My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner

by Chaim Grade, Ruth R. Wisse (Translator)

For centuries they speculated, they talked, and they wrote. Does duty to nation and family come first, or does the freedom of the individual come before his obligations to parents, wife, and children—or even to one’s self? They considered the matter solemnly and concluded that there are no bonds that a nation is not free to break; that truth and reason are like the sun, which must rise; can the sun be covered by throwing clods of earth at it? So there came in the West a booted ruler with a little mustache, and in the East a booted ruler with a big mustache, and both of them struck the wise man to the ground, and he sank into the mud. I suppose you’ll say that the wise men wanted to save their lives. I can understand that. But didn’t they insist that freedom, truth, and reason were more precious to the philosopher than his life? Take that wise man whose statue is standing there, with his instruments for measuring the stars and planets. When everyone else argued, ‘The sun revolves around the earth,’ he said, ‘Not so; do what you will to me, break me, draw and quarter me, the earth revolves around the sun!’ What would he have said to his grandchildren today? If the spirit of life could return to him, he would crawl down from his niche in the wall, strike his stone head against the stone bridge, and recite Lamentations.

Genres: Judaica, Judaism, Religion, Fiction

55 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1951

Reviews

[Israel Drazin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Brilliant Story by Chaim Grade

I am convinced that people could learn much from non-religious writings, even some, but not all, crime novels. Thus, my desire to increase my knowledge is why I still read more than a hundred fictional non-religious books annually, in addition to my studies of biblical commentaries. I will give an example of one such book. It is a short story of only 57 pages in its original Yiddish edition and 45 pages in its English translation. Both versions are in the bilingual English-Yiddish edition published by Toby Press in 2020, part of the prestigious publications of Israel’s Koren Press.
The story is by the Yiddish writer Chaim Grade (1910-1982), pronounced gra, as in open your mouth and say ah, and de at the end pronounced as in eh, the word said in surprise. Grade in German and Yiddish means “straight.” Grade’s early writings were poetry. “My Quarrel” was Grade’s first work as a novelist. He was successful, and other splendid, also thoughtful dramas followed.
The Noble winning novelist Elie Wiesel once said of Grade that he was “one of the great – if not the greatest – of living Yiddish novelists. The story is called in English “My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner.” It is so good that other writers made it into a film and a play. It is about the different opinions of Judaism by two former classmates at an Orthodox Yeshiva. Grade and his fictional counterpart in the tale left the Yeshiva and became a secular Jew because they felt the lessons of the Yeshiva were wrong, even harmful. Rasseyner continued his life living the Yeshiva beliefs. The Grade stand-in argues that Jews must open their minds to the enlightenment. Hersh Rasseyner argues fervently that only observant Jews are faithful Jews.
The story is a classic because of its lasting merit. Its message is still relevant today despite being first printed in 1952, seventy years ago, because it addresses the current dispute between secular and observant Jews. It highlights the destruction of Judaism and the conflict caused in the past and today. Talmudic rabbis and scholars agree that the second temple in Jerusalem, for example, was destroyed in the year 70 because Jews could not live peacefully together. Had they got along, Rome would not have demolished the temple, destroyed the land of Israel, and caused most Jews to wander in the diaspora for two thousand years.
The two former Yeshiva students were friendly classmates when they attended the right-wing very observant rabbinical school but did not see each other for decades after the student with Grade’s rational view of Judaism left the school. He became a secular Jew while his former friend continued at the school, became hostile to secular Jews whom he considered Jewish traitors, and rose to be the head of several Yeshivas. The two met in 1937 before the Nazi conflict, 1939 when Germany began to murder Jews and the former classmates lost their entire families, and 1948 when Jews reestablished Israel. The novel has six chapters. Of these, 1948 takes six, over 85 percent of the text. Hersh Rasseyner was abrasive throughout.
Each criticizes the other in 1937 and 1939. For example, Grade scolds Hersh: “You laugh at people who work and do business [while you stay at home or the synagogue reading the Talmud] because you say they don’t trust in God [to provide your needs]. But you live on what those exhausted women labor to bring you [not God], and in return, you promise them – the world to come. Hersh Rasseyner, you have long since sold your share of the world to come to those poor women.”
Grade censures Hersh for his narrow, divisive, and alienating Orthodoxy and scolds him for dismissing fellow Jews and righteous non-Jews from his circle. What would the non-Jewish people who saved Jews during the holocaust think if they heard Hersh’s Orthodoxy excluded them?
Hersh insists that humans should not rely on their works and ideas. They should choose between good and evil as Jewish Law chooses for them. He mocks Grade for failing to realize that humans are incapable of understanding life and insists that they need to rely on rabbinical teachings. Grade responds that he doesn’t consider it a particular virtue not to have doubts. The “heroism of secular thinkers lies in [striving to improve themselves and society and] their ability to risk and live in doubt.”
Ultimately, after the holocaust and the bickering, Chaim Grade ends his tale with a plea to Hersh Rasseyner and all who think like him to stop excluding people who do not believe as they do. The message of Judaism is respect for others. Love your neighbor as yourself. We need to stick together, or we will cease to exist.

