Shraga Feivel Mendelovitz

AMERICAN ORTHODOXY’S LUKEWARM EMBRACE OF THE HIRSCHIAN LEGACY, 1850-1939, Zev Eleff, TRADITION 45:3

"Even more difficult to assess, as far as spreading the word of Hirsch is concerned, is Shraga Feivel Mendelovitz. Despite vocal opposition from his Eastern European colleagues, Mendelovitz taught Hirsch’s writings to his students at Torah Vodaath and hired likeminded educators to teach at his school.74 And, like Bernard Drachman, Mendelovitz, according to his biographer, encouraged his students to learn German in order to study Hirsch’s original writings.75 Mention should also be made of the support and encouragement lent by Mendelovitz to Philipp Feldheim, when the latter established his first bookstore on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1939. Feldheim was most instrumental in disseminating English translations of Hirsch’s writings in America, but not until a sizable German Orthodox community emerged in America.76 Nonetheless, Mendelovitz’s lasting influence on Torah Vodaath was mitigated by Eastern European elements that took control of the school and steered the institution away from Western thinkers like Hirsch.77"

74 William B. Helmreich, The World of the Yeshiva: An Intimate Portrait of Orthodox
Jewry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 356, n.22.
75 Yonoson Rosenblum, Reb Shraga Feivel: The Life and Time of Rabbi Shraga
Feivel Mendlowitz the Architect of Torah in America (Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications,
2001), 198.
76 Shnayer Z. Leiman, “Montague Lawrence Marks: In a Jewish Bookstore,”
Tradition 25 (Fall 1989): 60.
77 Helmreich, The World of the Yeshiva, 302-4.