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וְהָאֱמֶת וְהַשָּׁלוֹם אֱהָבוּ; On Changing the Immutable by Marc B. Shapiro

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וְהָאֱמֶת וְהַשָּׁלוֹם אֱהָבוּ; On Changing the Immutable by Marc B. Shapiro
By Yitzchok Stroh
Professor Marc Shapiro’s latest work, Changing the Immutable, contains considerable interesting and pertinent information for the student of Jewish history. As stated on the cover, the author attempts to reveal how the (Jewish) orthodox ‘establishment’ silences both past and present dissenting voices through “Orthodox Judaism Rewriting Its History.” I don’t intend this to be a review of the entire work (that would take a lot more time and space), however I did want to share some of my frustration here, because I sense that the author’s bias affected his objectivity, and I am afraid that many a reader will be left with an impression that in many ways does not reflect the reality of this complex topic. In this article, I would like to examine one passage of Shapiro’s work to illustrate this point. In chapter eight, entitled, “Is the truth really that important?” Shapiro writes:
Because my purpose in this chapter is to chart the outer limits of what has been viewed as acceptable when it comes to falsehood and deception. I will be focusing on the more ‘liberal’ positions. My aim is to show just how far some rabbinic decisors were willing to go in sanctioning deviations from the truth. One must bear in mind, however, that there are often views in opposition to the ones I shall be examining. Perhaps this knowledge can serve as a counterweight to the shock that many readers will experience upon learning of some of the positions I will mention.
One ‘liberal’ position was expressed by R. Moses Isserles, who went so far as to say that one can even slander someone for the sake of preserving the community. The particular case he was discussing concerned a terrible community dispute that had created the possibility that the Jewish population would be expelled from the city. In what many will find a problematic decision, Isserles offered the opinion, which was then put into action, that it was acceptable to provide false information about an individual whom the government suspected of wrongdoing, if this would alleviate the situation. Although the Talmud states, with regard to giving a man up for execution in response to a demand made by non-Jews, that this is not the way of the pious, Isserles defended his approach: “Even if we did not act in accord with the way of the pious, nevertheless, we acted in accord with the law. I have proven that it is permitted to speak leshon hara [slander] in order to preserve peace.”[1]
Here, Shapiro portrays the רמ”א, the primary codifier of halacha for Ashkenazic Jewry, to have ruled that for the sake of preserving the peace, it is acceptable to provide false information to non-Jewish authorities about a presumably innocent individual whom the government suspected of wrongdoing.
Shocking indeed.
Unfortunately, Shapiro fails to present the תשובה of the רמ”א thoroughly and accurately, and as a result, the reader is left with an erroneous understanding of the opinion of the רמ”א. Furthermore, Shapiro fails to present the relevant section of Talmud precisely, which may lead to further misunderstanding. I am not accusing Professor Shapiro of intentional distortion, but חז”ל do teach us הוי זהיר בתלמוד ששגגת תלמוד עולה זדון — so, with this in mind, I would like to offer a more careful presentation of the Rema’s position as a counterweight for those who’ve read this (inaccurately presented) ‘shocking’ position of the רמ”א.
סימן י”א in  שו”ת הרמ”א is written in complicated rabbinic style, and does not provide a full account of what transpired — but, as the רמ”א writes in the introduction to the תשובה, we should be able to extract sufficient background information as necessary for our purposes[2]:  
The תשובה is a כתב התנצלות[3] (a “writ of justification”) defending actions taken by the בית דין of the רמ”א in response to a local crisis, and as the  רמ”א makes it quite clear in his description of the events, the ensuing bitter results were unexpected and troubling:
 … הנה בכל אלה לשלום נתכוונו בעצם וראשונה, אף כי במקרה מרה היתה באחרונה, ואף מקצת עזי פנים היו בקרבנו ועכשיו מהפכים דברינו לתוהו ובהו. מיהו אנו לשם שמים נתכוונו, והכל נמשך אחר המחשבה והכוונה. אף כי אחריתו ראש ולענה. “Behold in this entire incident our intention was peace, first and foremost, even though by happenstance the end was bitter. There were also a few brazen individuals amongst us, who are now turning things into utter chaos. However, our intent was for the sake of Heaven, and ‘everything follows one’s thoughts and intentions’, even though the end was gall and wormwood.”

While it is probably impossible to reconstruct a precise account of the incident, the following is obvious from the details presented in the תשובה: (1) The government did not suspect anyone of any type of wrongdoing[4]. (2) It was not an individual that was slandered; it was a group of about one hundred respectable community leaders or activists that were slandered. (3) False information was never provided to non-Jewish authorities, and those slandered were not slandered publicly — they were slandered in a private ruling by the decision of a בית דין which was then recorded in a written document. (4) Furthermore, the document was fashioned in a manner which made it evident that the ruling was an exaggeration and not an actual account, and (5) it was drafted only to be used as a means of forcing two opposing sides to reconcile a community quarrel. Unfortunately, (6) the document did become public knowledge and its intention was misconstrued by unscrupulous individuals.[5] And (7) there were dire consequences, probably due to involvement of the non-Jewish authorities, but we do not know what those consequences were.