[Masha Shollar · Rating 5 out of 5]

The more I read of Grade’s, the more fascinated I am by the push-pull dynamics, in this book, of religiosity vs secularism, but in general, it seems to me, of certainty vs doubt. Hersh Rasseyner is certainly pious by many metrics. But as he spoke, I kept think of another line from Grade’s work when, in “Leyb-Layzar’s Courtyard,” one character tells another “your piety is brutality.” Grade allows Chaim Vilner, essentially an author insert, the profoundness of existential doubt. But what’s so incredible about Grade as a writer is that, even with the brutal certainty of Hersh, he still allows that character to be a fully realized person, who makes some arguments that are so full of righteous anger that they are hard to simply dismiss. Grade doesn’t tie the debate up with a neat bow; he’s too good for that. Instead, he allows it to remain unfinished, to keep all their searching, potent, grieving questions up in the air. “The fact that you know in advance there will be no explanation from heaven doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility of asking.”

[Ninel · Rating 3 out of 5]

★★★☆☆ - This was definitely an interesting read.

For quite a long time, I had the ambition to give a try to Yiddish literature. I read a lot of articles and suggestions of which Yiddish novel I should read, which ones are the best and most famous, etc.
I ended up reading My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner because it is apparently one of the most well-known novel of modern Yiddish literature.
So I read it.
It was not bad at all, but it was not either the best read ever. It was interesting, I learnt quite a lot of things and the topic of the novel is important. But, let's be honest, a part of the novel is a bit boring, very descriptive and overall, not that thrilling.
Anyway, this is a nice read and a very nice book, I recommend it if you're curious about Yiddish literature. It is also very quick to read.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an insanely good story. It's about a guy who leaves religion and then meets his old friend from yeshiva who's still religious. The story is the argument between them - they each try to prove they're right.

The story takes on more meaning because it takes place right after the holocaust. Chaikl, the ireligious one, asks Hersh Rasseyner, the religious one, how he can believe in God after the holocaust. Hersh responds with "how can you believe in people after the holocaust." Fantastic short story that really makes you think.

[Ben Rothke · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Talmud (Yuma 9B) notes that Reish Lakish was sparing in his speech and extended friendship to only a select few prominent, righteous people, to the extent that a person to whom Reish Lakish was seen speaking in the marketplace, one would give him a loan and do business with him without witnesses.

One could use the same logic and observe that any study partner (chavrusa) of the Chazon Ish would have to be a serious scholar. One of those study partners was Chaim Grade, who learned with him in the 1920s. With his 40th yartzeit just passed, Grade (pronounced Grahdeh) has long been off the radar. And as one of the most prominent Yiddish writers of the twentieth century, it’s not like his books will be found in the bookstores on Cedar Lane.

Grade was born in Vilna in 1910, attended Musar movement yeshivas, and returned to Vilna in the early 1930s, where he was a poet. After the war, where he, like so many others, lost his entire family, he relocated to New York City.

First published in 1952, My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner has just been republished from Toby Press with an English translation from the noted scholar of Yiddish literature, Ruth Wisse, formerly a professor of Yiddish Literature Harvard. Wisse calls this book one of the greatest stories in Yiddish literature, a work she believes uniquely illuminates the debate of post-Holocaust religions.

The story is written with Grade as the narrator in the character of Chaim Vilner and describes his chance encounter after World War 2 on a Paris metro with his former chavrusa and close friend Hersh Rasseyner. The narrator had long-abandoned religious observance, while Rasseyner is still an observant Jew - both on the inside and with his traditional garb.

While Grade never mentions who Rasseyner is, later research showed that the character is based on Rabbi Gershon Liebman, who headed up the group of Novardok-based yeshivas in France after World War II.

