R. Zevin, R. Ovadia Yosef, Pras haRav Kook and a Minor Case of
Censorship

by Jacob D.

At the
end of R. Zevin’s introduction to his Sofrim u-Sefarim [1] we read –

In R.
Zevin’s footnote we see that one of the works that he wanted to review but
didn’t yet get to was R. Ovadia Yosef’s two volumes of Yabia Omer. As someone
who enjoys R. Zevin’s pen immensely (both his style and substance, especially
the way he analyzes books and their authors) [2], and as someone that studies
from R. Ovadia Yosef’s prolific halakhic literature quite often, I was curious
to know if R. Zevin ever ended up writing a review on any ​of ​R. Ovadia
Yosef’s works. For this I turned to R. Zevin’s grandchildren.[3] In a phone
conversation with R. Nahum Zevin (of Kiryat Eliyahu,Haifa) I was told that
although he has some unpublished R. Zevin material, ​and also existing are​
some highly critical book reviews that R. Zevin felt should remain unpublished,[4]
he doesn’t think anything was written about R. Ovadia Yosef.

In R.
Ovadia Yosef​’s​ Yabia Omer we find among the numerous approbations this –

Not
exactly an approbation but an explanation why the work deserved the R. Kook
prize ​of​ Torah literature for the year 571​5​ (1955). I have no doubt that
although R. Zevin signs his name along with two other judges​,​ the explanation
was penned by R. Zevin himself​​. From the three periods before​ these​ few
sentences ​​it seemed to me that more had been written than the few lines which
were ​printed in the ​book. I wanted to find the rest of the story​ (although I
wasn’t expecting a full review essay because R. Zevin wrote in his  Sofrim u-Sefarim published in 1959 that he
hadn’t gotten around to reviewing this work)​ and I spoke with the department
in the Tel Aviv municipality that handles these prizes (see here).
They said ​that ​they don’t have any additional information or documents that
pertain to this but ​that ​I should contact the Tel Aviv city archive (here) and they should be able to help. After speaking with the kind staff of that
archive I receive an email with two documents and a short message-

אנו שולחים לך סריקה של ההחלטה על הענקת הפרס לרב עובדיה יוסף וכן
סריקה של מכתבו של ראש העיר חיים לבנון לרב עובדיה המודיע לו על זכייתו ומברך אותו
עליה. אין בידינו נימוקים מפורטים יותר

בברכה,

רבקה פרשל-גרשון

הארכיון העירוני

By now I
kind of gave up, and forgot about the matter.

A short
while later I get a call from my friend Israel Mizrahi of Judaicaused.com (and the Musings of a Jewish Bookseller blog). He
tells me that I’m not going to believe it but in a recent shipment from Israel
of some old books he found a little booklet printed for one years Pras haRav
Kook. Upon opening it he sees that it was the booklet printed in the year
571​5​ (Summer 1955)​,​ the year that Yabia Omer was awarded the prize​​!

​For a
small fee I purchased the booklet ​and although I found ​it​ quite
interesting​,​ unfortunately nothing really more had been written about Yabia
Omer that hadn’t been​ ​printed in the book. Nothing really​ I say​, aside for
one small surprise.

In the beginning of the
little piece written about Yabia Omer we read-

 ​רגילים לחשוב שהתורה
הלכה ונתדלדלה מהעדה הספרדית, ירד קרנה ופנה זיוה הודה והדרה. ולא היא. על כל פנים
לא באותה מידה שחושבים

​

These
​last seven​ words​-

​

על כל פנים לא באותה מידה שחושבים

may seem
offensive to the level of Sephardic scholarship at that time and were therefore
censored out of​ ​ Yabia Omer volume one. Interestingly they were printed in
Yabia Omer volume two. This is consistent in the numerous later editions of the
books as well, including the latest re-typset edition (5775-2015).

We now
learn that Artscroll’s “The Festivals in Halacha” was ​​not the
​only, nor the ​earliest case of R. Zevin censorship (see here).​

It should
be mentioned that in R. Ovadia Yosef’s first volume of responsa Teshuvot Hazon
Ovadia, he receives a nice close to page long approbation by R. ​Zevin, but
still not the full review essay I was hoping for.

​[​​​​1​]​ I thank Eliezer Brodt for finding me the full three volume set. This set
doesn’t turn up in used bookstores too often​​. It’s an exception from most of
R. Zevin’s other books that have been reprinted many times over.​ I remember
the special morning I received his email informing me that he found them like
yesterday.​

​[​2​]​ ​R. Zevin’s ​Ishim ve-Shitot​ includes ten long essays on more famous Torah
personalities ​​,​ and ​his ​three volumes of Sofrim u-Sefarim​ includes about
a hundred and seventy-five (!) short essays​.