The actual events that led up to this action are described at length and can be summed up as follows:
A group of pretentious rabbinic and lay leaders[6] convened to place a ban on a certain individual, causing him great harm[7]. (The reason for the ban is not clear.) This individual then sought to take revenge upon those who had placed the ban upon him[8] and was joined by others who sympathized with his cause,[9] ultimately splitting the entire community between his supporters and his enemies[10]. This caused a tremendous desecration of G-d’s name as the strife continued to escalate[11], which led to placing the entire community in danger of being expelled by the authorities[12].
The רמ”א and his colleagues attempted to intercede with the individual’s opponents, but were completely ignored[13], and the matter escalated to the point of death threats against the man upon whom the ban had been placed[14]. In an attempt to resolve matters, the רמ”א and his partners decided to write a fictitious halachic ruling[15], containing exaggerated and slanderous accusations against the individual’s opponents, with the goal being that the individual in question would then use this document to extort the ruling written against him from his enemies, whereby both the documents would be exchanged and destroyed. 
Now, before you extrapolate from here that the רמ”א  had a flippant attitude towards honesty, please consider:
(1) The רמ”א and his colleagues were quite concerned about the possibility that this individual might use the document inappropriately (i.e. reveal its contents to the authorities), and to prevent this, they had him swear a strict oath that he would not show the document to anyone else, and that he would only use it to get his opponents to hand over their original חרם document to him[16]. Anyone familiar with the severity of an oath in Jewish law, and the general fear of swearing falsely at that time, will understand why the outcome was quite a surprise to the rabbis who signed this slanderous document. Furthermore, רמ”א had taken additional steps to insure that the document would be null and void if misused, and as the רמ”א concludes in his justification, “אבל לא נחתם להרע בו לשום אדם חלילה לנו מרשע” (…it was not signed to inflict harm upon any person; G-d forbid that we should do evil).
(2) Regardless of the fact that the slanderous ruling and the resulting document were extremely limited in nature and not meant to be seen by the public (and certainly not the government), the רמ”א was clearly still troubled by the elements of dishonesty. He makes it quite obvious that he felt that he had no choice, and that it was entirely out of concern for the safety of the community that made speaking and writing falsely and negatively about fellow Jews necessary in this case. It is this decision that the רמ”א is attempting to justify in his כתב התנצלות – and as we will see, this was hardly taken lightly.
The רמ”א goes on to quote various sources to support his decision, and proceeds, in rabbinic style, to argue the point by analyzing a Talmudic ruling. Shapiro, when he discusses the Talmudic ruling tells only half the story. Shapiro writes, “The Talmud states, with regard to giving a man up for execution in response to a demand made by non-Jews, that this is not the way of the pious.” However, as we shall see, giving a man up for execution in response to a demand made by non-Jews has nothing to do with the pious — indeed, it is strictly forbidden according to the Talmud. The Mishnah in תרומות rules that if non-Jews were to approach a group of Jewish women and demand that they hand over one of them be defiled or else they would defile all of them, that it is forbidden to hand over one of the women. The Talmud Yerushalmi adds that the same rule would apply in a situation where a non-Jew demands of a group of Jews that they hand over one Jew to be executed or else they would all be killed, that it is likewise forbidden to hand over one of them[17]. 
In this תשובה the רמ”א applies an analogy: Just as it is forbidden to save the lives or the innocence of all through giving over one individual to be defiled or killed, so too it would be forbidden to slander, ridicule, and deride one individual, or a group of individuals (even if no one ever became aware of the slander) in order to remove slander and ridicule from the entire community.
However, the רמ”א sees two distinctions between the cases: Firstly, the halachah that forbids giving someone over applies to a situation where it is done with an action, whereas if it is a matter of speech it would be permitted. Meaning that if the powers that be needed information with which they could kill one of the group, and they threatened that unless that information is provided they would kill them all, it would be permissible to give this information — since by merely providing information they are not directly participating in the action of murder, and therefore they would not be considered accomplices to the execution. So too in our situation, since slander is a matter of speech, the Talmud’s aforementioned rule would not apply. And secondly, the prohibition not to give someone over to the gentiles, is only in a case where they do not request a specific individual. However, were the non-Jews to demand a specific individual to defile or kill, and threaten that if he isn’t turned over they would defile or kill the entire group, then it would be permitted to turn him over. The רמ”א compared the situation in his city to a situation where specific individuals are being targeted; therefore he permitted falsehood and לשון הרע to be spoken.
Regarding this second limitation, the רמ”א questions his ruling based on the following anecdote related in the Talmud Yerushalmi: An individual was sought by the royal government, and he escaped to לוד. When the government surrounded the מדינה, ר’ יהושע בן לוי handed him over to them. Until this point in time it had been common for Eliyahu HaNavi to visit R. Yehoshua, but after this incident, אליהו הנביא ceased his visits. Subsequently, R. Yehoshua fasted many fasts, and Eliyahu appeared to him, and said, “Shall I reveal myself to a slanderer?” To which R’ Yehoshua responded, “But have I not acted according to the משנה?”  To this Eliyahu replied, “Can this be considered משנת חסידים?”
