Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch רבי שמשון רפאל הירש
rabbi of Frankfurt, author of the principle «Torah im derech eretz»
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch was born in Hamburg in 5568, studied with rabbis of the old school and simultaneously at the University of Bonn. At twenty-eight he published the «Nineteen Letters on Judaism», a conversation with a young educated German Jew for whom his fathers' religion looked archaic. Hirsch did not defend: he explained the meaning of the commandments in a language that reader could hear.
In 5611 he accepted the call of eleven observant families in Frankfurt, a city whose community was Reform. From that he built a congregation with a school where boys and girls studied Torah alongside mathematics, Latin and the sciences. His formula was «Torah im derech eretz» — Torah together with worldly culture, not as compromise but as a whole.
He secured a Prussian law allowing the observant to secede from the Reform community, and paid for it with a rupture with rabbis who thought separation impermissible.
His Torah commentary tries to explain every commandment as a system of symbols and education.