​​[​3​]​ I had previously spoken to one grandson Eliyahu who’s an attorney living in Tel
Aviv about having Sofrim u-Sefarim added to Hebrewbooks.org. In the course of
our conversations Eliyahu mentioned that he heard Hebrewbooks.org had already
scanned and posted some of R. Zevins’s other books, and that was
done without permission. He asked me to send them a message that the family
will take legal action if the issue isn’t straightened out. Upon Hebrewbooks
hearing that​,​ they seemed uninterested in dealing with the family to obtain
permission to keep the books on their site​,​ and all of R. Zevin’s
books were instantly removed. Also included in the books removed was the essay
whose true author is still in question about Yeshiva boys serving in the
Israeli Army. See my comment here and see
this post here.

[4] That
came to me a little bit as a surprise because in the three volumes worth of
essays that R. Zevin chose to publish in his Sofrim u-Sefarim, we do find some
highly critical reviews. See for example in volume one (Geonim, Rishonim,
u-Teshuvot)​​ his review on the third volume of Teshuvot Yaskil Avdi by R.
Ovadia Hedaya (pg. 258), and in volume two (Pesakim, Pirushim, ve-Hidushim), a
highly critical review of R. Aryeh Pomoranchik’s first volume of Torat Zera’im
(pg. 221)​.​​ Also in this same volume a pretty serious charge leveled
(delicately) ​at his friend and colleague R. Yehezkel Abramsky’s Hazon Yehezkel
Hullin (pg. 114). However, upon looking through some old issues of Ha-Tzofeh
from the 1930’s and 40’s (where most of the material in Sofrim u-Sefarim first
appeared, ​see ​here​​)​,​ I was able to come across some of the 
extremely critical reviews that R. Zevin chose not to publish in his
books. None of the reviews that R. Zevin published in his books were nearly as
critical as these.

See Ha-Tzofeh
Fri. Aug 5th 1938

and Ha-Tzofeh
Fri. Sep. 27th 1940

By Eliezer Brodt

מגנזי אירופה,
כרך ראשון, ההדיר והוסיף מבואות: שמחה עמנואל, הוצאת מקיצי נרדמים, 512 עמודים.

I am very happy to announce the publication of an important work which I have been eagerly waiting for, Professor Simcha Emanuel of the Hebrew University’s Talmud department’s volume of texts from the “European Genizah” (volume one). This volume was just printed by Mekitzei Nirdamim and is being sold by Magnes Press.

New texts from Rishonim are high up on my list of favorite publications, all the more so when they are edited by Professor Simcha Emanuel. Professor Emanuel is considered one of the today’s greatest experts in Rishonic literature. He has produced numerous special works [such as this recent work, this, this and my favorite] and articles of both texts and material about them for quite some time. [Many of which are available here] All of which are of very high quality, showing an incredible breadth and depth in the material at hand. One area of specialty of his is finding long lost works; this new volume continues this trend. Starting with an important introduction to the background and importance of the Genizah, it includes numerous newly discovered texts of Rishonim, with introductions and background of their importance and proof of identification.

Here are the Table of Contents of this special work:

For a sample e mail me at
Eliezerbrodtatgmail.com.

The book can be purchased via Magnes
Press or through me at: Eliezerbrodtatgmail.com.

Also take note of a special sale of numerous
titles at Magnes Press.

Copies of this work will be arriving
at Biegeleisen shortly.

Review of James A. Diamond, “Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish
Canon” (2014)

by Menachem Kellner

Menachem Kellner
is Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Jewish Thought at Shalem College,
Jerusalem, and the Wolfson Professor Emeritus of Jewish Thought at the
University of Haifa, where, among many other posts, he served as Dean of
Students and Chair of the Department of Maritime Civilizations, and founding
director of Be-Zavta, a program in Jewish enrichment. His most recent book is Menachem Kellner: Jewish Universalism,
edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron Hughes in Brill’s Library of Contemporary
Jewish Philosophers, and is available here.
Bar-Ilan University Press is about to publish his next book, Gam Hem Keruyim Adam: Ha-Nokhri be-Einei
ha-Rambam.

This is
Professor Kellner’s second contribution to the
Seforim blog. His previous essay, “Who is the Person Whom Rambam Says Can
be ‘Consecrated as the Holy of Holies’?” was published in 2007 and is available
here.

In People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and
Authority (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997) Moshe Halbertal
distinguishes between normative and formative canons. Texts which are canonical
in the normative sense are obeyed and followed; they provide the group loyal to
the text with guides to behavior and belief. Formative canonical texts, on the
other hand, are “taught, read, transmitted, and interpreted … they provide
a society or a profession with a shared vocabulary” (p. 3).