It is in response to this that the רמ”א states, “even if we did not act in accordance with ‘the way of the pious’, nevertheless, we acted in accordance with the law.” It seems reasonable to assume that since the slander recorded in the document written by the רמ”א and his colleagues was never meant to be seen by anyone and would have alleviated the threat of expulsion, the רמ”א felt that it was not necessary to follow “the ways of the pious” and was satisfied with following the letter of the law[18]. Hence, Shapiro’s claim in the name of the רמ”א “that it was acceptable to provide false information about an individual whom the government suspected of wrongdoing if this would alleviate the situation” is neither fair nor accurate.
In conclusion, I think it is fair to say that the position of the רמ”א in שו”ת הרמ”א סימן י”א does not represent a radical position which may shock many readers as being “on the outer limits of what has been viewed as acceptable when it comes to falsehood and deception”. Rather, there is no reason not to view this as the position of a responsible community leader of a high moral caliber, and it is unfortunate that he has been portrayed differently.
Postscript:
Although the following does not affect the above, I include it for whatever historical interest it may have: From the language of תשובה י”א in שו”ת הרמ”א (קהלתנו, עירנו, רחובותינו, = our community, our city, our streets) it seems almost certain that the case under discussion took place in the author’s city.  If the author was the רמ”א, that city would be Cracow, Poland where the רמ”א served as Rav from an extremely young age until his passing. However R. Asher Ziv, the Rema’s biographer and editor of his תשובות, suggests that the incident took place in the city of Prague in Bohemia[19]; a city plagued by strife and under the constant threat of expulsion. Since the five תשובות following סימן י”א in שו”ת הרמ”א were written by various rabbanim regarding problems in the city of Prague, it is not unlikely that תשובה י”א also concerns a dispute in Prague.
Based on the above, it would seem plausible to conclude that תשובה י”א was not even authored by the [20]רמ”א; rather it was sent to him by a colleague from Prague[21]. It is additionally possible that the תשובה was in no way connected to the רמ”א, however, since the תשובה was found among the other תשובות relating to Prague it was included accidently. This would not be all that surprising, since we do know that there are תשובות in שו”ת הרמ”א which were erroneously included in the collection[22].
   
Response by Marc B. Shapiro

Let me begin by thanking Rabbi Yitzchok Stroh and the many others who have read my book carefully, especially those who have sent comments. Some readers have pointed out errors or alternative ways to read passages and others have called attention to important new sources. I have already mentioned some of these in past posts and will continue to do so in future posts.
Stroh believes that my presentation of a responsum of R. Moses Isserles is inaccurate and suggests that it was my bias that led to my objectivity being affected. I am not sure what my bias would be in this case, presumably a desire to make use of an important source in support of my argument.
Stroh’s summary of the responsum is helpful, especially since as Stroh notes it is difficult to reconstruct exactly what happened. The beginning of the case was, as Stroh states:
A group of pretentious rabbinic and lay leaders convened to place a ban on a certain individual, causing him great harm. (The reason for the ban is not clear.)
In reading over the responsum, I think that the reason for the ban is explained on p. 56 in Siev’s edition. It states:
עליו נגזרה גזירה ונחתך עליו דין מסור הגמורה
I assume this means that they regarded him as a moser, and that is why he was placed under the ban. Earlier it states regarding this man ודמו להיות מותר which apparently alludes to the fact that a moser should be killed.
Stroh notes that I am mistaken in assuming that the government suspected one of the Jews of wrongdoing and that R. Isserles ruled that false information could be provided if this was the only way to save the community. He also states that contrary to my presentation, it was not one person who was to be slandered but numerous community leaders.
I have read over the responsum and I have to agree that the slander was not directed against one person but against a group, so I thank Stroh for this correction. In fact, I am not the only one to make this mistake, and am indeed in good company (not that this is in any way an excuse). Nachum Rakover also describes the case as being one of slander against an individual.[23]
מוציאי הדיבה קיוו, שאם “ישנו את טעמם”, כלומר ישקרו אודות מישהו מהקהילה, יעלה בידם להחזיר את השלום על כנו.
Based on this, Rakover then has an entire section dealing with if it is OK to sacrifice an individual to save the many.
R. Aryeh Pomeranchik writes:[24]
בתשו’ הרמ”א סי’ י”א למד מזה, דמותר להוציא שם רע על אחד מן הצבור כדי להשקיט בזה המריבה שנפלה בין הצבור ולעשות שלום
R. Aharon David Goldberg writes:[25]
אמנם בתשובות הרמ”א סי’ י”א מפורש דלא כדבריו, שדן בשאלה אם מותר להוציא שם רע על אחד מן הצבור כדי להשקיט מריבה
R. Yitzchak Zilberstein might also make this error (although it could be that he was simply not being exact in his description of the case, as his focus is on the underlying halakhah):[26]
ובתשובות הרמ”א (סימן יא) למד מזה, שמותר להוציא שם רע על אחד, כדי להשקיט בזה מריבה שנפלה בין הציבור ולעשות שלום.
