By Mitchell  First

(MFirstatty@aol.com)

           Critically, the name Chashmonai is not found in any form in I or II Maccabees, our main sources for the historical background of the events of Chanukkah.[7] But fortunately the name does appear in two sources in Tannaitic literature.[8] It is only through one of these two sources that we can get a handle on the identity of Chashmonai.

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       Already in the late first century, the identity of Chashmonai seems to have been a mystery to Josephus. (Josephus must have heard of the name from his extensive Pharisaic education, and from being from the family.) In his Jewish War, he identifies Chashmonai as the father of Mattathias.[9] Later, at XII, 265 of his Antiquities, he identifies Chashmonai as the great-grandfather of Mattathias.[10] Probably, his approach here is the result of his knowing from I Maccabees 2:1 that Mattathias was the son of a John who was the son of a Simon, and deciding to integrate the name Chashmonai with this data by making him the father of Simon.[11] It is very likely that Josephus had no actual knowledge of the identity of Chashmonai and was just speculating here. It is too coincidental that he places Chashmonai as the father of Simon, where there is room for him. If Josephus truly had a tradition from his family about the specific identity of Chashmonai, it would already have been included in his Jewish War.

   The standard printed text at Megillah 11a implies that Chashmonai is not Mattathias: she-he-emadeti lahem Shimon ha-Tzaddik ve-Chashmonai u-vanav u-Matityah kohen gadol…This is also the implication of the standard printed text at Soferim 20:8, when it sets forth the Palestinian version of the Amidah insertion for Chanukkah; the text includes the phrase: Matityahu ben Yochanan kohen gadol ve-Chashmonai u-vanav…[12] There are also midrashim on Chanukkah that refer to a Chashmonai who was a separate person from Mattathias and who was instrumental in the revolt.[13]

        But the fact that I Maccabees does not mention any separate individual named Chashmonai involved in the revolt strongly suggests that there was no such individual. Moreover, there are alternative readings at both Megillah 11a and Soferim 20:8.[14] Also, the midrashim on Chanukkah that refer to a Chashmonai who was a separate person from Mattathias are late midrashim.[15] In the prevalent version of Al ha-Nissim today, Chashmonai has no vav preceding it.[16]

        If there was no separate person named Chashmonai at the time of the revolt, and if the statement of Josephus that Chashmonai was the great-grandfather of Mattathias is only a conjecture, who was Chashmonai?

           Let us look at our two earliest sources for Chashmonai.  One of these is M. Middot 1:6.[17]

                        …המוקד בבית היו לשכות ארבע  [18]…ייון מלכי ששיקצום המזבח אבני את חשמוניי בני גנזו בה צפונית מזרחית

From here, it seems that Chashmonai is just another name for Mattathias. This is also the implication of Chashmonai in many of the later passages.[19]

             The other Tannaitic source for Chashmonai is Seder Olam, chap. 30. Here the language is: malkhut beit Chashmonai meah ve-shalosh =the dynasty of  the House of Chashmonai, 103 [years].[20] Although one does not have to interpret Chashmonai here as a reference to Mattathias,  this interpretation does fit this passage.

          Thus a reasonable approach based on these two early sources is to interpret Chashmonai as another way of referring to Mattathias.[21] But we still do not know why these sources would refer to him in this way. Of course, one possibility is that it was his additional name.[22] Just like each of his five sons had an additional name,[23] perhaps Chashmonai was the additional name of Mattathias.[24] But I Maccabees, which stated that each of Mattathias’ sons had an additional name, did not make any such statement in the case of Mattathias himself.

         Perhaps we should not deduce much from this omission. Nothing required the author of I Maccabees to mention that Mattathias had an additional name. But one scholar has suggested an interesting reason for the omission.  It is very likely that a main purpose of I Maccabees was the glorification of Mattathias in order to legitimize the rule of his descendants.[25] Their rule needed legitimization because the family was not from the priestly watch of Yedayah. Traditionally, the high priest came from this watch.[26] I Maccabees achieves its purpose by portraying a zealous Mattathias and creating parallels between Mattathias and the Biblical Pinchas, who was rewarded with the priesthood for his zealousness.[27] Perhaps, it has been suggested, the author of I Maccabees left out the additional name for Mattathias because it would remind readers of the obscure origin of the dynasty.[28] (We will discuss why this might have been the case when we discuss the meaning of the name in the next section.)

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             We have seen that a reasonable approach, based on the two earliest rabbinic sources, is to interpret Chashmonai as another way of referring to Mattathias.

        The next question is the meaning of the name. The name could be based on the name of some earlier ancestor of Mattathias. But we have no clear knowledge of any ancestor of Mattathias with this name.[29] Moreover, this only begs the question of where the earlier ancestor would have obtained this name.[30] The most widely held view is that the name Chashmonai   derives from a place that some ancestor of Mattathias hailed from a few generations earlier. (Mattathias and his immediate ancestors hailed from Modin.[31]) For example, Joshua 15:27 refers to a place called Cheshmon in the area of the tribe of Judah.[32] Alternatively, a location Chashmonah is mentioned at Numbers 33:29-30 as one of the places that the Israelites encamped in the desert.[33] In either of these interpretations, the name may have reminded others of the obscure origin of Mattathias’ ancestors and hence the author of I Maccabees might have refrained from using it.

        Whatever the meaning of the word חשמנים, I would like to raise the possibility that an ancestor of Mattathias lived in Egypt for a period and that people began to call him something like Chashmonai upon his return, based on this verse.

