[1]: א״ל הקב״ה … יודע אני כוונתו של אהרן היאך היתה לטובה On a Short Wedding Wish to the Lichtensteins from the Pen of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg

[1]: א״ל הקב״ה … יודע אני כוונתו של אהרן היאך היתה לטובה

On a Short Wedding
Wish to the Lichtensteins from the Pen of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg

By Shaul Seidler-Feller

Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, zts”l, the late, lamented, “irreplaceable”[2] gedol ha-dor of the Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist communities,[3] has been characterized by those who knew him as a larger-than-life – indeed, angelic[4] – leader whose complete command of every facet of Torah learning was matched only by his sterling character and superlative (almost Hafets Hayyim-like) piety.[5] One of the things that struck me most, however, in listening to and reading several of the eulogies delivered or published after his passing was precisely how genuinely human this prince among men was in his personal and family life. Mrs. Esti Rosenberg, one of Rav Lichtenstein’s daughters and the head of the Stella K. Abraham Beit Midrash for Women – Migdal Oz, used the biblical metaphor of “a ladder set up on the earth, whose head reached unto heaven” (Gen. 28:12)[6] to capture how her father managed to radiate both a rarefied aura of sanctity and, crucially, a true humanity that extended to such mundane matters as doing most of the laundry in the house,[7] getting the kids ready in the mornings,[8] helping them with their homework in the evenings,[9] coming to learn with them after seder twice a week,[10] making sure to eat dinner with them almost every night,[11] washing the dishes after Shabbat had ended so that his kids would not fight over whose responsibility it was,[12] attending their performances in the Ezra youth group or at school,[13] teaching them how to ride a bike,[14] playing Scrabble and chess with them,[15] taking an interest in their friends,[16] buying them gifts and clothing during his visits to the States,[17] etc. – all of them activities that might be undertaken by normal devoted fathers but that I think we usually, rightly or wrongly, do not associate with people of Rav Lichtenstein’s intellectual caliber and spiritual stature. Indeed, in the words of Rabbi Avishai David, a student of Rav Aharon’s, “Rav Lichtenstein was a normal gadol ba-Torah, a very normal gadol ba-Torah.”[18]

And, of course, the same level of devotion was manifest in his relationship with his wife, Dr. Tovah Lichtenstein (nee Soloveitchik). Rav Aharon’s children reflected at the levayah on the mutual respect and unwavering support each partner showed the other,[19] while his students described some of the (ever-modest) manifestations of their affection for one another.[20] Dr. Lichtenstein herself summed it up best in a video produced in honor of her husband’s eightieth birthday when she said, “He invested both intellectually and emotionally in our children.[21] And he invested in our marriage as well – he was not only a family man but also a husband.”[22]

It is in this context, then, that I wish to digress for a moment and travel back in time to the Lichtensteins’ wedding, the point at which this whole story started, by way of a unique text discovered by Menachem Butler in a volume on the shelves of Yeshiva University’s Mendel Gottesman Library of Hebraica/Judaica. The year is 1959, and Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg (1884–1966), famed prewar rector of the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin and author of the Seridei esh compendium of responsa, halakhic novellae, and topical essays, is living out the last stage of his life in Montreux, Switzerland. Meanwhile, across the ocean in the United States, Rav Lichtenstein has just received semikhah from Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, having completed his doctorate in English literature at Harvard two years prior,[23] and is engaged to be married to Tovah Soloveitchik, daughter of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Rav Aharon’s rav muvhak.[24] The couple originally planned to wed Tuesday night, 22 Kislev 5720 (December 22, 1959), in the Dorothy Quincy Suite of the John Hancock Building in Boston, the bride’s hometown (see Fig. 1).[25]

Fig. 1

In anticipation of the joyous occasion, to which he apparently could not arrive in person, Rav Weinberg sent an inscribed volume of Yad sha’ul,[26] a collection of essays compiled in memory of his beloved talmid muvhak (and the person primarily responsible for bringing him to Montreux in the first place),[27] Rabbi Saul Weingort (ca. 1914–1946),[28] who had passed away following a tragic train accident while on his way to deliver a shi‘ur at the yeshivah in Montreux.[29] Through some serendipitous twist of fate, it is this copy of the sefer which made its way into the open stacks of the Gottesman Library. The dedicatory text (see Fig. 2) and my translation thereof follow:

Fig. 2

מזכרת ידידות

ושי לחתונה

של הרה״ג ד״ר אהרן ליכטנשטיין

עב״ג

מרת טובה סולוביציק ילאי״ט

בתו

של גאון הדור ותפארתו

ידידי הגאון הגדול מאוה״ג

מהרי״ד הלוי סולוביציג [!][30] שליט״א

שתתקיים במז״ט ובשעה מוצלחת

בכ״ב לחודש כסליו שנת תש״כ

ויה״ר שהזוג היקר יתברך

ממעון הברכות בחיים ארוכים

טובים ומאושרים ומוצלחים בכל

דרכי חייהם, והבית אשר יוקם

,יהי׳ לשם ולתפארת בישראל

ולמקור עונג ושמחת עולמים

.להוריהם הדגולים

יחיאל יעקב וויינברג

מונתרה, ח׳ בכסליו, תש״כ

A gift and token of friendship presented on the occasion of the marriage of the ga’on, Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein, to his soul mate, Ms. Tovah Soloveitchik[31] – may their years be long and good – the daughter of this generation’s pride and splendor, my friend, the great ga’on and Luminary of the Diaspora, our teacher, Rabbi Joseph B. ha-Levi Soloveitchik – may his years be long and good, amen – which is set to take place, under a lucky star and at an auspicious hour, on 22 Kislev [5]720. May it be His will that this precious couple be blessed from the Abode of Blessing with long, good, and joyous lives and with success in all of their endeavors. And may the home that they build be of fame and of glory in Israel [see I Chron. 22:5] and a source of eternal delight and happiness for their distinguished parents.
Jehiel Jacob Weinberg
Montreux, 8 Kislev [5]720 [December 9, 1959]

I think this text is historically significant for at least two reasons. First, while I am unaware of any subsequent contact between the Lichtensteins and Rav Weinberg following the wedding,[32][32] this message certainly attests to a longstanding relationship of mutual regard
between Rabbis Weinberg and Soloveitchik, two leading rashei yeshivah whose formative years were spent in both the Lithuanian yeshivah world and the German academy. We know from other sources that they first met while the Rav was a student at the University of Berlin in the 1920s; according to testimony cited by Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff, the Rav audited classes at Rav Weinberg’s Seminary during the 1926–1927 academic year.[33] Their encounters extended well beyond the classroom, however,[34] and even though Rav Weinberg was generally not enamored of the Brisker derekh ha-limmud espoused by Rav Soloveitchik and his forebears,[35] these two intellectual powerhouses maintained a deep appreciation for one another throughout their lives[36] – as can certainly be seen in Rav Weinberg’s above inscription.

The second issue that I wish to discuss here relates to the date of the wedding itself. As of 8 Kislev 5720, Rav Weinberg, quite justifiably, thought that it would take place two weeks hence. However, that very evening, December 9 – the same night the Rav delivered the aforementioned (n. 35) hesped for his uncle, Rabbi Isaac Ze’ev Soloveitchik (1886–1959) – Rav Soloveitchik “informed his family that he had been diagnosed with colon cancer, and would be returning to Boston the next day for surgery. His daughter Tovah and her fiancé R. Aharon Lichtenstein postponed their wedding (which had been set to take place in the coming days) until a few weeks later, so that the Rav could participate.”[37] Thus, the wedding was not actually held until Tuesday night, 27 Tevet 5720 (January 26, 1960) (see Figs. 3 and 4),[38] something Rav Weinberg could not have predicted at the time he penned his wishes to the young couple.

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

III

In any case, returning to the present after our brief historical sojourn, it seems to me that, aside from all he taught us about avodat Hashem, lomdes, morality, and how to live as deeply committed Jews in the modern world, Rav Lichtenstein also modeled what it means to be a “totally devoted” family man.[39] As Rabbi Menachem Genack, who began his undergraduate studies at Yeshiva College when Rav Lichtenstein was already a rosh kolel in RIETS, remarked, “Rav Aharon’s gadlus batorah is well-known, but less celebrated is his gadlus as a father and as a son, his commitment and dedication to his family. Rav Aharon was always learning, but nevertheless managed to spend time with all of his children.”[40] Indeed, anyone who sees the pictures of Rav Aharon and his family featured in the aforementioned video will immediately understand what Rabbi Mayer Lichtenstein meant when he said that his father fulfilled the talmudic principle of ner hanukkah ve-ner beito, ner beito adif (Shabbat 23b).[41] With this background, it should not surprise us that, when asked, “What are you most proud of having accomplished during these years of service?” Rav Lichtenstein answered:

Looking back over
the past 50 years, what I am proudest of is what some would regard as being a
non-professional task. I’m proudest of having built, together with my wife, the
wonderful family that we have. It is a personal accomplishment, a social
accomplishment, and a contribution – through what they are giving and will
give, each in his or her own way – in service of the Ribbono shel Olam in the future.[42]

I think the lesson for us, his students, is clear. May we be zokheh to rise to the challenge of carrying forth all aspects of Rav Lichtenstein’s multifaceted legacy for many years to come.

*
I wish at the outset to express my appreciation to yedidi, Reb Menachem Butler, ne‘im me’assefei yisra’el, for furnishing me with the opportunity, as well as many of the bibliographical sources (including the primary text itself!) required, to compose this essay. Additional thanks go to his fellow editors at the Seforim Blog for their consideration of this piece and, generally, for their great service to the public in maintaining such an active and high-quality platform for the serious discussion of topics of Jewish interest. Finally, I am indebted to my friends Eliyahu Krakowski, Daniel Tabak, and Shlomo Zuckier for their editorial corrections and comments to earlier drafts of this piece which, taken together, improved it considerably.

[1]

[1] See Shemot
rabbah (Vilna ed.) to Parashat
tetsavveh 37:2.

[2]

[2] Dr. David Berger quoted Rabbi Yosef Blau
as describing Rav Lichtenstein in this way and went on to characterize him in
similar terms here
(listen at about 1:04:40). Rabbi Ezra Schwartz said in effect the same thing here,
and in some ways went even further (listen at about 58:00).

[3]

[3] For evidence of how strongly his loss
has already been felt in the Modern Orthodox/Religious Zionist communities, one
need only peruse the ever-expanding number of articles and tributes that have
been cataloged on the Yeshivat Har Etzion websites here and here.

[4]

[4] One set of verses to which maspidim kept returning when describing
Rav Lichtenstein was those that appear in Malachi 2:5-7, together with the
rabbinic interpretation thereof: “If a given rabbi can be compared to an angel
of the Lord of Hosts, let them ask him to teach them Torah, and vice versa” (Hagigah 15b, Mo‘ed katan 17a). See the hespedim
of Rabbis Mayer Lichtenstein here
(listen at about 7:50), Mordechai Schnaidman here
(listen at about 23:00), and my friend Mordy Weisel here
(listen at about 5:05). Similarly, others have described him as angelic without
specific recourse to the verses in Malachi; see the hespedim of Rabbis Mosheh Lichtenstein here
(listen at about 9:25) and Avishai David here
(listen at about 1:03:25).

[5]

[5] So according to Rabbi Mordechai
Schnaidman here
(listen at about 16:00); see also Yosef Zvi Rimon, “Keitsad magdirim gedol dor?”
JobKatif (May 4, 2015). Similarly,
Rabbi Ari Kahn compared Rav Lichtenstein to Rabbi Israel Salanter (1810–1883) here
(listen at about 9:00 and 48:55), and Mrs. Esti Rosenberg said that the stories
people tell about her father remind her of those told about Rabbi Aryeh Levin
(1885–1969); see her interview with Yair Sheleg: “Yaledah ahat mul 700 otobusim,” Shabbat: musaf le-torah, hagut, sifrut
ve-omanut 927 (May 15, 2015).

[6]

[6] See her hesped here
(listen at about 0:35 and 2:25).

[7]

[7] See the hesped of Mrs. Tanya Mittleman, Rav Lichtenstein’s youngest, here
(listen at about 10:15).

[8]

[8] See the hesped of Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot here
(listen at about 46:55).

[9]

[9] See the hesped of my friend David Pruwer here
(watch at about 18:50).

[10]

[10] See the hespedim of Rabbis Mosheh Lichtenstein here
(listen at about 4:50), Mayer Lichtenstein here
(listen at about 12:35), and Assaf Bednarsh here
(listen at about 14:05), as well as the video produced in honor of Rav
Lichtenstein’s eightieth birthday here (watch at about
9:25 and 11:35) and that of a public conversation between Rabbi Benny Lau and
Rav Aharon and Dr. Tovah Lichtenstein on the topic of “Education and Family in
the Modern World” held in Ra’anana on May 13, 2012 here (watch at about
27:45 and 28:55). See also the recently-released essay “On Raising Children,” The Israel Koschitzky Virtual Beit Midrash
(May 2015), based on a sihah
delivered by Rav Lichtenstein in July 2007.

[11]

[11] See the video produced in honor of Rav
Lichtenstein’s eightieth birthday here (watch at about
11:25), as well as the hesped of Mrs.
Tanya Mittleman here
(listen at about 19:05) and Mrs. Esti Rosenberg’s interview with Yair Sheleg, “Yaledah ahat mul 700 otobusim.”

[12]

[12] See the hesped of Mrs. Tanya Mittleman here
(listen at about 11:00). Similarly, Rabbi Julius Berman relates in his hesped here
that when Rav Aharon would stay at his house during visits to the States, he
would always wash his own dishes when he had finished eating (listen at about
20:30).

[13]

[13] See the hespedim of Mrs. Esti Rosenberg here
(listen at about 3:05) and Mrs. Tanya Mittleman here
(listen at about 19:20), as well as the video produced in honor of Rav
Lichtenstein’s eightieth birthday here (watch at about
11:15).

[14]

[14] See the hesped of Rabbi Shay Lichtenstein here
(listen at about 23:00). See also the hesped
of David Pruwer here
(watch at about 18:45), as well as Rav Lichtenstein’s “On Raising Children.”

[15]

[15] On Scrabble, see the hesped of Rabbi Shay Lichtenstein here
(listen at about 4:40). On chess, see the video produced in honor of Rav
Lichtenstein’s eightieth birthday here (watch at about
12:20).

[16]

[16] See the hesped of Mrs. Tanya Mittleman here
(listen at about 19:10).

[17]

[17] Ibid. (listen at about 10:30).

[18]

[18] See his hesped here
(listen at about 16:50).

[19]

[19] See the hespedim of Rabbi Mayer Lichtenstein here
(listen at about 16:15 and 17:30), Mrs. Esti Rosenberg here
(listen at about 13:35 and 15:25), and Mrs. Tanya Mittleman here
(listen at about 21:30); see also that of my friend Noach Lerman here
(listen at about 37:35).

[20]

[20] Rabbi Assaf Bednarsh recounted here
that when Rav Lichtenstein would call his wife on the phone, he would address
her as “darling,” rather than “rebetsin” (listen at about 14:35). (Dr.
Lichtenstein herself reminisced here about how her
husband would sometimes jokingly address her as “Mrs. L.,” and she, in turn,
would call him “Reb Aharon” [watch at about 1:10]). Noach Lerman talked here
about how Rav Aharon would open the car door for his wife when they drove
somewhere (listen at about 34:25). Similarly, see the video here for a picture of
husband and wife going rafting together (watch at about 12:22) and, of course,
the dedication Rav Lichtenstein inscribed at the front of his two-volume Leaves of Faith (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav
Pub. House, 2003–2004): “To Tovah: With Appreciation and Admiration.”