It is certain, however, that R. Zilberstein is mistaken when he states[27] שלמעשה הרמ”א לא התיר, as the entire responsum is indeed a justification of the action which occurred, and R. Isserles states: “Even if we did not in accordance with ‘the way of the pious’, nevertheless, we acted in accordance with the law.”
What about the non-Jewish government? Again, I have to agree with Stroh that there is no evidence that the slander was ever directly reported to the government, although I still assume that R. Isserles would agree that to save the community, one would even be permitted to slander someone to the non-Jewish authorities, not merely to the Jewish community. As I see it, and please correct me if I am wrong, the entire logic of R. Isserles’ responsum leads to this result even if, in the case under discussion, the slander was intended to remain in the Jewish community. How else is one to understand his words (p. 53):
דמותר להוציא שם רע אם כוונתו לשמים ולתכלית טוב כדי לעשות שלום
I thank Rabbi Stroh for setting the record straight.
Regarding giving up a man for execution in response to a demand made by non-Jews, I thought I was clear that we were dealing with a demand for a specific person, the details of which Stroh properly explains. Yet I should have also mentioned that the case must be one where the entire community will itself be killed if they do not give up the man.[28]
In his conclusion, Stroh states that the position of R. Isserles should not be seen as radical. “Rather, there is no reason not to view this as the position of a responsible community leader.” Yet I still think that in the eyes of most people what R. Isserles agreed to will be seen as “on the outer limits of what has been viewed as acceptable.” In fact, R. Daniel Eidensohn, who translates some of R. Isserles’ responsum here, writes as follows: “As far as I know the ruling of the Rema was not accepted and is not cited with approval by anyone else. It is the thinking, however, of one our major poskim and illustrates how important community peace is.”
R. Israel Zev Minzberg finds the permission to slander another for the sake of peace incomprehensible, and states that one cannot rely on this ruling.[29]
דברי התשו’ הנז’ נפלאו ממני ולדעתי אין לסמוך ע”ז למעשה כלל וכלל.
R. Yitzhak Hutner also found the responsum unacceptable and stated that it was not written by R. Isserles.[30] In other words, contrary to Stroh, Rabbis Eidensohn, Minzberg and Hutner do find the conclusion of the responsum surprising, and indeed “on the outer limits”.
Finally, I must note that R. Zilberstein refers to the responsum of R. Isserles in another place where he discusses the following problem:[31] Reuven is a very good and God-fearing student. His brother Shimon is not, and causes Reuven all sorts of serious problems. The teacher of Reuven wants to stop Shimon from doing this, and the only way to do so is to tell Shimon’s father, Yaakov, that Shimon said that he was going to steal from Yaakov in order to hire some thugs who would attack Reuven. When Yaakov hears this, he will take steps against Shimon and this will stop Shimon’s harassment of Reuven. Is it permitted for the teacher to lie about Shimon in order to protect Reuven?[32]
R. Zilberstein concludes that it is permitted to tell Yaakov the falsehood about Shimon, since Shimon is a “ba’al mahaloket”. In addition to citing R. Isserles’ responsum, he also cites an opinion of the Hafetz Hayyim.[33] The Hafetz Hayyim states that if one sees that a certain individual will be a bad influence on his son or student, he should warn him to keep away from this individual. If, however, by telling the truth about this individual, it will not be enough to keep one’s son or student away, the Hafetz Hayyim states that “it is possible” that it is permitted to exaggerate the individual’s wrongdoing, on the condition that one does this le-shem shamayim and not because of any personal grudge.
ולענין הפרט שלא יגדל העולה יותר ממה שהיא אם יספר להם כאשר היא לא יתרחקו מאתו ויכול לבוא מזה ריעותא אפשר דמותר לגדל

Although the Hafetz Hayyim shows some hesitation as to whether this is permissible, R. Zilberstein has no such qualms and concludes that it is permitted to lie for the good purpose of helping Reuven.

This decision provides further proof for my point that there are many voices in the tradition that sanction departing from the truth when they deem it necessary.


[1] Shapiro, Changing the Immutable, p. 255.
[2] All excerpts from שו”ת הרמ”א are from R’ Asher Ziv’s 1970 edition. “יבינו הקורא מעצמו מתוך דברי ענין ההתנצלות בעצמו”. (שו”ת הרמ”א נ”ב ע”ב.)
[3] “כתב התנצלות בענין מעשה שנעשה בשנות טעמים מפני רדיפת שלום” (שם).
[4] כנראה שטעותו של שפירא נובע מב’ קטעים בתשובת הרמ”א, הא’ – ממה שכותב הרמ”א שם עמ’ נ”ד “ובנדון דידן ייחד לנו אחם מהם, שאומר האויב כי נפשותיהם של אלו היה מבקש כמו שנתבאר”, וכנראה ששפירא הבין שהמדובר הוא באויב אינו יהודי מאישי הממשלה, אבל ברור שה”אויב” הוא אותו היהודי שהיה מוחרם מתחלה כפי שמבואר בפירוש בהמשך התשובה שהוא היה האויב של קבוצת הקצינים שהחרימו אותו. עי’ בהמשך דברינו בפנים. 