In his brave new
book, Maimonides and the Shaping of the
Jewish Canon (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), James A.
Diamond, the Lebovic Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo
(link),
sets out to prove that “at virtually every critical turn in Jewish
thought, one confronts Maimonidean formulations in one way or another” (p.
263). Diamond’s claim is actually much stronger than that. He sets out to prove
that the collected works of Rambam, alongside the Bible, Talmud, and Zohar
“comprise the core spiritual and intellectual canon of Judaism” (p.
266).

Diamond makes
his argument through a series of case studies, each one focusing on a different
thinker: Ramban, Ritva, Abravanel, ibn Gabbai, Spinoza, Hermann Cohen, Neziv,
and finally Rav Kook. These chapters constitute “a discussion of the long
and continuing history of exegetical entanglements with Maimonidean
thought…” (p. 26).

Diamond sets the
stage with two chapters on Rambam himself, in which he makes a subtle and
sophisticated argument to the effect that Rambam set the agenda for the future
of Jewish thought by providing an “inextricable link between philosophy,
law, and narrative” (p. 11).

In these two
chapters Diamond continues the methodological breakthroughs of his two previous
books on Rambam, Maimonides and the
Hermeneutics of Concealment (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002) and Converts, Heretics, and Lepers: Maimonides
and the Outsider (Noted Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2007). The first
book has literally changed the face of academic Maimonidean studies and
deserves to be much better known outside of the academy. The book exemplifies a
sophisticated methodology for reading the Guide
of the Perplexed. This approach may be characterized as follows: Diamond
takes Rambam at his word – to wit, that he was writing a book of biblical and
rabbinic exegesis – and cleverly and closely follows Rambam’s exegesis of his
sources. It takes a person of rare abilities to do this as well as Diamond
does; he is blessed with an impressive mixture of native literary abilities
combined with extensive reading of rabbinic sources and rigid training in law
and philosophy (he was originally a lawyer before realizing that life could be
much more interesting with a PhD in philosophy). Prof. Diamond’s reading of
Rambam’s exegesis of his sources is extremely convincing. Diamond also follows
my wife’s safe advice. She constantly reminds me: remember to tell your
students, Rambam was also a rabbi
(and not just a philosopher).

Diamond’s second
book consists of a series of extraordinarily close readings of core texts of
Rambam’s, readings which illuminate the delicate and multilayered interplay
between philosophical and religious ideas in his thought. As in his previous
work, Diamond convincingly illustrated the way in which Ramabam carefully
chooses, subtly interprets, and circumspectly weaves together rabbinic
materials to address philosophers and talmudists alike, each in their own
idiom.

In his first two
books, Diamond takes a linguistic pebble and throws it into the sea of Rambam’s
thought, following the ripples where they lead: verses connect to verses and to
rabbinic glosses upon them, which in turn lead to further exegetical and
philosophical ripples. In this, his third book, he uses the same subtle and
learned method to analyze the ways in which eight prominent post-Maimonideans
from the Thirteenth Century through the Twentieth engage Rambam’s thought, in
order to break away from it, or break it away from its medieval context to
adapt it to the ages in which they lived (p. 5).

Diamond’s claim
is stronger than the oft-noted influence of Rambam on radically different
thinkers. Indeed, there is hardly a Jewish thinker who does not claim to
represent Rambam in his or her world – as I often say, the two greatest
misrepresenters of Rambam in the 20th century were the Rebbe of
Lubavitch and the Rebbe of (Yeshayahu) Leibowitz. We have recently been treated
to a new-agish Rambam by Micah Goodman (Maimonides
and the Book That Changed Judaism: Secrets of the Guide for the Perplexed)
and (once again!) to a Kabbalistic Rambam in Mevikh Maskilim (!) by Rabbi Shlomo Toledano. In the chapters of
this book James Diamond does more than show how various thinkers have
appropriated Rambam to their needs – he demonstrates how Rambam was a formative
influence on the Jewish self-perceptions of a wide variety of central Jewish
thinkers.

