Benji Levy Covenant and the Jewish Conversion Question
Extending the Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik
Benji Levy
Jerusalem, Israel
Jewish Thought and Philosophy
ISBN 978-3-030-80144-1 ISBN 978-3-030-80145-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80145-8
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Whoever teaches their child Torah, the verse ascribes credit as though they received it themself from Mount Sinai, as it is stated: “And make it known to your children and your children’s children,” and following it: “The day when you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb.”
(BT Kiddushin 30a)
This book is dedicated to four unique individuals, without whom I would not exist. They gave me the foundations for what they never had through higher Jewish and academic education, and connected me with our tradition, enabling me to share it with others: My maternal grandparents, Clarice and Joe Schwartz My paternal grandparents, Julius and Rose Levy
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
On Israel’s Independence Day in 1956, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik delivered a landmark public address entitled: Kol Dodi Dofek (The Voice of My Beloved Knocks). He described how the relationship between the Jewish people and God formed through two covenants—the Covenant of Fate, established through the Israelite slavery in Egypt, and the Covenant of Destiny, established during the revelation at Mount Sinai. According to Soloveitchik’s conceptual understanding of halakhah (Jewish law), every convert to Judaism must commit themselves to these two covenants of national fate and religious destiny. Through a rigorous study of numerous rabbinic texts, including Soloveitchik’s own teachings, this book explores the boundaries and interplay between these two covenants through apostasy and the different elements of conversion law. This theological understanding will shed light on and provide a relevant framing device for the contemporary debates concerning conversion, particularly for various immigrant groups in the State of Israel.
According to Orthodox halakhah, a Jew is either someone born to a Jewish mother or someone who has converted according to halakhic standards.1 The traditional conversion process requires males to undergo the ritual of circumcision and all to undergo ritual immersion in addition to
1 See Arthur J. Wolak, ‘Ezra’s Radical Solution to Judean Assimilation,’ Jewish Bible Quarterly, 40:2 (April 2012): pp. 93–105 and Shaye J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
B. Levy, Covenant and the Jewish Conversion Question, Jewish Thought and Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80145-8_1
1
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committing to the full panoply of traditional observance through ‘accepting the yoke of the commandments’ (kabbalat ol mitsvot). For many rabbinic authorities, this last requirement is not an afterthought but rather the telos of conversion. In this sense, to be a Jew, at the most basic traditional level, is to be committed to obeying the commandments and so, to become a Jew, is frst and foremost a matter of commitment to observance. However, for the majority of contemporary Jews, in fact, strict halakhic observance is hardly the exclusive defnition of what it means to be a Jew. This has led to a considerable defnitional gap between halakhic Jewish identity and subjective Jewish identifcation. While this applies to all Jewish communities throughout the world, the gap has become all the more evident and pressing in the State of Israel, following the arrival of approximately 1,000,000 immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) of whom approximately 300,000 are not halakhically Jewish. Moreover, as Marc D. Stern has observed:
the combination of a changing conception of Jewishness, coupled with a higher intermarriage rate, requires consideration of whether the Orthodox status quo, which allows for only a trickle of conversions, is an appropriate response. If nothing else, the active presence of so many non-Jews within the Jewish institutional community calls – possibly but far from certainly –for a response more nuanced than simply a rote recitation of the ideal halakhah.2
The question that this book probes is whether the potential exists within the sphere of halakhic possibility for a more nuanced and dynamic response to the current situation than the status quo. Is there a response that does not constrain one to a strict either/or of commitment to complete observance or nothing or as Stern puts the question: Can one ‘legitimize other forms of Jewishness without undermining the primacy of the religious aspect, and without unacceptably diluting its content’?3 This question is important for the Jewish present and future and, as will be demonstrated, is subject to impassioned and nuanced debate from all
Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (California: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 198–238.
2 Marc D. Stern, ‘The Jewish People – A Yawning Defnitional Gap’ in Conversion, Intermarriage and Jewish Identity ed. Robert S. Hirt (Adam Mintz & Marc D. Stern, New Jersey: Yeshiva University Press, 2015), p. 430.
3 Marc D. Stern, ibid., p. 444.
sides. This book answers the question in the affrmative: It argues that it is, in fact, possible to broaden the bounds of legitimate Jewish identity while remaining faithful to the Jewish religious tradition; indeed, this analysis attempts to demonstrate that the tradition itself supports a more dynamic, inclusive, and historically and sociologically attuned approach. There are many reasons for arguing for a halakhic solution to the problem of the signifcant number of Israeli citizens who see themselves as Jews and who wish to be classifed legally as Jews, but who do not embrace a lifestyle fully committed to traditional halakhic observance. The current situation generates severe halakhic, ethical, and social diffculties exacerbating the urgency of a solution. It is certain that denying Jewish identity to this great number of Israeli citizens is generating—and will continue to generate—the problem of intermarriage in Israel. In order for Jewish identity to have integrity to many within Israeli society, this grave halakhic problem cries out for a halakhic solution. Any approach to the status quo must weigh the enormous diffculties engendered by pervasive intermarriage and unprecedented conditions in Israel against the methodological and ideological objections of adopting a more open defnition of Jewish identity. The halakhic problems entailed by preserving the status quo may outweigh the diffculty of adopting a more broad-based defnition of Jewish identity. Moreover, denying Jewish identity to citizens who see themselves as Jewish, who have endured persecution and oppression because they were identifed as Jews in their former countries, and who risk their lives today to defend the Jewish State causes severe discrimination in Israel in areas such as marriage and burial rights. This denial of rights and equality raises deep ethical and social diffculties that contradict the foundations of justice and democracy—the very values that Israel has pledged to uphold. Rather than requiring an abdication of halakhah, which to some is the problem, precisely because this is diffcult, a sincere exploration of a halakhic solution is vital. Finally, the denial of Jewish identity to this population causes profound suffering on a personal level, and on a social level weakens allegiance to Israeli society as a whole. Such weakening of personal allegiance to the polity in which a citizen lives inevitably undermines the strength of the democratic society, because every democracy relies on the commitment of individual citizens to the laws and purposes of the body politic. This adds to the motivation toward not standing idly by and actively seeking resolution.
Identifying with the importance of the strength, stability, and resilience of Israeli society for the Jewish people can lead to an unabashedly Zionist
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position, which many scholars do take. However, the above considerations for exploring halakhic solutions to the issues are rightly seen as religious, legal, ethical, and social arguments, rather than political ones.
In pursuing this argument, I frame it within the thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, a prominent fgure widely regarded as a prime defender of the formalist conception of halakhah demanding an all-ornothing Orthodox stance regarding conversion. Through a more detailed analysis of his writings on this issue than has taken place to date (as well as the writings of his students whose lecture notes add considerably to our understanding of his position), my aim is to show that Soloveitchik’s thought can be a key source and driving force for a more dynamic approach to the current challenges of halakhic conversions. In Part I of the book, I undertake an in-depth examination and analysis of Soloveitchik’s thought on Jewish identity, peoplehood, and conversion against the background of its biblical and classical rabbinic source materials. With the framework of Soloveitchik’s thought, I then take a step back in Part II to widen the scope of inquiry to the broader history of Orthodox rabbinic approaches to conversion in modernity. Through this I demonstrate the usefulness of Soloveitchik’s conceptual framework in understanding the present debate around conversion and suggest possibilities for constructive directions forward.
This book argues that the received wisdom and predominant understandings of Soloveitchik’s views on conversion have been determined by a handful of admittedly clear and unyielding halakhic positions and public policies. On that view, Soloveitchik maintains without qualifcation that Jewish status and hence conversion is a binary affair, that is, a zero-sum game brooking no partial fuidity, or temporary liminality. I argue that the standard view artifcially restricts the full breadth of conceptual potential residing within Soloveitchik’s thinking for addressing the contemporary crises of Jewish status. I offer three main lines of argument. First, there are powerful instances of Soloveitchik’s thinking, especially in his reading and analysis of some core rabbinic texts pertaining to conversion, which are themselves in tension with formulations of his positions. Examining this tension and seeking its resolution, however dialectically, I argue, points clearly toward a more fuid and dynamic understanding of Jewish status. Second, Soloveitchik’s voluminous record of teachings represents a treasure-trove (hitherto unexamined in this way in the conversion debate
literature) of concepts and conceptual trajectories vital to a full understanding of Soloveitchik’s thinking on conversion and Jewish status. Third, an understanding of Soloveitchik’s theology limited to his bottom-line positions is belied by the substance of his thinking that offers a broad purchase to the given facts of our contemporary historical reality.
By incorporating all these sources and ideas not previously published within this context, and by analyzing and clarifying the tensions and instabilities in the framework of Soloveitchik’s thought, I show that (1) Soloveitchik’s approach holds more potential for a dynamic and progressive grappling with contemporary realities than previously acknowledged and that (2) Soloveitchik articulates a powerful conceptual structure for framing, understanding, and advancing contemporary deliberations around conversion. Animating his strictly legal positions on these issues is an intellectually, spiritually, and existentially charged understanding of the covenant—or, as he sees it, multiple covenants—between God and the people of Israel. This understanding is derived from his careful readings of the classical biblical and rabbinic sources and his evolving engagement with the realities of history. Soloveitchik’s fnal legal rulings cannot be properly comprehended apart from this broader spiritual-existential background as will be demonstrated. Seen in this fuller context, I argue that even his apparently more constricting rulings on conversion can, in fact, contribute toward the construction of a more fuid and dynamic position. One possibility is that of recognizing partial covenantal commitment as suffcient to attain at least a partial, and for that reason not wholly real, halakhic Jewish identity. In other words, I postulate that Jewish identity and its adoption need not be all or nothing, or at least not all at once— even according to Soloveitchik.