הב’ – ממה שכותב הרמ”א “ולא היה לנו למסור נפש אחת מישראל …”  ושפירא הבין שהכוונה למסור נפש אחת מישראל לעכו”ם, אבל ברור הדבר כפי שכותב הרמ”א בהמשך דבריו שמדובר אודות מסירה ללעג ולקלס ולהוצאת שם רע כמו שכותב הרמ”א “ולא היה לנו למסור נפש אחת מישראל ללעג ולקלס ולהוציא עליו דברים אשר לא כן. כ”ש על חשובים כמאה מנהיגי המדיניה, כמו שעשו במעשה אשר אבאר למטה” וכפי מה שמבאר הרמ”א למטה לא היה מעולם מסירה לאינו יהודים.
וגם בהקטע שם נ”ה ע”א “דמצינו שפת יתר על קציני ארץ ליתן אותם לפני בני בליעל” כוונתו על המסירה לפני אויביהם היהודי הנ”ל וחביריו.
[5] שם עמ’  “… ומפרש בו (בהפסק דין) דברים זרים אשר לא עלו על לבנו מעולם, והתחברו אליו אנשים רקים … מוציאי דבה…”
[6] שמכנף הארץ שמענו שנתחברו יחד כתרנגולים של בית בוקיא, ועי’ ברש”י יבמות פ”ד ע”א שפי’ בקיאים וחריפים ואין מניחים תרנגול נכרי ביניהם.
[7] שם נ”ה ע”א “וזה המעשה אשר אירע לא ראינו מעשה מעולם כזה לרוע, שמכנף הארץ שמענו שנתחברו יחד כתרנגולים של בית בוקיא כל רועי ישראל האזינו גדולי ארץ גודרי פרץ פרשו מצודתם בנציבותינו על אחד ונלכד בחרמם ובמצודתם וכדגי הים יאסוף במצותם, ודמו להיות מותר וכסהו בעפר.”
[8] שם “הנ”ל רצה על אויביו שהמציאו עליו הדברים לנקום ובהם התעבר הצריח ואף התגבר.”
[9] שם “ונתחברו אליו אנשים לעזרתו, אשר היה להם צר בצרתו.”
[10] שם “ובסבת זה נחלקה הקהלה לשנים …”
[11] Apparently the strife came to be judged before the authorities as the רמ”א writes: “כמו שהיה ידוע מקדמות דנא לכל באי שער עירנו, המעשים הרעים שהיו נגד פנינו, ואויבינו היו פלילים. וכאן כנראה כוונתו לאויבים אינו יהודים כמאמר רז”ל המובא ברש”י ריש פרשת משפטים.  
[12] שם. “ובזה נתמוטטו עמודי ארץ ויסודיה. והיה לחוש בן יפוק ח”ו חורבא מיניה מאת פני המלך והשרים לגרש כל העם הזה כולו כהניה ושריה.”
[13] שם. “פתחנו לשלום ודברנו עם הצד שהיה מנגד להשלים אתו והיינו בעיניהם כמתעתע”
[14] שם. “[ואמרו] כי לא ישקטו עד אשר רצו להרוג אותו” (בדפוסים אחרים כתוב עד שרצו להרוג אותנו).
[15] שם עמ’ נ”ז: “גם מתוך השטר ניכר כי לא דינא עבדנו רק ע”ד גיזום … כי השטר מזויף מתוכו … השטר בטל ומבוטל … כי לא נתקן אלא מפני השלום …”
[16] שם נ”ו: “כי נשבע לנו שבועה חמורה שלא רצה לגלות השטר החתום לעולם ובשמנו לא יהא נקרא. רק שיוכל להתפאר בו שגם לו חתומים כאלה, באולי יכול להוציא ע”י זה השטר החתום עליו (כלומר שטר החרם) ויבואו על ידי זה להשלים אתו, ויבערו שני הצדדים השטרות מן העולם. ואם ככה היה עשה לנו לא היה בדבר אלא קדוש השם יתברך … אבל מעולם לא עשינו בכוונה אחרת כי אם להוציא את שלום. ואם לא קיבל עליו להחזיר לנו את חתימתנו.”
[17] כמובן שכל זה  מיירי אף כשברור הדבר שביכולתם להרוג את כולם, ולדוגמא אם נמצאו כמה יהודים בבנין ויש ביכולת הנכרים להרוג כולם ע”י שיפוצצו כל הבנין, והנכרים מבקשים למסור להם אחד מהיהודים אסור מן הדין למוסרו להם. וביאור הדבר הוא כי אף באם לא ימסרו אחד מהיהודים להנכרים יהיה אותו יהודי נהרג עם האחרים אך אין לנו רשות לברר מי הוא זה שיצא להריגה. אך כאשר הנכרים מבקשים איש פרטי אזי מעיקרא דדינא מותר למסור אותו אמנם עפ”י דברי הירושלמי אינה ממידת חסידות כי למעשה אנו מוסרים אותו להריגה וטוב לנו להניח הדבר בידי שמים אף שעל פי דרך הטבע מן הסתם יהיו כולם נהרגים.