                                             Conclusions

       Even though Josephus identifies Chashmonai as the great-grandfather of Mattathias, this was probably just speculation. It is too coincidental that he places Chashmonai as the father of Simon, precisely where there is room for him.

        The most reasonable approach, based on the earliest rabbinic sources, is to interpret Chashmonai as another way of referring to Mattathias, either because it was his additional name or for some other reason. A main purpose of I Maccabees was the glorification of Mattathias in order to legitimize the rule of his descendants. This may have led the author of I Maccabees to leave the name out; the author would not have wanted to remind readers of the obscure origin of the dynasty.

       Most probably, the name Chashmonai derives from a place that some ancestor of the family hailed from.

—–

       A few other points:

            º Most probably, the name חשמונאי did not originally include an aleph. The two earliest Mishnah manuscripts, Kaufmann and Parma (De Rossi 138), spell the name חשמוניי.[49] This is also how the name is spelled in the two passages in the Jerusalem Talmud.[50] As is the case with many other names that end with אי (such as שמאי), the aleph is probably a later addition that reflects the spelling practice in Babylonia.[51]

      Since there is no evidence that the name was used as a family or group name at the time of Mattathias himself, the common translation in Al ha-Nissim: “the Hasmonean” (see, e.g., the Complete ArtScroll Siddur, p. 115) is misleading. It implies that he was one of a group or family using this name at this time. A better translation would be “Chashmonai,” implying that it was a description/additional name of Mattathias alone.

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      Postscript: Anyone who is not satisfied with my explanations for Chashmonai can adopt the explanation intuited by my friend David Gertler when he was a child. His teacher was talking to the class about Mattityahu-Chashmonai and his five sons, without providing any explanation of the name Chashmonai. David reasoned: it must be that he is called חשמני because he had five sons (i.e., חמשי metathesized into חשמי/חשמני)![64]

Eliyahu Stern, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism. New Haven: Yale University Press 2013, pp. xiv+322.*

            In this regard my father was not unique. As Eliyahu Stern states at the beginning of his important and ambitious study, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism:

For two centuries Elijah has been known simply by the name “Genius,” or “Gaon.” His biographers claim that “one like him appears
every thousand years.”… By the time of his death… he had written commentaries on a wider range of Jewish literature than any writer in history…. His originality, command of sources, and clarity of thought… establish him as the equal of… religious and intellectual giants such as Aquinas and Averroes. (1)

Not surprisingly, not very long after the Gaon’s death traditionalist scholars began writing biographies extolling his piety and, even more so, his brilliance, an enterprise that continues until today.  Despite their hagiographic nature and often strongly ideological bent, these biographies are often serious attempts, granted from within a traditional perspective, to document the Gaon’s life and works and paint his personality, and, if used selectively and critically, they can be of great value to academic historians. Thus, to take a very recent example, R. Dov Eliakh’s 1300 (!) page, three volume biography from 2002, Ha-Gaon[1]  clearly has a Haredi ideological agenda, doing its best to distance the Gaon from, heaven forbid, any “enlightenment” tendencies, and further waging a fierce campaign against all the ”distortions”
that the dastardly “enlighteners” perpetrated on the Gaon and his disciples.[2] Yet this biography, ironically enough, has been condemned in certain extremist Haredi  circles for displaying its own enlightenment tendencies, perhaps alluding to its very full (and useful) documentation and its ”sin” of every now and then referencing academic articles and even worse identifying their authors![3]

            Primarily, however, traditionalist scholars undertook to preserve and disseminate the Gaon’s vast intellectual legacy by transcribing, editing, publishing, and commenting on his works.  Here one must state that while no one will deny the Gaon’s “originality [and] command of sources,” for Stern to speak of his “clarity of thought” is misleading.  While a few of his works, like his Commentary on Proverbs, are full and clear, most of his  writings, as scholars have noted and Stern himself concedes, are exceptionally concise and concentrated, often consisting entirely of learned but obscure allusions and references, the relevance of which can be  deciphered  only by exceptionally knowledgeable readers.[4] Indeed, many of his “commentaries” are, in truth, nothing of the sort, but simply glosses and annotations entered by the Gaon into the margins of the texts in his rabbinic library. Most of his works were not prepared for publication; many were dictated in oral form to his students and exist in varying recensions. At times the Gaon’s original manuscripts are missing, and the accuracy of the printed texts prepared from them is not certain.  The magnitude of this on-going effort cannot be overstated, and even today the job is far from completed.[5]

            In contrast to traditionalist scholars, academic scholars until fairly recently focused, by and large, only on selected aspects of the Gaon’s personality and legacy. They examined the famous and exceptionally fierce  campaign which he, together with the Vilna community leaders, waged against the new spiritual pietistic Hasidic movement; took note of his interest in a broad range of secular disciplines, to be sure, only as ancillaries to the study of the Torah, and asked to what extent he could be seen as a forerunner of the East European Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment); and finally posed the question as to what extent his views regarding the interplay between piety (yirah) and study of the Torah anticipated those of the mid-nineteenth century ethical-pietistic “mussar” movement. In all these instances the scholarly interest was not so much in the Gaon per se, but in his relationship to either contemporaneous or subsequent religious movements.[6]