In the first of
these chapters, on Ramban (“Launching the Kabbalistic Assault”),
Diamond shows how Ramban’s theology 
“can only be fully appreciated in its counterexegesis, reaction to,
and reworking of Maimonides’ own theology and philosophical exegesis” (p.
69). Fully aware of what Rambam was doing, Ramban sought to present an
alternative vision of Judaism (just as I have argued elsewhere, Rambam himself
sought to present an alternative vision of Judaism to that which found
expression in Halevi’s Kuzari). Thus,
for example, for Ramban “Jewish history inheres in Abraham’s biography
both physically and metaphysically, to be played out by his biological
descendants, [while] for Maimonides Abraham’s life provides a manual on how to
qualify as his ideological offspring” (p. 74). In this typically
beautifully written and densely packed sentence, Diamond presents one of the core
differences between the Judaisms of Rambam and of Ramban. Students of the two
rabbis will see here hints at Ramban’s view of Torah stories as prefiguring
Jewish history (itself a cunning subversion of a classic Christian trope) and
at Rambam’s opposed essential lack of interest in history per se (even Jewish
history) and his construal of Judaism as a community of true believers, defined
by ideology, not by descent.

This is just one
of the many ways in which James Diamond teases out the essential differences
between Rambam and Ramban. I would like to stress that as much as Ramban was
clearly aware of these differences (as brilliantly elucidated by Diamond), and
as much as he rejected Rambam’s picture of Judaism, Voltare- like he still
defended Rambam’s right to be wrong. It would be wonderful if today’s rabbinic
leadership would take a “musar
haskel” from Ramban’s behavior in this matter.

Rabbi Yom Tov
Ishbili (Ritva) belonged to Ramban’s school, and I would like to think that one
of the lessons he learned from Ramban was to defend Rambam without agreeing
with him, as he does in Sefer ha-Zikkaron,
closely analyzed by Diamond in chapter four, “Pushing Back the  Assault.” Diamond detects in Ritva an
“ideological retreat from Nahmanideanism toward Maimonideanism” (p.
88). This “retreat” is not a rejection of the world of Ramban,  but, rather, an attempt to salvage
“rationalism and reserve a space for it alongside Kabbalah within Jewish
practice and belief” (p. 113).

In chapter five
we are presented with a Don Isaac Abravanel “who struggled with
Maimonides’ thought throughout his prolific career” (p. 116); a specific
locus of that struggle was Rambam’s account of the Akedah. Abravanel, it has famously been reported, used to end
lectures on Rambam in Lisbon with the statement: “these are the views of
Rabbenu Moshe, but not those of Moshe Rabbenu.” Here again, we see an
attempt to keep Rambam within the fold, without denying the challenges he
presents to more conservative interpretations of Judaism. It is one of the most
important contributions of Diamond’s book that time and again he shows us how
medieval thinkers rejected much of what Rambam taught, without denying that he
taught it. Comparing the approaches of Ramban, Ritva, and Abravanel to the
furor surrounding the so-called Slifkin affair and the writings of many
contemporary rabbis, makes one almost believe in the decline of the
generations.

The chapter
which I personally found most interesting was about Meir ibn Gabbai, the
Sixteenth Century kabbalist, largely because he is the figure treated by
Diamond about whom I knew the least. Chapter Six, “The Aimlessness of
Philosophy” examines ibn Gabbai’s Avodat
ha-Kodesh, one of the most popular works of pre-Lurianic Kabbalah. This
kabbalistic digest is “inextricably intertwined with a withering critique
of  Maimonidean rationalism” (p.
138), further evidence for  Moshe Idel’s
claim  that Rambam was a “negative
catalyzer” for kabbalistic conceptions. Ibn Gabbai’s world was thus one
“where Maimonides’ thought inspired fierce rejection, while ironically at
the same time providing  a fertile
repository of ideas, exegesis, and terminology for the advancement of
kabbalistic thought and interpretation” (p. 137).

Rambam was so
important for a figure like ibn Gabbai that the latter felt forced to accept
the widespread legend concerning Rambam’s 
alleged “conversion” to Kabbalah at the end of his life. That
this legend was so widespread, and that ibn Gabbai and many others contributed to
spreading it, is powerful support for the thesis of Diamond’s book about the
centrality of Rambam in forming the Jewish canon. Rambam is so important and
central a figure, that a Kabbalist cannot allow him to remain outside the fold.

I will leave
discussions of the last four chapters of Maimonides
and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon (on Spinoza, Hermann Cohen, Neziv, and
Rav Kook) to specialists in modern Jewish thought. To this reader, at least,
they appeared every bit as insightful and illuminating as the six chapters
outlined here. One comment, however begs to be made. Diamond’s concluding
chapter deals with a twentieth century writer one rarely sees, if ever,
mentioned alongside Maimonides — Franz Kafka. Intriguingly, Diamond’s argument
is that even a contemporary, secular, Jewish diarist, thinker, and novelist is
both made possible and understood better when read against the grain of
Maimonides. In this case  Diamond argues that Kafka, the pessimistic
prophet of gloom and alienation in the modern age, takes Maimonides’ negative
theology to its logical extreme and leaves us with a sobering thought
  especially in a post-Shoah age. If Maimonides’ “theology of
negation ends in the breakdown of both intellect and language,” then perhaps it
also “can all too easily lead to a theology of brokenness and alienation, and
to the parables of Kafka.”