For Rav Lichtenstein’s analysis of the Torah’s attitude
toward the institutions of marriage and family and how they square with more
modern conceptions, see his “Ha-mishpahah ba-halakhah,” in Mishpehot beit yisra’el: ha-mishpahah bi-tefisat ha-yahadut
(Jerusalem: Misrad ha-Hinnukh ve-ha-Tarbut – Ha-Mahlakah le-Tarbut Toranit,
1976), 13-30, esp. pp. 21-30; “Of Marriage: Relationship
and Relations,” Tradition 39:2
(Summer 2005): 7-35, esp. pp. 10-13 (reprinted here
in Rivkah Blau, Gender Relationships in
Marriage and Out [New York: Michael Scharf Publication Trust of the Yeshiva
University Press; Jersey City, NJ: Ktav Pub. House, 2007], 1-34, and in Aharon
Lichtenstein, Varieties of Jewish
Experience [Jersey City, NJ: Ktav Pub. House, 2011], 1-37); and “On Raising Children.”

[21]

[21] In the course of the aforementioned (n.
10) public conversation on the topic of “Education and Family in the Modern
World” here, Dr. Lichtenstein
recalled that at the berit milah of
the couple’s firstborn son Mosheh, her father, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik
(1903–1993), sensing that Rav Lichtenstein harbored grand aspirations to save
the world, spoke about the importance of the father’s role in raising his
children and not leaving the job solely to his wife (watch at about 26:00). See
Rav Aharon’s parallel account in “On Raising Children,” as
well as his comment there that “I feel very strongly about the need for
personal attention in child-raising, and have tried to put it into practice.”

[22]

[22] Watch here at about 12:15.
Incidentally, during a different part of that same public event in Ra’anana,
available here, Rav
Lichtenstein commented on the role of children in strengthening the emotional
bond between partners (watch at about 35:15; see also 53:55).

[23]

[23] Shlomo Zuckier and Shalom Carmy, “An Introductory
Biographical Sketch of R. Aharon Lichtenstein,” Tradition 47:4 (2015): 6-16, at p. 7. His dissertation would
eventually appear as Aharon Lichtenstein, Henry
More: The Rational Theology of a Cambridge Platonist (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1962).

[24]

[24] According to my friend Jonathan Ziring, in
an e-mail communication dated May 28, 2015, the Lichtensteins first met, by
chance, at the home of Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik (1917–2001), the Rav’s brother
and another major influence on Rav Lichtenstein. The Rav would later encourage
Rav Aharon to court his daughter, and the rest, as they say, is history.

[25]

[25] Image courtesy of Naftali Balanson’s Facebook page, as brought
to my attention by Rabbi Jeffrey Saks.

[26]

[26] Jehiel Jacob Weinberg and Pinchas Biberfeld (eds.), Yad
sha’ul: sefer zikkaron a[l] sh[em] ha-rav d”r sha’ul weingort zts”l (Tel Aviv: The
Widow of Saul Weingort, 1953).

[27]

[27] See Rav Weinberg’s memorial essay,
“Le-zikhro,” printed at the beginning of Yad
sha’ul, pp. 3-19, at p. 13.

[28]

[28] The date of Rabbi Weingort’s birth seems
somewhat controversial. Rav Weinberg himself, in “Le-zikhro,” 4,
estimates that his student was born in either 5673 or 5674 (1913 or 1914),
whereas the frontmatter
of the Yad sha’ul volume gives the
precise date 12 Kislev 5675 (November 30, 1914); Marc B. Shapiro, Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of
Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, 1884–1966 (London; Portland, OR: Littman
Library of Jewish Civilization, 1999), 161, claims he was born in 1915; and the website of the Yad Shaoul
kolel in Kokhav Ya’akov, opened in
2011 and dedicated in Rabbi Weingort’s memory, concurs with Shapiro.

[29]

[29] See Weinberg, “Le-zikhro,” 15.

[30]

[30] Most readers are probably familiar with
the more common Hebrew spelling of “Soloveitchik” with a final kof. Rav Weinberg, however, generally
preferred ending the name in a gimel
(except, strangely, in the case of the Rav’s daughter Tovah).

[31]

[31] Dr. Lichtenstein would go on to complete
her doctoral studies in social work at Bar-Ilan University following the
family’s arrival in Israel in 1971, writing her dissertation on “Genealogical
Bewilderment and Search Behavior: A Study of Adult Adoptees Who Search for
their Birth Parents” (1992). She is therefore referred to here without her
doctoral title.

[32]

[32] It should be noted that Rav Lichtenstein
served as coeditor of the rabbinic periodical Hadorom during the mid-1960s and, as such, may have been involved
in editing some of Rav Weinberg’s last publications to appear during his
lifetime. (For a partial bibliography of Rav Weinberg’s oeuvre, see Michael
Brocke and Julius Carlebach, Biographisches
Handbuch der Rabbiner: Teil 2: Rabbiner im Deutschen Reich, 1871–1945, vol.
2 [Munich: K. G. Saur, 2009], 639-640 [no. 2657]. For a fuller inventory, see Shapiro,
Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy, 239-246.) Discovery and analysis of any
potential remaining correspondence between the two during this period remain
scholarly desiderata.

[33]

[33] See Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff, The Rav: The World of Rabbi Joseph B.
Soloveitchik, ed. Joseph Epstein, vol. 1 (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Pub. House,
1999), 27 with n. 13. Similarly, see Shalom Carmy, “R. Yehiel Weinberg’s Lecture on Academic Jewish
Scholarship,” Tradition
24:4 (Summer 1989): 15-23, at p. 16.

[34]

[34] See Werner Silberstein, My Way from Berlin to Jerusalem, trans.
Batya Rabin (Jerusalem: Special Family Edition Published in Honor of the Author’s 95th
Birthday, 1994), 26-27, as quoted in Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik: The Early Years,” Tradition 30:4 (Summer 1996): 193-209,
at p. 197; idem, The Rav, 28; and idem, From
Washington Avenue to Washington Street (Jerusalem; Lynbrook, NY: Gefen; New
York: OU Press, 2011), 108 (available here).

[35]

[35] See his letter to Rabbi Jacob Arieli of
Jerusalem composed sometime after 2 Nisan 5711 (April 8, 1951), as reproduced
in Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, Seridei esh:
she’elot u-teshuvot hiddushim u-bei’urim be-dinei orah hayyim ve-yoreh de‘ah, vol. 2 (Jerusalem:
Mossad Harav Kook, 2003), 355-357 (sec. 144), at pp. 356-357; his letters to Dr. Gabriel Hayyim Cohn,
dated 27
Tevet 5725 (January 1, 1965) and 19 Kislev 5726 (December 13, 1965), as
reproduced in Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, Kitvei
ha-ga’on rabbi yehiʼel yaʻakov weinberg, zts”l, ed. Marc B. Shapiro, vol. 2
(Scranton, PA: Marc B. Shapiro, 2003), 219 n. 4 (esp. the latter one); and the
beginning of the selection from his eulogy for Rabbi Weingort printed in Yad sha’ul, 16. For a partial translation of the Rav’s famous hesped “Mah dodekh mi-dod,” which
originally appeared in Hebrew in Hadoar
43:39 (September 27, 1963): 752-759 and is referred to by Rav Weinberg in the
last letter cited above, see Jeffrey Saks, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on the Brisker Method,” Tradition 33:2 (Winter 1999): 50-60.

For further discussion of these and similar sources, see
Judith Bleich, “Between East and West: Modernity and
Traditionalism in the Writings of Rabbi Yehi’el Ya’akov Weinberg,” in Moshe Z. Sokol
(ed.), Engaging Modernity: Rabbinic
Leaders and the Challenge of the Twentieth Century (Northvale, NJ;
Jerusalem: Jason Aronson Inc., 1997), 169-273, at p. 239; Marc B. Shapiro, “The Brisker Method Reconsidered,” Tradition 31:3 (Spring 1997): 78-102, at
p. 86, with n. 25; idem, Between the
Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy, 194-195, with nn. 95-98; and Nathan
Kamenetsky, Making of a Godol: A Study of
Episodes in the Lives of Great Torah Personalities, vol. 1, 1st
ed. (Jerusalem: Hamesorah, 2002), 432-433. See also Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits’
assessment of his teacher’s derekh
ha-limmud in “Rabbi Yechiel Yakob Weinberg zatsa”l: My Teacher and Master,” Tradition 8:2 (Summer 1966): 5-14, at
pp. 5-10. For Rav Lichtenstein’s own reflections on the types of criticisms of
the Brisker derekh expressed by Rav
Weinberg, see his “Torat Hesed and Torat Emet: Methodological Reflections,”
in idem, Leaves of Faith, 1:61-87,
esp. at pp. 78-83, as well as an earlier version of this essay cited in
Shapiro, “The Brisker Method Reconsidered,” 93-94. (I am indebted
to Eliyahu Krakowski for bringing the Kamenetsky and Lichtenstein references to
my attention.) See also Aharon Lichtenstein, “The Conceptual Approach to Torah
Learning: The Method and Its Prospects,” in idem, Leaves of Faith, 1:19-60, esp. at pp. 43-44, 48-50.

As an aside, and as far as I can tell, allusions to a
“Rabbi Moses Soloveitchik” in Rav Weinberg’s published works, excluding those made
in the above letters, generally refer not to the Rav’s father (1879–1941) but
to his Swiss first cousin (1915–1995), son of Rabbi Israel Gerson Soloveitchik
(1875–1941), son of Rabbi Hayyim Soloveitchik (1853–1918).

[36]

[36] Indeed, Rav Weinberg would consistently
refer to the Rav in writing by his honorific rabbinic handle, “Ha-g[a’on]
r[abbi] y[osef] d[ov],” or a variant thereof (as in our case); see his Seridei esh, 2:196-201 (sec. 78),
at p. 198 (dated 29 Adar 5716 [March 12, 1956]), and idem, Kitvei ha-ga’on rabbi yehiʼel yaʻakov weinberg, zts”l, 219 n. 4. According to Shapiro, Between the Yeshiva World and Modern
Orthodoxy, 163, Rav Weinberg also contacted the Rav after the War to seek
his assistance during his long recovery.

For the Rav’s part, the postwar written
record with which I am familiar is a bit more reticent, although Rabbi Howard
Jachter reports the following in the context of a discussion of the prohibition
of kol ishah and Rav Weinberg’s
now-famous lenient ruling on the question:

Interestingly, I
asked Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik in July 1985 whether he agrees with this
ruling of Rav Weinberg. The Rav replied, “I agree with everything that he
wrote, except for his permission to stun animals before Shechita” (see volume
one of Teshuvot Seridei Eish). Rav Soloveitchik related his great appreciation
of Rav Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg. Rav Shalom Carmy later told me that Rav
Soloveitchik and Rav Weinberg had been close friends during the years that Rav
Soloveitchik studied in Berlin.

See Howard Jachter, “The Parameters of Kol Isha,” Kol Torah 11:17 (February 2, 2002).

For more on the shehitah controversy referred to here, see H. J. Zimmels, The Echo of the Nazi Holocaust in Rabbinic
Literature (New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1977), 183-189; Bleich,
“Between East and West,” 260-261, 271-272;
and Shapiro, Between the Yeshiva World
and Modern Orthodoxy, 117-129, 192. For Rav Soloveitchik’s own involvement
in questions relating to the humane slaughter of animals, see Joseph B.
Soloveitchik, Community, Covenant and
Commitment: Selected Letters and Communications, ed. Nathaniel Helfgot
(Jersey City, NJ: Toras HoRav Foundation, 2005), 61-67.

[37]

[37] Jeffrey Saks, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and the Israeli Chief
Rabbinate: Biographical Notes (1959–60),” BDD 17 (September 2006): 45-67, at p.
53.

[38]

[38] Fig. 3 is courtesy of Naftali Balanson’s
Facebook page, as
brought to my attention by Rabbi Jeffrey Saks. Fig. 4 derives from the video
produced in honor of Rav Lichtenstein’s eightieth birthday here (watch at about
1:03). (I am indebted to Rabbis Dov Karoll, Jeffrey Saks, and Reuven Ziegler
for confirming some of the details of the Lichtenstein wedding for me.)

[39]

[39] See the interview with Rabbi Dov Karoll
on Voice of Israel here
(listen at about 2:55). See also the hesped
of Rabbi Mosheh Lichtenstein here
(listen at about 5:15). Similarly, at a sheloshim
event held at the Hechal Shlomo Jewish Heritage Center in Jerusalem on May 18,
Mrs. Esti
Rosenberg, in speaking of her father’s self-identification with the Levites as
the prime exemplars of ovedei Hashem par excellence, commented that just as the
Levites were netunim netunim to Aaron
and his sons in Parashat be-midbar (Num.
3:9) (which also happened to be Rav Lichtenstein’s bar mitzvah parashah), so was Rav Aharon completely
dedicated to his family. See the video here (watch at about 11:40). And for a
visual representation of just how central avodat
Hashem was to Rav Lichtenstein’s core identity, see the photograph of his matsevah posted to Yeshivat Har Etzion’s
Facebook page.

[40]

[40] From a forthcoming article to be published
in Jewish Action.

[41]

[41] See his hesped here
(listen at about 10:30).

[42]

[42] See Rav Lichtenstein’s interview with
Yaffi Spodek: “Reflecting
on 50 Years of Torah Leadership,” the
YUNews blog (October 11, 2011). Similarly, see this video produced in honor
of Rav Lichtenstein receiving the Israel Prize in 2014 (watch at about 10:20),
as well as the hespedim of Mrs. Esti
Rosenberg here
(listen
at about 8:45) and Rabbi Baruch Gigi here (listen at about 16:30) and the
former’s interview with Yair Sheleg, “Yaledah ahat mul 700 otobusim.” Finally, see Rav Lichtenstein’s sihah “On Raising Children,” where
he states unequivocally: “There are very few people about whom it can […]
genuinely be said that there is something objectively more important in their
life than raising children.”

The Princess and I: Academic Kabbalists/Kabbalist Academics

ב”ה

The Princess and I[1]

Academic
Kabbalists/Kabbalist Academics

לכב’ יומא דהילולא דרשב”י ל”ג בעומר

by Josh Rosenfeld

Josh Rosenfeld is the
Assistant Rabbi at Lincoln Square Synagogue and on the Judaic Studies Faculty
at SAR High School.

This is his second
contribution to the Seforim blog. His
first essay, on “The Nazir in New York,” is available (here).

The last few decades
have witnessed the veritable explosion of “new perspectives” and
horizons in the academic study of Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism. From the
pioneering work of the late Professor Gershom Scholem, and the establishment of
the study of Jewish Mysticism as a legitimate scholarly pursuit, we witness a
scene nowadays populated by men and women, Jews and non-Jews, who have
challenged, (re)constructed, and expanded upon Scholem’s work.[2]

These men and women themselves have been
variously praised and criticized themselves for sometimes blurring the lines
between academician and practitioner of Kabbalah and mysticism.[3]
Professor Boaz Huss of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has done
extensive work in this area.[4]
One of the most impressive examples of this fusion of identities is Professor
Yehuda Liebes (Jerusalem, 1947-) of Hebrew University, who completed his
doctoral studies under Scholem, and rose to prominence himself by challenging
scholarly orthodoxies established by his mentor.