[18] If one were to be מדייק in the language used by the רמ”א in formulating his ruling, he will notice that the רמ”א permits one to be משנה (alter) for the sake of peace, but he never allows one to be משקר (lie) for the sake of peace. This רמ”א would be proof to the opinion of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Ztz”l (שיחות קודש שבת פ’ עקב תשמ”א אות כ”ז עי”ש) who explains that one may be משנה (alter) for the sake of peace, but not be משקר (lie) for the sake of peace.
[19] הר’ זיו שם הערה 64, “אבל קרוב הדבר לומר שהכוונה פה לקהילת פראג העתיקה …”
[20] ואולי זהו הכוונה במש”כ בתוכן הענינים שנדפס בדפוס ראשון של שו”ת הרמ”א, כתב התנצלות בענין רדיפות שלום לגדול אחד, היינו שהתשובה הוא לגדול אחד ולא יצא מידי הרמ”א.
הר’ אשר זיו מילת אלו מתוכן הסימנים והעיר בשולי הגליון, בכל ההוצאות נוסף פה ‘לגדול אחד’. ואולי הבין שהכוונה הוא שהתשוב נכתב אל גדול אחד.
[21] אולם הר’ זיו לא הזכיר שתשובה זו אינו להרמ”א
[22] זיו בהמבוא לשו”ת הרמ”א עמ’ 30
[23] Matarah ha-Mekadeshet et ha-Emtza’im (Jerusalem, 2000), p. 176 (emphasis added here and in subsequent quotations).
[24] Emek Berakhah, p. 41.
[25] Shirat David, Bereshit-Shemot, p. 132.
[26] Hashukei Hemed, Sukkah, pp. 443-444.
[27] Ibid., p. 444.
[28] JT Terumot 8:4.
[29] She’erit Yisrael, Orah Hayyim no. 13.
[30] Sefer ha-Zikaron le-Maran Ba’al “Pahad Yitzhak”, p. 334.
[31] Hashukei Hemed, Makot 11a.
[32] One should not assume that this question, or any of the other strange questions in R. Zilberstein’s works, are actual cases. I think it is obvious that he makes them up in order to have a springboard to discuss various halakhic issues.
[33] Hafetz Hayyim, Kelal 4, Be’er Mayim Hayyim, no. 43.


The History and Dating of Onkelos

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The History and Dating of Onkelos

By Israel Drazin
The Babylonian Talmud has the earliest report of the authorship and date of Targum Onkelos. It states that an individual named Onkelos composed the translation in the first third of the second century CE. Since the nineteenth century, scholars have generally rejected this recollection and dated the Targum, or its final redaction, in the third century CE. I will show that the proper date is more likely the late fourth or early fifth century CE. This dating is supported by seeing the consistent use of the targumist of the final version of tannaitic Midrashim that were not edited until the late fourth century.
The Traditional View and its Problems
The Babylonian talmudic scholars gave preference to the literal Aramaic translation of the Pentateuch, which they called targum didan (“our translation”), over other translations.[1] However, they had but a single unreliable memory of its author.
            A Palestinian Amora (in Megillah 3a) curiously states that Onkelos composed the authorized translation after it had been forgotten.
R. Jeremiah – or some say R. Hiyya b. Abba – also said: Onkelos the proselyte under the guidance of R. Eleazar and R. Joshua composed The Targum of the Pentateuch…. But did Onkelos the proselyte compose the targum to the Pentateuch? Has not R. Ika said in the name of R. Hananel who had it from Rab: What is meant by the text, “And they read in the book, in the law of God, with an interpretation, and they gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading” (Nehemiah 8:8)? “And they read in the book, in the law of God” this indicates the [Hebrew] text; “with an interpretation”: this indicates the Targum; “and they gave the sense” this indicates the verse stops; “and caused them to understand the reading” this indicates the accentuation; or, according to another version, the Masoretic notes? – These had been forgotten, and were not established again.[2]
            The Babylonian Talmud states that Onkelos was the son of Kolonikos, who was the nephew of the Roman Emperor Titus. He converted to Judaism. Several miraculous stories are revealed about him.[3] These tales are virtually identical with those conveyed of the Greek translator Aquilas, and, as we shall see, were confusedly ascribed to Onkelos.[4] Thus, according to R. Jeremiah and the Babylonian Talmud, Targum Onkelos was composed about 130 CE.