Given the centrality of Soloveitchik’s thought to forming the foundation of this project, I proceed here with a brief biographical overview. I then provide a chapter synopsis to allow for a bird’s-eye view of the skeleton of the analysis and to help guide the reader. Finally, I succinctly review a few of the key literary works published in recent years to establish their areas of focus and what was overlooked, explaining how this book flls some of those gaps in addition to adding new insight to the ongoing conversation regarding conversion and Jewish identity.
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Biographical overview of Soloveitchik
Joseph Ber Soloveitchik’s life, philosophy, and life philosophy were very much intertwined. While he was the ultimate ‘Halakhic Man’4 and many admired his unique capacity to take objective points of view on complex issues, as a ‘Lonely Man of Faith’5 he valued his subjective vantage point as legitimate for his thought and argued: ‘whatever I am going to say here has been derived not from philosophical dialectics, abstract speculation, or detached impersonal refections, but from actual situations and experiences with which I have been confronted.’6 Given this book is based on Soloveitchik’s thought and his thought, by his own admission, derives from his experiences, it is important to understand who this leading twentieth-century thinker was and some of his key experiences.7
Born in Pruzhany in 1903 to a prominent rabbinic family, his genius was recognized early. As a young student, his educational regimen focused almost exclusively on traditional Talmud study, primarily in the form of private lessons from his father with some supplementation from private tutors. He inherited the halakhic and Talmudic mastery of one of the greatest Lithuanian dynasties stemming from his great-grandfather Joseph Baer Soloveitchik, the joint head of the Volozhyn Yeshiva, and his grandfather Chaim Soloveitchik, who founded a new form of textual analysis in Judaism. His father, Moshe Soloveitchik, was the head of the Talmud faculty at Yeshiva University and taught him ‘how to comprehend, how to analyze, how to conceptualise and how to classify….’8 This unique approach, which is characteristic of the ‘Brisker’ methodology, made an indelible impact on how he categorized tension within the world, very much leading to his covenantal theology that will be explored throughout
4 ‘Halakhic Man’ is the title of one of Soloveitchik’s most famous works.
5 ‘Lonely Man of Faith’ is another of Soloveitchik’s most famous works.
6 Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith (Jerusalem: Maggid Books, 2012), p. 1.
7 Nonetheless, my argument is not primarily about Soloveitchik’s philosophy, nor a philosophical argument per se, but rather an exploration of a unique area of his thought, the list of secondary sources in relation to his philosophy is limited to the appropriate level. For an extensive list of the works of Soloveitchik and his students, see Eli Turkel, ‘Partial Bibliography of works by and about Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik Zt”l,’ updated on January 12, 2020, and accessed at http://www.math.tau.ac.il/~turkel/engsol.html
8 Jonathan Sacks, Tradition in an Untraditional Age: Essays on Modern Jewish Thought (New York, Vallentine Mitchell, 1990), p. 37; ‘A Tribute to the Rebbitzen of Talne,’ Tradition 17:2 (Spring 1978).
this analysis. While he received this critical thinking skills from his paternal side, his mother very much added color and understanding, imbuing his formal instruction with emotion as a lived experience:
She taught me that there is a favor, a scent and warmth to the mitzvot … Without her teachings, which quite often were transmitted to me in silence, I would have grown up a soulless being, dry and insensitive.9
In this sense he valued both the formal and informal, cerebral and experiential elements of Jewish life and learning, and it is the combination of both that layers his depth of thought that is implicit in this book.
In his late teenage years, he began his education in general academic subjects, graduating at the age of nineteen from a Gymnasium in Dubno.10 After three semesters in the Free Polish University in Warsaw, he matriculated into the University of Berlin where he studied a variety of subjects, eventually earning his doctorate with a dissertation on the philosophy of Hermann Cohen. In his philosophical writings, he often integrated what others separated as Jewish and secular.
Soloveitchik immigrated to the United States in 1932, assuming the position of Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox Jewish community of Boston, Massachusetts. In 1941 he began his career teaching Talmud at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University in New York and Jewish philosophy in the university’s graduate school of Jewish studies. Through his position as the Talmud teacher, he exercised a remarkable degree of infuence over Orthodox Jewish life in America, famously ordaining over 2000 rabbis during his tenure. In addition to his teaching at the university, he lectured regularly to lay audiences in New York and Boston and served as the chairman of the Halacha Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America for over thirty years, solidifying his reputation among the era’s leading rabbinic lights and achieving a degree of unparalleled authority in modern Orthodox circles. He died in April 1993 near his home in Brookline Massachusetts after prolonged illness.
Soloveitchik was a prodigious writer and lecturer and left behind a large cache of manuscripts. He published relatively little in his lifetime: a
9 ‘A Tribute to the Rebbitzen of Talne,’ op cit, p. 77.
10 Manfred R. Lehman, ‘Re-writing the Biography of the Rav,’ Manfred and Anne Lehmann Foundation, accessed March 19, 2018, https://www.manfredlehmann.com/ news/news_detail.cgi/110/0
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handful of essays and eulogies in rabbinic periodicals, fve monographs on philosophical and existential aspects of Jewish thought, and two volumes of his Talmudic lectures delivered in honor of his father. Most important for the purpose of this analysis is his essay Kol Dodi Dofek (Listen—My Beloved Knocks), which, inter alia, dealt with the relationship between Jewish religion, nationhood, and the modern State of Israel among other important topics. This was originally delivered as a lecture at an Israeli Independence Day celebration in 1956 and was frst published in 1961.11 Also important are a number of authorized adaptations of his teaching which were printed during his lifetime, including Five Addresses, consisting of lectures delivered in Yiddish at the annual convention of the religious-Zionist Mizrachi movement between 1962 and 1967.12
Soloveitchik’s frm support for religious Zionism was not a foregone conclusion from his early life and he ‘… was not born into a Zionist household’ to say the least.13 Indeed many of his family members, associates, and mentors were frmly opposed to political Zionism in any form—though it bears mentioning that his father did teach in a Zionist Mizrachi school in Warsaw. Soloveitchik himself was the chairman of the national executive committee of Agudas Yisrael, which was adamantly anti-Zionist. Living during the Holocaust and witnessing the helplessness of both its victims and those like him who witnessed the horrors from afar but could do little to help, and then just three years later witnessing the ‘almost supernatural occurrence’14 of the declaration of the State of Israel, allowed Soloveitchik to appreciate the real-life urgency and religious meaning of the Zionist enterprise, ‘What would the yeshivot [rabbinic academies] and Torah scholars rescued from the Holocaust… have done,’ he asks rhetorically, ‘if the “Joseph” of 5662 [1902] (the year that the Mizrachi movement was founded) had not trod a path for them in the land of Israel and had not made possible the transplanting of the Tree of Life of Lithuania and other lands in the Holy Land?’15
11 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek: Listen – My Beloved Knocks, transl. David Z. Gordon (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2006).
12 Idem, Hamesh Derashot )Jerusalem: Yedi’ot 2012) [Heb.]; In English, Five Addresses (The Rav Speaks), ed. David Telsner (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 5743).
13 Idem, The Rav Speaks: Five Addresses on Israel, History, and the Jewish People (Brooklyn: The Judaica Press Inc., 2002), p. 35.
14 Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek, p. 31.
15 Soloveitchik, The Rav Speaks, p. 32.
Soloveitchik begins his earliest work, The Halakhic Mind with the sentence, ‘it would be diffcult to distinguish any epoch in the history of philosophy more amenable to the mediating homo religiosus than that of today.’16 This book puts his bold contention to the test.
Clear-eyed recognition of the realities of history had convinced him that the Jewish people, including and perhaps especially its rabbinic leadership, could not focus on its faith and spiritual mission to the exclusion of proactive engagement with the broader political world in securing the Jewish people’s continued survival and the material conditions for its fourishing. Importantly, it also could not restrict, even if only implicitly, its understanding of legitimate Jewish identity to the Torah observant:
If I now identify with Mizrachi, against my family tradition, it is only because, as previously clarifed, I feel that Divine Providence ruled like ‘Joseph’… that He employs secular Jews as instruments to bring to fruition His great plans regarding the land of Israel. I also believe that there would be no place for Torah in Israel today were it not for the Mizrachi.17
It was against the backdrop of these imperatives that Soloveitchik frst articulated his theory of Jewish peoplehood as grounded in two covenants with God: (1) the Covenant of Fate, which unites every Jew, regardless of their personal proclivities, in a single, collective historical experience, and (2) the Covenant of Destiny, through which the Jewish people and every individual Jew are called to pursue spiritual excellence in accordance with the Torah.18 The question, of course, is how these two strands of Jewish identity are to be intertwined—that is, whether the worldly or the spiritual strand ought to be accorded primacy, or whether the two can in some way be understood as co-original and co-equal. This is the question with which Soloveitchik wrestled most centrally in developing his approach to conversion, and as I hope to show in this analysis, it is precisely this question that should provide the basic direction for all those who hope to advance the conversations.
