, even if they go against the Shulchan Aruch, they are right - because Minhag Frankfurt is older than the Shulchan Aruch by hundreds and hundreds of years!”

However, Polish Jews - and I have already given a lecture on this - had some pockets of old German minhagim. For example, in Vilna, in the Groyse shul, in Ostrov, which had stronger yekkish minhagim than “Breuer’s” in Washington Heights. In Eastern Europe, in the Ukraine, in Lithuania, we had communities with strong German links. We cannot generalize. We know for sure that Palestinian propaganda has no room in real life. The history is that we are all one people. We are all Ashkenazim - unless we are Sefardim, etc., which is a story on its own, and a very respectful story - together, we should draw on all our strengths together, and help each other to continue the messorah as much as we can. Thank you very much.