On a personal note, the
initial encounter between so-called ‘traditional’ notions of Kabbalah and
academic scholarship was a jarring one, calling into question aspects of faith
and fealty to long-held beliefs.[5]
In a moment of presumption, I would imagine that this same process is part and
parcel of many peoples’ paths to a more mature and nuanced conception of Torah
and tradition, having undergone the same experience. The discovery of
scholar/practitioners like Prof. Liebes, and the fusion of mysticism and
scholarship in their constructive (rather than de-constructive) work has served
to help transcend and erase the tired dichotomies and conflicts that previously
wracked the traditional readers’ mind.[6]

It is in this sense, and
in honor of the 33rd of the ‘Omer –
the Rosh ha-Shana of The Zohar and
Jewish Mysticism that I present here an expanded and annotated translation of
Rabbi Menachem Hai Shalom Froman’s poem and pean to his teacher, Professor
Yehuda Liebes.[7]
Study of the unprecedented relationship between the two, and other
traditional/academic academic/traditional Torah relationships remains a
scholarly/traditional desideratum.[8]

Rabbi Menachem Froman
was born in 1945, in Kfar Hasidim, Israel,
and served as the town rabbi of Teko’a in the West Bank of Israel.
During his military service, served as an IDF paratrooper and was one of the
first to reach the Western Wall.. He was a student of R. Zvi Yehuda Kook at
Yeshivat Merkaz ha-Rav and also studied Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. A founder of Gush Emunim, R. Froman was the founder of Erets Shalom and advocate of
interfaith-based peace negotiation and reconciliation with Muslim Arabs. As a
result of his long-developed personal friendships, R. Froman served as a
negotiator with leaders from both the PLO and Hamas. He has been called a
“maverick Rabbi,” likened to an “Old Testament seer,”[9]
and summed him up as “a very esoteric kind of guy.”[10]
Others have pointed to R. Froman’s expansive and sophisticated religious
imagination; at the same time conveying impressions of ‘madness’ that some of
R. Froman’s outward appearances, mannerisms, and public activities may have
engendered amongst some observers.[11] He passed
away in 2013.

R. Froman was not known
for his written output, although recently a volume collecting some of his
programmatic and public writing has appeared, Sahaki ‘Aretz (Jerusalem: Yediot and Ruben Mass Publishers: 2014).[12]
I hope to treat the book and its fascinating material in a future post at the Seforim blog. [13]

The Princess and I

Menachem Froman

Translated and Annotated
by Josh Rosenfeld

II Samuel 6:12-23

And she saw him, dancing
and leaping[14]

amongst lambs and goats

it troubled her[15]

and she despised

him in her heart that
had opened to love

she had com/passion

and she sought from her
father to be his wife[16]

And she saw him, dancing
and leaping

with her in the ways of
men amidst the longing of doves[17]

it troubled her

and she despised

him in her heart at the
moment of intimacy

she had com/passion

upon him like the
embrace of parting moment[18]

And she saw him, dancing
and leaping

amongst foreign matrons

it troubled her

and she despised

him in her heart that he
had left her in pain

and she resorted to the
honor of her father and the garb of royals

He saw her, and he leapt
and he danced

in the presence of the
glory of his God

he was troubled

and he despised

in his heart conceiving
the troubles in hers

he had com/passion

yet still returned

to his flocks and his
herds

to the dancing and
leaping he loved

______

It is through this poem, written many years ago, that I
wish to join with those who are honoring my teacher and Rebbe Muvhak [ =longtime teacher] Professor Yehuda Liebes, shlit”a [ =may he merit long life]
(or, as my own students in the Yeshiva are used to hearing during my lectures, Rebbe u’Mori ‘Yudele’ who disguises himself
as Professor Liebes…).

This poem (at least
according to its authorial intent), describes the ambivalent relationship
between two poles; between Mikhal, the daughter of Saul, who is connected to
the world of kingship and royalty, organized and honorable – and David, the
wild shepherd, a Judean ‘Hilltop Youth’ [ =no’ar
gev’aot]. Why did I find (and it pleases me to add: with the advice of my
wife) that the description of the complex relationship between Mikhal, who
comes from a yekkishe family, and
David, who comes from a Polish hasidishe family, is connected to [Prof.] Yehuda
[Liebes]? (By the way, Yehuda’s family on his father’s side comes from a city
which is of doubtful Polish or German sovereignty). Because it may be proper,
to attempt to reveal the secret of Yehuda – how it is possible to bifurcate his
creativity into the following two ingredients: the responsible, circumspect (medu-yekke)
scientific foundation, and the basic value of lightness and freedom.

Seriousness and mirth
(as he analyzes with intensity in his essay “Zohar and Eros”[19]),
formality and excess (as he explains in his book, “The Doctrine of
Creation according to Sefer Yetsirah“[20]),
contraction and expansion, saying and the unsaid, straightness ( =shura)
and song ( =shira). Words that stumble in the dark, seek in the murky mist,
for there lies the divine secret. Maimonides favors the words: wisdom and will;
and in the Zohar, Yehuda’s book, coupling and pairs are of course, quite
central: left as opposed to right, might ( =gevura)
as opposed to lovingkindness ( =hesed),
and also masculinity as opposed to the feminine amongst others. I too, will
also try: the foundation of intellectualism and the foundation of sensualism
found by Yehuda.

Do these two fundamental
aspects of Yehuda’s creativity mesh together to form a unity? This poem, which
I have dedicated to Yehuda, follows in the simple meaning of the biblical story
of the love between Mikhal and David, and it does not have a ‘happy ending’;
they separate from each other – and their love does not bear fruit. Here is
also the fitting place to point out that our Yehuda also merited much criticism
from within the academic community, and not all find in his oeuvre a unified
whole or scientific coherence of value. But perhaps this is to be instead found
by his students! I am used to suggesting in my lectures my own interpretation
of ‘esotericism’/secret: that which is impossible to [fully] understand, that
which is ultimately not logically or rationally acceptable.

I will conclude with a
story ‘in praise of Liebes’ (Yehuda explained to me that he assumes the meaning
of his family name is: one who is related to a woman named Liba or, in the changing of a name, one who is related to an Ahuva/loved one). As is well known, in
the past few years, Yehuda has the custom of ascending ( =‘aliya le-regel)[21]
on La”g b’Omer to the
celebration ( =hilula) of
RaShb”I[22]
in Meron. Is there anyone who can comprehend – including Yehuda himself – how a
university professor, whose entire study of Zohar is permeated with the notion
that the Zohar is a book from the thirteenth- century (and himself composed an
entire monograph: “How the Zohar Was Written?”[23]), can be
emotionally invested along with the masses of the Jewish people from all walks
of life, in the celebration of RaShb”I, the author of the Holy Zohar?

Four years ago, Yehuda
asked me to join him on this pilgrimage to Meron, and I responded to him with
the following point: when I stay put, I deliver a long lecture on the Zohar to
many students on La”g b’Omer,
and perhaps this is more than going to the grave of RaShb”I.[24]
Yehuda bested me, and roared like a lion: “All year long – Zohar, but on La”g b’Omer – RaShb”I!”

God’s secret is with/in those who fear him, and his
covenant makes it known.[25]

[1] I wish to thank yedidi R’ Menachem Butler for his patient guidance and assistance in the preparation of this short essay. His expertise and erudition is something worthy of true admiration. Thanks, as well, is also due to the other editors at the Seforim Blog for their consideration of this piece, and for providing such a remarkable, long-running platform for the dissemination, discussion, and study of Jewish culture and thought
[2] It is no understatement to say that there is a vast literature on the late Professor Gershom Scholem and for an important guide, see Daniel Abrams, Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory: Methodologies of Textual Scholarship and Editorial Practice in the Study of Jewish Mysticism, second edition (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2014). See also Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism 50 Years After: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on the History of Jewish Mysticism, eds. Joseph Dan and Peter Schafer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993), 1-15 (“Introduction by the Editors”); Essential Papers on Kabbalah, ed. Lawrence Fine (New York: NYU Press, 1995); Mysticism, Magic, and Kabbalah in Ashkenazi Judaism, eds. Karl Erich Grozinger and Joseph Dan (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1995); Kabbalah and Modernity: Interpretations, Transformations, Adaptations, eds. Boaz Huss, Marco Pasi and Kocku von Stuckrad (Leiden: Brill, 2010), among other fine works of academic scholarship.

For a unique example of a non-apologetic traditional engagement with Scholem’s work, see R. Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (ShaGaR), Nehalekh be-Regesh (Efrat: Mahon Kitve ha-Rav Shagar, 2010), 75-97, especially 77-78 (Hebrew), which I hope to explore in a future essay at the Seforim blog.

[3] While representing a
range of academic approaches, these scholars can be said to have typified a
distinct phenomenological approach to the academic study of Kabbalah and what
is called “Jewish Mysticism.” See Boaz Huss, “The Mystification
of Kabbalah and the Myth of Jewish Mysticism,” Peamim 110 (2007): 9-30 (Hebrew), which has been shortened into
English adaptations in Boaz Huss, “The Mystification of the Kabbalah and
the Modern Construction of Jewish Mysticism,” BGU Review 2 (2008), available online (here);
and Boaz Huss, “Jewish Mysticism in the University: Academic Study or
Theological Practice?” Zeek (December 2006), available online (here).

[4] See Boaz Huss,
“Spirituality: The Emergence of a New Cultural Category and its Challenge
to the Religious and the Secular,” Journal
of Contemporary Religion 29:1 (January 2014): 47-60; see further in Boaz
Huss, “The Theologies of Kabbalah Research,” Modern Judaism 34:1 (February 2014): 3-26; and Boaz Huss,
“Authorized Guardians: The Polemics Of Academic Scholars Of Jewish Mysticism
Against Kabbalah Practitioners,” in Olav Hammer and Kocku von Stuckrad,
eds., Polemical Encounters: Esoteric
Discourse and Its Others (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 85-104. On the difficulty
of pinning down just what is meant by the word ‘mysticism’ here, see Ron
Margolin, “Jewish Mysticism in the 20th Century: Between Scholarship and
Thought,” in Haviva Pedaya and Ephraim Meir, eds., Judaism: Topics, Fragments, Facets, and Identities – Sefer Rivkah
(=Rivka Horwitz Jubilee Volume) (Be’er Sheva: Ben Gurion University, 2007;
Hebrew), 225-276; see also the introduction to Peter Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 1-31, especially 10-19, where Schäfer attempts
to give a precis of the field and the various definitions of what he terms
“a provocative title.” See
Boaz Huss, “Spirituality: The Emergence of a New Cultural Category and its
Challenge to the Religious and the Secular,” Journal of Contemporary
Religion 29:1 (January 2014): 47-60; see further in Boaz Huss, “The
Theologies of Kabbalah Research,” Modern Judaism 34:1 (February 2014):
3-26; and Boaz Huss, “Authorized Guardians: The Polemics Of Academic
Scholars Of Jewish Mysticism Against Kabbalah Practitioners,” in Olav
Hammer and Kocku von Stuckrad, eds., Polemical Encounters: Esoteric Discourse
and Its Others (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 85-104.

On the difficulty of
pinning down just what is meant by the word ‘mysticism’ here, see Ron Margolin,
“Jewish Mysticism in the 20th Century: Between Scholarship and
Thought,” in Haviva Pedaya and Ephraim Meir, eds., Judaism: Topics,
Fragments, Facets, and Identities – Sefer Rivkah (=Rivka Horwitz Jubilee
Volume) (Be’er Sheva: Ben Gurion University, 2007; Hebrew), 225-276; see also
the introduction to Peter Schäfer, The
Origins of Jewish Mysticism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 1-31,
especially 10-19, where Schäfer attempts to give a precis of the field and the
various definitions of what he terms “a provocative title,” as well
earlier in Peter Schäfer, Gershom Scholem
Reconsidered: The Aim and Purpose of Early Jewish Mysticism (Oxford, U.K.:
Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies, 1986).

[5] For an example of the
sometimes fraught encounter and oppositional traditional stance regarding the
academic study of Kabbalah, see Jonatan Meir, “The Boundaries of the
Kabbalah: R. Yaakov Moshe Hillel and the Kabbalah in Jerusalem,” in Boaz
Huss, ed., Kabbalah and Contemporary
Spiritual Revival (Be’er Sheva: Ben Gurion University Press, 2011),
176-177. Inter alia, Meir discusses
the adoption of publishing houses like R. Hillel’s Hevrat Ahavat Shalom of “safe” academic practices such as
examining Ms. for textual accuracy when printing traditional Kabbalistic works.
See also R. Yaakov Hillel, “Understanding Kabbalah,” in Ascending Jacob’s Ladder (Brooklyn:
Ahavat Shalom Publications, 2007), 213-240; and the broader discussion in
Daniel Abrams, “Textual Fixity and Textual Fluidity: Kabbalistic
Textuality and the Hypertexualism of Kabbalah Scholarship,” in Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory:
Methodologies of Textual Scholarship and Editorial Practice in the Study of
Jewish Mysticism, second edition (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2014), 664-722.

[6] For a scholarly
overview of Liebes’ work, see Jonathan Garb, “Yehuda Liebes’ Way in the
Study of the Jewish Religion,” in Maren R. Niehoff, Ronit Meroz, and
Jonathan Garb, eds., ve-Zot le-Yehuda –
And This Is For Yehuda: Yehuda Liebes Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem: Mosad
Bialik, 2012), 11-17 (Hebrew); and for an example of a popular treatment of
Liebes, see Dahlia Karpel, “Lonely Scholar,” Ha’aretz (12 March 2009), available online here
(http://www.haaretz.com/lonely-scholar-1.271914).

[7] The poem and essay were
first published in Menachem Froman, “The King’s Daughter and I,” in
Maren R. Niehoff, Ronit Meroz, and Jonathan Garb, eds., ve-Zot le-Yehuda – And This Is For Yehuda: Yehuda Liebes Jubilee Volume
(Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2012), 34-35 (Hebrew). The translation and
annotation of this essay at the Seforim
blog has been prepared by Josh Rosenfeld.

[8] For
a sketch of the (non)interactions of traditional and academic scholarship in
the case of Gershom Scholem, see Boaz Huss, “Ask No Questions: Gershom
Scholem and the Study of Contemporary Jewish Mysticism,” Modern Judaism 25:2 (May 2005) 141-158. See also Shaul Magid, “Mysticism,
History, and a ‘New’ Kabbalah: Gershom Scholem and the Contemporary
Scene,” Jewish Quarterly Review
101:4 (Fall 2011): 511-525; and Shaul Magid, “‘The King Is Dead [and has
been for three decades], Long Live the King’: Contemporary Kabbalah and
Scholem’s Shadow,” Jewish Quarterly
Review 102:1 (Winter 2012): 131-153.

[9] See
the obituary in Douglas Martin, “Menachem Froman, Rabbi Seeking Peace,
Dies at 68,” The New York Times (9 March 2013), available online (here).
Speaking to a member of the Israeli media at R. Froman’s funeral, the author
and journalist Yossi Klein Halevi described “Rav Menachem” as
“somebody who, as a Jew, loved his people, loved his land, loved humanity
– without making distinctions, he was a man of the messianic age, he saw
something of the redemption and tried to bring it into an unredeemed
reality,” available online here (here).

[10] R. Froman’s mystical
political theology permeated his own personal existence. Even on what was to
become his deathbed, he related in interviews how he conceived of his illness
in terms of his political vision: “How do you feel?” “You are
coming to me after a very difficult night, there were great miracles. It is
forbidden to fight with these pains, we must flow with them, otherwise the pain
just grows and overcomes us. This is what there is, this is the reality that we
must live with. Such is the political
reality, and so too with the disease.” (Interview with Yehoshua
Breiner, Walla! News Org.; 3/4/13, emphasis mine)

[11] See, for example, the
short, incisive treatment of Noah Feldman, “Is a Jew Meshuga for Wanting
to Live in Palestine?” Bloomberg
News (7 March 2013), available online (here),
who concisely presents the obvious paradox of “The Settler Rabbi” who
nevertheless advocates for a Palestinian State, and outlines the central
challenges to R. Froman’s “peace theology” from practical security
concerns for Jews living in such a state to the challenges of unrealistic
idealism in R. Froman’s thought.

[12] A presentation of some
of the first translations of some of Sahaki
‘Aretz’ fascinating material, can be seen online (here).