16 Soloveitchik, The Halachic Mind, p. 3.
17 Soloveitchik, The Rav Speaks, p. 36.
18 See Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek, pp. 51–68. These covenants will be explored in depth in Chap. 2
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framing the framing
Soloveitchik’s unique framing device, which is studied and extended throughout the book, has a framing of its own. Every scholar has internal leanings and external infuences and Soloveitchik is no exception. As mentioned earlier, he clearly adheres in as strict a way as he can toward Orthodox Judaism:
Before beginning the analysis, we must determine within which frame of reference, psychological and empirical or theological and Biblical, our dilemma should be described. I believe you will agree with me that we do not have much choice in the matter; for to the man of faith, self-knowledge has one connotation only – to understand one’s place and role within the scheme of events and. Things willed and approved by God…19
Whereas others may attempt to reconcile traditional Jewish texts with different wisdoms and secular studies, Soloveitchik holds the former as truth and therefore is not defensive about it in the face of the latter:20
Analysis in depth of the various components of halakhic norms yields a rich harvest of psychological, ethical, metaphysical, and religious insights. Especially striking is the complete avoidance of all apologetics and the unabashed willingness to face up to the complexities which are so frequently overlooked by philosophers in the quest of a master formula designed to unify all experience.21
Other schools of thought, traditions, and approaches can deepen traditional Jewish understandings and broaden considerations and therefore have validity, however, never at the expense of this tradition, ‘the Halakhah believes that there is only one world – not divisible into secular and hallowed sectors….’22 With a solid Jewish conceptual framework, he was able to choose freely, selectively, and creatively from Western thought. Reuven Ziegler explains that, ‘as a good student of twentieth-century philosophy,
19 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, (New York: Doubleday, 1992), p. 8.
20 See Rabbi Yitzhak Twersky, ‘The Rov’ in Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Man of Halacha, Man of Faith, ed. R. Menachem Genack (Hoboken: NJ, 1998), pp. 25–34.
21 Discussed regarding Soloveitchik by Walter Wurzburger in the Preface to On Repentance: In the Thought and Oral Discourses of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Ed. Pinhas Peli (Orot: Jerusalem, 1984), p. x.
22 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, p. 85.
Rav Soloveitchik realized that – philosophically speaking! – he was not beholden to any one school of thought.’23 Thus, there were two operating systems at play. The frst was not assumed—differing philosophies where he was free to transcend any particular one, affording him the opportunity to employ many.24 The second was the assumed corpus of rabbinic literature, which Soloveitchik explains and asks questions about rather than questioning its basis. He critiques others, including Maimonides, who attempt to formulate a teleology of this corpus, and thereby, in Soloveitchik’s mind, ‘turning Halakhah into merely a means to attain some philosophically-determined end.’25 He vehemently insisted that Jewish law needs to be appreciated and understood on its own terms, in its own way, and using its own style.26
Utilizing Soloveitchik’s thought as a springboard for framing Jewish identity, I also, by and large, stay true to his framing throughout the book. On sources of this nature, I assume a typological methodology. Specifc texts and their commentaries are categorized into ideal types.27 I assume faithfulness to these texts, and in exploring from this vantage point, I too take the rabbinic texts as assumed and often explicate them in a traditional way. There are additional benefts to this. While there is great creativity and depth in non-Orthodox and even non-Jewish literature on these topics, their approach would change the nature of the study, as they veer from a common rubric and the same assumption of an absolute legitimacy of precedent. In this sense, by restricting my analysis to traditional Orthodox sources and responsa, there is a shared sense of loyalty, respect, and deference to the same rubric of authority. This ensures an equal playing feld, providing appropriate room for comparing and contrasting, and a control
23 Reuven Ziegler, Majesty and Humility: The Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (Jerusalem: Urim Publications 2012), p. 179.
24 Ziegler, ibid., in footnote 11, quotes Soloveitchik who himself referred to this point when comparing Maimonides and Nahmanides, the former stuck within an Aristotelian frame of reference and the latter acting with greater freedom (like Soloveitchik himself).
25 Ziegler, Majesty and Humility: The Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, p. 151.
26 ‘Mah dodekh mi-dod’ in B’sod hayachid vehayachad [Heb.] Pinchas Peli, ed. (Orot, Jerusalem), p. 224.
27 Avi Sagi in The Open Canon: On the Meaning of Halakhic Discourse (Continuum Books: New York, 2007), p. 8, utilizes this methodology when approaching similar texts and cites Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, trans. Edward Shils and Henry A. Finch (The Free Press: New York, 1947), for an exploration of this. He goes on to discuss how the typological method he adopts resembles a phenomenological one as I too do later in this paragraph. 1 INTRODUCTION
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for the framework from which decisions develop. The question may arise that if the thinkers I study come from the same world of beliefs and practices, why do their rulings differ so much. The answer to this question, as will be explored, reveals both the assumptions and presumptions (or ‘the appearing’ and ‘that which appears,’ respectively, in Husserlian terms), that is, ‘the transcendent eidos manifesting itself indirectly in the words of the text.’28 While there are many variables that give way to presumptions, such as biographical background as explored regarding Soloveitchik above, I focus primarily on understandings of primary texts, covenantal theology, and public policy approaches. In this sense, methodologically, I add a phenomenological layer to the assumptions, that is, canonical texts and their later interpretations or responsa derived on the basis of them.
Most of what has been published in Soloveitchik’s name was delivered orally and only later published in written form. Moreover, he did not always necessarily intend to articulate a coherent system; rather, ‘he wrote about individual topics that interested him, and would often return to and rethink these issues… Soloveitchik was neither systematic in his approach nor comprehensive in his scope.’29 He changed approaches in some places through his life, and as such there are changes of emphasis or even contradictions in some of his writings.30 Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein, his sonin-law, explained three primary factors to some of his changes in emphasis, as summarized by Ziegler:
First, the Rav always rethought matters. Second, in many areas his thought moved over the years in a more humanizing direction, from the
28 Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar, Transforming Identity: The Ritual Transition from Gentile to Jew – Structure and Meaning (Continuum Books: New York, 2007), p. 1. For an exploration of the complex connection between what I have termed presumptions and assumptions from a phenomenological perspective, Sagi and Zohar cite Jean-Luc Marion, Being. Given, Phenomenology of Givenness (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), pp. 21–23, 39; Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp., 51–55.
29 Ziegler, Majesty and Humility: The Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, p. 182.
30 Regarding a change of emphasis, see, for example, his approach to prayer as explored by Ziegler, Majesty and Humility: The Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik p. 227 which is explained specifcally in the following quote, and for an example of a contradiction, see Shiurim le-Zekher Abba Mari Z”l, [Heb.] (Makhon Yerushalayim: Jerusalem, 5745) vol. 2, p. 191 (translated into Out of the Whirlwind p. 72), he argues that honoring Shabbat does not require an internalized fulfllment, whereas in ibid., 5743 vol. 1 pp. 64–68 he argues that there is a requirement for an internalized fulfllment of honoring Shabbat.
epistemological to the existential, engaged with and sensitive to human needs, agonies and homes. Third, in Wordsworth’s phrase, “a deep distress hath humanized my soul” (Elegiac Stanzas I.36) – his wife’s illness left him to soften and ameliorate his position on the availability of prayer to man.31
More than why these changes existed—that they existed leaves room for a greater fuidity in his approach than is generally assumed and there are examples of this in many areas of his thought, including on conversion. As Ziegler states, ‘we should expect no less from a dynamic, creative and dialectical thinker who is sensitive to the changing human condition.’32 It is this creativity and fuidity, specifcally beneath the surface of Jewish identity, that I test, explore, and extend in this book.
One of the key features that help Soloveitchik with his approach, where he never is entirely comfortable in one modality to the exclusion of others, is his consistent framing of dialectics and the dialectics of his framing. This is true to the Brisker methodology derived from his biographical history as mentioned above. Philosophically, there are a number of different forms of dialectics, such as a lack of resolvability between different sides, which is often termed ‘Kierkegaardian,’ Hegelianism which represents a contradiction of ideas as the defning feature in their relationship and the Marxist evolution of this which refects an evolution of ideas regarding materialism. There are many variants, and in this case, style matches substance, whereby the dialectical approach runs so deep throughout Soloveitchik’s thought that his approach represents a dialectic of dialectics. Contrary to many thinkers who tend to one side of any discussion or to Maimonides, who famously discussed a balanced path between extremities,33 Soloveitchik created an interesting twist, curving Maimonides’ middle road.34 This path bends between positions, sometimes representing a thesis, other times an antithesis, and other times still a synthesis, incorporating many and not sticking to any position exclusively. His philosophical works bring this to life, containing ‘dialectical pairs of ideas: cognitive man vs. religious
31 Ziegler, Majesty and Humility: The Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, p. 228, quoting Lichtenstein’s presentation entitled ‘The Limits of Prayer,’ which was an address at Yeshiva University’s Gruss Institute in Jerusalem on May 26, 2006.
32 Ibid., p. 410. Here Ziegler revisits the continuity of Soloveitchik’s thought, citing other theories for his changes.
33 Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Deot, 1:4–7.
34 This ‘interesting twist’ is explored by Ziegler, Majesty and Humility: The Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, pp. 53–54.
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man, Adam I vs. Adam II, majesty vs. humility, the natural religious consciousness vs. the revelatory religious consciousness…’35 and of course, for the purpose of this analysis, the Covenant of Fate and the Covenant of Destiny.