            There are several serious problems with R. Jeremiah’s opinion. The Babylonian Talmud translates pentateuchal words eighteen times using the term u’m’targuminun, “and it is translated,” or “the Targum states.”[5] Despite R. Jeremiah’s view of authorship, in none of these instances is Onkelos mentioned by name. Midrashim use the same formula seventeen times and Onkelos is cited only once, in a late twelfth-century midrash (Numbers Rabbah 9).[6] An opinion is attributed to an individual called Onkelos only once in the Talmud. This opinion is in no way related to the Targum.[7]
            There is good authority confirming that Aquilas translated the Bible into Greek about 130 CE. There is, however, no corroboration for connecting the Aramaic translation currently called Targum Onkelos with a person named Onkelos other than the single statement in the
tractate Megillah. The talmudic sages, R. Jeremiah or R. Hiyya, obviously confused the two translations.[8] It is hardly possible that R. Eleazar and R. Joshua had two students with virtually identical names, both of whom were born of the same noble lineage under highly unusual circumstances, and both of whom underwent remarkably similar miraculous events.
            It is more likely that the redactors of the Babylonian Talmud did not know who composed their “authorized” or “officially accepted” translation. They recalled that the Jerusalem Talmud of several generations earlier had stated that Aquilas composed the authorized Greek translation. They ascribed their Aramaic version to him as well.[9]
            The only essential difference between the names of Onkelos and Aquilas in Hebrew script is the addition of the letter nun, a characteristic insertion in Babylonian Aramaic. Onkelos is thus a Babylonian equivalent of the name Aquilas.[10]
            There are indicators that suggest, although admittedly they do not prove, that Targum Onkelos could not have been composed in the second century. If Onkelos existed, aside from the unbelievable circumstance that both he and Aquilas underwent the same curious life experiences, there must have been some differences. Why is no difference mentioned in the two stories? Moreover, why is there no allusion to Onkelos in the Talmud, where the Targum is extolled? If the Babylonian talmudic rabbis knew the author of the Targum, we would expect that Onkelos’ name should have been cited whenever the Targum is mentioned.[11] If Onkelos was a noted Palestinian scholar of the second century, he should have been included in the Jerusalem Talmud whose final redaction occurred at the end of the fourth century. Further, if the author of the Targum was known, there should have been no need for the tradition of R. Jeremiah, and the Talmud should never have questioned this tradition.
            Even more significantly, if Onkelos composed the Targum in the second century, why is his name not mentioned in the tannaitic midrashim that were edited in the late fourth century? Jewish tradition is meticulous about naming the source of every teaching.[12] Furthermore, the Mishnah in the Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 8b, edited after the traditionally held composition date of the Onkelos Targum, quotes R. Simeon b. Gamaliel, who lived during and after the traditional composition date of Targum Onkelos. He identified only the Greek translation as being holy. The Mishnah knows nothing of Targum Onkelos. The Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 9b, comments upon this Mishnah and states in the name of R. Abbahu (circa 300 CE), who made his statement in the name of R. Johanan (circa 250 CE, both living several generations after the supposed composition of Targum Onkelos), that the halakhah follows R. Simeon b. Gamaliel.
Modern Scholarship
 
The problems that refute the talmudic view of the dating of Targum Onkelos also confront and refute the views of modern scholarship. Some writers, such as M. H. Goshen-Gottstein and B. Grossfeld, accept the talmudic dating.[13] Grossfeld, for example, maintains that Onkelos and Aquila are the same person, argues that the parallels between the Targum and the midrashim point to a common tradition upon which both genres of scriptural interpretations rest, and concludes that where the school of R. Akiba and R. Ishmael differ, Onkelos upholds the views of R. Akiba’s school. Grossfeld knew only 153 cases in the Pentateuch where Targum Onkelos and the tannaitic midrashim parallel each other. He attributes Onkelos’ translation to the Akiban school because he notes that in 19 of these 153 instances the Targum’s deviation were like those of R. Akiba. Grossfeld did not know that Targum Onkelos parallels the tannaitic Midrashim in 698 instances, as we will show, in just four of the pentateuchal books, and he did not analyze the parallels or take note of the frequent times that the targumist differed with the Akiban school (e.g. Exodus 21:3, 19; 22:3).
            Most scholars reject the Talmud’s date and assign the date of composition to the first half of the third century CE. They rely on references to the Targum in a volume on targumic traditions collected in Die Masorah zum Targum Onkelos,[14] which is said to have been composed in the first half of the third century CE.[15] There is no evidence of the time of composition of this Masorah and no certainty that many elements were not added at later dates. A second proof for the third century dating is the existence of non-halakhic material in the Targum. The argument is that later rabbis could not have authorized divergences from halakhah. These scholars fail to note that rabbinic tradition has always tolerated dissident opinions as to the peshat, the literal sense of the text. Contra-halakhic biblical interpretations occur in the early midrashim and the Talmuds, as well as in the later commentaries of Rashi, Rashbam, Ibn Ezra, Nachmanides, and others. There is no rabbinic statement indicating that Targum Onkelos has halakhic authority. The rabbis only forbade teachings which encourage “behavior” that is contrary to halakhah.