            Over the past two decades, however, scholars have sought to extend these rather limited horizons and take stock of the broader contours of the Gaon’s intellectual legacy. Important attempts have been made to probe the Gaon’s original Kabbalistic thought; show how, despite his presumed anti-philosophical stance,  he drew upon the medieval Jewish philosophy in forming his world view; examine his hermeneutics and the connected issue of how he conceived of the relationship between the plain-sense meaning of the biblical text and its rabbinic interpretation; and finally assess his immense more strictly Talmudic legacy, looking at his many innovative and unconventional legal rulings and interpretations of rabbinic texts.[7]

            Stern’s The Genius both synthesizes and builds upon this recent scholarship, and is the first attempt to undertake an intellectual biography and cultural profile of the Gaon, placing him firmly within the concrete social and political reality of the Vilna of his day and taking into full account his dizzyingly wide ranging and varied intellectual and literary activity. Of particular interest is the colourful, warts and all, personal portrait that Stern paints of the Gaon, examining the connections between the Gaon’s eccentric, highly reclusive and ascetic lifestyle—for example, he limited his sleep to two hours a day and almost ruthlessly cut all emotional ties with his immediate family—and his genius, or to be more precise the connections drawn between these two facets of his personality by his disciples. As Edmund Morris notes[8] when speaking of the slightly later Beethoven, a genius’ admirers expect him to be unlike ordinary men and wholly devoted his calling—music for Beethoven, rabbinic learning for the Gaon. If Beethoven’s admiring patrons viewed him, to cite Morris, as an ”undisciplined freak”—and all the greater for that—the Gaon’s admiring students appeared to have viewed him as a highly disciplined, indeed, over-disciplined, one—and,
again, all the greater for that.

            Yet, as the book’s subtitle, Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism, indicates, Stern has an even bolder agenda. For in addition to limning the Gaon’s life, thought, and personality, Stern in his book’s Introduction and Conclusion advances a novel thesis regarding the nature of modern Judaism and the role of the Gaon in its making, seeking to unsettle the binary opposition generally drawn between tradition and modernity.

            For Stern, modernity is not “just a movement based on… liberal philosophical principles,” but “a condition characterized [among other
things] by democratization of knowledge and privatization of religion… that restructured all aspects of European thought and life in diverse and often contradictory ways,” (8) and that in the case of Judaism “gave rise to [both] the Haskalah and institutions such as the Yeshiva” (8).  It is in this light Stern maintains that we should understand the historical significance of Gaon’s great work on Jewish law, his Bi’ur
or commentary on Joseph Karo’s sixteenth century code of law, the Shulhan Arukh. Here, to sharpen Stern’s analysis, we may point to an instructive paradox. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, thanks to the primacy of the Shulhan Arukh, the study of the Talmud was neglected and scholars focused their attention on codes of law. The Bi’ur might seem to fit into that pattern, but in actuality it served to subvert the Shulhan Arukh’s authority. For by tracing in great and unprecedented detail the source of the Shulhan Arukh’s rulings back the Talmud and its classic commentaries and then by often challenging those rulings in light of those sources the Bi’ur spurred a return to Talmudic study.

            Stern suggestively, if perhaps a bit mechanically, links the move, sparked by the Gaon, from study of Codes to study of the Talmud to the decline of the kehilah, the Jewish community, and the rise of more privatized forms of traditional Judaism. As long as a kehilah possessed the power, granted to it by the local non-Jewish authorities, to govern itself by Jewish law, study of the codes, which served as guides to practical communal legal decision making, occupied center stage. With the kehilah’s decline, study of the Talmud for its own sake emerged as the highest form of religious worship and pushed the study of the codes to the margins.  Thus, Stern notes, the Yeshiva of Volozhin, founded in 1803 by the Gaon’s leading disciple, R. Hayyim of Volozhin, which served as the primary center of Talmud study in Eastern Europe through the nineteenth century, was a new type of Yeshiva that “functioned independently of any communal governing structure, and …recruited students and funds from across European Jewry” (138). Moreover, this detaching of Talmudic study “from practical code-oriented learning” encouraged “an ethos of innovation, originality, and brilliance” (139) where intellectual battles were won by “pedagogic persuasion and not coercion” (140).

            This perception of the Volozhin Yeshiva as exemplifying the rise of a more privatized and democratic form of religion thus connects directly with Stern’s broader thesis that the modern condition manifested itself in both “enlightened” and “traditional” forms of nineteenth century Judaism, despite their apparent opposition. This analysis is very suggestive, but open to two objections.

            First, while the Gaon certainly played an important role in the move from the study of Codes to study of the Talmud, Stern exaggerates the extent of that role.  It would appear that Stern rather uncritically relies on the understandably hyperbolic claims made by the Gaon’s students, who credited him with almost singlehandedly reviving the study of Talmud in traditional circles. In truth, however, the Gaon’s approach appears to be a part of a broader return to Talmudic study in the eighteenth century, which occurred for reasons we cannot enter into here, as exemplified by, among others, his slightly older central European rabbinic contemporary Rabbi Jacob Joshua Falk (1680-1755) and, in particular, by his Lithuanian contemporary R. Aryeh Leib Ginzburg (1695-1785), both of whom, unlike the Gaon, actually wrote full scale commentaries on the Babylonian Talmud. Indeed, as Yisrael Ta-Shma has noted, Falk’s commentary, the famed Pnei Yehoshua, with its penetrating questions but often not entirely satisfactory answers, spurred a whole spate of commentaries on the Talmud, seeking to provide their own answers to Falk’s questions.[9] And, as Ta-Shma has further noted, Ginzburg’s equally famed writings, the Turei Even, Gevurot ha-Ari, and, in particular, the Sha‘agat Aryeh, with their rejection of pilpul, independent approach, amazing control of the far-flung reaches of classic halakhic literature, and very close attention to the peshat of the Talmudic text, resemble in many ways the Gaon’s approach to the Talmud.[10]