His dialectical approach framing actions and interactions penetrate his actual view of humans as characteristically dialectical, and the following comment seems both general and autobiographical:
Man is a dialectical being; an inner schism runs through his personality at every level… Man is a great and creative being because he is torn by confict and is always in a state of ontological tenseness and perplexity. The fact that the creative gesture is associated with agony is a result of this contradiction, which pervades the whole personality of man.36
Soloveitchik makes his stance very clear here, but rather than deriving these principles from rabbinic sources or a divine perspective, he characteristically begins from a very human angle and later brings support. Thus, his dialectical approach stems from a very human place too, a natural state for people who can exploit this toward creativity as, indeed, Soloveitchik himself does. One of the greatest places where this plays out is through his conceptual covenants of fate and destiny, and the fuidity lies more between fate and destiny than within either alone.
When analyzing Soloveitchik’s thought, writings, and statements, it is important to keep in mind the overall orientation and structure of his thinking. He did not believe in systematic philosophy nor any systemization of truth, and he was deeply suspicious of any global systematic approach to the problems of human experience. In this sense his orientation was closer to existentialist thinking than to any purely coherent
35 Ziegler, Majesty and Humility: The Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, pp. 51–62. He cites this interpretation as proposed by Soloveitchik in a 1954 lecture, recorded by Walter Wurzburger in his article ‘Alienation and Exile’ Tradition 6:2 (Spring-Summer 1964), pp. 42–52, reprinted in A Treasury of Tradition, eds. N. Lamm and W. Wurzburger (New York, 1967), pp. 93–103, and his Covenantal Imperatives (Jerusalem, 2008), pp. 229–238. This idea can be found as well in Wurzburger’s book, Ethics of Responsibility (Philadelphia, 1994) pp. 100–101.
36 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, ‘Majesty and Humility’ Tradition 17:2 (Spring 1978), p. 25. Soloveitchik returns to this theme multiple times in his writings, for example, in The Lonely Man of Faith p. 10, he writes, ‘[T]he answer [to the discrepancies] lies not in an alleged dual tradition but in dual man, not in an imaginary contradiction between two versions but in a real contradiction in the nature of man.’
rational attempt to understand the world and human life. Moreover, since Soloveitchik was an extraordinary orator with a poetic bent, many of his statements contain high rhetoric not always given to close literal, legal, or philosophical analysis. As his personality was one of confict, so was his thinking. His output contains variegated strands that frequently move in different directions and contains contradictions both within and between his works are common. Even his halakhic positions changed over time and did not exhibit pure consistency. These contradictions and the inconsistent implications between his philosophical pronouncements and his halakhic positions make explicating the thrust of his work a diffcult—and even a risky—enterprise. Given the nature of his personality and his work, it remains possible to infer opposing conclusions from what he wrote. Nevertheless, I have focused here on central ideas—the Covenant of Destiny and the Covenant of Fate—in his writings about Jewish identity and Jewish history.
Since Soloveitchik himself published relatively little and most of his Talmudic insights were communicated orally, I have—where appropriate—cited works penned by his students. These works range in their scope and style, with some of the more notable of these including B. David Schreiber’s Noraos HaRav series wherein the author has made direct transcriptions from Soloveitchik’s lectures;37 Michel Zalman Shurkin’s Sefer Hararei Kedem (2009), which is not a transcription of Soloveitchik’s lectures, but a clear summary while consciously employing a narrow rabbinic lexicon to fulfll Soloveitchik’s request that his thought be read and appreciated by a broader range of Yeshiva students38 and Tzvi Yosef Reichman’s Reshimot Shiurim: Yevamot (2011) which, as the author explains in his introduction, was reviewed by a number of his fellow students who also attended Soloveitchik’s lectures on Tractate Yevamot.
Meaningful differences can occasionally be found when comparing the various records of Soloveitchik’s novella as recorded by his students which clearly raises methodological concerns as demonstrated by Shlomo Pick in his essay ‘Concerning R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Recently Published Novellae and Commentaries to the Talmud and Jewish Law.’ Moreover,
37 On this point, see Shlomo Pick, ‘Concerning R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Recently Published Novellae and Commentaries to the Talmud and Jewish Law’ (Hebrew), Alei Sefer: Studies in Bibliography and in the History of the Printed and the Digital Hebrew Book, No. 26/27 (Sivan 5777) p. 361.
38 Ibid., p. 363.
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from discussions with and through learning under the tutelage of some of his authoritative students, it is clear that his classroom was often a laboratory where creativity could sometimes reign in a manner that would not necessarily translate into practical halakhic decision-making. As with Talmudic logic, entertaining thoughts, even in this space, allows them a legitimate place within the realm of possibility. However, by and large, that which is quoted in this book is included because more than one such work records an identical insight and his students attest to their veracity. In addition, where such an insight aligns with the ideas written by Soloveitchik himself, it seems clear that such records and literature can be considered to be reliable.
Soloveitchik is a particular subject for speculation due to his prominence and to the fact that his public record was rhetorical and academic, rather than that of a full-time rabbinic decisor. Compounding the problems of anyone analyzing his thought is the fact that much attributed to him comes from informal statements that he made to different people, as well as the growing mythology that purports to describe who he ‘really’ was and what was primary in his life, thought, philosophical concepts, and halakhic stances. Throughout my analysis I have labored to confne myself by and large to his formal writing, excluding as much as possible the unsubstantiated ‘oral tradition’ surrounding him that is not given to academic verifcation. I also note that there are few records to draw upon of any involvement by Soloveitchik in conversions, while he functioned as the leading Orthodox communal rabbi in metropolitan Boston and as the spiritual head of the Jewish day school in Brookline Massachusetts, The Maimonides School, which he founded.39
Like his own vacillations cited above, a true appraisal of his works requires oscillation between methodologies (such as typological and phenomenological as mentioned), allowing not one strict discipline but room for interdisciplinarity, as well as confning the study to rabbinic sources that subscribe to what might be termed as an Orthodox approach. It is in this spirit that I have framed and written this book, each chapter building upon the next to develop the thesis.
39 See Seth Farber, An American Orthodox Dreamer: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Boston’s Maimonides School (Brandeis University Press: Hanover and London, 2004). I spoke with the author of this work who is an expert in Jewish conversion and after combing through the archives and primary sources confrmed Soloveitchik’s lack of involvement in practical conversions.
Book overview
Chapter 2 begins with a historical overview of covenantal thinking in the Jewish tradition and its broader Ancient Near Eastern context. With that in place it turns to a presentation of Soloveitchik’s innovative ideas on the matter alluded to above. In particular, I explore Soloveitchik’s claim that the covenant between God and the people of Israel is fundamentally dual: it is constituted by what he calls the ‘Covenant of Fate,’ which refers to shared passive experiences as a matter of given fact, by every Jew simply by virtue of their Jewishness, as well as the ‘Covenant of Destiny,’ the proactive, creative commitment to the fulfllment of the spiritual mission mandated by God through the revealed Torah. Soloveitchik argues that the Covenant of Fate is understood to have been sealed concurrent with the Exodus, as God confrmed His commitment to participation in the people’s worldly fate, and the Covenant of Destiny is identifed with the covenant forged at Sinai wherein God gave, and the people accepted, the Torah.
How these two covenants should relate to one another—and what to do when they seem to come apart—is the most fundamental question I confront in this book. Thus, Chap. 2 begins by examining that confrontation and looking at the correlations between Soloveitchik’s developing positions on questions of Jewish identity with his assumption of increasingly greater responsibility for the historical conditions of Jewish life.
In Chap. 3, I test the boundaries and parameters of Jewish identity by examining behavioral deviancy and apostasy. The dominant strand in the halakhic tradition has been that a Jew remains a Jew despite sin, and I show through a historical survey of the sources that cessation of Jewish identity is a contested concept to which the tradition provides a wide and powerfully variegated set of responses. The sheer breadth and refned nuance of these responses themselves testify to the gravity attached to the question, as do both the urgency and inherent diffculty of providing a satisfactory answer to these issues. Against this background, I analyze Soloveitchik’s remarkable claim that, as with the covenant, ‘holiness’ (kedushah), constituting Jewish identity, is fundamentally dual. It is true, he argues, that there is a kind of baseline holiness that each and every Jew possesses simply by virtue of birth, which admits one to the Jewish collective. In this sense, a Jew is a Jew, and no Jew is any more or less a Jew than any other. However, Soloveitchik argues that there is a further form of holiness, no less immediately grounded in and refecting Jewish identity,
B. LEVY
the form and degree of which is a function of the consciousness and conduct of the individual. In this sense, one who not only belongs to the Jewish collective but actively embraces that status in seeking to advance the Jewish destiny—which for Soloveitchik is inextricable from realizing the commandments in their fullness—possesses more holiness. In this sense, one is arguably ‘more Jewish.’ On the other hand, one who, despite belonging by birth to the Jewish collective, elects to forsake that belonging and the destiny which grounds it possesses less holiness and is arguably ‘less Jewish,’ despite remaining fundamentally a Jew. What a Jew does is not separate from who a Jew is. This chapter tries to demonstrate that what emerges for Soloveitchik is that Jewish identity, in fact, does not operate under a strictly two-valued binary logic, that is, possessing Jewish identity is not simply a matter of affrmation or denial, all or nothing. In other words, it is within the realm of possibility to be a Jew in some respects but not in others.