[13] A preliminary scholarly
overview of R. Froman’s literary output and sui generis personality is the
forthcoming essay by Professor Shaul Magid, “(Re)Thinking American Jewish
Zionist Identity: A Case for PostZionism in the Diaspora.” To the best of
my knowledge, Professor Magid’s currently unpublished essay is the first
scholarly treatment of R. Froman’s writings in Sahaki ‘Aretz, although see the brief review by Ariel Seri-Levi,
“The Vision of the Prophet Menachem, Rebbe Menachem Froman,” Ha’aretz Literary Supplement (9 February
2015; Hebrew). I would like to thank Menachem Butler for introducing me to
Professor Magid.

[14] King David is at times
referred to as the badhana d’malka,
or “Jester of the King” (see Zohar, II:107a); Liebes treats the
subject at length in Yehuda Liebes, “The Book of Zohar and Eros,” Alpayim 9 (1994): 67-119 (Hebrew).

[15] Gen. 41:8

[16] For an outlining of the
parallel, sometimes oppositional, and rarely unified relationships between the
two royal lineages of Joseph and Judah, see the remarkable presentation of R.
Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izbica (1801-1854), Mei ha-Shiloah, vol. 1, pp. 47-48, 54-56. On these passages, see
Shaul Magid, Hasidism on the Margin:
Reconciliation, Antinomianism, and Messianism in Izbica/Radzin Hasidism
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 120, 147, 154, et al. The
marriage of David to Mikhal, daughter of Saul, represented an attempted
mystical fusion of the two houses and their perhaps complementary spiritual
roots, as R. Froman alludes to later in his essay.

[17] Song of Songs 2:14,
5:2. See, most recently, Michael Fishbane, The
JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 2015), 75-76, 133-135.

[18] 1 Kings 7:36, see also
b. Yoma 54b with commentary of Rashi.

[19] Yehuda Liebes,
“The Book of Zohar and Eros,” Alpayim
9 (1994): 67-119 (Hebrew)

[20] Yehuda Liebes, Ars
Poetica in Sefer Yetzirah (Jerusalem:
Schocken, 2000; Hebrew) and see the important review by Elliot R. Wolfson, “Text,
Context, and Pretext: Review Essay of Yehuda Liebes’s Ars Poetica in Sefer Yetsira,” Studia Philonica Annual 16 (2004): 218-228.

[21] See the start of this
essay, where we defined Lag ba-Omer in
the sense of the Kabbalistic/Mystical Rosh ha-Shana. For an overview of Lag ba-Omer and it’s unique connection
to the study of the Zohar, see Naftali Toker, “Lag ba-Omer: A Small Holiday of Great Meaning and Deep
Secrets,” Shana beShana (2003):
57-78 (Hebrew), available online (here).

[22] See Boaz Huss,
“Holy Place, Holy Time, Holy Book: The Influence of the Zohar on
Pilgrimage Rituals to Meron and the Lag ba-Omer Festival,” Kabbalah 7 (2002): 237-256 (Hebrew).

[23] Yehuda Liebes,
“How the Zohar Was Written,” in Studies
in the Zohar (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), 85-139. For an exhaustive survey
of all of the scholarship on the authorship of the Zohar, see Daniel Abrams,
“The Invention of the Zohar as a Book” in Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory: Methodologies of Textual
Scholarship and Editorial Practice in the Study of Jewish Mysticism, second
edition (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2014), 224-438.

[24] Towards the end of his
life, R. Froman delivered extended meditations/learning of Zohar and works of
the Hasidic masters in a caravan at the edge of the Teko’a settlement in Gush
Etzion. These ‘arvei shirah ve-Torah
were usually joined by famous Israeli musicians, such as the Banai family and
Barry Sakharov. One particular evening was graced with Professor Liebes’
presence, whereupon Liebes and Froman proceeded to jointly teach from the
Zohar. It is available online (here).

[25] Ps. 25:14; See Tikkunei Zohar 17b, 65a; For the
connection of this verse with the 33rd of the ‘Omer, see R. Elimelekh of Dinov, B’nei Yissachar: Ma’amarei
Hodesh Iyyar, 3:2. For an exhaustive discussion of the 33rd day of the
‘Omer and its connection with Rashbi, see R. Asher Zelig Margaliot (1893-1969),
Hilula d’Rashbi (Jerusalem: 1941),
available online (here), On R. Asher
Zelig Margaliot, see Paul B. Fenton, “Asher Zelig Margaliot, An Ultra
Orthodox Fundamentalist,” in Raphael Patai and Emanuel S. Goldsmith, eds.,
Thinkers and Teachers of Modern Judaism (New York: Paragon House, 1994), 17-25;
and see also Yehuda Liebes, “The Ultra-Orthodox Community and the Dead Sea
Scrolls,” Jerusalem Studies in
Jewish Thought 3 (1982): 137-152 (Hebrew), cited in Adiel Schremer,
“‘[T]he[y] Did Not Read in the Sealed Book’: Qumran Halakhic Revolution
and the Emergence of Torah Study in Second Temple Judaism,” in David
Goodblatt, Avital Pinnick, and Daniel R. Schwartz, eds., Historical Perspectives from the Hasmoneans to Bar Kokhba in Light of
the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 105-126. R. Asher Zelig
Margaliot’s Hilula d’Rashbi is
printed in an abridged form in the back of Eshkol Publishing’s edition of R.
Avraham Yitzhak Sperling’s Ta’amei
ha-Minhagim u’Mekorei ha-Dinim and for sources and translations relating to
the connection of RaShb”I and the pilgrimage (yoma d’pagra) to his grave in Meron, see (here).

מורשת הצדיק משטפנשט: עיון מחודש

מורשת הצדיק משטפנשט: עיון מחודש

צחי הרשקוביץ

רב קהילת “נצח שלמה”, פ”ת

אונ’ בר-אילן

בימים אלו נוהרים רבים להסתופף בצל אהלו של הצדיק ר’ אברהם מתתיהו פרידמן, נכדו של הריזי’נער, בנו של הבן הרביעי לחצר המלוכה, ר’ מנחם נחום פרידמן. הסיבה לכך היא יום הולדתו של הצדיק, שנלב”ע חשוך ילדים, שהוא כ”ה כסלו, נר ראשון של חנוכה. תאריך זה חקוק אף בשמו של הצדיק, המכונה אברהם על שם ר’ אברהם המלאך, בנו הדגול של המגיד ממזריץ’, סבו של הריז’ינר, וכן על שם מתתיהו החשמונאי.

כאמור, בשל העובדה שנפטר ללא שהותיר המשכיות לזרעו, החליטו תושבי העיירה שטפנשט שעל גדות נהר הפרוט שבצפון רומניה להנציחו בהקמת ישיבה על שמו (“בית אברהם”), ובהנהלת רב העיירה הצעיר באותה עת, הרב יוסף ברייער (האדמו”ר נפטר בשנת תרצ”ג, 1933 למניינם בגיל 87; הרב ברייער, יליד 1894, היה אז רק בן 39; אמנם, בכל שנותיו כרב העיירה נהג האדמו”ר שרק הרב ברייער יגיד דברי תורה על שולחנו). מאכזב במקצת לגלות שבאתר הרשמי של מוסדות שטפנשט, המאדיר את הצדיק ואת ישועותיו, העובדה שהוקמה על שמו ישיבה בעיר מגוריו איננה מוזכרת כלל ועיקר, יחד עם שמו של הרב המנציח, הרב ברייער ע”ה. נשוב לכך מיד.

למעשה, מאחר שהאדמו”ר האחרון משטפנשט מיעט ביותר באמירת “תורות” לקהל חסידיו, ומאחר שלא הותיר אחריו כתבים תורניים מסודרים וערוכים, אין לנו ממשנתו, מהוראותיו ומתורתו מאומה, וחבל על דאבדין. בשל כך, דווקא הישיבה שהוקמה על קברו (ראו ברמב”ם הל’ אבל יד, כב, בהוראה כיצד נוהגים אחר מות מלך, ומאן מלכי? רבנן!) היא כנראה הזכרון הטוב ביותר שיש בידינו ממורשתו הגדולה.

יצויין לטובה הרב ראובן ברים שפרסם בעיתון המודיע ביום השלושים לפטירת הרב ברייער כתבה יפה עליו, שהופיעה לאחר מכן גם בבטאון “תפארת ישראל” של בית רוז’ין (גליון כ, שנת תשמ”ח, עמ’ 41-39). בכתבה זו צוטט מאמר מפרי עטו של בנו של הרב ברייער, הרב פרופ’ מנחם מנדל ברייער, שעסק בישיבה המפוארת “בית אברהם”. אולם, לגודל החרפה, מאמרו של הרב ברייער צונזר בעיתון המודיע ובבטאון תפארת ישראל, וכל מעיין יגלה שלא יד עורך מקרית “קיצרה” את המובאות מדבריו.

המאמר של הרב מנחם מנדל ברייער התפרסם במקורו בספרו החשוב של הרב פרופ’ שמואל מירסקי ע”ה, מוסדות תורה באירופה בבנינם ובחורבנם, ניו-יורק תשט”ז. ספר זה ביקש לשמר מכלי ראשון את קורות עולם התורה שנכחד באבחה אחת בידי הצורר המנוול ומשתפי הפעולה עימו. בספר כתב הרב ברייער מאמר שכותרתו “הישיבות ברומניה” (עמ’ 560-517). בעמ’ 524-523 ייחד הרב ברייער מקום לישיבתו של אביו, ישיבת “בית אברהם”.

והנה, פסקה אחת מדבריו של הרב ברייער על אודות הישיבה שהקים אביו לזכר האדמו”ר משטפנשט נשמטה כלא-היתה אצל כותבי הקורות המאוחרים, וכה לשונה:

“בתכנית היו גם קורסים לגימנסיה, והתלמידים הפיקו בזה תועלת רבה ולא הצטרכו לחלל את השבת בגימנסיה ממשלתית. כבישיבה מיאסי כן גם תלמידי הישיבה משטפאנעשט התיצבו פעמיים בשנה לבחינות כלליות בגימנסיה מטעם הממשלה בבוטושן וביאסי”.

הרי לנו שלא סתם ישיבה היתה ישיבת שטפנשט, כי אם ישיבה תיכונית המשלבת קורסים בלימודי חול, ועמידה בבחינות כלליות מטעם הממשלה (למודי ליב”ה?), שהיו לתועלת רבה לבחורים הגדלים בה. הרב ברייער הצדיק לא ראה סתירה בין מורשתו החסידית הנלהבת של האדמו”ר לצורך לבסס את עולמם הכללי של תלמידיו ולהתאים אותם לאתגרי השעה.

כנראה שחסידי האדמו”ר האמיתיים, ולא אלו שמחקו את זכרו של הרב ברייער או את מפעלו החשוב, לא ראו בכך זילות של זכר האדמו”ר. הראיה לכך היא שהרב ברייער עצמו נתבקש לכהן כרב בית הכנסת ע”ש האדמו”ר משטפנשט בארה”ב בין השנים תש”ז-תשכ”ד.

זאת ועוד, משפחת ברייער גדולת הייחוס, טומנת בחובה, כנראה, את הסוד לצנזורה החמורה. הרב יוסף ברייער היה ידוע כציוני נלהב (ראו אצל הרב ד”ר יצחק אלפסי, אנציקלופדיה לחסידות, כרך ג, עמ’ 350), ובנו, הרב פרופ’ מנחם מנדל ברייער, כיהן בישיבה-יוניברסיטי (YU) כמרצה לחינוך ותנ”ך, הגם שתחום המחקר הראשון שלו היה פסיכולוגיה (הוא אף העניק ייעוץ פסיכולוגי לתלמידי האוניברסיטה כחלק מתפקידו). דומה שדי ב”חטאים” אלה בכדי להסביר את הצורך במחיקת זכרם מדברי ימי חסידות שטפנשט. אולם, תורה מחזרת אחר אכסניה שלה, ככל הנראה, ובנו של הרב פרופ’ מנחם מנדל ברייער, הלא הוא ר’ נחום דב ברייער, התעלה לימים והפך להיות אדמו”רם של חסידי בויאן (בן נוסף, ד”ר ישראל אברהם ברייער משמש מדען חלל בנאס”א). למיטב ידיעתי הוא גם האדמו”ר היחידי בארץ שבעברו לימודים בישיבת הסדר (למד תקופה מסויימת בישיבת הר עציון שבאלון שבות).

דומני שדווקא בסמיכות ליום הולדתו של הצדיק יש מקום להעניק לו במתנה את הכבוד למנציחי שמו. מי שהיו אמונים על הנצחתו לא לשם קבלת פרס, ולא מתוך הפצת קמיעות וסגולות הם הראויים להקרא נושאי דגלו. אלה שפעלו לשם הרבצת תורה לאורו ובהשראתו, וראו בה תורה שלימה ומלאה, כזו שמוכנה להתמודד עם מציאות מורכבת מבחינה דתית ואינטלקטואלית, וכזו שיוקדת בה אהבת הארץ וכמיהה לבניינה, הם ממשיכי דרכו האמיתיים.

How many children did Michal have? Explanation of a Talmudic passage in light of the writings of Josephus Flavius

How many children did Michal have? Explanation of a Talmudic passage in light of the writings of Josephus Flavius[1]

By Chaim Sunitsky

The following Talmudic passage appears in Sanhedrin 19b (we are using mostly Soncino translation):

R. Yossi was asked by his disciples: How could David marry two sisters while they were both living? He answered: He married Michal after the death of Meirav. R. Yehoshua ben Korha said: His marriage to Meirav was contracted in error, as it is said, Deliver me my wife Michal whom I betrothed unto me for a hundred foreskins of the Philistines. How does this prove it? — R. Papa answered: Because he said, My wife Michal but not ‘my wife Meirav’. Now, what was the error in his marriage [with Meirav]? [It was this:] It is written, And it shall be that the man who kills [Goliath], the king will enrich him with great riches and will give him his daughter. Now he [David] went and slew him, whereupon Shaul said to him: I owe you a debt, and if one betroths a woman by a debt, she is not betrothed. Accordingly he gave her to Adriel, as it is written, But it came to pass at the time when Meirav, Shaul’s daughter should have been given to David, that she was given to Adriel the Meholatite to wife. Then Shaul said to David, ‘If you still wish me to give you Michal to wife, go and bring me hundred foreskins of the Philistines.’ He went and brought them to him. Then he said: ‘You now have two claims on me, [the repayment of] a loan and a perutah’. Now, Shaul held
that when a loan and a perutah are offered [as kidushin], he [the would-be husband] thinks mainly of the loan; but in David’s view, when there is a loan and a perutah, the mind is set on the perutah. Or if you like, I will say, all agree that where a loan and a perutah [are offered], the mind is set on the perutah. Shaul, however, thought that [the hundred foreskins] had no value, while David held that they had value at least as food for dogs and cats. How does R. Yossi interpret the verse, Deliver me my wife Michal? He explains it by
another view of his. For it has been taught: R. Yossi used to interpret the following confused passage thus: It is written, But the king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Ayah whom she bore to Shaul, Armoni and Mephiboshet, and the five sons of Michal, the daughter of Shaul, whom she bore to Adriel the son of Barzillai, the Meholatite etc. But was Michal really given to Adriel; was she not given to Palti the son of Layish, as it is written, Now Shaul had given Michal, David’s wife, to Palti the son of Layish . . .? But Scripture compares the marriage of Meirav to Adriel to that of Michal to Palti, to teach that just as the marriage of Michal to Palti was unlawful, so was that of Meirav to Adriel. Now as to R. Yehoshua ben Korha, surely it is written, And the five sons of Michal the daughter of Shaul whom she bore to Adriel. R. Yehoshua [b. Korha] answers thee: Was it then Michal who bore them? Surely it was rather Meirav who bore them! But Meirav bore and Michal brought them up, therefore they were called by her name. This teaches you that whoever brings up an orphan in his home, Scripture ascribes it to him as though he had begotten him.