            Indeed, Stern admits that “it is puzzling that Elijah composed a commentary on the Shulhan ‘Arukh but not on the Talmud itself” (131). His suggestion “that in the eighteenth century it was much easier to purchase a set of Karo’s code than to acquire a full set of Talmud” (131) is painfully weak, as Stern himself appears to realize. After all, if such a consideration did not deter Rabbis Falk and Ginzberg from writing their commentaries, it is hard to imagine it deterring the even more independent minded Gaon. Moreover, the Gaon wrote full scale commentaries on recondite sections of the relatively neglected Palestinian Talmud and on other obscure works of rabbinic literature despite
their relative inaccessibility.

              Perhaps the key here is the Gaon’s daring and its limits. Rabbi Falk in his commentary deferred to and simply expounded the interpretations of the Rishonim, the classical medieval Talmudic commentators. Even the more independent minded Rabbi Ginzberg, who often rejected views of the Aharonim, even those of the classical commentators on the Shulhan Arukh, never directly rejected those of the Rishonim. The Gaon, by contrast, felt free to reject the Rishonim’s views, despite their great standing.  Still, it was one thing for him to offer original and unconventional explanations of the Palestinian Talmud, where there was not an authoritative tradition of commentary, or even to reject the Rishonim’s explanations of the Babylonian Talmud and offer explanations of his own in the course of his Commentary on the Shulhan ‘Arukh, where his dissent might not be that visible. But a full scale commentary on the Babylonian Talmud would have required that the Gaon, who was unwilling to compromise “his own understanding,”[11] take issue much more openly with the explanations of the Rishonim and present his own exceptionally bold and innovative interpretations.  That might have been too bold a move even for the Gaon, given the conservatism of the Jewish community of his day. This would also explain why the Gaon, despite his son’s, R. Abraham’s urgings, never wrote his own Code of Law.  Again, it was one thing to undermine the Shulhan ‘Arukh’s rulings in course of a commentary, another to simply set the Shulhan ‘Arukh’s rulings aside and directly offer competing rulings in a new code of law.[12]

            Second, even if we grant Stern’s point that the Volozhin Yeshiva exemplifies the rise of a more privatized and democratic form of religion that manifested itself in both “enlightened” and “traditional” forms of nineteenth century Judaism, he underplays the difference
it makes whether that privatization and democratization are harnessed in the service of greater acculturation and individual autonomy, as in the case of the Haskalah, or greater insularity and ideological intolerance, as in the case of many Lithuanian Yeshivas. It is striking that while in the book’s text Stern lauds “the freedom and individuation” of Talmudic study in the Yeshivas, in a lengthy endnote he concedes that
“for all the lively debate … bouncing off the [Yeshiva] walls, these walls were soundproof, blocking out those with radically different and conflicting opinions” (264, n. 80).[13]

            More problematic, Stern’s thesis that the Gaon’s activity and image contributed  to the privatization of Judaism and the democratization of rabbinic knowledge leads him to skew his portrait  of the Gaon, exaggerating both his radicalism and modernity. Thus, for
example, the reader never gets a full sense from Stern of the depth of the Gaon’s involvement in Kabbalah nor learns, except in passing, of the sheer number of major commentaries he authored on Kabbalistic literature. Perhaps Stern deemed such a discussion too technical for the general reader,[14] but one inevitably gets the feeling that this minimizing of the Gaon’s Kabbalistic side fits into the modern picture Stern is drawing.

            A fairly mild example of Stern’s modernizing portrait of the Gaon may be found in Chapter 2, ”Elijah’s Worldview,” the book’s most technical chapter. Here Stern, building on the scholarship of Alan Brill,[15]  seeks to show how the Gaon drew upon Greek and medieval Jewish philosophic sources, Kabbalistic texts, and even, indirectly, the eighteenth century German idealistic tradition in constructing his view of God, creation, and nature. The chapter’s centrepiece is an extended comparison of the worldviews of the Gaon and Leibniz. To be sure, Stern concedes, the Gaon never read any of Leibniz’s works; indeed he most probably did not know any language other than Hebrew. Still, he notes, the Gaon was influenced by the work Tekhunot Ha-Shamayyim, written by Raphael Halevi of Hannover, a leading student of Leibniz, as well as by the writings of Rabbi Moses Hayyim Luzzatto “who read and appropriated Leibniz’s ideas on theodicy” (38).  More significant, “Elijah, Luzzatto, and Leibniz were working with an overlapping set of Kabbalistic and philosophical texts, ideas, and questions that pervaded eighteenth century European intellectual life” (38). Stern’s comparison, while suggestive and forcefully argued, is not entirely
convincing. He argues that both “Leibniz’s and Elijah’s views converge around the … idea that knowledge can be represented in mathematical terms.”[16]  This contention that the Gaon, like Leibniz, believed “that knowledge can be represented in mathematical terms” rests primarily, however, on Stern’s vocalization of a key word from the Gaon’s commentary on the Sifra de-Tzeniuta (196-198, note 19), a vocalization Stern puts forward in opposition to that of Elliot Wolfson, the leading scholar of Kabbalah in North America. However, R. Bezalel Naor, the noted rabbinic scholar of Kabbalah and editor of the Gaon’s commentary on the Sifra de-Tzeniuta, in a review of The Genius supports Wolfson’s vocalization of the text.[17] This is a highly technical matter, and I do not deem myself qualified to adjudicate this dispute, but at the very least it must be said that Stern is building a very imposing edifice on a very slender base.