Grade, like Liebman, was a student of Novardok, and in reading this book, it’s clear that while Grade left observance, Novardok never left him.

The quarrel comes down to Chaim, who feels that Jews must be liberated from the religiosity of the stifling ghetto, and Hersh, who remains faithful to halacha.

The language is deep and rich, and while Grade left the yeshiva world, his writings are still saturated with the language of the yeshiva. Wisse has done a remarkable job of translating the book.

While categorized as a short story, when studying Grade’s life, this is, in truth, an autobiographical short story, and a fascinating one at that.

Hersh Rasseyner’s interlocutor is Chaim Vilner, who abandons the Mussar movement to pursue a life in secular literature. Which coincidently is exactly what Grade did.

While I don’t understand Yiddish, I think the book could have been improved on had it been formatted in an interlinear-like presentation, such that the reader, who may not be fluent in Yiddish, could understand and appreciate the specific Yiddish terms with Talmudic references that are on every page.

The dispute between Vilner and Rasseyner is the same dispute that has been raging for thousands of years. A more current version of it is in Judaism Straight Up: Why Real Religion Endures (Maggid, 2020), a superb work by Moshe Koppel that also looks at the differences between traditional religion and contemporary secular society.

My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner is considered a masterpiece of Yiddish literature. And Ruth Wisse has done a masterful job of bringing this gem to the English-speaking reader.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short story dramatized... no wonder as a stage play and a film adaptation I saw in 1992...a poet based on Grade, named Chaim Vilner, and the title character, a rabbi from the Litvak tradition. Their reunion comes in 1948 Paris. Of course, they debate what Ruth Wisse renders from the Yiddish as the "khurban," the Six Million, and those who like themselves, and a student who has a cameo, survived.

Wisse, in the 2020 Moment magazine online archive, translates the novella in its entirety for the first time. She captures the spirited tone well. I agree that Grade makes the rabbi sound a bit too much as if Grade himself as the advocate, but after all, he needed to counter his own stand-in convincingly! She prefaced her version with a backstory of the writer, the kernel of real-life that sprouted into fiction, and its original reception in the American press. I wish she'd included an evaluation of the pair of elaborated treatments as "The Quarrel" over a generation after its first appearance, as these may be how contemporary audiences may have first encountered the exchange, in more fleshed-out settings.

That being said, the two protagonists each have their say. Grade seems nevertheless to come out as a secular champion, as his doppelganger (more or less) gets the last rebuttal. He defends the Jewish ideal of continuity outside the Orthodox limits. It's instructive, however, to observe in hindsight how the assimilation of the non-Orthodox Yiddish community ensued as Grade's generation died off, vs. the heirs to the rabbi such as his student, for his grandchildren today are more likely to be thriving in a pattern marked by such as an Hasidic or Vilna legacy in the diaspora, than a socialist Yiddish trace.

[Mark Greenfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chaikl and Hersh are chavrusas in Yehsiva. Chaikl becomes a secular Jewish writer and Hersh is now a rosh yeshiva.
They bump into each other many years later after both surviving the holocaust and get into a very emotional argument, both thinking their way of life is correct.

Rav Hersh no longer trusts or believes in anyone who is not a religious Jew after witnessing the horrors people are capable of during WWII.
Chaikl responds of stories ranging from atheists to Christian goyim who risked their lives saving Jews. Furthermore, he questions Rav Hersh how he can separate devoutly religious Jews from secular Jews when German Nazis never cared about the difference.

This is a beautiful and emotional conversation that only Chaim Grade can write, being a survivor of the Holocaust himself and having a deep understanding of all the nuances that come with a conversation of old friends who chose different paths.

[Perlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short story captures the two worlds of mussar and Jewish haskalah from prewar Europe to post Holocaust. Grade seems to have written from each side of his own heart, a character who embodies that self. From my perspective, the mussarist argues more accurately. While I feel for the Chaim character, I also pity him a bit, because what he wishes for, yearns for, does not actually exist. A very powerful story enhanced by Ruth Wisse's thoughtful translation.

[Yankevhersh Desover · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have completed reading the recently published bilingual ( Yiddish and English) edition bu Toby books.
It is a powerful short story about values and how to live your values. Worth reading , especially in the Yiddish original

[John Minster · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful story dealing with many of the most enduring Jewish themes in a very small space