The accepted understanding of this passage is that according to Rabbi Yossi David married Michal only after her sister had five children from Adriel and died. Michal later brought up the five children as her own. The commentators[2] ask how Meirav could possibly have five children within just two and a half years of Shaul’s reign and answer that she was pregnant with twins twice, and once with the fifth child. However, according to the calculation of all the events that had to occur before David married Michal and after he ran away from Shaul, there is not enough time left for three pregnancies of Meirav[3]. We need to look for a simpler understanding of the Talmud.

The difficulty of the Gemara is with the following verse from the end of David’s life (Shmuel 2:21:8): “And the king [David] took two sons of Rizpah daughter of Ayah whom she bore to Shaul, Armoni and Mephiboshet, and the five sons of Michal, the daughter of Shaul, whom she bore to Adriel the son of Barzillai, the Meholatite …” Five children of Michal and Adriel are mentioned in this verse. All the commentators follow the explanation of our Gemara that the children were born to Meirav and Michal only raised them. But a careful reading seems to reveal that R. Yossi is not the one who holds that the five children were Meirav’s. This explanation is provided by the Gemara later according to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Karcha. If so, R. Yossi must hold that indeed Michal was the one to have the five children. Since David only took her back seven years after he became king, there was plenty of time for her to give birth to five children. But Michal was never married to Adriel, she was “married” to Palti. It’s important to understand what Rabbi Yossi is implying by his words “confused passage” (מקראות מעורבין literally mixed up verses). Apparently he means that while Michal married Palti, the verse is using the expression “married to Adriel” to teach us that the marriage of Michal to Palti was just as sinful as the marriage of Meirav to Adriel. Both marriages were based on an incorrect decision of Shaul and his Bet Din. David’s Kidushin with Meirav was declared invalid and his later Kidushin with Michal was declared invalid again[4]. Indeed Josephus Flavius (Antiquities 7:4:3) says that Michal had five children from Palti.

Now we can offer a simple understanding of the entire Talmudic passage. The students asked R. Yossi, how could David marry two sisters? They are obviously assuming that some form of Kidushin was involved when Shaul offered his (presumably older[5]) daughter to the one who kills Goliath[6]. If David was technically married to Meirav he could not marry Michal even if Meirav was incorrectly given to a different man. R. Yossi answered that Meirav died before David married Michal. R. Yehoshua ben Karcha however holds that there was no kosher Kidushin between David and Meirav. He learns it from the words in a verse: “my wife Michal”, meaning only Michal is my wife, Meirav is not. The Gemara goes into the technical explanation of why Michal’s Kidushin was valid and not Meirav’s according to R. Yehoshua ben Karcha. R. Yossi however only learns from this verse that Michal was David’s wife meaning her Kidushin was valid just as Meirav’s, and giving her to Palti was incorrect. He learns that the verse (Shmuel 2:21:8) describing David’s giving five children of Michal and Adriel to Givonim[7] were really Michal’s children from Palti and is using the expression “mixed up verses” to teach us that Michal’s Kidushin with David was valid just like Meirav’s was.[8] R. Yehoshua ben Karcha however says the verse in Shmuel 2:21:8 is not talking about Michal’s children but about Meirav’s children whom Michal raised. The Gemara goes on to give other examples where children raised by someone are considered like one’s own children.

[1] Note that this article does not claim to research the words of Tanach but only the Chazal’s explanation of it. In particular we are trying to offer a novel explanation of R. Yossi’s shita in the Gemara. We will use a novel idea supported by Yosef ben Matityahu. While he was a controversial person at best, he had excellent Jewish education and his traditions are largely reliable and generally represent the opinions of Tanaim of his time. He is quoted numerous times in Daat Sofrim and other traditional commentaries.

[2] Yad Ramah, Tosafot Harosh.

[3] See Margoilyot Hayam. He therefore concludes that we must accept the shitah of Rabeinu Yeshaya on Shmuel (1:13:1) that the two and a half years that Shaul had ruled are only considered until the time David was anointed. However this shitah is in contradiction with Seder Olam which is a product of Rabbi Yossi himself. In the commentary of Gaonim on Sanhedrin another possibility is offered that Shaul himself did not realize that Meirav had been married to Adriel when he offeredher to David. Incidentally modern scholarship supposes that Shaul ruled over Israel for more than two years and possibly the word “thirty” is missing in Masoretic text before the word “two” in Shmuel 1:13:1: “[thirty] two years he ruled in over Israel.” Abarbanel has a different explanation of our text according to which Shaul also ruled longer.

[4] It is also possible (though this is not R. Yossi’s shita) that Palti was the same person as Adriel and Shaul first gave Meirav to Adriel and later when she died soon after this marriage and David was running away from Shaul and was considered a rebel, Meirav’s sister Michal was given to Adriel who was now called Palti.

[5] See Tosafot Kidushin 52b.

[6] As to the nature of this Kidushin, we do find some cases where “work” performed is counted as Kidushin as well as saving from danger (see Kidushin 8b, in particular “saving from a dog” in 30:11). Apparently both R. Yossi and his students don’t question that some kind of Kidushin happened here, and if Meirav was no longer minor it must be that she either agreed on Shaul’s proposal or made Shaul her shliach to accept such a Kidushin as saving from a “dog” (incidentally Goliath is in fact compared to a dog, see Sota 42b).

[7] Note that according to David these children were mamzerim.

[8] As mentioned previously neither R. Yossi nor his students had any doubt that Meirav’s Kidushin was valid. Therefore the verse used that Kidushin to compare to Kidushin of Michal and emphasize that giving Michal to Palti was just as sinful as giving Meirav to Adriel. The verse therefore means: “And the king took two sons of Rizpah daughter of Ayah whom she bore to Shaul, Armoni and Mephiboshet, and the five sons of Michal, the daughter of Shaul, whom she bore to [Palti to whom she was given incorrectly just like Meirav was given to] Adriel the son of Barzillai, the Meholatite”. This may be similar to Chazal’s explanation of Zecharia 12:11: “On that day the mourning will be as great in Yerushalaim as the mourning of Hadadrimon in the valley of Megiddo”. There is no known tragic incident in our history that is related to Hadadrimon and the valley of Megiddo. The Talmud (Megilah 3a) quotes the Targum adding a number of words and relating this verse to two different events: “On that day the mourning will be as great in Yerushalaim as the mourning of [Ahab who was killed by] Hadadrimon [and the mourning of Yeshayahu who was killed] in the valley of Megiddo.

Was Professor Saul Lieberman “Orthodox” or “Conservative”? [1]

Was Professor Saul Lieberman “Orthodox” or “Conservative”? [1]

by David Golinkin

Saul Lieberman (1898–1983) is universally regarded by Talmud scholars as the foremost talmudist of his generation, and some regard him as one of the foremost talmudists of all times.

Immanuel Low wrote to him in Hebrew in 1938: “In the depth of your articles there are many sparks of the spirit of the Gaon of Vilna.” E. S. Rosenthal wrote in Hebrew in 1963: “… until we can almost say about him: there was no king like him before him, according to his custom and his method.” Jacob Neusner, who later attacked Lieberman after Lieberman had panned Neusner’s Yerushalmi translation, wrote to Lieberman on December 10, 1981: “I am enjoying Hayerushalmi Kifshuto so much, that I wanted to tell you so…. It reminds me of why I have long ago concluded you are the greatest exegete of rabbinic texts of the twentieth century and among the true greats among the ones I have studied and used—of all times.” Yitzhak Rafael wrote in Hebrew in 1983: “I am not authorized nor do I dare assert that Professor Rabbi Saul Lieberman z”l was the greatest Talmud scholar in recent generations, but it seems that no one would attempt to dispute this assertion.” David Weiss Halivni wrote in 1986: “Professor Lieberman was not only a yahid b’doro, unique in his generation, but a yahid b’dorotav, unique in all generations.” Elijah Schochet wrote in 1988: “Rabbeinu Eliyahu, the Gaon of Vilna, was born on the first day of Pesah, 1720. Rabbeinu Shaul, our own Gaon, was laid to rest on the eve of Pesah, 1983. Between them, there was no other like Saul Lieberman.”[2]

Finally, in 2002, Israel Ta-Shema recounted an amazing story that took place in 1981, in which he asked Professor Lieberman a riddle about the Yerushalmi. Ta-Shema had heard the riddle from Rabbi Shlomo Goren in 1961 and since then had been unable to find the answer. Professor Lieberman spent about three minutes in silence, during which he opened one volume of the Yerushalmi and closed it. Finally he returned to the bookshelf, pulled out Yerushalmi Sotah 2:1, and showed Ta-Shema the correct answer. Lieberman later explained to Ta-Shema that “in my youth, I would have answered immediately that the answer is not in the Yerushalmi at all. But now that I am old, I do not rely on my memory, which is already weakened; and therefore I decided to flip through all the pages of the Yerushalmi in my mind, in order to make certain that it is not found in any place. And when I arrived at chapter 2 of Sotah, I found the place and showed you.” Ta-Shema concluded the story: “I had the merit over the course of the years to be a frequent visitor to the houses of quite a few of the greatest talmidei hakhamim [scholars] of the generation and among the beki’im [those who possess encyclopedic knowledge] in their generation … but [bekiut] of such magnitude I have never seen, not before and not after, and the memory of that Shabbat has not departed from me until today.”[3]

In addition to his amazing memory and breadth of knowledge, Lieberman was one of the most prolific Talmud scholars of all times. He published 225 books and articles, for a total of approximately 11,500 pages—devoted, for the most part, to the explication of rabbinic texts.[4] Finally, he published books and articles related to almost every area of Jewish studies, including Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, Bavli, ancient piyyut, Hellenism, Greek, Latin, and medieval rabbinic literature.[5] Therefore, it is not surprising that over eighty books and articles have been devoted to Lieberman and his œuvre between 1948 and 2008.[6] Indeed, three entire books have been published about Lieberman since 2002.[7]

This essay will respond to the most recent monograph, Marc Shapiro’s Saul Lieberman and the Orthodox.[8] Professor Shapiro has shown in his writings that he is adept at archival research.[9] This monograph is no exception; it quotes and/or publishes at least twenty-five letters related to Lieberman. Indeed, it should be entitled “What the Orthodox Thought of Saul Lieberman,” since it quotes the opinions of Rabbis Yaakov Halevi Herzog, Yitzhak Nissim, Shlomo Goren, Isser Yehuda Unterman, Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook, Meir Ben-Zion Hai Uziel, Ḥayim Ozer Grodzinsky, Isaiah Karelitz, Pinchas Hirshprung, Meshulam Rathe, Mordechai Gifter, Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg, Yehudah Leib Maimon, Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky, David Zvi Hillman, Yaakov Kamenetski, Aaron Kotler, Menahem Mendel Kasher, Shlomo Yosef Zevin, Menahem Mendel Shneerson, Ze’ev Wolf Leiter, Samuel Belkin, Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, and She’ar Yashuv Cohen. We are in debt to Marc Shapiro for this very useful anthology based on archival sources.

However, it would appear that Shapiro has missed the mark regarding three critical points: (1) the character of the Jewish Theological Seminary from 1940 and following, (2) Lieberman’s motives for accepting a position at JTS and remaining there, and (3) whether Lieberman consider himself “Orthodox” or “Conservative.” This essay will address these three critical issues in Lieberman’s biography.

The Character of the Jewish Theological Seminary from 1940 and Following

Shapiro’s basic assumption is that Lieberman was “Orthodox” and JTS was “Conservative.” Thus, he writes: “It can be imagined what a shock it was for the Orthodox when in 1940 the internationally renowned Jerusalem illui Saul Lieberman accepted an invitation to join the Seminary faculty.”[10] This assumption about JTS, which repeats itself throughout the monograph, is basically incorrect, for the following nine reasons:

1. During most of the years that Lieberman taught at JTS (1940–1983), almost all of the Talmud faculty at JTS were “Orthodox” or strictly observant Jews, including Rabbis Alexander Marx, Louis Ginzberg, Louis Finkelstein, Moses Hyamson, Abraham Sofer, Moshe Zucker, H. Z. Dimitrovsky, A. S. Rosenthal, Yehezkel Kutscher, Mordechai Margaliot, Jose Faur, David Weiss Halivni, Dov Zlotnick, Israel Francus, and Shamma Friedman.

2. During the 1940s and 1950s, most of the students at JTS were observant Jews; a large percentage of them came from Orthodox homes and/or were graduates of Yeshiva College. This point is stressed by Schochet and Spiro in their recent biography of Lieberman, and more importantly, it is stressed by Shapiro himself: Between 1946 and 1957, 60% of JTS rabbinical students came from Orthodox homes and 30% were graduates of Yeshiva College.[11] Similarly, both Rabbi Isaac Klein and my father, Rabbi Noah Golinkin z”l, began their studies at Yeshiva University in the 1930s and then transferred to JTS. Rabbi Klein said that he did so in order to learn the critical methodologies of Professor Louis Ginzberg. Indeed, he received s’mikhah yoreh yoreh yadin yadin from Ginzberg. He certainly was not looking for a more lax halakhic approach.[12]

3. From 1940 to the late 1950s, the division between Orthodox and Conservative Judaism was not at all clear. Indeed, this was pointed out by Shapiro himself as well as by other scholars, such as Jonathan Sarna.[13]

4. Beginning in the 1950s, the mehitzah become the main dividing line between Orthodox and Conservative Judaism,[14] but the Seminary synagogue maintained separate seating for men and women from the days of Solomon Schechter until Professor Lieberman passed away in 1983.[15]

5. During all of the years that Lieberman taught at JTS, the Seminary synagogue did not use any of the siddurim produced by the Rabbinical Assembly and edited by Rabbis Silverman, Hadas, or Harlow. It used, instead, a rather obscure Orthodox prayer book edited by Rabbi A. Th. Philips. Indeed, I was informed by someone who prayed in the Seminary synagogue with Professor Lieberman for nine years that at one point, two of the students told Professor Lieberman that the Philips siddurim were falling apart. They, of course, wanted to replace Philips with a more modern siddur. Professor Lieberman said that he would take care of the problem. He then proceeded to purchase two boxes of brand new Philips siddurim! [16]

6. From 1940 until 1959, Higher Criticism of the Bible was not taught at JTS.[17] This opposition began way back in the days of Sabato Morais, who headed JTS from 1887 until 1897.[18] Solomon Schechter, who served as president of JTS from 1902 until 1915, called Higher Criticism “Higher Anti-Semitism.”[19] Cyrus Adler, who was president of JTS from 1915 until 1940, was also opposed to Biblical Criticism; in his day, Bible was taught at JTS with medieval Bible commentators.[20] Finally, Louis Finkelstein, who headed JTS from 1940 until 1972, was also opposed to Higher Criticism.[21] In 1944, he asked Lieberman to “gently” tell H. L. Ginsberg to write his article on biblical history in a proposed volume entitled Judaism and the Jews “from an extremely conservative point of view,” so as to “avoid various pitfalls of higher criticism.”[22]

7. Furthermore, in the 1940s when Lieberman started teaching at JTS, the rabbinical students dressed just like rabbinical students at Yeshiva University.[23]

8. More importantly, Louis Finkelstein, who together with Louis Ginzberg invited Lieberman to teach at JTS in 1940, saw JTS—as had Solomon Schechter and Cyrus Adler before him[24] —as an institution for k’lal yisrael, the collective Jewish people, and not just of the Conservative Movement. Finkelstein stated in 1941: “If someone calls us traditional, orthodox or conservative, it is he who makes a division in Judaism, not us … I think that the members of the faculty generally prefer the term ‘traditional Judaism’….”[25] After quoting this passage, Schochet and Spiro add: “Finkelstein preferred viewing JTS as an umbrella institution for all traditional Jews, which he hoped would attract to it Orthodox Jews, rather than one reflecting a specific denominational ideology. Finkelstein made no secret of the fact that he hoped that Orthodoxy would eventually find a home at the Seminary. He would therefore counsel his associates, ‘Let’s not be too Conservative; let’s not prevent [Orthodox Jews] from coming.’”[26]

Indeed, Shapiro himself stresses[27] that when Haim Zalman Dimitrovsky came to study with Lieberman at JTS in 1951, he did not even know that JTS had a connection with the Conservative Movement!