            Even if we grant Stern his vocalization, nevertheless, as he himself admits, at the heart of Leibniz’s metaphysics are not so much abstract mathematical points, but monads, which are living, self-contained substances. Here Leibniz, as has often been noted, seems to be in large measure inspired, if only negatively, by Spinoza, and his theory of monads appears to be an attempt to adopt Spinozistic premises while avoiding Spinozistic conclusions. Of course, there is no evidence that the Gaon was aware of Spinoza, whose name, indeed, does not appear in Stern’s book. Thus, while it is true that “Elijah … and Leibniz were working with an overlapping set of Kabbalistic and philosophical texts, ideas, and questions that pervaded eighteenth century European intellectual life,” they were also working with non-overlapping sets of “texts, ideas, and questions.” By focusing on the overlapping issues and scanting the broader and differing contexts within which the Gaon and Leibniz worked, Stern, even granting his mathematical comparison, ends up giving a somewhat unbalanced picture of the metaphysical systems of both these thinkers.  Stern concludes his chapter with a bold, if rather speculative, suggestion that one may draw a link between the Gaon’s highly abstract theological ideas and his daring emendations of rabbinic texts, which, in Stern’s view, should be seen as part of “his broader philosophic project of restoring the rational pre-established harmony of a world confused by unnecessary human error and evil” (56-57). Perhaps.

            Chapter 3, “Elijah and the Enlightenment,” advances the book’s most startling and revisionist claim. Generally, Stern notes, the Gaon’s contemporary, Moses Mendelssohn is portrayed as the founder of modern Judaism, while the Gaon is depicted as the defender of rabbinic or traditional Judaism. Stern, however, as part of his effort to unsettle the binary opposition between tradition and modernity, argues that in certain respects the Gaon was a more radical figure than Mendelssohn. Thus, while Mendelssohn maintained that rabbinic interpretations of the legal passages in Scripture were to be identified with the plain-sense meaning of the text, the Gaon interpreted the plain-sense meaning of the text independently of rabbinic interpretations, which were seen as belonging to another level of Scripture. Stern argues that this difference reflects a greater level of self-confidence on the Gaon’s part, as “the intellectual leader of a majority Jewish culture” (71) than on Mendelssohn’s, living as he did in “Berlin, a cosmopolitan city with a tiny Jewish minority” (64), where rabbinic Judaism and particularly rabbinic law were under attack in Christian academic quarters. Stern, I believe, accords too much weight here to matters to matters of demography. Rather, contra Stern, I support the regnant view that this hermeneutical difference reflects, in large measure, the Gaon’s insularity from as opposed to Mendelssohn’s greater openness and sensitivity to their respective surrounding cultures, deriving, in turn, from the presence of a “beckoning bourgeoisie,” to use Gershon Hundert’s phrase,[18] in Berlin and the absence of one in Vilna.

            Even more problematic, Stern’s contrasting portraits of the Gaon and Mendelssohn serve to exaggerate the Gaon’s modernity, while minimizing Mendelssohn’s. Stern begins his chapter, “Elijah and the Enlightenment” with the arresting claim that while ”Elijah believed that Judaism and Jewish texts expressed universal values, Mendelsohn, Leibnitz’s best known Jewish follower … highlighted the social and political limitations of idealism” (63). Really? What of the Gaon’s view (to cite Stern himself) that ”Jew and Gentile do not share the same deity” (109)? And what of his view (something Stern omits to point out) that Jewish souls, as the Kabbalah maintains, differ essentially from non-Jewish souls?[19] Regarding Mendelsohn, Stern himself acknowledges that he believed that philosophy (and we would add Jewish belief) “[are] something universal and cannot contradict natural reason” (79). Furthermore (again something Stern neglects to tell us), Mendelssohn’s criticisms of German idealism flowed from its being in his view not universal enough, still retaining the traces, as in Leibnitz’ affirmation of eternal damnation, of its Christian theological origins. All this is apart from the Gaon’s ready use of the ban to suppress the nascent Hasidic movement, as contrasted with Mendelssohn’s call upon both Church (including Synagogue) and State to renounce any coercion in matters of religious belief.

            A final example of Stern’s skewed perspective is his depiction of the Gaon’s view about the nature and authority of the rabbinic tradition. Stern on the same page (64) first asserts that the “the Gaon called into question the canons of rabbinic authority” and then that
he “challenged the rabbinic tradition.” Both assertions lack any foundation. True, for the Gaon the rabbinic interpretations of the legal passages of biblical text are to be distinguished from their plain-sense meaning, but, as he clearly states on many occasions—and here, incidentally, he is following in Maimonides’ footsteps—their authority is based on their being divinely revealed “laws given to Moses on Mount Sinai,” and after the fact they can all be derived, via the principle of Scriptural omnisignificance, from seemingly minor and trivial superfluities or gaps in the biblical text.  Given this clearly stated view, Stern’s contention that for the Gaon “rabbinic authority is not derived from the rabbis’ connection to the biblical text itself, but rather is based on the fact that the Torah was given to human beings to interpret” (76) cannot be sustained.[20]