Chapter 4 further illustrates the complexity and fundamental heterogeneity in Soloveitchik’s conception of Jewish identity, by turning to the primary rituals comprising the halakhic conversion process: circumcision and immersion in a ritual bath. Soloveitchik sees the performance of these rituals as representing commitment to the Covenant of Fate and the Covenant of Destiny, respectively. Circumcision, a passively received mark on the fesh, represents one’s participation in the shared worldly fate of the Jewish people in history, whereas the ethereal symbolism of immersion in water—traditionally coupled with the convert’s verbal affrmation of commitment to observing the commandments—signifes the convert’s freely embraced commitment to the spiritual mission and destiny of Israel. Both aspects, Soloveitchik stresses, are strictly necessary, because both aspects of Jewish identity—both covenants—must fnd direct expression in the conversion procedure. Yet, how can a woman give expression to her embrace of the Covenant of Fate, if female converts do not undergo circumcision? Addressing this through a series of subtle conceptual efforts, Soloveitchik shows that even as full commitments to both the Covenant of Fate and the Covenant of Destiny are required for legitimate conversion, the manner in which that combination is achieved may well be a complex process through time rather than an all-or-nothing affair at one particular moment.
This argument assumes another layer of depth in Chap. 5, where I examine the requirement of ‘accepting the yoke of the commandments’ (kabbalat ol mitsvot), which Soloveitchik and others take to be the conversion procedure’s most fundamental element. What requires clarifcation,
however, is precisely what juridical form this element must take, and once again one fnds among rabbinical authorities a wide range of subtly differentiated positions on the precise parameters for this requirement: whether the acceptance must be performed verbally, whether it must be performed before a duly constituted court, precisely what commitments it must include or not exclude, which understandings of the commandments and one’s relation to them are valid and which invalid, and so on. Against this background, Soloveitchik’s hallmark contribution is showing that the acceptance of the commandments, precisely on account of its status as conversion’s most fundamental element, is in fact not a ritual performance unto itself—not merely one additional item that one could verify and cross off a checklist—but, rather, it is a spiritual disposition that should animate the performance of the other discreet rituals. For Soloveitchik the acceptance of the commandments is fundamentally open-ended and prospective in reference, involving not only a present commitment to observe the commandments but also the commitment to continually study the commandments in ever-greater breadth and depth. In step with that study is a corresponding commitment to a mode of observance developing evergreater breadth and depth. Thus, I will argue that Soloveitchik’s thinking transforms what might have seemed a tightly constricting, static requirement—acceptance of the commandments that many have held is all-ornothing and necessarily all at once—into what is, at least in principle, a dynamic, trajectory through time.
In Chap. 6 I turn from questions regarding the ritual performances involved in the conversion process to the question of the motivations that are deemed proper and improper, valid and invalid, on the part of the convert. May a court accept a convert who is suspected to be converting for the sake of ulterior motives? On what grounds should such suspicions be entertained, and by what criteria should they be corroborated or dismissed? If the court does perform the conversion despite suspicions as to the presence of ulterior motives, is the conversion valid ex post facto? Because of the inherent opacity of the human heart and because the constellation of advantages, disadvantages, and meanings attached to Jewish identity have changed so substantially and rapidly in the modern period, these questions have become especially diffcult to approach with precision, whereby any defnitive, once-and-for-all answer will be deeply problematic. Appealing to texts from Maimonides, Soloveitchik argues for a two-stage distinction in the process, corresponding to two distinct forms of convert at each stage: there is, frst, the ‘regular,’ or ‘mere convert’ (‘ger
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b-alma’), and second, the ‘righteous convert’ (‘ger tsedek’). Appealing to the distinction noted earlier between the collective and individual forms of Jewish identity-related holiness, Soloveitchik argues that those who convert without proper motives do attain the generic holiness of baseline membership in the Jewish collective, but fall short of attaining the personal holiness of the Jew qua individual, that is, they are mere converts, not righteous converts. This model invites the possibility of any convert’s continued development toward an unalloyed embrace of Jewish identity for its own sake and thus for attaining the full-fedged status of a righteous convert in the course of time. Jewish identity, once again, need not be all or nothing, nor need it be all at once.
Utilizing Part I as a springboard, I turn in Part II from an analysis and elaboration of Soloveitchik’s covenantal thought to an examination of Orthodox rabbinic discourse on these questions in the modern period. I argue that Soloveitchik’s covenantal thought offers two key contributions to this enterprise. First, Soloveitchik’s theorization of the dual covenant structure at the heart of Jewish identity and the dialectical interactions between the potentially conficting imperatives of the two covenants provides a signifcant lens through which to understand the complex and politically fraught debates over more contemporary questions of conversion. Second, given the background of contemporary discourse on these questions, I argue that Soloveitchik’s covenantal thought can help us not only understand but creatively point toward resolution of these debates.
In Chap. 7 I look at a range of rabbinic responses to questions regarding conversion that attempt to grapple with the dramatic changes in Jewish life and identity post-emancipation, primarily in Europe. As Jews gained civil rights as individuals, the imposed corporate character of Jewish life began to dissipate, and the infuence of modern secularism and liberalism increasingly permeated the community. The defnition of what it means to be and live as a Jew could no longer be taken for granted and became the source of unending contention between communities, their leaders, and common Jews. Whereas in an earlier era Jewish religion, culture, and political life arguably formed an organic whole, each inseparable from the other, after the Emancipation it became increasingly possible and attractive to embrace one or two aspects at the expense of others. Confronting questions of conversion, which speak to the core of Jewish identity, therefore, required rabbinic decision-makers to attend not only to the technicalities of legal interpretation but also to the potential—and often quite unpredictable—ramifcations of their decisions for the ongoing restructurings of Jewish life. Narrow formalism was simply no longer a legitimate
possibility for most responsible rabbinic authorities. Looking at a survey of widely and subtly varied responsa from the period, I show that both the assorted currents in themselves and the overall range of the competing currents in rabbinic thinking on these questions are well accounted for as differing responses to Soloveitchik’s dual covenantal imperatives and the interactions between them. I argue that understanding these underlying issues in these complex, multi-front debates enables advancing in the direction of consensus and with the requisite dynamism for meeting new challenges.
Following the horrors of the Holocaust, perhaps no event in modernity bears greater import for the question of Jewish identity than the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Not only was the possibility for a purely nationalistic understanding of Jewish identity buttressed more than ever, but the State itself with its Law of Return that guaranteed citizenship to all Jews assumed the position of determining who is and is not a Jew. While the State turned to rabbinic authorities for guidance, it did not grant them full control of the issue. The impact of the State’s decisions with regard to Jewish identity and citizenship would be matched by an unprecedented regime of ambivalences, ambiguities, and contests on the part of the Jewish persons and communities to whom those determinations applied. For rabbinic authorities, whether in or outside the State of Israel, and whether in cooperation with or opposition to Israel’s government, a whole new range of factors had to be confronted. Finally, the sheer fact of a nation-sized society with a powerfully Jewish character, a country where Hebrew is the national language, the calendar is punctuated by Jewish festivals, the Bible and Jewish history are taught in schools, and citizens are asked to risk their lives in defense of the Jewish State, entailed new realities for Jewish life and hence, arguably, for Jewish identity. In Chap. 8, I look at several landmark cases and episodes in the State’s history and the variously charged ways in which rabbinic authorities grappled with them. Once again, I posit that Soloveitchik’s covenantal framework emerges as a critically helpful tool for making sense of, and potentially resolving, many of the various tensions and subtle complexities.
In the fnal chapter, I look to the present, where the recent infux of over 300,000 halakhically non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union has presented the State of Israel with arguably its greatest challenge to date regarding who is Jewish. For many of those immigrants, the question of how they attain Jewish status that can be recognized by halakhah notwithstanding their limited interest in halakhic observance remains unanswered. The central concerns, given that the vast majority of these
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The shaft, however, was never built. Screw propulsion was just coming into use; the design of the vessel was changed, and the whole scheme lapsed. A year or so later, M. Schneider, the French iron master of Creuzot, and his engineer, M. Bourdon, visited Bridgewater while Nasmyth happened to be away. Mr. Gaskell, after taking them about the plant, showed them the Scheme Book and pointed out the sketch of the hammer, telling them of the purpose for which it was intended. They were impressed with it and took careful notes and sketches of its details. Nasmyth was informed of their visit upon his return, but knew nothing of their having taken sketches of the hammer.
In 1842 Nasmyth visited France, and was cordially received at Creuzot and shown about the works. “On entering,” he writes, “one of the things that particularly struck me was the excellence of a large wrought-iron marine engine single crank, forged with a remarkable degree of exactness in its general form. I observed also that the large eye of the crank had been punched and drifted with extraordinary smoothness and truth. I inquired of M. Bourdon ‘how that crank had been forged?’ His immediate reply was, ‘It was forged by your steam hammer!’... He told me ... that he had taken careful notes and sketches, and that among the first things he did after his return to Creuzot was to put in hand the necessary work for the erection of a steam hammer.... M. Bourdon conducted me to the forge department of the works, that I might, as he said, ‘see my own child’; and there it was, in truth—a thumping child of my brain.”[100] Fortunately it was still time to save his patent rights. He moved rapidly and in June, 1842, two months after his visit to Creuzot, a patent was obtained.[101]. The steam hammer soon found its way into all the large shops of the world and greatly increased Nasmyth’s already comfortable fortune. Nasmyth transferred his United States patent to S. V. Merrick of Philadelphia, who introduced the hammer into the American iron works.