Did Maimonides
indeed shape the Jewish canon alongside Bible, Talmud, Midrash, and Zohar? Each
reader of this remarkable book will have to make up her or his mind on this
issue. What cannot be denied is that each such reader will finish the book
enriched, enlightened, and challenged.

R. Yitchak Al-fasi’s
Anti-Qaraite Legislative Activity
By Tzvi H. Adams

“צום הרביעי וצום החמישי וצום השביעי” וגו’. … והוא
העשירי מן החדש העשירי… והוא היום אשר סמך בו נבוכדנצאר על ירושלם והצר עליה
ובנה עליה דיק, שנאמר “ויהי בשנה התשיעית למלכו בחדש העשירי בעשור לחדש בא
נבכדנאצר מלך בבל וכל חילו” וגו’

והיום השני – והוא יום פתיחת המדינה, והוא היום התשיעי מן החדש הרביעי
שנאמר “בחדש הרביעי בתשעה לחדש ויחזק הרעב בעיר ולא היה לחם לעם הארץ ותבקע
העיר”.

והצום השלשי – הוא היום השביעי מן החדש החמישי מפני כי אמר בו
“בחדש החמישי בשבעה לחדש היא שנת תשע עשרה שנה למלך נבוכדנצר בא נבוזראדן רב
טבחים עמד לפני מלך בבל בירושלם, וישרוף את בית יוי”.

והצום הרביעי – הוא היום העשירי מזה החדש הה’ שנאמר “ובחדש
החמישי באחד לחדש” וגו’. והגרמתו וגם הגרמת היום הז’ הוא שריפת בית יוי מפני
כי אמר אחרי כל אחד מהם ” וישרוף את בית ה’ 
שני פעמים.

והצום הה’ – הוא יום כד’ מן החדש השביעי שנאמר “וביום עשרים
וארבעה לחדש נאספו בני ישראל בצום ובשקים” וגו’.

… ויש באלה הצומות חלוף. מהם בין הרבנים ובין הקראים, ומהם בין
הקראים ובין העננים,…

The Torah’s Jewish
Sense of an Ending: A Yasher Koyach
to Moses

by James A. Diamond

Every year, the joy I experience
on Simchat Torah, is somewhat
diminished by the apparent dismal ending of Deuteronomy whose closing we
celebrate on the way back to creation and beginnings once again. Rather than
climaxing in the rebirth of a nation and entry into the territory long ago
divinely promised as a homeland, it ends in death and a frustrated life. Not
only does it conclude on a morbid note, but it does so regarding Moses, the
noblest protagonist of the narrative, the one who least deserves a premature
death. His career begins with his first venture outside the cocoon of a
privileged life within the royal palace walls, triggering an empathic act of
heroic proportions. Without any knowledge of the Israelite God or the
principles and norms that God stands for, Moses reacts violently out of an
inherent sense of justice to prevent human suffering inflicted by those he was
raised to recognize as compatriots. His subsequent intervention in an
aggressive dispute among his own native tribesmen, also to prevent maltreatment
of another human being, meets with a ‘mind your own business’ attitude, along
with an ominous prospect of betrayal. Rejected by the Hebrew community to which
he belonged by birth, and by his adoptive Egyptian community in which he was
nurtured, for his opposition to injustice no matter its source or target, he
became alienated from both. There remained no choice but to live out his life
in exile- a stranger in a foreign land.[1]

A divine commission, plunging him
back into that very orbit of rejection to complete what he had started,
shattered what little peace he found in an estranged existence. He in fact
proved himself to be precisely the most qualified to lead by marshaling
repeated arguments against his qualifications for the mission of national
liberator, ranging from insignificance (Who
am I?)[2] to lack of confidence (They
will not believe me)[3] to inarticulateness (I am not a man of words).[4] The politician who doesn’t seek out
position, and who is compelled by others to run for public office on the
strength of his principled reputation, is the one least likely to fall prey to
the seductions of power that accompany that office. In fact the rare objective
description of Moses’ character in the Bible, a humble man, more so than any man on earth,[5] reflects a sense of self-effacement that rules out self-interest
as a decisive factor in his public life. Hesitatingly, he accepts and liberates
the Israelites only to encounter years of incessant complaint, ingratitude, and
rebellion. Ceaseless aggravation and insult escalated to the outrageous extent
of the peoples’ longing to return
to the “comforts” of that very hellish existence Moses had fought so courageously
to release them from.