            Stern seeks support for his view by referring to a justifiably famous comment of the Gaon to Lev. 6:2. He writes:

The Gaon explains how the [literal sense] of the biblical text allows a [high] priest to enter the [Holy of Holies] whenever he pleases. (According to the rabbis of the Talmud the high priest could only enter once a year.) The Gaon makes a simple but critical historical distinction: during the time of Scripture, biblical law permitted Aaron to go in when he pleased; his access to the [holy of holies] was restricted only later in history when the law changed.  (81)

This is seriously confused. The distinction the Gaon draws in his comment is not between the literal sense of the biblical text and a differing rabbinic view, but between two units of the biblical text itself. Leviticus 16:1-28, the Gaon maintains basing himself on a rabbinic observation in Leviticus Rabbah 21:7,[21] refers just to Aaron, who is allowed to enter the Holy of Holies any time he wishes as long as he performs the ritual outlined in that section. Lev. 16:29-34, on the other hand, refers to all high priests subsequent to Aaron, who are allowed to enter the Holy of Holies only if they perform the requisite ritual and only once a year on Yom Kippur. This accounts for the fact that Yom Kippur is not mentioned in verses 1-28 as well as for the emphasis in verses 16:29 and 34 that this law is “for all time” and the otherwise inexplicable emphasis in 16:34 that this ritual is to be performed only “once a year.” Aside from brilliantly illuminating the biblical text, the Gaon’s analysis also allows him to deftly and convincingly resolve some long standing rabbinic conundrums, such as the rabbinic debate over the
function of the “ram for a burn offering” and the puzzling rabbinic assertion that Lev.16:23 is out of place.[22]

            That Stern misconstrues the Gaon’s observation is particularly unfortunate, since its proper explication would have offered readers a wonderful example of the Gaon’s exegetical genius. This leads to another weakness of Stern’s book. Stern repeatedly and rightly stresses the Gaon’s exegetical originality and incisiveness, but the all too few examples he brings do not, at least in my view, substantiate his claim. There is never any “aha” moment where readers of the book will exclaim ”Wow! This is brilliant; this true genius.” Stern points to the Gaon’s deletion of a passage from a classic rabbinic text on the grounds of its superfluity (55). But while it may take daring to deem a passage inauthentic because it is redundant, it does not require any particular genius to do so. There are many not overly technical examples that Stern could and should have brought where the Gaon’s textual emendations bring light and clarity to what had previously appeared to be a textual and conceptual muddle—say his brilliant transposition in Tosefta Terumot, 7:20 of ”outside” (“mi-be-hutz”) and “inside” (mi-bifnim”)[23] Similarly, there are not overly technical examples of the Gaon’s brilliantly original  interpretations of halakhic texts that Stern could and should have brought—say the Gaon’s famous and oft-cited interpretation of Mishnah Berakhot 4:1 regarding the meaning of the word “keva” in the Mishnaic statement that the evening service has no “keva”.[24]

            In a related, if somewhat different vein, Stern’s scanting the Gaon’s Kabbalistic side deprives him of the opportunity to show the reader how the Gaon often uses Kabbalah to brilliantly explain and illuminate a rabbinic Aggadah. From a critical-historical perspective, of course, such explanations cannot be accepted, since the Kabbalistic concepts the Gaon uses are, as established by historical scholarship, much later than the rabbinic material he is explaining; nevertheless, at times his comments (say his famous explanation of the debate in Bava Batra 15a and Menachot 30a regarding who wrote the last eight verses of the Torah[25]) are so ingenious and so elegantly and powerfully resolve multiple problems in the rabbinic text being explicated that even the critical reader, almost against his or her own better judgment, begins to wonder “Perhaps this is the meaning of the rabbinic text after all!”

            Finally the book is missing a bibliographical chapter, briefly describing the Gaon’s major works, their publishing history, and the problems involved in their editing. Some of this can be found scattered throughout the book, but that is no substitute for a systematic presentation. Such a chapter by detailing the multiple editions of many of the Gaon’s writing and the differences between them would have sensitized the readers to the difficulties in reconstructing his worldview.[26] It would also have driven home the amazing range of the Gaon‘s literary activity. Above all, it might have provided the reader with a deeper understanding of the nature and sheer reach of the Gaon’s literary project. Aside from his commentary on the Shulhan Arukh that, in many ways, is the odd-man out, the Gaon in his writings sought to explicate the totality of biblical and rabbinic literature. But, for him, rabbinic literature includes the liturgy, all of classical rabbinic literature, including the Mishnah, Tosefta, Halakhic and Aggadic midrashim (including Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer), the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, and even such historical rabbinic works as Seder Olam Rabbah, all of which for him constitute the exoteric branch of rabbinic literature, as well as such classic Kabbalistic works as the Zohar, Tikkunei Zohar, Raya Mehemna,  Midrash ha-Ne‘elam, Sefer Yetzira, Sifra
de-Tznuiuta, and Sefer ha-Bahir, all of which for him constitute the esoteric branch of rabbinic literature. In this respect Stern’s speaking of the Gaon’s “mastery of the entire canon of rabbinic and Kabbalistic literature” (20) is, without further explanation, somewhat misleading, for in the Gaon’s view these were two branches of rabbinic literature, and his goal was to show that, if properly explicated, both branches not only were they not contradictory, but, more, formed a unified whole, rooted in and deriving from biblical literature. This explains why the Gaon, as seen above, never hesitated to use Kabbalistic concepts to explicate aggadic texts and, perhaps even more important, why, he maintained that, if understood properly, there was no contradiction between the halakhic rulings found in the Zohar and those found in the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds. Again, the ambition and boldness of this project are breath taking, and, if anywhere, it is here that we find “his broader philosophic project of restoring the rational pre-established harmony of a world confused by unnecessary human error and evil.”