[100] Ibid., pp. 246-247. The self-acting valve motion for the steam hammer was invented by Mr. Wilson, when Nasmyth was absent on business. Wilson was manager at Patricroft and later became a partner. It was much used for a time but with the advent of balanced piston-valves the hand-operated gear supplanted it. Nasmyth’s invention of the hammer was
denied by M. Schneider in 1871. For fuller discussion of the history of this hammer see London Engineer, May 16, 1890, and a pamphlet by T. S. Rowlandson, entitled “History of the Steam Hammer ” Manchester, 1866 [101] No 9382, June 9, 1842
Besides work on the hammer and machine tools, Nasmyth made a number of inventions of interest. While still with Maudslay he invented the flexible shaft made of a coiled spring, and speaks with amusement at his finding the same idea in a dental engine many years later credited as an American invention. He invented the balland-socket joint for shafting hangers and also the single wedge gate valve. His steam piledriver, an adaptation of the steam hammer, was the invention in which he seems to have taken the most satisfaction. He was working out a method of puddling iron with a blast of steam when he was eclipsed by Bessemer’s brilliant invention, in 1855, of the air blast. Nasmyth was a member of the Small Arms Committee which remodeled the Small Arms Factory at Enfield. His connection with this will be taken up in the consideration of the rise of interchangeable manufacture.
Nasmyth retired from business in 1856, bought an estate in Kent, and spent the remainder of his life in travel and in his studies in astronomy. He was deeply interested in this study from boyhood. Before he was twenty he had built an excellent 6-inch reflecting telescope, and it was he who aroused Maudslay’s interest in the subject. He had a 10-inch telescope at Patricroft and a large one at Hammersfield. He began his study of the moon in 1842, and received a medal for his work at the Exhibition of 1851. His book, “The Moon, Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite,” published in 1874, in conjunction with James Carpenter, the result of his thirty-two years of work, is authoritative today.
Nasmyth died in 1890 at the age of eighty-two. He was much more than a splendid mechanic. His personal charm and quality of mind can best be appreciated by reading his own story. This chapter will have served its purpose if it induces the reader to read the autobiography from which we have quoted so freely.
CHAPTER IX
WHITWORTH
The work of the earlier generation of English tool builders may be said to have culminated in that of Sir Joseph Whitworth. For a man of his commanding influence, the information in regard to his life is singularly meager. He left no account of himself as Nasmyth and William Fairbairn did; no biography of him was written by his contemporaries, and the various memoirs which appeared at the time of his death are short and incomplete. He was born at Stockport in 1803. His father was a minister and schoolmaster. At fourteen he was placed in the office of his uncle, a cotton spinner in Derbyshire, to learn the business. But commercial work did not appeal to him. He slighted the office as much as possible and delved into every nook and corner of the manufacturing and mechanical departments of the establishment. In a few years he had mastered the construction of every machine in the place and acquired the deep-seated conviction that all the machinery about him was imperfect. He ran away to Manchester to escape a routine business life, and found work with Creighton & Company, as a working mechanic. He married in 1825, and shortly afterward went to work with Maudslay & Field in London. Maudslay soon placed him next to John Hampson, a Yorkshireman, who was his best workman. While there, Whitworth developed his method of making accurate plane surfaces by hand scraping them, three at a time. On leaving Maudslay, Whitworth worked for Holtzapffel, and later for Clement. He returned to Manchester in 1833, rented a room with power, and hung out a sign, “Joseph Whitworth, Tool Maker from London.” Here he began his improvements in machine tools—the lathe, planer, drilling, slotting and shaping machines. He improved Nasmyth’s shaper, adding the quick-return motion, which has been known ever
since as the Whitworth quick-return motion. His tools became the standard of the world, and in the London Exhibition of 1851 stood in a class by themselves.
Their preëminence lay not so much in novelty of design as in the standard of accuracy and quality of workmanship which they embodied. With unerring judgment, Whitworth had turned his attention first, to use his own words, “to the vast importance of attending to the two great elements in constructive mechanics,— namely, a true plane and power of measurement. The latter cannot be attained without the former, which is, therefore, of primary importance.... All excellence in workmanship depends upon it.”[102]
[102] Presidential Address. Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 1856, p. 125.
The first step, the production of true plane surfaces, made while he was at Maudslay’s, was, we are told, a self-imposed task. The method of producing these, three at a time, is generally credited to Whitworth. We have already quoted Nasmyth’s statement that the method was in use at Maudslay’s and that it was “a very old mechanical dodge.” While this is probably true, Whitworth contributed something to the method, which very greatly increased the accuracy of the product. The writer is inclined to believe that that element was the substitution of hand scraping for grinding in the final finishing operations. Whitworth’s paper, read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Glasgow in 1840, indicates this, although it does not say so directly. In this paper he specifically points out the reason why planes should not be finished by grinding them together with abrasive powder in between; namely, that the action of the grinding powder was under no control, that there was no means of securing its equal diffusion or modifying its application and localizing its action to the particular spot which needed it. Holtzapffel confirms this view, saying, in 1847: “The entire process of grinding, although apparently good, is so fraught with uncertainty, that accurate mechanicians have long agreed that the less grinding that is employed on rectilinear works the better, and Mr. Whitworth has recently shown in the most satisfactory manner,[103] that in such works grinding is entirely unnecessary, and may, with
the greatest advantage be dispensed with, as the further prosecution of the scraping process is quite sufficient to lead to the limit of attainable accuracy.... The author’s previous experience had so fully prepared him for admission of the soundness of these views, that in his own workshop he immediately adopted the suggestion of accomplishing all accurate rectilinear works by the continuance of scraping, to the entire exclusion of grinding.”[104]
[103] Referring to the paper before the British Association, 1840
[104] “Turning and Mechanical Manipulation,” Vol II, p 872
When Whitworth determined to make a better set of planes than any in use at the Maudslay shop, we are told that he was laughed at by Hampson and his other fellow workmen for undertaking an impossible job. He not only succeeded, but the truth of the planes he produced aroused the admiration and wonder of all who saw them. Nasmyth distinctly mentions scraping, but it should be remembered that he worked at Maudslay’s four or five years after Whitworth went there, and scraping may have been introduced into their older methods of making triple surface-plates by Whitworth, and have accounted for the wonderful accuracy of which Nasmyth speaks. Having realized what he considered the first element in good workmanship, Whitworth began on the second,—improved methods in measurement. He introduced the system of “end measurements,” relying ordinarily on the sense of touch rather than eyesight; and, for extreme accuracy, on the falling of a tumbler held by friction between two parallel planes. At the presentation of the address before the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, in 1856, he exhibited a measuring machine built on this principle which detected differences of length as small as one-millionth of an inch. The address was largely devoted to the advantages of end measurement. Referring to the machine before him, he said: “We have in this mode of measurement all the accuracy we can desire; and we find in practice in the workshop that it is easier to work to the ten-thousandth of an inch from standards of end measurements, than to one-hundredth of an inch from lines on a two-foot rule. In all cases of fitting, end measure of length should be used, instead of lines.” This principle has become almost universal for commercial work, although for
extremely accurate work upon final standards line measurements, aided by the microscope, are used.
It was Whitworth who brought about the standardization of screw thread practice in England. He had come into contact with the best thread practice at Maudslay’s and at Clement’s, but in the other shops throughout the country there was chaos, so far as any recognized standard was concerned. Using their work as a basis, and collecting and comparing all the screws obtainable, Whitworth arrived at a pitch for all sizes and a thread contour, which he proposed in a paper before the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1841.[105] It was received with favor, and by 1860 the “Whitworth thread” had been generally adopted throughout the country.
[105] The Minutes of the Institution, Vol I, give only an abstract of this paper A recent writer, however, in the American Machinist, Vol XLIII, p 1178, quotes Whitworth as follows:
It is impossible to deduce a precise rule for the threads of screws from mechanical principles or from any number of experiments. On the other hand, the nature of the case is such that mere approximation would be unimportant, absolute identity of thread for a given diameter being indispensable.
There are three essential characters belonging to the screw thread, namely, pitch, depth and form Each of these may be indefinitely modified independently of the others, and any change will more or less affect the several conditions of power, strength and durability The selection of the thread is also affected by the mutual relation subsisting between the three constituent characters of pitch, depth and form. Each of these may be separately modified; but practically no one character can be determined irrespective of the others.
We find instead of that uniformity which is so desirable, a diversity so great as almost to discourage any hope of its removal. The only mode in which this could be attempted with any probability of success would be by a sort of compromise, all parties consenting to adopt a medium for the sake of common advantage The average pitch and depth of the various threads used by the leading engineers would thus become the common standard, which would not only have the advantage of conciliating general concurrence, but would, in all probability, be nearer the true standard for practical purposes than any other
An extensive collection was made of screw bolts from the principal workshops throughout England, and the average thread was carefully
observed for different diameters.
(Then follows the well-known table showing the number of threads per inch )
It will be remembered that the threads, of which the preceding table shows the average, are used in cast iron as well as wrought; and this circumstance has had its effect in rendering them coarser than they would have been if restricted to wrought-iron.
The variation in depth among the different specimens was found to be greater proportionately than in pitch The angle made by the sides of the thread will afford a convenient expression for the depth The mean of the variations of this angle in 1-in screws was found to be about 55 deg , and this was also pretty nearly the mean of the angle in screws of different diameters As it is for various reasons desirable that the angle should be constant, more especially with reference to general uniformity of system, the angle of 55 deg has been adopted throughout the entire scale A constant proportion is thus established between the depth and the pitch of the thread.