This is the man that God summons
to the top of a mountain where he can almost touch everything he had dreamed
of, fought for, and ardently dedicated himself to, and on whom God then
abruptly drops the curtain- and there you
shall not cross.[6] It is difficult to see this as something other than
unbecoming of God, profoundly deepening the pain of a leader who is on the
precipice of his life’s goal. Why would God prevent Moses from taking that tiny
step necessary to consummate his mission? Why would God withhold a future from
the man who was not only instrumental in attaining it, but was the man who
originally surrendered his own entire regal future in the name of justice? At
the end of the annual cycle of Torah readings, are we to celebrate a malevolent
God who punishes his most devoted “friend” by denying him the joy of completing
a quest He Himself imposed upon him? And shouldn’t the punishment fit the
gravity of the crime? Slighting God’s honor (You did not affirm my sanctity in the eyes of the people),[7]
surely does not warrant sanctioning it as a capital offence by denying Moses
the fruits of his relentless sacrifices when they are within reach. And
finally, doesn’t this reading land precisely in the season for forgiveness, a
time for the supreme Being to have set a supreme example of mercy,
graciousness, and magnanimity, when the simple cost would have been to yield
His own glory? God seems to have missed the lesson of Moses’ humility.

As always though, in the long
history of Jews reading their sacred texts, those texts’ problems goad the
reader into rethinking what may at first seem obvious or apparent. As the
eminent biblical scholar James Kugel points out, the Bible’s irregularities, in
this case morally and theologically troubling aspects, are the grains of sand
that irritate the oyster-like Jewish interpretive tradition to construct pearls
around them.[8] Perhaps the way to approach this final episode is to reconsider
God’s “punishment” as really a favor and concession to Moses’ character and
sensibility. On closer examination it may in fact be graciously consistent with
Moses’ biography, and superbly commemorates who he authenticated himself to be.

The key to these final verses is
their casting of Moses’ relationship to God in terms of equals who meet each
other face to face. Earlier in the
Torah that same phrase, face to face, captures the familiarity of a
normal human conversation, as one man
speaks to another.[9] Genuine dialogue can only take place when both participants
express their own views, assert their own personalities, and are open to
debate. Any conversation wholly dominated and monopolized by one participant
amounts to a monologue that promotes only listening but not responding or true
engagement. Understood in this way we become mindful of Moses’ inaugural
meeting with God who, for the first time in biblical history, formally
introduces Himself by name. However, the puzzling name, I will be whoever I will be (ehyeh asher ehyeh),[10] is
a tautological non-name. Rather than a being that is fixed by definition,
confined to a particular place, and possessing jurisdiction over an exclusive
domain, God tells Moses that He cannot be pigeon holed into a pre-conceived
framework that a specific name might enable. God is a being in flux,
encountered differently by different human beings in different circumstances.
He is an evolving God, rather than a God that simply and immutably is, there to
be called on ritually by those privy to His name. As such, this open-ended non-name conveys a relational being, a God of
perpetual becoming, that cannot but be elusive. God is continually shaped and
reshaped by the respective partners with whom She establishes relationship.
Moses’ life is paradigmatic of this Jewish spiritual model.

Returning to Moses’ origins,
God’s awareness of Israel’s suffering in Egypt immediately follows a quick
succession of Moses’ actions, all sharing the common feature of interventions
curtailing injustice and oppression. Considering the literary progression of
events it is quite plausible to conclude that Moses’ autonomously motivated
acts instigated by his own “seeing,” or evaluation of circumstances, provokes
God’s immediately reported own “seeing” and “knowing” of Israel’s suffering- And God saw the Israelites and God knew.[11]
The Jewish Publication Society’s translation exquisitely captures this
nuance with its rendering of “knew” as “and God took notice of them.” In other
words, God, who was oblivious to human suffering until then, was inspired to
emulate Moses’ moral activism with His own moral awakening- an act of maturity
with which the declaration “I will be” resounds. Rashi’s comment on “God’s
knowing” expressively understands this divine realization as an emergence from
apathy, transitioning from “ignoring the plight of His creation” to “focusing
His attention on them.” God’s new consciousness, compelling His own
intervention is evoked by Moses’ example. It is a premiere instance of God
imitating man, the inverse of the primary religious mandate of imitatio dei, or emulating God.