            In sum: Stern’s The Gaon is a pioneering work about an intellectual titan that opens up many important avenues for further research, but I remain unconvinced by its modernizing portrait of the Gaon. Above all, while I am certain that anyone who finishes reading The Gaon with, say, the Appassionata Sonata or Eroica Symphony playing in the background will understand and appreciate Beethoven’s genius, I am not at all certain that, for all Stern’s learning and insight, she will understand and appreciate in what way the Gaon was a genius.

Who was Reb Shlomo? by Natan Ophir (Offenbacher)

Natan Ophir’s book, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach: Life, Mission, and Legacy, has just appeared. This is a complete biography of Carlebach’s life (not a hagiography) and is essential for anyone with an interest in Carlebach. The Seforim Blog is happy to include this excerpt from the book, pp. 413-419.

1.      Who was Reb Shlomo?

Who was Reb Shlomo Carlebach? This question was deliberated in the obituaries after his death. Elli Wohlgelernter of The Jerusalem Post tried to describe Shlomo’s elusive uniqueness:

Indeed, Shlomo just didn’t seem to fit into any restrictive defining label. Menachem Daum, in a video report for Religion News and Ethics, labeled Rabbi Carlebach as the “most unorthodox Orthodox rabbi.” Moshe Stern, the internationally renowned cantor, characterized Carlebach as a combination of “a prodigal tzaddik, a musical genius, perhaps a religious exegete, a hippie in religious-ultra-orthodox garb.” Stern highlighted the all-encompassing nature of Reb Shlomo’s personality which defied categorization:

His greatest strength was and remains chiefly his ability to be all encompassing, a kind of prototype for felling the divides, for blurring the borders. This, it seems, is what the ears and souls of many in that younger generation latched onto, seeking as they did an escape path from the rigid categorizing enforced on them by the split reality of Israeli life.[2]

Similarly, Robert L. Cohen asks: Was there ever such an “embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions?”[3] Cohen enumerates some of the seemingly contradictory aspects of Shlomo’s life. For example:

A thoroughgoing traditionalist, with Orthodox yeshiva education and rabbinical ordination, he outraged the Orthodox; a man for whom “pluralism” was an alien, ill-fitting concept, he was an implicit pluralist – teaching and singing everywhere, honoring rabbis of every denomination and encouraging others’ unorthodox paths.[4]

Shlomo was equally at home with the Admor of Amshinov, the homeless in Riverside Park, and Hadassah women. But there were subtle differences in how he presented himself. It was a different type of Shlomo comforting soldiers in hospitals during the Yom Kippur War, and another Shlomo singing for Christians in Poland and Germany.

A 1994 obituary by Yossi Klein Halevi in The Jerusalem Report used the term “Pied Piper of Judaism” to describe how Shlomo “taught an orphaned generation numbed by the Holocaust and assimilation how to return to joy.” Halevi captured the uniqueness of Shlomo’s concerts:

A Shlomo concert was part 60s-style happening, part Hasidic revival…. Shlomo always appeared with an entourage – strung-out street people, rebellious yeshivah boys, spiritual seekers, groupies… The only constant was Shlomo himself: his beautiful melodies; his deep, sure voice; his at-once profound and hokey rap ranging from Hasidic stories to exhortations for people to love each other, to mocking and very funny critiques of both ultra-Orthodoxy and Reform Judaism.[5]

The question of who was Reb Shlomo was often a reflection of how people related to him. Sometimes, it was Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach officiating in rabbinical functions such as weddings. Most disciples preferred the appellation “Reb Shlomo” to indicate a Hasidic closeness and warmth.[6] But for many followers, it was simply “Shlomo,” the best friend, informal confidant, eschewing titles or other artificial barriers. He was the rabbi poised at the entrance to his shul on West 79th St. to welcome all with a bear hug. In the setting of Manhattan’s street corners, he was a “holy brother” to many a “holy beggar.”

With a natural ease, Reb Shlomo also assumed the role of a charismatic prayer leader. For example, on Hoshana Rabbah services at West 79th St., wearing a white kittel and black gartel, he was like a choirmaster orchestrating the musical accompaniment of trumpet, violin and
singing congregation. In the full hour-long video dated September 26, 1994 at the Carlebach Shul, one can see the epitome of the new religious structure invented by Reb Shlomo: integrating a selection of his songs for the Hallel, each setting a different mood and spiritual direction; the symbolic waving of the lulav and arava with joyful dancing, and interjections in English creating a thoughtful direction.[7]
This is the Shlomo leading a new form of religious experience specifically adapted to the Orthodox community.

Shlomo was able to blend in to so many different types of communities because he reflected sundry images to diverse audiences. Prof. Shaul Magid uses the metaphor of a mirror:

Most remember him as a mirror: They saw in him what they wanted him to be, or what they imagined themselves to be…. each of his followers heard what he or she wanted and constructed him in their image. The Orthodox offer one reading, the neo-Hasidim another, Diaspora Jews another, Israeli Jews another; leftists read him one way, Jewish militants another. The point is none of them really know… He bequeathed a “Judaism of uncertainty” (“what do we know?” was his catchphrase) so that everything could be reviewed and revised, in the spirit of love and not separation, on compassion and not exclusion.[8]

Nonetheless, of all the images of Shlomo, the most well-known is that of the Singing Rabbi, the father of modern Hasidic music.