In calculating the former, a deduction is to be made for the quantity rounded off, amounting to one-third of the whole depth that is, one-sixth from the top and one-sixth from the bottom of the thread. Making this deduction it will be found that the angle of 55 deg. gives for the actual depth rather more than three-fifths and less than two-thirds of the pitch The precaution of rounding off is adopted to prevent the injury which the thread of the screw, and that of the taps and dies, might sustain from accident
F 25. S J W
In 1853 Whitworth visited the United States, and in conjunction with George Wallis of the South Kensington Museum, reported on the enterprises and manufactures of the United States.[106] Nearly all the memoirs of Whitworth refer to the profound effect of this report. As one reads it today, it seems difficult to see why it should have had so much influence. It is probable that Whitworth’s own personal report to the influential men about him contained much which does not appear in the formal report. In it he takes up steam engines, railway supplies, woodworking tools, electric telegraph, textile mills, and gives brief accounts of some of the factories and methods which he found at various places in New England and the Middle States. The longest description is given to the Springfield Armory, but even this is a mere fragment, and the only detailed information is of the time necessary to finish a gun-stock. We know, however, that this armory and the various private armories they saw, made an impression upon Whitworth and the whole Commission which led to the remodeling of the British gun-making plant at Enfield. Nasmyth was also concerned in this and a fuller account of it will be given later.
[106] “Report of the British Commissioners to the New York Industrial Exhibition.” London, 1854.
The conclusion of Whitworth’s report shows clearly that he was deeply impressed with the extent to which the automatic principle was being applied to machine tools in America. “The labouring classes,” he says, “are comparatively few in number, but this is counterbalanced by, and indeed, may be regarded as one of the chief causes of, the eagerness with which they call in the aid of machinery in almost every department of industry. Wherever it can be introduced as a substitute for manual labour, it is universally and willingly resorted to.... It is this condition of the labour market, and this eager resort to machinery wherever it can be applied, to which, under the guidance of superior education and intelligence, the remarkable prosperity of the United States is mainly due.” Another characteristic of American manufacture attracted his attention,—the tendency toward standardization. In his address in 1856 he
condemns the overmultiplication of sizes prevalent in every branch of English industry.
Shortly after his return from America, Whitworth was requested by the government to design a complete plant for the manufacture of muskets. He disapproved of the Enfield rifle and declined to undertake the work until exhaustive tests were made to determine the best type of rifle. The government, therefore, equipped a testing plant and range near Manchester, and Whitworth began a series of tests which showed the Enfield rifle to be inferior in almost every respect. He then submitted a new rifle, designed on the basis of his experiments, which embodied the small bore, an elongated projectile and a rapid rifle-twist and great accuracy of manufacture. Although this rifle excelled all others in accuracy, penetration and range, it was rejected by the war office. Some thirty years later, the Lee-Metford rifle, which embodied Whitworth’s improvements, was adopted, but only after these principles had been recognized and used by every other government in Europe. His contributions to the manufacture of heavy ordnance were even greater, but they met with the same reception from the war office. In 1862 he completed a high-powered rifle cannon with a range of six miles, the proportions of which were substantially those in use today. He developed the manufacture of fluid compressed steel, about 1870, to supply a stronger and more reliable material for ordnance use. Few men in any country have had a greater influence on the design and development of ordnance and armor. His partnership with Sir William Armstrong resulted in one of the greatest gun factories in the world.
Whitworth married twice but had no children. He acquired a great fortune. During his lifetime he established the famous Whitworth scholarships. At his death, large sums were distributed by friends, to whom he had willed them for the execution of his wishes, and they devoted nearly £600,000 ($3,000,000) to the foundation or endowment of the Whitworth Institute, Owens College, and the Manchester Technical Schools, and other public institutions. In 1874 he converted his Manchester business into a stock company, giving the majority of the stock to his foremen and making provision for the acquiring of further stock by his clerks and workmen. While he was slow in receiving recognition from his own government, he became
universally recognized as one of the greatest engineering authorities in the world, and was honored as few engineers have been, being elected to the Royal Society, chosen president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, given degrees by Dublin and Oxford, the Cross of the Legion of Honor; and, in 1869, made a baronet.
As he grew older he became irritable and exceedingly dogmatic, possibly because of his long contests with slow-moving government officials. Charles T. Porter, in his autobiography, brings out this side of his nature and shows that the initiative of subordinates in his shop was practically killed. Perhaps this limited his service somewhat in his later years, but when all is taken into account, he was, without question, one of the greatest of mechanical engineers. He was a master experimenter. Tests which he made were thorough, conclusive, and always led somewhere. His experiments, whether in machine tools, screw threads, or ordnance, always resulted in a design or process which sooner or later became standard.
Whitworth’s position as a tool builder is not weakened by the fact that most of the general tools had been invented by the time he began his independent work. He raised the whole art of tool building by getting at the fundamental conditions. He led the way in the change from the weak, architectural style of framing; introduced the box design or hollow frame for machinery, taking his suggestion from the human body, and very greatly increased the weight of metal used.
In 1850 Whitworth was, without doubt, the foremost tool builder in the world. He had introduced a standard of accuracy in machine tools unknown before, and so improved their design and workmanship that he dominated English tool practice for several generations. In fact, the very ascendency of Whitworth’s methods seems to have been an element in the loss of England’s leadership in tool building. Most of the progressive work for the next fifty years was done in America.
In the foregoing chapters we have traced briefly the work of the great English mechanics from 1800 to 1850. Their services to engineering, and, in fact, to mankind, cannot be measured. When they began, machine tools in any modern sense did not exist. Under their leadership nearly all of the great metal-working tools were given
forms which have remained essentially unchanged. England had the unquestioned leadership in the field of machine tools. Machine-tool building in Germany and France was one or two generations behind that of England, and nearly all their machinery was imported from that country. With the exception of the early and incomplete work of the ingenious French mechanics, which we have referred to from time to time, practically all of the pioneer work was done by Englishmen.
In glancing back at these early tool builders, it will be seen that few of them were men of education. All were men of powerful minds, many of them with broad intellectual interests. It is suggestive to note one thing, whatever may be its bearing. Only three of all these men, Matthew Murray and the two Fairbairns, served a regular apprenticeship. Bentham and Brunel were naval officers; Bramah, a farmer’s boy and cabinetmaker; Maudslay, a blacksmith; Clement, a slater; Roberts, a quarry laborer; Nasmyth, a clever school boy; and Whitworth, an office clerk.
Whatever may have been the reason, the rapid advance of the English machine-tool builders ceased about the middle of the last century, and they have made but few radical changes or improvements since that time. At about the same time the American engineers introduced a number of improvements of very great importance.
The great distance of America from England forced it into a situation of more or less commercial and mechanical independence. While France and Germany were importing machine tools from England, America began making them and soon developed independence of design. The interchangeable system of manufactures and the general use of accurate working gauges, which were hardly known in England, developed rapidly in America. These, with the introduction of the turret, the protean cam, and precision grinding machinery, and the great extension of the process of milling, served in the next fifty years to transfer the leadership in machine-tool design from England to America. A visit to any one of the great machine shops in England, Germany or France will convince one that the leadership now rests with the American tool builders.
The remaining chapters will take up the lives and work of those who have contributed to this great change.
EARLY AMERICAN MECHANICS
The phrase “Yankee ingenuity” has become a part of the English language. If New England no longer holds all the good mechanics in the United States, there was a time when she came so near it that the term “New England mechanic” had a very definite meaning over the whole country.
The industrial development of New England was long delayed, but once started it was rapid. Up to 1800 New England artisans supplied merely small local needs and there was little or no manufacturing in any modern sense; but from then on the development was so rapid that by 1850 New England was not only supplying the United States with most of its manufactured products, but was beginning to export machinery and tools to England, where machine tools originated. For five generations, American mechanics had little or no industrial influence on Europe, and then within fifty years they began to compete on even terms.
There were several reasons for this. A market for machinery must of necessity be a wide one, for no single community, not even a large modern city, can alone support a great manufacturing enterprise. Machinery building can thrive only in a settled country having a large purchasing power and good transportation facilities. The colonies lacked all of these conditions; the people were widely scattered and poor, and there were practically no facilities for heavy transportation, at least by land. The colonial mechanics were often ingenious and skilled, but they had few raw materials and they could supply only their immediate neighborhood. Any approach to specialization and refinement was therefore impossible.