Both in the Bible itself and
later rabbinic traditions Moses continues in this vein of affecting and shaping
God’s will and actions. When God categorically declares His intentions to wipe
out the Israelites in response to their worship of the golden calf, Moses
refuses to accept it as an irrevocable fait accompli and argues God out of it.
It is as if God announces His genocidal intent in order to provoke a visceral
moral response to it – “Nu, Moses, what do you have to say?” What God doesn’t
want, it seems, is the silent submission to His will so often associated with
religious orthodoxy. The Rabbis positively accentuate the boldness of what
normally would be taken as insolence by picturing Moses grabbing God and
threatening not to release Him until He submits to the demand of a pardon.[12]
Moses proves his spirituality precisely by refusing to blindly succumb to
divine fiat, and instead, transforming God Herself with his extraordinary
devotion to humanity. An opinion in the Talmud even portrays God as lamenting
the death of Moses for the loss of the one who mediated between Him and His
children.[13]

Indeed, the Rabbis push this idea
radically further. The ancient rabbis noted Deuteronomy’s inconsistencies long
before modern biblical criticism “discovered” them. However they offered a far
more radical and ethically provocative solution than the determination of
different author’s hand at play in the composition of the text. Some laws in
Deuteronomy, which contradict previous versions of them in the Torah, are
attributed to Moses’ own creative revisions, which God subsequently endorses.
For example, Moses replaces God’s explicit endorsement of vicarious punishment
in Exodus, visiting the iniquity of
fathers on children, with a just antithetical version in Deuteronomy- every person shall be put to death for his
own crime.[14] Moses doesn’t simply amend and repeal divine
legislation and theology to keep it current. He humanizes God.

Against this background the
Torah’s ending is recast from a cruel insensitive scene into one that
poignantly depicts a final reunion of two dedicated friends who have mutually
enriched each other’s existences. Should Moses have extended his leadership
tenure and guided the people into the land he would have been faced with simply
more of the same anguish and suffering he had experienced up until this point.
It would surely have entailed the wrangling, the complaints, the jealousy, and
the power struggles that accompany the burdens of state building. God privileges
the visionary Moses with an ocular vision- and
God showed him the whole land[15] – that guarantees the posthumous success
of his efforts. God does not invite Moses up the mountain to deny him entry
into the Promised Land (I have let you
see it with your own eyes But you
shall not cross there[16]), but rather to preempt the pain of doing so,
while assuring him that his vision will inevitably become a reality. The verse
reads better as “I have let you see it with your own eyes and there you need not cross.” Moses is thus spared
being mired in the partisan machinations that, as the historical record of the
books of Joshua to the end of Kings evidence (let alone the contemporary
history of the modern Jewish state!) would certainly have ensued. His record
then of autonomy and initiative, even in the face of divine obstinacy, is
preserved and remains untarnished by the political intrigue that would have
inevitably consumed him to the very end.

The final three verses spell out
the absolute uniqueness of Moses’ three pronged legacy- an unparalleled face to face intimacy of with God; the
efficacy of the miracles that the Lord
sent him to display in Egypt against Pharaoh; and all the great might and awesome power that Moses displayed before
Israel.[17] Moses’ singularity is first evident in his private
life communing with God, and then in two dimensions of his public life,
combatting enemies and sustaining friends. Yet, note the subtle distinction
made between Moses as God’s emissary vis-à-vis the Egyptians in the second last
verse, and Moses in his own capacity vis-à-vis Israel in the last. It may have
taken miracles to convince the taskmasters of the Israelite God’s invincibility
to release their repressive stranglehold on their slaves. However, the
establishment of a cohesive nation and its continuing viability cannot rest on
miracles and otherworldliness. That requires human autonomy and human
sensitivity to the social, political, and moral dimensions of a human polis,
which Moses qua Moses independently
sets in motion for his successors to follow.

Rashi’s Torah commentary
analogously ends with a striking midrashic explication of this final verse that
accentuates its extraordinary emphasis on the human dimension. Rashi oddly
identifies that awesome power wielded
by Moses in front of the entire nation of Israel with his breaking of the
Tablets at Sinai. As Rashi states, Moses “decided on his own to break the
tablets publically and God’s will acquiesced to his will, offering him
congratulations (yishar kochacha) on
breaking them.”[18] Rabbinically the Torah’s ending picks up on its patent
sense of concentrating on human capability, but empowering it to the utmost
extent of overcoming God, of persuading God to defer to the human perspective.
In fact this midrash is the very source for the idiomatic salutation of yasher koyach (may your strength be
firm) in response to any job well done, particularly those that benefit
community. Every single positive human accomplishment and societal contribution
then resonates with its origins in Moses’ exertion of the very outer limits of
human capacity.