9. Finally, Shapiro himself[28] quotes a letter written by Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg in 1948, when he was informed by someone supposedly “in the know” that Finkelstein was interested in him joining the faculty, alongside Ginzberg and Lieberman. Weinberg wrote to his friend Samuel Atlas (in Hebrew): “How could it be possible that they are asking me, when they have two great teachers like L. Ginzberg and Sh. Lieberman?” Weinberg did not say that he could not teach at JTS because it was Conservative or heretical; he simply said that they did not need him, because they already had Ginzberg and Lieberman.

Thus, from 1940 when Lieberman began to teach at JTS, until 1959—and, to a large extent, until 1972, when Louis Finkelstein retired—it was difficult to call JTS a Conservative institution. The faculty and students were mostly Orthodox or traditional; the lines between the movements were not clearly drawn; the Seminary synagogue maintained separate seating and used an Orthodox prayerbook; Higher Criticism was not taught; and the students at JTS even dressed like the students at YU. Louis Finkelstein viewed JTS as an institution for k’lal yisrael and even Rabbi Weinberg had no ideological objections to teaching at JTS.

Thus, there is no basis for Shapiro’s surprise that an “Orthodox” Jew like Lieberman accepted a position teaching at a “Conservative” institution.

Lieberman’s Motives for Leaving Israel, Accepting a Position at JTS, and Remaining There Until the End of His Life

Shapiro says[29] that Lieberman’s main motives were economic security, which he did not have in Jerusalem, and a desire to draw the students at JTS nearer to Torah and Judaism. These points are undoubtedly true, but I believe that there are at least six reasons why Lieberman left Israel, came to JTS, and stayed there for forty-three years:

1. Saul Lieberman could not earn a living in Jerusalem. This is what Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan, Lieberman’s father-in-law, told Rabbi Aaron Pechenik and others,[30] and this was the reason that Lieberman later gave Pechenik for remaining there.[31] Indeed, while in Israel (1927–1940), Lieberman worked as a clerk at the Tel-Aviv Chamber of Commerce, as a teacher in Herzlia, as a part-time lecturer at the Mizrahi Teachers Institute.[32] as a secretary at Yeshivat Shaar Hashamayim, as a Talmud teacher at Hebrew University (from 1932–1937, a position from which he was fired and only received severance pay a year later),[33] and as Dean of the Harry Fischel Institute for Talmudic Research.[34]

2. Shapiro also says that Lieberman wanted to draw the students at JTS closer to Torah and Judaism,[35] as indicated by his brother Meir, by Pnina Herzog, and in a letter to Gershom Scholem from 1941. Furthermore, Lieberman himself said this in a Hebrew letter to Hapardes in 1945, which Shapiro published in 2003. There he says: “Young Jewish men are innocent (t’mimim) and there is nothing that will influence them more than the light of Torah planted by a teacher who believes in the holiness of the Torah.”36]

3. At Hebrew University, Lieberman’s Talmud course in the 1930s shrank from six to two students, he was fired, and Hebrew University refused to award him a Ph.D. for Talmuda Shel Kisrin or Tosefet Rishonim.[37] The Harry Fischel Institute, which Lieberman headed for five years, was not an academic institution. Indeed, Lieberman himself spelled out in 1937 the requirements for Talmud scholarship; the students at Harry Fischel did not possess many of those qualifications.[38] In other words, at Hebrew University he had scholars to talk to but no job, while at Harry Fischel he had a job but no one to talk to. Thus, in 1940, JTS was the only serious academic center of Jewish studies in the world, as Lieberman himself wrote to Louis Ginzberg in Hebrew on April 30, 1940: “And I also hope that I could bring benefit to your Bet Midrash, which is now the only scientific institution [i.e., of Jewish studies] in our world.”[39]

4. In 1940, and for most of the years that Lieberman taught there, JTS had the best Jewish library in the world, with a large collection of manuscripts and Genizah fragments.[40] Schochet and Spiro relate that Seminary librarian, Nahum Sarna, advised Menahem Schmelzer, his successor, to open the Rare Book Room at any time so that Lieberman could consult the thirteenth-century manuscript of the Mishneh Torah, which was placed on a table there especially for his use.[41]

5. Lieberman had a very warm relationship with Louis Ginzberg of JTS.[42] They met in 1929 when Ginzberg served as visiting lecturer at Hebrew University and Ginzberg asked Lieberman to prepare for publication Ginzberg’s lecture, “The Significance of Halakhah for Jewish History.” They then corresponded from 1930 to 1940. Louis Finkelstein explicitly praised Ginzberg for his indefatigable efforts to persuade Lieberman to come to JTS. This special relationship is evident from a Hebrew letter from Lieberman to Ginzberg from 1940.[43]

6. Finally, Lieberman had an incredibly close relationship with Louis Finkelstein, who gave Lieberman whatever he needed and treated him like a king. Their relationship has been dealt with at length by Schochet and Spiro.[44] A few examples will suffice: Rabbi Bernard Mandelbaum, long-time Vice President of JTS, said: “Finkelstein gave Lieberman whatever he needed.”[45] Lieberman said as much in his Hebrew introduction to Hilkhot Hayerushalmi in 1947: “And last but not least is my friend, Rabbi E. A. Finkelstein, the President of our Bet Midrash, who provides me with special conditions for Talmud Torah and work with all possible convenience.”[46]

But their relationship went way beyond one of providing scholarly needs. Finkelstein viewed Lieberman as the most important Talmud scholar in the world and he told him so, both privately and publicly, on a regular basis. He referred to Lieberman’s arrival in the United States as “a historic one in the development of American Judaism … Even if the Seminary across the years had done nothing else than lay the foundation for such a work [=Tosefta Kifshutah on Zera’im], the institution would have justified itself.”[47] Finkelstein further stated that “Professor Lieberman does not exist for the Seminary; the Seminary exists for Professor Lieberman.” Faculty member Professor Judah Goldin once said, “Finkelstein believed in God and worshipped Lieberman.”[48]

On December 1, 1959, Finkelstein informed Lieberman that he would become Rector of JTS, with all the powers and no administrative responsibilities: “It seems obvious to me that with your increasing preoccupation with the Tosefta Kifshutah (which …will turn out to be probably the most significant single accomplishment of the Seminary) …”[49] In a letter to Edward B. Lawson, American Ambassador to Israel, in 1955, Finkelstein introduced Lieberman as “Professor of Talmud in the Seminary and one of the most learned men in the world.”[50] Finally, when Finkelstein got Lieberman involved in the agunah dilemma in 1953, he introduced the Lieberman ketubah at the Rabbinical Assembly Convention in hyperbolic terms and compared it to the accomplishments of the tannaim.[51]

Thus, it appears that Lieberman came to JTS and stayed there for six reasons: because he could not earn a living in Jerusalem; in order to draw the students closer to Torah and Judaism; because JTS was the only scientific institution of Jewish studies in the world; because JTS had the best Jewish studies library in the world, to which he had open access at all times; because of his warm relationship with Louis Ginzberg between 1929 and 1953; and because of his unique relationship with Louis Finkelstein from the 1930s until 1983.

Did Lieberman Consider Himself “Orthodox” or “Conservative”?

Shapiro claims that Lieberman “regarded himself as an Orthodox Jew”[52] and he faults me[53] for categorizing Lieberman as a Conservative rabbi,[54] but he himself writes:

In 1959, Lieberman became rector of the Seminary, and one of his responsibilities was “guarding the general religious policy of the institution.” Thus, there is certainly justice in the assertion that whatever his personal religious commitments, Lieberman had become part and parcel of the Conservative Movement and was assisting it at the time that the Orthodox were attempting to expose what they regarded as the Conservatives’ distortion of halakhah.[55]

Shapiro’s confusion is well-justified; I myself have debated whether Lieberman considered himself Orthodox or Conservative.[56]

On the one hand, he taught at the only Conservative rabbinical seminary from 1940 until 1983, and he served as its rector from 1959 until 1983. When he proposed his takkanah regarding the ketubah to the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly in 1953, he attacked “the Orthodox rabbis”:

I saw that some of you were accused of being frightened by the Orthodox rabbis. I want to tell you that I am not frightened by them at all. I want, therefore, to give you a point of information. In truth, they were frightened, and I want you to know why they were frightened. They weren’t afraid that the Bet Din would issue some takkanot. No, not at all. They were afraid that the Bet Din will issue takkanot in accordance with the law.

As a matter of fact, one of the very important members of the Orthodox rabbis said so in many words: If this Bet Din of the Rabbinical Assembly will issue atakkanah, that will be takkanato kalkalato. It will be a great misfortune because they will get authority and that is the reason why they oppose this. Many of them think that [if] that Bet Din will begin to move in this line, the movement can become strong and it will affect them.[57]

When, during the negotiations about a Joint Bet Din, the Orthodox insisted that the RA sanction rabbis who perform a wedding even without aget, “Lieberman’s spontaneous response was that the Conservative Jews do not like inquisitions …”[58] He also wrote a letter that enabled Rabbi Theodore Friedman, a leading Conservative rabbi, to receive permission to perform weddings in Jerusalem, and another letter to Chief Rabbi Unterman in 1964, which defended the gittin performed by Rabbi Israel Silverman and other Conservative rabbis.[59]

On the other hand, Schochet and Spiro cite an undated interview in the Jerusalem Post in which “Lieberman explicitly stated that he himself was not a Conservative Jew; however, he praised Conservative Jews for their sincerity and their success in appealing to young people.”[60] Furthermore, in 1974, the Israeli daily Maariv published an article claiming that Golda Meir had asked Lieberman to influence the Conservative Movement to accept a compromise on the “Who Is a Jew” issue. Lieberman was described there as “one of the leaders of the Conservative Movement and as the Vice-President of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.” Lieberman wrote an indignant letter to the editor in Hebrew in which he denied the whole story and in which he said:

I am not one of the heads of the Conservative Movement and I am not, nor have I ever been, the Vice President of the [Jewish] Theological Seminary. I teach Torah to the Jewish people and I don’t understand much about politics.[61]

Finally, when a group of Seminary professors, graduates, and students held a “Conference on Halakhic Process” in 1979 in order to urge JTS not to ordain women, Lieberman wrote a letter to the Conference praising them for deciding to discuss “how to guard the last spark of the halakhah, that it should not be extinguished.”[62]

There are three possible ways to interpret this contradictory data. The first approach is followed by Hillel Goldberg, who, in a nasty review of Schochet and Spiro’s biography, would have us believe that Lieberman was Orthodox and taught and stayed at JTS simply because it was a cushy job which allowed him to do his research.[63] This approach contradicts everything we know about Lieberman’s piety and integrity, and barely merits a response. The second approach is put forth by Marc Shapiro, who maintains throughout his monograph that Lieberman was “Orthodox.” When he defended Conservative rabbis during the attempts to set up a joint Bet Din, “Lieberman was only reflecting on the mindset of the Conservative rabbinate, not describing his own feelings.”[64]

There is, however, a third way to interpret the data. I agree with Shapiro that Lieberman did not consider himself “Conservative.” However, neither did he consider himself “Orthodox.” An “Orthodox” Jew would not have spoken about Orthodox rabbis in the third person and in such a critical tone as Lieberman used in the 1950s. Furthermore, neither Shapiro nor Schochet and Spiro adduce even one text in which Lieberman himself calls himself “Orthodox.” Shapiro[65] simply refers to Schochet and Spiro.[66] but the latter offer no such proof. They quote Rabbi Berel Wein, who said that Lieberman “was personally an observant Jew.” They quote Rabbi Emanuel Rackman who said that Lieberman was “a Jew whose Orthodoxy was beyond question.” They themselves say: “These citations from prominent Orthodox rabbis reflect the common perception that Saul Lieberman was indeed ‘Orthodox’ in his religious practices” (emphasis added). They then cite numerous instances of “his firm adherence to halakhic practice and accepted custom.” They later quote someone who said that Lieberman “stressed that he wanted to be known as ‘Orthodox’ (note 266), but Lieberman himself never wrote such a thing.”

Furthermore, Shapiro mistranslates a key passage in Lieberman’s important Hebrew letter to Hapardes from 1945, which Shapiro himself published in 2003. Shapiro writes:

In his letter, Lieberman states that at the Seminary he is permitted to teach what he wishes. He also mentions that if another two or three Orthodox teachers joined the faculty (italics added), they could turn it into a wonderful place.[67]

However, that is not what Lieberman wrote. He wrote:

זהו מוסד חשוב שלו היו נכנסים לשם עוד שנים שלשה מורים משלומי אמוני ישראל היו מהפכים אותו לבית ספר למופת

This is an important institution. If two or three teachers “who seek the welfare of the faithful in Israel” [cf. II Samuel 20:19] would enter it, they would turn it into an exemplary school.[68]

Similarly, in his 1964 letter to Rabbi Unterman defending the gittin of Rabbi Israel Silverman.[69] he states that “Rabbi Silverman, when he was my student, observed Torah and mitzvot as is fitting.”

היה שומר תורה ומצוות כראוי וכיאות

He goes on to say

that it is essential to arrange matters related to gittin in America, and if there is good will on all sides, it is possible to arrive at a mutual agreement. Otherwise, I am afraid that chaos will take over this profession too and we will come to a similar situation to giving a hekhsher to a treif kitchen in an Israeli boat. And behold this hekhsher was not given by the Conservatives (who rejected the offer with disgust), but by an irresponsible group which calls itself Orthodox, and this group also performs gittin!

