Elias, Joseph (1919-2014)

Joseph Heinz Elias¹

I. Family and Educational background
Rabbi Joseph Elias was born on October 29, 1919, in Leipzig to Dr. Markus (Mordechai) Elias and Bertha (Braindel, nee Oppenheimer). He had one older sister, Miriam (vital dates unknown). In 1928, the family moved to Frankfurt am Main, where his father worked at the Samson Raphael Hirsch Secondary School (SRHS) as the school headmaster.² His paternal aunts Berta Elias and Irma Elias (never married) joined them and were also teachers in Frankfurt.³ The Elias family made their residence on the top floor of the SRHS and were part of the secessionist Jewish community of Frankfurt.⁴ In 1936, Joseph’s parents were divorced, for unknown reasons. The Elias family associated with the elite factions of the congregation, including the families of Jacob Rosenheim and Rabbi Simon Schwab. This specific community faction, which was heavily involved with Agudath Israel, was unique because it represented a broader “post-Neo-Orthodox” stream which differed ideologically from more conservative Neo-Orthodox families like the Breuer’s. This broader movement critically evaluated their German cultural heritage and romanticized both Eastern European Judaism and Lithuanian Yeshiva culture. They perceived the Eastern European rabbinical leadership as representing a more authentic form of Judaism than their own Neo-Orthodox heritage. Like his father, Joseph Elias became fascinated with Lithuanian-style yeshiva culture and he inculcated its emphasis on the importance of Talmudic-only study.⁵ Additionally, the Elias family supported aspects of Zionism, in contrast to Rabbi Dr. Joseph Breuer. The Elias’s were involved in Neo-Orthodox efforts to settle Palestine and to establish modern Jewish schools there teaching general studies. At one point the Elias family even considered immigrating to Palestine, although this did not materialize due to the Arab Revolt of 1936. After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Joseph Elias’s sister Miriam Heinrich immigrated to the Holy Land.⁶

Elias received his education at the Israelitische Bürgerschule in Fürth from 1925 to 1928 and the Samson Raphael Hirsch School from 1930 to 1937.⁷ From 1937 to 1938 he studied at an Eastern European-style yeshiva in Hamburg.⁸ He was also a member of the Agudath-affiliated Esra Youth movement.⁹

II. Emigration to England and Internment in Canada
Shortly before the pogrom of November 8, 1938, Elias emigrated to England through the Kindertransport.¹⁰ There he enrolled at the Jewish Secondary School of London in Finsbury Park, headed by British Orthodox Jewish leader and educator Rabbi Dr. Avigdor Schonfeld, where he completed his high-school studies. During the 1938 November pogrom, Elias’s father Markus was briefly incarcerated in the Buchenwald Concentration camp. He was only released due to his son’s timely efforts to secure an emigration visa to England where he joined his son. Joseph was unable to save his mother Bertha, who remained in Frankfurt am Main and was ultimately deported to the Sobibor concentration camp and murdered there during the Holocaust.¹¹

Between 1938 and 1939, Joseph Elias worked as a volunteer for the London Home Office’s Kindertransport program. Elias’s task was translating into English letters from German and Austrian Jewish parents who were requesting safe asylum for their children.¹² Elias also studied briefly at Cambridge University from 1938 to 1939, until his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War Two and his subsequent internment.¹³ When the war erupted, Elias was forcibly interned by the British government as a prisoner of war because of his German background. As a result, Elias was taken to the Isle of Man and deported to Canada where he was interned in prison camps in Frederickson and Fort Lennox from 1939 to 1941.¹⁴ After his release, he continued his Jewish education with private lessons under Rabbi Yaakov Kaminetzky in Toronto and later at Yeshiva Merkaz HaTorah in Montreal.¹⁵ At the latter institution, Elias received his rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Elia Chazan in 1945. That year, he also finished his BA at the University of Toronto, where he majored in world history.¹⁶ In 1943, Elias was the recipient of the Isserman Peace Prize in Toronto for his study on international cooperation, although specifics of it are unknown.¹⁷

III. Life and Work in the United States
Like his father, Joseph Elias aspired to a career in Jewish education. In 1944, he relocated to Chicago, where his father was living and working as a Hebrew studies teacher.¹⁸ Joseph Elias attended the University of Chicago from 1944-1946. In 1946 he completed his MA in Social Thought, which researched Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch’s and Heinrich Graetz’s perspectives of interpreting Jewish history.¹⁹ On November 3, 1947, he married Miriam (nee Eisemann) in London. Elias and his wife officially immigrated to the United States on December 15, 1947. They were naturalized in Detroit on November 6, 1958.²⁰ They had four children: David (1954), Deborah (1954), Michael, and Shifra.