2. The Foremost Songwriter in Judaism?

Ari Goldman, in The New York Times obituary in 1994, designated Shlomo Carlebach “the foremost songwriter in contemporary Judaism.”[9] Recently, Goldman reiterated this statement, adding that it has never been disputed.[10] In 1997, music historian, Robert L. Cohen, referred to Shlomo as “the most prolific composer of liturgical folk melodies in this, perhaps any, century.”[11] In a later article, Cohen explained that Carlebach “opened the gates for a new generation of niggun makers” by creating music with a Hasidic flavor that could be accessible to young Americans:

Shlomo Carlebach had a phenomenal gift for melodies that conveyed yearning and joy, sweetness and exultation all at once… His
example inspired an entire generation to set traditional, and some original, verses to their own new melodies… The result has been a garland of new Jewish music – of new wings for our prayers.[12]

This type of recognition recurs in various Jewish encyclopedias and year books. Mark K. Bauman in the 2011 Jewish American Chronology, recognized Shlomo as “the twentieth century’s most prolific and influential composer of Jewish music and a key ambassador of spirituality,
especially to Jewish youth.”[13] Judah M. Cohen, in the Encyclopaedia Judaica entry, defined Carlebach’s extraordinary influence:

At the time of his death, Shlomo Carlebach had become a legend of sorts, having recorded over 25 albums, composed up to 5,000 songs, performed on five continents, released two official songbooks, amassed a broad following, granted semikhah to both male and female students, and given away nearly all his earnings. Several of his songs, moreover, had become “traditional” during Jewish events; revelers would sing such songs as “Esa Einai,” “David Melekh Yisrael,” “Am Yisrael Chai,” and “Od Yeshoma.”[14]

Mark Kligman, professor of Jewish Musicology at Hebrew Union College in New York, in his survey of contemporary Jewish music in the American Jewish Year Book (2001) stated: “Jewish musical artists of today consider Shlomo Carlebach the father of contemporary Jewish music.”[15] Kligman explains that the most innovative part of Shlomo’s musical success was “the blending of Hassidic song with folk music”:

Combining the participatory ease of folk music, the energy of the newly created music from Israel, and the religious fervor of the Hassidic niggun, he succeeded in moving liturgical music out of the synagogue and into a wide range of other settings, including concert halls and night clubs, and used his music to educate and inspire Jews to renew their Jewish identity and discover the beauty of Jewish life.[16]

Nonetheless, not all Jewish musicologists have recognized Shlomo’s importance. Cantor Macy Nulman in his 1975 comprehensive encyclopedia of Jewish music does not have an entry for Shlomo Carlebach.[17] Similarly, in his 1992 masterful survey of Jewish musical traditions, Hebrew University Professor of Musicology, Amnon Shiloah, does not mention Shlomo.[18] Presumably, part of the reason is that popular Hasidic folk songs are not on the same level as professional music. Indeed, Shlomo’s musical success is remarkable considering that he never really trained as a professional musician, and apart from a few voice lessons in Manhattan, was not an expert cantor. Or as Shlomo self-effacingly explained in an interview to Elli Wohlgelenter:

Furthermore, by adapting the form and fervor of a Hasidic farbrengen (see above, Chapter 6), Shlomo constructed a new hybrid of folk singing and semi-prayer. To quote the insightful appraisal of Motti Regev and Edwin Seroussi:

Armed with a guitar, dressed like an “orthodox hippie,” and using the most basic harmonies and short, repetitive melodies, Carlebach appeared at concerts that became a kind of unorthodox prayer that recalled the traditional Hassidic tish, an assembly of Hassidim around the table of the rebbe, held on special dates, and characterized by singing and dancing.[22]

In sum, the amalgamation of a Hasidic tish, inspirational storytelling, emotional insights, and ethical exhortations created the innovative Carlebachian musical experience. Samuel C. Heilman, professor of Sociology at Queens College CUNY, describes Shlomo Carlebach as a product of a synergy between Hasidic, Israeli, and American trends:

He attached himself to Hasidic prayer styles from which he took the idea of expressive enthusiasms in prayer and devotional ecstasy as part of Jewish outreach. From American new folk idioms, he took the guitar, rhythms, the practice of sing-alongs, the “talking blues,” concertizing, and the idea of making recordings. From Israeli culture, he borrowed the idea of shirah b’tzibbur, i.e., choral singing as a tool of social solidarity. All these he mixed syncretistically to develop his particular style.[23]

Indeed, this description sums up the secret of the appeal to Reb Shlomo’s music. He was able to bring together the popular folk music of the 1960s and the fervor of Hasidic niggunim to create a new genre of music. But Heilman goes further and explains:

Contemporary Carlebach minyanim have elevated him and his approach to a kind of mythic status. Reb Shlomo, as devotees refer to him these days, is the modern Jew’s counterpart to the Hasidic rebbes and other immortals that the Haredi world has enshrined. Like these rebbes, he is frequently resurrected in stories, songs, aphorisms, and teachings that are meant to shape the attitudes and religious character of those who invoke his memory.[24]

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