The picture that emerges from Lieberman’s letter to Hapardes in 1945, from his attempt to set up a joint Bet Din in 1953, and from his letter about gittin in 1964, is that Lieberman meant exactly what he said in his letter to Maariv in 1974: “I teach Torah to the Jewish people and I don’t care much about politics—that is: I am neither ‘Orthodox’ nor ‘Conservative.’ There are “Conservative” rabbis who are halakhic and there are ‘Orthodox’ rabbis who are not. I care that the teachers at JTS should be sh’lomei emunei yisrael and that the students and graduates should beshomrei torah u-mitzvot ka-rauy v’khayaut.” Lieberman did not care about labels but rather about substance, and in this he was a true disciple of Rabbi Judah the Prince who said: Al tistakkeil ba-kankan, ella b’mah she-yeish bo—do not look at the vessel, but rather at its substance.[70]

Notes

[1] This article is based on a lecture given in Hebrew in Jerusalem on Professor Lieberman’s 30th Yahrzeit, 9 Nisan 5773 (2013). It originally appeared in Conservative Judaism 65 (Summer 2014), pp. 13-29, published here with the permission of The Rabbinical Assembly.
[2] The first quotation is from Elijah J. Schochet and Solomon Spiro, Saul Lieberman: The Man and His Work (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 2005), p. 303 (and cf. pp. 53, 139). The other quotations are from David Golinkin, “The Influence of Seminary Professors on Halakhah in the Conservative Movement, 1902–1968,” in Jack Wertheimer, ed., Tradition Renewed: A History of the Jewish Theological Seminary, vol. 2 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1997), p. 473, n. 36. For Lieberman’s attack on Neusner’s translation of the Yerushalmi, see Journal of the American Oriental Society 104:2 (April–June 1984), pp. 315–319. For Neusner’s counterattacks against Lieberman, see History and Theory 27:3 (1988), pp. 241–260 = Jacob Neusner, Wrong Ways and Right Ways in the Study of Formative Judaism (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), pp. 3–27; and idem, Why There Never Was a Talmud of Caesarea: Saul Lieberman’s Mistakes (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994).
[3] Ta-Shema in Meir Lubetski, ed., Saul Lieberman (1898–1983): Talmudic Scholar and Classicist (Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2002), pp. 88-90 = Israel Ta-Shema, Knesset Mehkarim, vol. 4 (Jerusalem: 2010), pp. 337–339 (Hebrew). See Shamma Friedman in Lubetski, pp. 91–95, for an explanation of the riddle.
[4] A. S. Rosenthal wrote in Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 31 (1963), Hebrew section, p. 1, that Lieberman wrote 10,000 pages. A careful count of Tuvia Preschel’s 1993 bibliography of Lieberman in Shamma Friedman, ed., Sefer Hazikaron L’rabbi Shaul Lieberman (New York and Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1993), pp. 1–28, adds up to approximately 11,500 pages.
[5] See Preschel’s bibliography (above, n. 4) as well as the essays in the Lubetski volume.
[6] See Golinkin, pp. 472–473, n. 35, for a listing of thirty items and Elinor Grinet, “A Bibliography About Saul Lieberman: The Man and His Work,” in Lubetski, pp. 91–96, for seventy-seven items (some of them overlap). More recent works include: Aviad Hacohen, Madda’ei Ha-yahadut 42 (5763–64), pp. 289–301; a letter from Lieberman to the editor of Hapardes from 1945, published by Marc Shapiro in Kitvei Ha-Gaon Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg, vol. 2 (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 2003), pp. 449–450; review of new edition of Hayerushalmi Kif-shuto edited by Menahem Katz (New York and Jerusalem, 2008), by Yehoshua Schwartz in Makor Rishon Hatzofeh,April 11, 2008, pp. 10, 13; Naomi G. Cohen, “In Memoriam: Chana Safrai (1946–2008), Friend and Colleague,” in Nashim 15 (Spring 5768/2008), pp. 198, 201. For reactions to Schochet and Spiro’s book, see: Hillel Goldberg, Tradition 40:3 (Fall 2007), pp. 69–75; Aaron Rakefet, Tradition 40:4 (Winter 2007), pp. 68–74; and Bernard Septimus and David Horwitz, Tradition 41:1 (Spring 2008), pp. 114–115.
[7] The books are Lubetski (n. 3 above), Schochet and Spiro (n. 1 above), and Shapiro (n. 8 below).
[8] Marc B. Shapiro, Saul Lieberman and the Orthodox (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 2006).
[9] See, for example, his book Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, 1884–1966 (London and Portland: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1999); Kitvei Ha-gaon Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg, 2 vols (Scranton: University of Scranton Press 1998 and 2003); and “Scholars and Friends: Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg and Professor Samuel Atlas,” in The Torah Umadda Journal 7 (1997), pp. 105–121.
[10] Shapiro, p. 16.
[11] Schochet and Spiro, p. 22, and Shapiro, p. 16. Both base themselves on Jeffrey S. Gurock, “Yeshiva Students at the Jewish Theological Seminary,” in Wertheimer (n. 2 above), vol. 1, p. 473.
[12] Regarding Rabbi Isaac Klein, see what I wrote in my introduction to his Responsa and Halakhic Studies, second revised and expanded edition (Jerusalem: Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, 2005), p. xii.
[13] Shapiro, pp. 14–15; Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 237ff. Shapiro, pp.14–15.
[14] See my book The Status of Women in Jewish Law: Responsa (Jerusalem: Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, 2012), pp. 14–15, and n. 27; p. 31, n.3; pp. 308–340.
[15] See JTS Semi-Centennial Volume (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1939), p. 59; Jonathan Sarna, “The Debate Over Mixed Seating in the American Synagogue,” in Jack Wertheimer, ed. The American Synagogue: A Sanctuary Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 379–380; David Golinkin, ed., The Responsa of Prof. Louis Ginzberg (New York and Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1996), pp. 85–100; Wertheimer, vol. 1, p. 395, Harvey E. Goldberg, “Becoming History: Perspectives on the Seminary Faculty at Mid-Century”, Schochet and Spiro, p. 22.
[16] Personal communication from Dr. Baruch Schwartz, April 13, 2008. The siddur was entitled Daily Prayers with a Revised English Translation (New York: Hebrew Publishing Co., 1914), and reprints.
[17] David Ellenson and Lee Bycel, “A Seminary of Sacred Learning: The JTS Rabbinical Curriculum in Historical Perspective,” Wertheimer, vol. 2, p. 559.
[18] Ibid., pp. 536, 656.
[19] Solomon Schechter, Seminary Addresses and Other Papers (New York: The Burning Bush Press, 1959), pp. 35–39 and cf. pp. 1–7.
[20] David Ellenson and Lee Bycel, “A Seminary of Sacred Learning: The JTS Rabbinical Curriculum in Historical Perspective,” Wertheimer, vol. 2, p. 546.
[21] JTS Semi-Centennial Volume, p. 25.
[22] Schochet and Spiro, p. 29.
[23] Compare the pictures in Jeffrey Gurock, The Men and Women of Yeshiva (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), after p. 120; to the pictures in Baila R. Shargel, “The Texture of Seminary Life During the Finkelstein Era,” Wertheimer, vol. 1, pp. 527, 535.
[24] Regarding Schechter, see Mel Scult, “Schechter’s Seminary,” in Wertheimer, vol. 1, pp. 58–59; Michael Panitz in Robert Fierstien and Jonathan Waxman, eds., Solomon Schechter in America: A Centennial Tribute (New York: The Joint Convention Committee, 2002), p. 14; and Solomon Schechter, Seminary Addresses and Other Papers, pp. 48–49. Regarding Adler, see Schochet and Spiro, p. 17, which is based on Mel Scult (in Wertheimer, vol. 1), pp. 85–88.
[25] Schochet and Spiro, pp. 21–22.
[26] Ibid., p. 22. Regarding Finkelstein’s desire for JTS to serve all denominations, see Michael B. Greenbaum, “The Finkelstein Era,” in Wertheimer, vol. 1, pp. 163ff.; Jack Wertheimer, “JTS and the Conservative Movement,” in Wertheimer, vol. 2, pp. 419–420; and Michael B. Greenbaum, Louis Finkelstein and the Conservative Movement: Conflict and Growth (Binghamton: Global Publications, 2001), pp. 48, 60–67. Ibid., p.22.
[27] Shapiro, p. 48.
[28] Ibid., p. 9, n. 30.
[29] Shapiro, pp. 17–18.
[30] Ibid., p. 17.
[31] Ibid.
[32] See Saul Lieberman, Mehkarim B’torat Eretz Yisrael, ed. David Rosenthal (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991), pp. 601–602, for a beautiful vignette from that period of time.
[33] Schochet and Spiro, pp. 8–10.
[34] Ibid., pp. 10–11.
[35] Shapiro, p. 18.
[36] Shapiro, Kitvei Ha-gaon Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg, vol. 2 (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 2003), p. 449.
[37] Schochet and Spiro, pp. 9–10.
[38] Ibid., pp. 10–11; and cf. Lieberman’s English introduction to Harry Fischel Institute Publications, Section III, Rishonim, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Harry Fischel Institute Press, 1937), pp. vi-viii, where he spells out the qualities necessary to do scientific talmudic research. My thanks to Professor Shamma Friedman, who called my attention to this passage a number of years ago. Cf. Preschel (n. 4 above), who lists this article in item 36 even though the Hebrew and English introductions to that volume are totally different. Ibid., pp.10–11.
[39] Shapiro, Hebrew side, p. 17, also quoted in the English side, n. 64.
[40] Regarding the Seminary library, see Alexander Marx in The JTS Semi-Centennial Volume, pp. 87–120; Menahem Schmelzer, ed., Alexander Marx, Bibliographical Studies and Notes, (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary and Ktav, 1977); Herman Dicker, Of Learning and Libraries: The Seminary Library at One Hundred (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1988); and Menahem Schmelzer, “Building a Great Judaica Library—At What Price?” in Wertheimer, vol. 1, pp. 678–715.
[41] Schochet and Spiro, p. 16.
[42] Ibid., pp. 9, 18–20.
[43] Shapiro, Hebrew section, pp. 17–18.
[44] Schochet and Spiro, pp. 23–39.
[45] Ibid., p. 16.
[46] Saul Lieberman, Hilkhot Hayerushalmi L’harambam (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1947), p. 3
[47] Schochet and Spiro, p. 24.
[48] Both quotations are from Schochet and Spiro, p. 26.
[49] Ibid., p. 37.
[50] Ibid., p. 40.
[51] David Golinkin, ed., Proceedings of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Movement 1927–1970 (New York and Jerusalem: The Rabbinical Assembly and the Institute of Applied Halakhah [of the Schechter Institute], 1997), vol. 2, pp. 825–829.
[52] Shapiro, p. 26.
[53] Ibid., p.20, n. 72
[54] Golinkin, Proceedings, vol. 1, p. v.
[55] Ibid., p. 24.
[56] Golinkin, “Influence,” pp. 451–452. Golinkin, “Influence,”pp.451–452.
[57] Shapiro, pp. 26–27 = Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly 17 (1953), pp. 75–76 = Golinkin, Proceedings, vol. 2, pp. 810–811.
[58] Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, unpublished letter to Sheldon Engelmayer, May 14, 1987. I received a copy from Professor Jack Wertheimer and I gave a copy to Marc Shapiro, who quotes from the letter in his monograph, p. 20.
[59] Golinkin, “Influence,” p. 452, n. 55. Shapiro published the second letter on the Hebrew side of his book, pp. 33–34.
[60] Schochet and Spiro, p. 99, end of n. 163.
[61] I quoted this letter in Golinkin, “Influence,” p. 452. Shapiro published the entire letter in Shapiro, Hebrew side, pp. 35–36 and discusses it on the English side, p. 20, n. 72.
[62] Shapiro, Hebrew side, p. 40.
[63] See above, n. 5.
[64] Shapiro, p. 20, n. 72.
[65] Ibid.
[66] Schochet and Spiro, pp. 66 ff., 99 n. 163.
[67] Shapiro, p. 22.
[68] Shapiro, Kitvei Ha-gaon Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg, vol. 2 (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 2003), pp. 449.
[69] Shapiro, Hebrew section, pp. 33-34
[70] Pirkei Avot 4:20.

Yehuda Azoulay’s Maran: The Life and Scholarship of Hacham Ovadia Yosef

Yehuda Azoulay’s Maran: The Life and Scholarship of Hacham Ovadia Yosef has just appeared. The Seforim Blog is happy to present this excerpt.

Chapter 17: Back to Jerusalem

In 1958, Hacham Ovadia was invited to serve as a judge on the Jerusalem bet din, beside Rabbi Waldenberg and Rabbi Qafih.[1] His gratitude for being able to move back to Jerusalem is displayed in his third volume of Yabia Omer, published in 1960, and his joy and satisfaction at serving on this prestigious bet din with first-class scholars is evident in a number of places where he mentioned this job.

Rabbi Waldenberg,[2] author of the Tzitz Eliezer responsa, was the head of the bet din and he became Hacham Ovadia’s study partner at this time. Despite their disagreements on many issues of practical halachah,[3] the two enjoyed each other’s company very much. Rabbi Waldenberg was very pleased with the addition of Hacham Ovadia to the bet din; he referred to Yabia Omer in the warmest of terms.[4] Hacham Ovadia as well mentioned Rabbi Waldenberg endearingly throughout his works. He learned much in this forum regarding working on a bet din.[5]

In Petah Tikvah, though Rabbi Katz accorded him great respect and placed him in charge of writing the Sephardic divorces, Hacham Ovadia was frustrated that the court did not see the significance of following Rabbi Yosef Karo for the Sephardic population. Finding himself – the one Sephardic judge – always the minority in the court of three, he could not always convince the two Ashkenazic judges of the importance of his approach.[6] In Jerusalem, he usually served beside the Yemenite Rabbi Qafih, finally creating a majority of Sephardic-Eastern scholars in the courtroom. Rabbi Waldenberg understood early on that, so long as the litigants were Sephardic, the pair could not be swayed by his Ashkenazic leanings and traditions.

In 1964, the issue of ethnic name spellings came up again. This time, however, Hacham Ovadia did not have to resign in protest.

Rabbi Yehezkel Abramsky[7] had been the Av Bet Din of London until his retirement in 1951, when he moved to Bayit Vegan. His bet din in London, who followed his instructions and was still in touch with him for guidance, wrote a divorce with Ashkenazic spelling of the husband’s name “George” for a Sephardic couple; the wife lived in Jerusalem and Hacham Ovadia was on the bet din that reviewed it. The couple themselves preferred the Ashkenazic spelling, but Hacham Ovadia refused to deliver the bill of divorce to the woman, and wrote to the London bet din asking for it to be rewritten. The bet din, however, had followed Rabbi Abramsky’s guidelines in writing the names, so they called Rabbi Abramsky with the story.

Rabbi Abramsky called Rabbi Waldenberg for a meeting and the two agreed that they thought the Ashkenazic spelling correct, but Rabbi Waldenberg was familiar with the tenacity of the two Sephardim on his bet din, and since they were the majority, he explained to Rabbi Abramsky that there was no way they could get the divorce approved without changing the spelling. Eventually, Rabbi Abramsky recognized that he had no recourse but to ask the London bet din to rewrite it.

Maran concluded, “Rabbi Abramsky is indeed a brilliant man, but when it comes to Torah we do not let the honor of any man color our rulings. Our Torah is a Torah of truth.”[8]

Hacham Ovadia’s confidence in and loyalty to his own approach in halachic matters shows up throughout his work on this bet din. Just as he felt it a holy mission to teach halachah without giving precedence to the Ben Ish Hai or the Arizal, he would not change his mind for the honor of teachers, mentors, or peers once he was convinced of his position. In 1962, for example, his bet din had ruled that a husband should not have to pay child support for his stepdaughter in a certain case. The appeals court, which had the final say, overturned the ruling, and sent back the file requesting that their court determine the amount of child support. Hacham Ovadia refused to deal with the procedure, because he continued to maintain that the man should not have to pay. The other members of the court backed him up. He refused to listen to the appeals court against his better judgment, even though it consisted of Rabbi Yaakov Ades – his former teacher, Rabbi Elyashiv – the Torah giant whom Hacham Ovadia held in high esteem, and Rabbi Zolty – a friend and colleague whom he respected as well.[9]

Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim was the Sephardic chief rabbi at that time, following Rabbi Benzion Meir Hai Uziel’s passing in 1953. Sometime during those first few years, Hacham Nissim made it clear to Hacham Ovadia that “I know you will take over for me.” In 1960, as Rabbi Nissim was completing a five-year term, the Sephardic Community Council, headed by the committee’s heads, Elyashar and Sitton, nominated Hacham Ovadia as a candidate for the position.[10] Rabbi Tzvi Pesah Frank pushed him unremittingly to submit his candidacy. At the end of 1962, the rabbis of the Sephardic Council declared Hacham Ovadia the chief rabbi, but in the end, even after postponing the elections twice, Hacham Ovadia did not submit his candidacy, but lingered a few years longer in the world of writing and teaching, his labor of love.

Kol Sinai Magazine[11]

While Hacham Ovadia’s status was steadily rising among the Sephardic sector of Jerusalem through the few hundred who attended his lectures, his true greatness was only known by those who could read Yabia Omer, which was written for a somewhat more scholarly audience.

In 1962, the Sephardic Community Council asked Hacham Ovadia to write a column in its monthly magazine, Kol Sinai. The magazine published biographies and articles that related to Sephardic Jewry. Hacham Ovadia undertook the task, and stood by it monthly for seven years. This magazine, read by many in and out of Israel, is what positioned Hacham Ovadia as the authority and number one address for any Jew, in any area of halachah.

The writing style he adopted in Kol Sinai is nothing like that of Yabia Omer. His magazine articles were very focused and, though he brought support for all his rulings and noted all his sources, he did not go into detail. He generally followed Rabbi Yosef Karo, and noted this whenever the prevalent custom followed the Ben Ish Hai or others. There is no smattering of ethics or stories; these are encyclopedia-like entries by topic: laws of Shabbat, holidays, prayers, etc. He wrote them in language that the layman could understand and relegated any technical discussion or sources to footnotes.