During the 1940s, Elias held various educational positions with the Agudath Israel’s Torah Umesorah Hebrew Day School movement. From 1944 to 1946, he worked in Chicago as a Hebrew instructor in an after-school Talmud Torah program. From 1946 to 1949, Elias was the director of the Teacher’s Training Program at Yeshiva Torah Vodaath in New York.²¹ From 1949 to 1951, he held various Hebrew-teaching positions at Yeshiva Zichron Moshe in the Bronx and Yeshiva Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (YRSRH) in Washington Heights.²² Elias served as the principal of Yeshiva Bais Yehuda (YBY) of Detroit from 1951 until 1963.²³ As a budding pedagogue in the American Ultra-Orthodox Jewish milieu, he was friendly with Rabbi Samson Raphael Weis as well as German-born yeshiva teacher Rabbi Chaim Schloss (1919–2002), both of whom lived in Detroit and worked together with Elias on the staff of YBY.²⁴ In 1963, he accepted an invitation from the YRSRH to be the principal of the Hebrew Studies Department. Subsequently, the family relocated to New York and joined the Khal Adath Jeschurun (KAJ) congregation. When the YRSRH established a separate girls-only Beis Yaakov school Elias became their principal. He also served as the principal of the Rifka Breuer Teachers Seminary. He served in this educational position until his retirement 2003.²⁵ Elias was involved with the Agudath Israel and was on the editorial board of its media organ, The Jewish Observer, from 1964-2006. He was described by Agudath Israel activist Rabbi Moshe Kolodny as “the idealogue of Agudath Israel.”²⁶ Joseph Elias passed away in his Monsey residence on August 18, 2014, and was buried in Clifton, New Jersey.

IV. Remembering the Holocaust
As a leading Ultra-Orthodox pedagogue, Joseph Elias promoted Holocaust education for his Ultra-Orthodox students and espoused a religious perspective of this tragedy in an effort to locate a religious meaning.²⁷ In 1999, he launched Torah Umesorah’s “Zechor Yemos Olam: Holocaust Education” initiative, providing training seminars and curricula dedicated to Holocaust education according to a religious Jewish perspective, as well as symposiums at the Agudath Israel national convention dedicated to this goal. Between 1999, over 400 faculty teachers from mainline American Ultra-Orthodox schools participated in this project.²⁸ Like many German Jewish refugees, Elias’s faith in the Enlightenment ethos of Bildung, rationalism, and universalism, was severely shaken as a result of the trauma of the Holocaust.²⁹ Elias did not return to Germany and was not involved in any efforts to reorganize Jewish learning and rabbinical seminaries in Germany.

V. Legacy between Neo Orthodoxy and American Ultra-Orthodoxy
As a post-war Neo-Orthodox rabbi positioned in the American Ultra-Orthodox milieu, Joseph Elias desired to transmit the Neo-Orthodox heritage to the American scene. At the same time, he shrewdly adjusted certain Neo-Orthodox teachings towards the dominant ideological proclivities of the American Agudath Israel and the Lithuanian Yeshiva movement.³⁰ He aspired to promote an American Ultra-Orthodoxy that operated on its own terms and urged for the wider propagation in the United States of all-day Hebrew day-schools (yeshivot) which would provide a full “Torah education.”³¹ Importantly too, Elias emphasized the strategic imperative of every American Ultra-Orthodox yeshiva maintaining a state-approved secular studies curriculum that followed standard requirements. In 1984, Elias declared that the Torah Umesorah program was an ideological descendant of Samson Raphael Hirsch’s ideal of Torah im Derech Eretz (meaning Torah with Civilization, henceforth TIDE). According to Elias, the all-day Hebrew day-school movement, by establishing educational institutions for joint Hebrew/secular studies across the United States, was enabling Orthodox Jews to “live a life dedicated to Torah under the conditions of the modern world.” In the view of Elias, this achievement represented the raw essence of TIDE.³² As principal of YBY in Detroit, and later the YRSRH in New York, Elias promoted an openness to general studies, such as English and science, but he repeatedly emphasized the superiority of Talmud study over these disciplines, in the spirit of the classic Lithuanian Yeshiva approach. Elias reinterpreted the TIDE ideal as a binary formula, rather than a program of mutual synthesis as traditionally interpreted by Neo-Orthodox in Germany.³³ As an author and journalist, Elias wrote prolifically on important intellectual themes involving the Talmud, science, the Jewish mission to humanity, as well as political issues regarding Ultra-Orthodoxy, Modern-Orthodoxy, and the State of Israel, all of which he adjusted and framed towards an Ultra-Orthodox perspective.³⁴ The outlook Elias championed on rabbinical Judaism was extremely conservative and he opposed more open-minded attitudes even if they emanated from Orthodox circles. For example, he opposed the Steinsaltz translation of the Talmud.³⁵ In this way, he made aspects of Neo-Orthodoxy more receptive to a broader Orthodox Jewish audience which otherwise had no connection to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. However, some elements of the Neo-Orthodox community disapproved of Elias’s approach. For example, in 1995, he published a new translation of Hirsch’s Die Neunzehn Briefe, which included Elias’s original notes. Some of his notes were controversial, as he denied traces of enlightened German cultural influence on Hirsch’s thought. He was subsequently criticized by veteran YRSRH teacher Rabbi Shelomo E. Danziger for espousing an apologetic “ideological correctness” rendition of the Neo-Orthodox heritage that accommodated the religious tastes of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish yeshiva readers. Danziger felt that Elias’s notes deemphasized academic studies and suggested that full-time Talmudic study was the normative Orthodox Jewish ideal.³⁶