This is why it is so important
for the Torah, despite its minimalist narrative style, to emphasize the
seemingly superfluous detail of the hiddenness of Moses’ grave- no one knows his burial site to this day.[19]
Given the phenomenon prevalent in our own time of worshipping dead
saints, it is not difficult to imagine the idolization Moses’ gravesite would
have certainly attracted. Shockingly perhaps to many, yet soberly, Moses
Maimonides discourages frequenting cemeteries and halachically rules in his
legal code against the erection of monuments on the graves of the righteous (tzadikim), “for their words are their
memorials.”[20] As Moses’ life and death illustrate, Judaism must
never lapse into a cult of the dead but must be a celebration of life. Moses’
grave is concealed precisely so that the focus will always be directed toward a
life lived and profound teachings transmitted.

There is a well known debate in
the Talmud concerning the authorship of the last eight verses in the Torah that
record Moses’ death, with one opinion attributing them to Joshua’s hand.
However, even those that consider Moses to have penned the report of his own
death admit that there is a change in its manner of transcription, imagining
Moses writing in an inconsolable silence, “with tears.” Even more moving is the
alternative interpretation of this phrase where the words on the parchment were
literally inscribed with tears rather than ink. An intriguing halakhic consequence
regarding the rules governing the formal reading of these final verses in the
synagogue informs this heartrending debate. Its ambiguous Talmudic formulation
that a single
individual reads them
attracts a number of interpretations, but the dominant one is that they must be
read as one unit by one person without any interruption (Rashi).[21] Maimonides
however interprets it stunningly and uniquely as dispensing with the standard
requirement of a prayer quorum of ten males (minyan) for their recitation! His rationale is “since the sense of
these verses refers to what occurred after the death of Moses they have become
distinct.”[22] Maimonides’ ruling strikingly affords a normative
framework for my philosophically theological reading the Torah’s final scene.
His halakha captures the shift in narrative focus and mood of the transition
from ink to tears, from the people at the foot of the mountain to Moses alone
at its summit, from community to the solitary individual. It promotes a
dramatic reenactment of everything I have argued about Moses’ characterization
in these final verses- a demarcation of a private space for the individual, for
the emergence of one’s uniqueness, for a semblance of the relational spiritual
intimacy of the face to face, and for
the creative power of the single person who stands out from the crowd. By
granting halakhic legitimacy to this Torah reading outside the formal framework
of a minyan, Maimonides transforms every Simchat Torah into the possibility of
momentarily experiencing, however partially, the awesome power of Judaism’s incomparable lonely man of faith.

And so the Torah ultimately
climaxes, neither with an impressive tombstone, nor with preternatural
transcendence that is the subject of its penultimate verse, but with the spiritual
strength and moral defiance of a single human being. It carves out a space for
human beings in what can all too often slip into a dangerously God intoxicated
universe that overwhelms human autonomy rather than inspire it. It concludes
with humanness rather than godliness. That is Moses’ life and that is his
epitaph- a joyful and Jewish sense of an ending.

_____________________________________________________

[1]
Exodus 2:22.

[2]
Ibid, 3:11.

[3]
Ibid, 4:1.

[4]
Ibid, 4:10.

[5]
Num. 12:3.

[6]
Deut. 34:4.

[7]
Num. 20:12.

[8]
See his seminal study in James Kugel, “Two Introductions to Midrash,” Prooftexts 3:2 (May 1983): 131-155,
reprinted in Geoffrey Hartman and Sanford Budick, eds., Midrash and Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986),
95-97.

[9]
Exod 33:11.

[10]
Exod 3:14.

[11]
Ibid, 2:25.

[12]
bBerakhot 32a.

[13]
bSotah 13b. Here I follow Rashi’s
explanation. Maharsha, in his Hidushe
Aggadot, actually identifies this talent directly with assuaging God’s
anger against Israel because of the golden calf incident.

[14]
On this see Tanhuma, Shofetim 19.
There are many other sources where not only Moses, but patriarchs, other
prophets, and even rabbinic sages convince God of the correctness of their
opinions and actions. To mention just a select few see for example Shemot Rabbah 15:20, Bereshit Rabbah, 44:21; and Midrash Tehillim 4 that commences with
the idea that this ability singles out the greatness of the Jewish nation.

[15]
Deut. 34:1.

[16]
Ibid, 34:4.

[17]
Ibid, 34:10-12.

[18]
See Sifrei 357 and bShabbat 87b.

[19]
Deut. 34:6.

[20]
Mishneh Torah, Avel, 4:4.

[21]
bMenachot 30a; bBava Batra 15a.

[22]
Mishneh Torah, Tefillah, 13:6. Rabad,
caustically attacks this ruling as “bizarre,” sarcastically questioning
“Where did the quorum go?”