Message from Professor Haym Soloveitchik
In the newly-published issue of the Jewish Quartlerly Review (Spring 109:2), there is an exchange between Robert Brody and Haym Soloveitchik on the “Third Yeshivah of Bavel” (https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/
10 thoughts on “Message from Professor Haym Soloveitchik”
Since we are on the topic of Professor Haym Soloveitchik, I would like to ask a question.
Professor Soloveitchik, was supposed ot come out with three books; a. Collected Essays Volume , His book on Yayin in English and his rupture and reconstruction redone.
Does anyone know where they are holding in publishing?
Thanks.
Collected Essays 3 will be published in September
Thanks! great to hear.
What about in regards to the other 2 books?
>> Does anyone know where they are holding in publishing?
Where they are holding, you ask? Mistama they’re still holding in shakla vetarya on the inyan.
The format is, if not quite unreadable, certainly rebarbative. I read the previews of the two articles and the debate looks fascinating. but I won’t be able to read it all until my free JSTOR membership catches up in 4 years.
Do any of the participants in this actually need to boost their publication list by publishing in journals that only people actually in universities can read?
A generous soul was kind enough to send me the articles (thankyou!)
I have 3 comments
1) A lot of work has been done on the genetic history of Ashkenazi Jews (both because they are an interesting and rare example of a group who moved about a lot, and because a lot of geneticists are Ashkenazi Jews). As I understand it, the consensus is that Ashkenazi Jews are descendants of a small group of male Jews from the Levant who took wives from the gentile population in Italy and were then almost totally endogamous. It seems a little odd to see a debate about the origins of Ashkenazi Jewry that completely ignores an entire category of relevant information.
2) A lot seems to hinge on the Aramaic issue. Does the Aramaic proficiency of Ashkenazi scholars indicate that their recent ancestors were Aramaic speakers or that they just worked really hard at learning Aramaic? It seems to me that this question can only be answered by having a trained linguist do a systematic study of thousands of examples. Without that it’s just two very learned people giving their subjective impressions.
3) If Asheknazi Jews were the close descendants of those who had chosen to study the Bavli over the Yerushalmi, then this would go some way to explaining their unique style of limmud. In Bavel itself, they studied the Bavli because it was what was handed down to them; it therefore makes sense that as the intellectual climate changed they would relegate parts of it that seemed less relevant or interesting. However, if you have made a choice to study Bavli that would presumably be because you thought that its distinct style was actually superior. Hence you would want to study in detail the back and forth of the sugya rather than just skipping to the conclusion, you would want to study all of Kodashim, and you would want to study the longer, more ‘literary’ aggadata.
Can you point to some sources for this “consensus” I never heard of? Or is it another theory, like Koestler’s Khazar theory, to discredit the Ashkies as gentile fake Jews?
No problem:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/063099v1
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2013/10/08/ashkenazi-jewish-women-descended-mostly-from-italian-converts-new-study-asserts/
https://www.the-scientist.com/daily-news/genetic-roots-of-the-ashkenazi-jews-38580
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews#Mt-DNA_of_Ashkenazi_Jews
I found this unsettling when I first read about it, but I got over it. Either you believe in giyur or you don’t. Megilat Rut doesn’t discredit malchut beit david.
(Parenthetically, the Khazar theory – which is rejected by nearly all geneticists – goes back at least 150 years before Koestler.)
I left a comment with a link to a number of scientific papers, but I think it hit a spam filter or something. So I suggest starting on the Wikipedia page on Jewish genetic history and working from there.
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