As a young Neo-Orthodox Jewish refugee rabbinical student navigating North America, Joseph Elias played a pivotal role as a budding pedagogue on the emerging American Jewish scene. His educational activities in several all-day Hebrew schools and yeshivot, coupled with his prolific ideological writings on science, Judaism, Torah study, and the teachings of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, contributed immensely to the educational outlook and school structure of the American Ultra-Orthodox community.

Cohen, Suri. “Rabbi Joseph Elias.” Hamodia, August 20, 2014. Accessed November 29, 2024, https://hamodia.com/2014/08/20/rabbi-joseph-elias-zl/.
“Rav Joseph Elias,” Matzav, August 18, 2014. Accessed November 29, 2024, https://matzav.com/rabbi-joseph-elias-ztl/.
Elias, Joseph. “The New Halacha.” The Jewish Observer 1, no. 9 (June 1964): 3–6.
Elias, Joseph. “Reflections on the Jewish Educational Scene.” The Jewish Observer 3, no. 10 (December 1966): 12–18.
Elias, Joseph. “The Case of National Identity.” The Jewish Observer 6, no. 6 (March 1970): 1–10.
Elias, Joseph. “The Relationship Between Hebrew and General Studies Department in Our Yeshivas.”Mitteilungen 44 (June 1984): 1–2.
Elias, Joseph. “Popularizing the Talmud: An Analytical Study of the Steinsaltz approach to the Talmud.” The Jewish Observer 22, no. 10 (January 1990): 18–27.
Elias, Joseph. “Joseph Elias: Mein Vater war dagegen (1998).” In: Die Samson-Raphael-Hirsch-Schule in Frankfurt am Main: Dokumente, Erinnerungen, Analysen, 125-126, edited by Hans Thiel. Waldemar Kramer, 2001.
Elias, Joseph. “The Mosser.” In: Holocaust Hero: The Untold Story and Vignettes of Solomon Schonfeld, an Extraordinary British Orthodox Rabbi who Rescued 4000 Jews During the Holocaust, 139-141, edited by David Kranzler. KTAV, 2004.
Elias, Joseph. “Sixty Years Since Churban Europa.” The Jewish Observer 38, no. 5 (May 2005): 10.
Elias, Joseph. “Irma Elias, Page of Testimony, Berta Elias, Page of Testimony.” Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony, Names, Memorial Collection, May 21, 2008. Accessed November 10, 2024. https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/7699831 and https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/7699832.
Interview by Raphael Thurm with Rabbi Dovid Elias, Rabbi Mayer Schiller, October 2021, April 2022, November 2024. Textual recording. Private archive Raphael Thurm.
Jung, Leo. “The Contributors: Joseph Elias.” In Jewish Leaders, 1750-1940, edited by Leo Jung. Boys Town Jerusalem Publishers, 1964.
Mayer, Egon, and William B. Helmreich, From Suburb to Shtetl: The Jews of Boro Park. Taylor and Francis, 1979.
Sherman, Moshe. “Markus Elias (1886-1984) and Joseph Elias (1919-2014).” Congregation Ohr Torah. Weekly Announcements. July 17, 2021. Accessed November 29, 2024. https://ohrtorah.net/downloads/announcements/2021/20210717_Devarim.pdf.
Thiel, Hans. “Der letzte Schulleiter: Dr. Markus Elias.” In Die Samson-Raphael-Hirsch-Schule in Frankfurt am Main: Dokumente, Erinnerungen, Analysen, 122-125, edited by Hans Thiel. Waldemar Kramer, 2001.

Elias, Joseph. “Reason, Revelation and History in Nineteenth-Century Jewish Thought: Samson Raphael Hirsch and Heinrich Graetz.” MA thesis. University of Chicago, 1946.
Elias, Joseph. The Nineteen Letters: The World of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. Feldheim Publishers, 1995.
Elias, Joseph. The Haggadah:  Expanded Edition. Artscroll, 2000.
Elias, Joseph. Tragedy and Rebirth: Transmitting the History and Messages of Churban Europa to a New Generation, coauthored with Yaakov Astor. Artscroll, 2012.
Elias, Joseph, and Harold Leiman. Science and Judaism. Jewish Pocket Books, 1947.
“Torah Umesorah Holocaust Interviews – Rabbi Joseph Elias,” Torah Umesorah. Accessed November 10, 2024. https://vimeo.com/844659627.