The Hazon Ovadia series on the laws of the festivals, published forty years later, was based on these magazine articles.[12]

Friday Night Classes

Hacham Ovadia delivered a very popular class on Friday nights in Yeshivat Porat Yosef. His brother Naim was the manager of a synagogue, and one week in 1965, he asked his famous elder brother to come speak there. Although Naim knew it probably wasn’t feasible, as Hacham Ovadia had a commitment to Porat Yosef at that time, he nonetheless made his request, and was quite surprised when Hacham Ovadia agreed. That Friday night, he first gave the class in Naim’s synagogue and led the evening prayers there, and afterward left for Porat Yosef to deliver his regular lecture, somewhat later than usual.

While they waited for Hacham Ovadia, Rabbi Binyamin Jorgi informed the students that Hacham Ovadia would arrive late and he gave a mini class in the meantime. Hacham Ovadia arrived about half an hour later and delivered the class as usual.

Toward the end of the lecture, the third floor of the yeshivah suddenly collapsed. Chunks of concrete, iron beams, and planks of wood fell to the street on all sides of the building. The ground floor, however, was unaffected, and everyone within the building remained safe. Had Hacham Ovadia began the class at the usual time, hundreds of students would have been milling around the building at the time of the collapse, and there could have been fatal injuries.

Exiting the building by way of a shattered window and mattresses laid over the debris, the students accompanied Maran all the way home with song and dance. The building was closed off until it was safely renovated.

When Hacham Ovadia spoke to his brother on Sunday, he asked him, “You’ve been managing the synagogue for four years and you never asked me to speak. What made you do so this week, when you knew I wouldn’t be able to come without rearranging my regular class?”

When Naim had no material answer, Hacham Ovadia continued pensively, “And I wonder what made me agree. G-d performs miracles through those who have merit and both of us were fortunate to protect the participants at the Friday night class. This was a truly joyous event.”

Naim suggested that they share the story with a reporter, but Hacham Ovadia insisted there was no need.[13]

Rabbinical High Court

The Rabbinical High Court is the appellate court for Israel’s municipal rabbinical courts. One of the chief rabbis serves as its Av Bet Din. The bet din was established during the years of the British Mandate.

When Hacham Ovadia began his term there, the bet din met in Hechal Shelomo on King George Street. In 1967, it moved to the Old City. Today it shares the Frumin House on King George with the Jerusalem bet din and is headed by Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef.

The Rabbinical High Court appointed new judges in 1965. Hacham Ovadia was already a favored candidate, and he joined at age forty-four. Hacham Salman Hugi-Aboudi,[14] Rabbi Eliezer Goldschmidt,[15] and Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli[16] were appointed on the same occasion.

Already on the bet din were Rabbi Elyashiv,[17] fifty-five at the time, and Rabbi Zolty,[18] who was the same age as Hacham Ovadia.[19]

Hacham Ovadia found a close friend in Rabbi Elyashiv, and said he was like a brother to him.[20] He enjoyed tackling the country’s most complex halachic issues together with Rabbi Elyashiv for he valued the latter’s extraordinary proficiency and clarity of understanding. This friendship between the two leading poskim of the generation continued after Hacham Ovadia became the chief rabbi and Rabbi Elyashiv resigned from his position.

He remained on this bet din, becoming its Av Bet Din with his election to chief rabbi in 1973. As with all his bet din jobs, many of those rulings were printed in Yabia Omer.[21] In 1984, he led the bet din, joined by Rabbi Waldenberg, Rabbi Yitzhak Kolitz,[22] and Rabbi Qafih who was promoted in 1970.[23]

The Sephardic Torah Student[24]

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Porat Yosef was the only major Sephardic yeshivah in Israel. Many Sephardic students went to the Ponevezh yeshivah in Bnei Brak, and when Porat Yosef’s building was destroyed by the Arab Legion during the War of Independence, prominent Jerusalem Sephardic families turned to Ashkenazic yeshivot, especially Kol Torah, run by Rabbi Shelomo Zalman Auerbach. In this way, many hundreds of Sephardic and Yemenite youth internalized the ideas and mentality, and adopted the unique language and dress of their teachers and peers in Lithuanian-style yeshivot.

Students of a yeshivah are in most cases expected to follow the practices of the school; thus Sephardic boys learned to pray with an Ashkenazic accent, at least for those paragraphs recited aloud, wear the garb of a Lithuanian Torah student, and generally conduct themselves according to the norms accepted within those halls. This was a very difficult as well as formative experience for many of these boys.

Hacham Ovadia dealt with the halachic issues that cropped up from this situation,[25] always with the goal of fortifying a distinct Sephardic identity, without alienating the boys from their yeshivot.

Sephardic students of the Ashkenazic Hevron yeshivah asked[26] whether it would be acceptable for them to shave until the first of Av, in accordance with Sephardic custom, or if they were obliged to follow the prevalent custom in the yeshivah and stop shaving from the beginning of the Three Weeks.

Hacham Ovadia answered that since Jews worldwide are aware that Sephardim follow the Shulhan Aruch, and since every group of Jews knows that varying customs are all holy, there is no concern that one will violate the prohibition of splitting the community[27] – a prohibition which does not apply in situations where each group is following its own custom. Everyone must follow his family customs, even within the same synagogue. Nevertheless, he recommended that the boys refrain from shaving, out of respect for and sensitivity to their environment.

Another question[28] deals with the Sephardic custom of wearing tzitzit tucked in, among their Ashkenazic friends who wear them out. According to Kabbalah, tzitzit are tucked inside the pants, to conform with the mandate to “walk modestly with your G-d.”[29] Hacham Ovadia encouraged Sephardic boys to follow this practice and Rabbi Ezra Attiya maintained that “a Sephardic boy who wears his tzitzit out may be guilty of disparaging previous generations.”[30]

Ultimately, however, Hacham Ovadia concluded that the obstacles to developing as a Sephardic yeshivah student in the genuine sense within the Lithuanian yeshivot were insurmountable, as the Ashkenazic yeshivot were fundamentally different from Sephardic ones as far as their underlying visions and goals. This will be discussed more fully in the coming chapters.

Hacham Ovadia, then, wished to reverse the trend of Sephardic boys studying in Ashkenazic yeshivot. He hoped that attracting them back to their own yeshivot would help preserve a unique Sephardic religious identity. Sociologically, he wished to present an alternate image of the ideal Torah lifestyle. Yet perhaps more importantly was the alternative he offered in actual study. He sought to reestablish a distinct Sephardic learning style, which in certain respects is markedly different from that of the Lithuanian Torah world.

Despite the religious intensity of Porat Yosef, the larger Sephardic community in Israel was losing its independent character of cultural codes and halachic customs. The 1940s in Jerusalem saw the Sephardic community join the underground resistance movements, which meant integrating into the Ashkenazic hegemony and cultural assimilation (often characterized by adopting an irreligious lifestyle).[31] Hand in hand with the experience of cultural assimilation, Jerusalem’s Sephardic Jews suffered from a shortage of Torah leadership of any stature. Outside Porat Yosef and its rabbis, few scholars carried the banner of Sephardic tradition, either in Torah study or halachah. Those years witnessed prolific Ashkenazic halachic literature, while Sephardic Jews published next to nothing. Seventy-five percent of rabbinical judges were Ashkenazic. The number of Sephardim who took the test for the judicial rabbinate was negligible and these usually hailed from Lithuanian-style yeshivot and had adopted an Ashkenazic tradition of study and halachic ruling.[32] Meanwhile, most litigants of these bate din were Sephardic.[33]

Sephardic Torah Judaism was in crisis.

Hacham Ovadia jumped in headlong to change all that. In 1965, he approached the heads of the Sephardic committee and established the Study Hall for Rabbis and Rabbinical Judges which would train young men to lead communities and serve as judges carrying the tradition of Sephardic Judaism. The committee provided him with a building that they owned in Talbieh, as well as scholarships. It opened in 1966 with fifteen students. The course provided three years of study, culminating in a test on sections Even Ha’ezer and Hoshen Mishpat, toward the judicial examinations administered by the rabbinate. After the Six Day War, the school moved to the Old City, to synagogue Tiferet Yerushalayim. Hacham Ovadia stood at its head and gave halachah classes three times a week. He tested the young men weekly and supervised their well-being.[34]

There was a yeshivah high school on the premises as well, run at the time by Rabbi Yehuda Amital. Hacham Ovadia maintained a loose connection with the high school, delivering lectures to the students periodically. Upon the graduation of the first class of the yeshivah, Hacham Ovadia pronounced this project “the crown of the Sephardic Committee in Jerusalem, which took the responsibility upon themselves of establishing a generation of rabbis and judges who shall restore the crown to its former glory.”[35]

Hacham Ovadia worked to shape the Sephardic yeshivah world into a vehicle that would continue restoring the crown to its former glory. Later joined by his sons, he established a few elite Sephardic educational institutions that adopted his learning style and halachic methodology. In 1973, when he was elected chief rabbi, he promptly set up a bet midrash for judges called “Hazon Ovadia,” and financed stipends for the married students. The kollel’s alumni serve as judges and rabbis both in Israel and abroad. In 1986, Hacham Ovadia established another kollel, Yehaveh Da’at, with his son, Rabbi David, at its helm. It is considered the premier Sephardic kollel the world over. Hacham Ovadia delivered regular lectures there and kept in close touch with its students. In 1993, Hacham Ovadia opened a yeshivah for higher learning, headed by his son, Rabbi Yitzhak, where hundreds of students were trained in his father’s methods. In 1996, the kollel Ma’or Yisrael opened. At its head stands Rabbi Moshe, Hacham Ovadia’s youngest son. Through these institutions, Maran molded the next generation of Sephardic Torah scholars.

Rabbi Zevin, quoted in the preface to Yabia Omer volume I, cheered the “redeemer” of Sephardic Jewry who will raise it from its humbled state. The editor of Kol Sinai[36] said the same: “This hero has given form to the period of history in which he lived – the period that restored the crown of Torah and glory to Sephardic Jewry – and is the artisan who molded a new spiritual period that shall be known, in the religious annals of our nation, as the period of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.”

The day Rabbi Attiya disengaged the young man from his father’s shop and brought him back to the yeshivah, Hacham Ovadia was adopted by another world. His spiritual father was the rosh yeshivah, his closest relatives were the boys beside him on the bench, and the library, his playground. It was from the yeshivah that he embarked, protected by his spiritual father, to give his first classes. It was the rosh yeshivah who sat beside him on his first job on the rabbinical court, his intervention which brought him to Cairo, and to him Hacham Ovadia returned at the end of his mission there. His repeated attempts, almost unknown to the public, to establish a body of higher learning for Eastern spiritual leadership, point to the horizon on which his eyes were set: a generation of rabbis and judges proudly bearing the tradition of Sephardic Jews in the holy land of Israel.

[1] Pronounced Kapah; 1917-2000; born in Sana’a, Yemen, he immigrated to Israel in 1943, and worked as a judge on the Jerusalem bet din and then the Rabbinical High Court. He was the rabbi of the Yemenite community and is best known for his translations and commentaries of the Rambam’s works and the translations of other Sephardic literature of that time period.

[2] 1915-2006; Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg was known as “the Tzitz Eliezer” after his encyclopedic halachic treatise which was one of the great achievements of halachic scholarship of the twentieth century. He was a leading rabbi and Av Bet Din of Jerusalem, and then a judge on the Rabbinical High Court, and was the rabbi of the Sha’are Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. He won the Israel Prize for rabbinical studies in 1976. He also wrote Hilchot Medinah, three volumes dealing with halachot regarding the State of Israel.

[3] See, for example, the discussion in chapter 7 regarding whether women should make a blessing when performing time-bound mitzvot such as lulav.

[4] Yabia Omer vol. IV, O.H. 31

[5] Yabia Omer vol. III, introduction; Hazon Ovadia – Eulogies, p. 474

[6] Ovadia Yosef, Biography

[7] 1886-1976; born in present-day Belarus, Rabbi Abramsky studied at premier Lithuanian yeshivot, particularly Brisk, and became a practicing rabbi by the age of seventeen. Following the Russian Revolution, he was at the forefront of opposition to the Communist government’s attempts to repress the Jewish religion and culture. As a result, the Russian government refused Abramsky permission to leave and take up the rabbinate of Petah Tikvah in Palestine in both 1926 and 1928. In 1928, he started a Hebrew magazine, but the Soviet authorities closed it after the first two issues. In 1929, he was arrested and sentenced to five years of hard labor in Siberia. Upon his release in 1931, he moved to London where he was the Av Bet Din until he retired and made aliyah. In Israel, he served as rosh yeshivah of Slabodka. He received the Israel Prize in 1956 for his twenty-four volume Hazon Yehezkel on the Tosefta.

[8] Yabia Omer vol. X, E.H. 34; also retold in Ma’adane Hamelech (Transcriptions of Maran’s Lectures) vol. II, pp. 370-371.

[9] Yabia Omer vol. IX, E.H. 27

[10] Although until then chief rabbis usually served until their passing, the rabbinical establishment was calling for shortening the term and holding elections.

[11] MiMaran ad Maran, pp. 86-87

[12] See introduction to Hazon Ovadia – High Holidays, Sukkot, Hanukah, Tu BeShevat, Purim, and Holidays, where he wrote that the material in those volumes are based on his articles in Kol Sinai forty years earlier.

[13] Sha’ah Tovah interview with Naim

[14] He served until his retirement in 1970.

[15] 1909-1992; born in Lithuania, he aided his teacher Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac Sher in founding the Slabodka yeshivah.

[16] 1909-1995; he was born in Belarus, studied under Rabbi Yehezkel Abramsky in Lithuania, and when he moved to Israel became a prominent religious Zionist rabbi and posek.

[17] He served on this court from 1956 until his resignation in 1973.

[18] Also elected in 1956

[19] Hazon Ovadia – Eulogies, p. 476

[20] Mishpacha, July 2012

[21] For example, a ruling written in 1980, when he was joined by Rabbi Zolty and Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, is recorded in Yabia Omer vol. VII, H.M. 4.

[22] Yabia Omer vol. VII, E.H. 23; Rabbi Yitzhak Kolitz, 1922-2003, was a Lithuanian Av Bet Din of Tel Aviv, then joined the high court in the late seventies, and became rabbi of Jerusalem in 1983.

[23] Yabia Omer vol. X, E.H. 31

[24] Largely translated and adapted from MiMaran ad Maran, pp. 91-92 and 199-200

[25] E.g., see reply to students in Lakewood, in chapter 44.

[26] Yehaveh Da’at vol. IV, p. 190; see also Hazon Ovadia – Fast Days, p. 159.

[27] See Yevamot 13b based on Devarim 14:1 for the prohibition against forming separate groups among Israel (“lo titgodedu”).

[28] Yabia Omer vol. IX, O.H. 108:18 states that while tzitzit should be worn under the clothing, individuals in Ashkenazic yeshivot, or those new to Judaism, can wear them out.

[29] Yehave Da’at vol. II, p. 5

[30] Ohr LeZion vol. II, p. 27, note 2 by Rabbi Benzion Abba-Shaul

[31] See N. Horowitz, pp. 30-60.

[32] See report by A. Doron, Kol Sinai, 1965, p. 401.

[33] This is the case in many vicinities, as secular Ashkenazim bring their cases to the secular courts system, while the Ashkenazic haredi community is more likely use the rabbinical courts of the Edah Haharedit. Sephardic litigants across the religious spectrum more often bring their complaints to the State-regulated bet din system.

[34] Details found in Bama’aracha, Tishre 1968, p. 1.

[35] MiMaran ad Maran, pp. 91-92

[36] Shevat 1971, page 340