The second cause for delayed development was England’s industrial policy toward her American colonies. The colonists had
hardly gained a foothold when they began to show a manufacturing spirit and an industrial independence which aroused the apprehension of the manufacturing interests in England. The first importations of iron into England from the colonies came from Virginia and Maryland, about 1718.[107] The importations for a few years thereafter are not known, as no records are available. They were sufficient, however, to arouse the jealousy of the English iron masters, for, although there was plenty of iron ore in England, they were beginning to feel seriously the shortage in wood which was then used for its reduction. They felt that the abundance of iron ore, fuel and water power in America constituted a serious menace, and they vigorously opposed the growth of any kind of manufacture in the colonies. This resulted in a prohibition of the manufacture of any form of ironware and of bar or pig iron by forges or other works. In spite of these repressive measures, a report on manufactures in the colonies, made to the House of Commons in 1731, indicated that New England had six furnaces, nineteen forges, one slitting mill and one nail factory.[108] These could, however, have supplied only a small part of the materials required even for colonial use. By 1737 much discussion had arisen respecting the policy of encouraging importation of American iron, and petitions in favor of doing so were presented to Parliament. England imported at that time about 20,000 tons of foreign iron, 15,000 from Sweden and 5000 from Russia, most of which was paid for in money.[109] It was urged that if this could be obtained from the colonies it could be paid for in British manufactures, at a saving of £180,000 annually. The annual production of bar iron in England was about 18,000 tons, and on account of the shortage of wood this could not be materially increased. To encourage colonial exportation of pig and bar iron to England would, it was urged, be the best means of preventing such further manufacturing as would interfere with their own. It was, therefore, proposed that a heavy duty be laid on all iron and manufactured products imported into the colonies from continental Europe, and on all iron imported into England except from America. These views prevailed and resulted in the act of 1750, which was entitled “An act to encourage the importation of pig and bar iron from His Majesty’s Plantations in America,” and provided that “pig-iron
made in the British Colonies in, America, may be imported, duty free, and bar-iron into the port of London; no bar-iron, so imported, to be carried coastwise, or to be landed at any other port, except for the use of his Majesty’s dock yards; and not to be carried beyond ten miles from London.”[110] With this was incorporated another clause designed to arrest all manufacture at that stage. It was enacted that “from and after the 24th day of June, 1750, no mill, or other engine for slitting or rolling of Iron, or any plating forge to work with a tilthammer, or any furnace for making steel shall be erected, or after such erection, continued in any of his Majesty’s Colonies of America” under penalty of £200.[111] This attempt to stifle the industrial life of the colonies, persistently adhered to, ultimately brought about the Revolution.
[107] J L Bishop: “History of American Manufactures,” Vol I, p 625
[108] Ibid., Vol. I, p. 623.
[109] Ibid., Vol. I, p. 623.
[110] Ibid , Vol I, p 624
[111] Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 624-625.
From 1730 to 1750 there had been an importation of about 2300 tons of bar iron annually, 90 per cent of which came from Maryland and Virginia, and a little less than 6 per cent from Pennsylvania. New England and New York were producing iron by that time, but were using nearly all of their product, hence their small share in the trade. The iron masters of the midland counties in England protested against this act, prophesying the utter ruin of the English iron industry. England, they said, would be rendered dependent upon the colonies, and thousands of English workmen would be reduced to want and misery; American iron could never supply the place of the Swedish iron in quality, nor the Russian iron in cheapness, consequently the manufacture of tools would be stopped and numberless families reduced to beggary
The manufacturers of Birmingham, on the other hand, petitioned that the bill was a benefit to their trade and to the colonists, who would exchange their raw products for British manufactures; that manufacturing was more valuable to the nation than the production of raw materials, and as iron could not be produced at home in such
quantity and at such price as to supply all the needs of the manufacturers, it was the duty of Parliament to encourage the importation of raw materials, even if it should arrest their production in England; that the importation of iron from America could affect the iron works no more than the same quantity from any other country, and the home production was less than one-half the amount required, and growing steadily dearer: that the increasing activity of the English manufacturers rendered it more and more necessary to obtain these materials at the lowest price, and the only way to do this was either to reduce the duty on continental iron, or make it necessary for English iron masters to reduce their prices by raising up a rival in America. They heartily concurred, however, in the prohibition of all finishing of materials as an interference with British manufactures. The merchants of Bristol petitioned that American bar iron, which was admitted only at the port of London, be imported duty free into all of His Majesty’s ports. This discussion continued until 1757, when the privilege of importation was extended to the other ports of Great Britain.[112]
[112] Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 626-627.
Under the act of 1750, the importation rose to about 3250 tons, 94 per cent of which still came from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Practically all the iron produced in New England was used there, for, despite the repressive measures from the mother country, small local manufacturing enterprises, “moonshine iron works,” were constantly cropping up. The iron supply of New England came at first from the bog ores in eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. By 1730-1760 better mines were opened at Salisbury, Conn., and in Orange County, New York, so that the production of iron in the bog-ore regions gradually dwindled.
The Revolution terminated British legislative control over the trade and manufactures of America. The war itself furnished a market for supplies for the army, and the manufacture of cannon and guns was active. Many of these factories were ruined by the flood of imports which followed the Revolution. In 1789 the present Federal Government replaced the ineffective Confederation, which had left to the separate states the duty of protecting their manufacturing
interests, and a tariff was placed upon manufactured articles. Freed from the old restrictions, and with foreign competition largely precluded, manufacturing industries began to spring up on every hand.
A third cause contributed to rapid development at this time. An enormous production of cotton followed Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1792, and the South, which had never been a manufacturing community, furnished both a source of supply and a rich market, easily accessible by coastwise trade. The beginnings of New England’s manufacturing industries are closely identified with the rise of the American cotton crop, and most of the first machine shops were developed to manufacture textile machinery.
England, who seems to have blundered whenever she legislated on early American trade, made one more serious mistake. In 1785 Parliament passed a stringent law, with severe penalties, to stop the emigration of all mechanics and workmen in iron and steel manufactures, and to prevent not only the exportation of every description of tool, engine or machine, or parts of a machine used in making and working up iron and other materials, but even the models and plans of such machinery.[113] England was then the most advanced of all countries in the production of engines, tools and textile machinery, and it was hoped by this act that manufacturing might be kept there. It had the opposite effect so far as America was concerned. It was inevitable that mechanics, such as Samuel Slater and William Crompton, should get away, and with them, ideas. The act only stimulated a race of skillful mechanics in America to independent development of machine tools, textile machinery, and the like. America, instead of buying her machinery from England as she would naturally have done, proceeded to make it herself.
[113] Ibid., Vol. I, p. 630.
One of the earliest American mechanics was Joseph Jenks, who came from Hammersmith, England, to Lynn, Mass., about 1642, and died in 1683. With the backing of Governor Winthrop, he set up an iron foundry and forge near a bog-iron mine. The very first attempt in America to start an iron works had been made in Virginia more than twenty years before, at the settlement of Jamestown. It was hardly
started, however, before it was destroyed in the general sack of the settlement, and for one hundred years there was no further attempt at producing iron in Virginia.[114]
[114] Beverley: “History of Virginia ” Bishop: “History of American Manufactures,” Vol I, pp 469, 595
From the little forge and foundry started at Lynn, there is no break in the spread of iron manufacturing in this country. The forge was located on the lands of Thomas Hudson, of the same family as Hendrick Hudson, the explorer. Jenks was “the first founder who worked in brass and iron on the western continent. By his hands, the first models were made and the first castings taken of many domestic implements and iron tools.”[115] The very first casting is said to have been an iron quart pot.
[115] Lewis: “History of Lynn ”
For many years the colonial records refer to his various activities. He made the dies for the early Massachusetts coinage, including the famous pine-tree shilling.[116] In 1646 the General Court of Massachusetts resolved that “In answer to the peticon of Joseph Jenckes, for liberty to make experience of his abilityes and Inventions for ye making of Engines for mills to go with water for ye more speedy despatch of work than formerly, and mills for ye making of Sithes and other Edged tools, with a new invented Sawe-Mill, that things may be afforded cheaper than formerly, and that for fourteen yeeres without disturbance by any others setting up like inventions; ... this peticon is granted.”[117] In 1655 he was granted a Massachusetts patent for scythes, his improvement consisting of making them long and thin, instead of short and thick, as in the old English scythe, and of welding a bar of iron upon the back to strengthen it, which later became the universal practice,[118] and no radical change has been made in the blade of this implement since his day. He built for the town of Boston the first fire engine used in this country, and also made machines for drawing wire. Jenks seems to have also been interested in another iron works started at Braintree between 1645 and 1650.
[116] Weeden: “Economic and Social History of New England,” Vol. I, p. 191.
[117] Goodrich: “History of Pawtucket,” p 17
[118] Weeden, Vol. I, p. 184. Bishop, Vol. I, p. 477.
An iron works was started at Raynham in 1652 by the Leonards, who came from England about the same time as Jenks and had worked at Lynn.[119] The Jenks and Leonard families were all mechanics. It used to be said that wherever you found a Leonard you found a mechanic; and the Jenks family has been in some form of manufacturing continuously from the days of Joseph Jenks to the present time.
[119] Bishop, Vol. I, p. 479. Weeden, Vol. I, p. 192.
The near-by portions of Rhode Island and Massachusetts centering on the headwaters of Narragansett Bay, became famous for the production and manufacture of iron. A young Scotchman, Hugh Orr, settled in Bridgewater about 1738. He was a pioneer in the manufacture of edged tools, and is said to have introduced the trip hammer into this country. “For several years he was the only edge-tool maker in this part of the country, and ship-carpenters, millwrights, etc., ... constantly resorted to him for supply. And, indeed, such was his fame, that applications were frequently made to him from the distance of twenty miles for the purpose of having an axe, an adze or an auger new tempered by his hands.” In 1748, he built 500 stand-of-arms for the province, the first made in America, and later did much casting and boring of cannon during the Revolution. After the war, he made cotton machinery until his death in 1798, at the age of eighty-two. Weeden credits Hugh Orr with being “perhaps the most conspicuous” American iron worker in the eighteenth century. His son, Robert Orr, was also a skilled mechanic, and was one of the very early master armorers of the Springfield Arsenal.[120]
[120] Weeden, Vol. II, p. 685. Bishop, Vol. I, pp. 486-487.
Joseph Holmes is another of the pioneers of this neighborhood. He is said to have made more than 3000 tons of iron from bog ore, and “Holmes’ iron” was famous for anchors. He also furnished many
