THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE: Harry Maryles has a post about an article in Yated Ne'eman similar My Uncle, The Netziv--with similar results:

The Yated Ne’eman had published a biography of Rav Eliyahu Dessler upon his fortieth Yahrzeit. It told of the Hashkafos of his father, Rav Reuven Dov, a Talmid of R. Simcha Zisel Ziv who was in turn a Talmid of R. Yisroel Salanter.

Rav Simcha Zisel founded a Yeshiva which included the teachings of the Russian language, history, geography, and other secular studies, in addition to the normal Yeshiva curriculum. He felt that Balei Batim would have to know more than Torah and Mussar in order to succeed in life. Rav Reuven Dov learned in that Yeshiva and absorbed the Hashkafos of his Rebbe and made it his goal to transmit what he had learned in his Yeshiva to his son Rav Eliyahu. True to those principles, he made sure that world literature was included in his son’s curriculum, including many classics translated into Russian, among them, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. All this in the Yated.

You can guess what happened next.

Read the whole thing.

According to Tenuas HaMussar, by Rabbi Dov Katz (vol 5 p52-53), Rabbi Yosef Leib Bloch of Telz--who learned for a while at Kelm--sent his daughters to study at the Russian gymnasium in Telz and gave them permission, under his supervision, to study books written by Maskilim.

Rabbi Katz also recounts, in the name of Rabbi Eliahu Meir Bloch, that one daughter even translated an article in a Jewish newspaper into Russian and sent it to Leo Tolstoy because she felt it would be a Kiddush HaShem.

Technorati Tag: Yated Ne'eman and Kelm and Telz and Haskalah.