Dating Onkelos by means of the Tannaitic Midrashim
While studying, translating and commenting upon Targum Onkelos to the Pentateuch,[16] I noted the remarkable reliance of this Aramaic translation upon the present version of all of the tannaitic midrashim.[17] This has led us to date the Targum to a time following the final redaction of these midrashim.[18]
            I will illustrate this conclusion by focusing on the book of Numbers. A comparison of the words used in Targum Onkelos and Sifrei to Numbers shows the reliance of the author(s) of the Targum upon this late fourth-century midrash[19] and shows the many similarities between the two documents.[20] The findings are rather startling when one realizes that the two documents were not only written in different languages, but that their authors and editors, as will be seen, had totally different agendas. While space constraints restrict us from detailing the findings in the other pentateuchal books, we will also outline these findings briefly and show the consistency of the targumic borrowings.
            The method used in the following study of Numbers is relatively simple. Whenever the Onkelos translation replaces the biblical Hebrew word with a word that deviates from being an exact translation of the original, the tannaitic midrash is examined.
            We will see, for example, that there are five instances where our targumist relied on Sifrei to Numbers’ definitions. Sifrei defined words with what we may call a full definition formula: ein bakhal makom elah (‘there is no place that X means anything else but ‘Y’). Onkelos quotes Sifrei’s word definition each time this formula is used, except where the midrash differentiates dabeir, ‘speak’, from amar, ‘said’.[21]
            Similarly, Sifrei uses what we could call a short definition formula, in (‘There is no… but’), thirteen times.[22] Again, Onkelos incorporates Sifrei’s exact word or uses a synonym of the midrashic term in each instance. Thus, repeatedly and consistently, Onkelos defines the biblical terms exactly like the midrash whenever the midrash states that it is giving a definition. In each instance, the targumist used Sifrei as a dictionary.
            Additionally, our targumist repeats – one might even say “quotes” – Sifrei’s exact word in 53 other verses and is similar to the midrash an additional 35 times in the book of Numbers. Thus, when Onkelos parallels the midrash, it is more likely to repeat the midrash’s exact word than to use a synonym. These numbers are extraordinary since the Targum is an Aramaic translation and the midrash is a Hebrew documentary, and there is extant midrash on only a third of the biblical text.
            In total, Targum Onkelos parallels Sifrei to Numbers in 106 instances, in over a third of the verses where Sifrei has commentary. This is not happenstance. The Targum uses the word because the targumist drew it from the midrash.[23]
            The Onkelos targumist not only drew his translation, indeed his very words, from Sifrei to Numbers but did so as well with the tannaitic midrash Sifrei Zutta to Numbers.
 
            Sifrei Zutta does not use the full definition formula contained in Sifrei, but it has the short formula ein in five verses (7:3, 10:31, 11:3, 11:18 and 15:38). In each of these instances, our targumist deviates from the biblical text and uses an Aramaic synonym for Sifrei Zutta’s word.
            In addition, Onkelos quotes Sifrei Zutta’s exact word 61 times and is similar to the midrash 38 times. In total, the Targum parallels this midrash in 104 places.[24]
Lack of Similarities
 
Turning now to the opposite perspective, the following answers the question: why did the targumist not copy everything in the midrash and why did he include material not in the midrash? This will help us understand that the targumist consistently drew his material from the midrash and only failed to do so because of good reasons.
            As mentioned earlier, the targumist and the midrash compilers had different agendas. The targumist quotes the midrash when their purposes are the same, when the midrash translates the text’s simple meaning. He deviates from the midrash when the midrash goes beyond this task. He adds material that is not in the midrash when the midrash did not attempt to clarify the text’s meaning and his rendering does so.
            The following list catalogues some of the kinds of deviations inserted by the targumist to clarify the text that are not in Sifrei. These changes, which are explained in chapter 3 and in the author’s Targum Onkelos to Numbers, either did not concern the halakhic and aggadic-minded commentators of the midrash, or they are insertions that the compilers of the midrash did not feel compelled to add to every verse when they had already commented upon it elsewhere (e.g. Shekhinah or adding a preposition).[25]
Explaining the text with an Aramaic idiom
Replacing el, which means “God,” with “idol”
Changing the harsh “take” to the softer “lead”
Grammatical and tense replacements
Explanation of metaphors
Using words to avoid anthropomorphisms, such as memra
Treating a name as verb
Updating and thereby identifying a place name
Being more explicit than the Bible
Avoiding an anthropomorphism and anthropopathism
Changes to preserve Israelite honor
Changes to protect God’s honor
Removing redundancies
Replacing the plural Elohim with the Tetragrammaton
            Thus, the targumic insertions that are of not in the midrash are absent from the midrash because they do not concern the midrashic authors. Conversely, the targumist only incorporates Sifrei material that interprets biblical verses according to their literal meaning. He avoids using derash, interpretations trying to disclose the text’s hidden meaning, or where the midrash has halakhah, theology, legends, and parables.
            Examples of midrashic derash that Onkelos refrains from using are: the Massoretic Text’s (MT’s) “uncover the woman’s head” (Numbers 5:18) teaches that Israelite women should keep their heads covered. MT’s “place in her hands” (5:18) is required to tire her out so that she will repent. MT’s “two turtledoves and two young pigeons” (6:10) implies that people may not substitute turtledoves for pigeons or pigeons for turtledoves.
            Halakhic elements are on virtually every Sifrei page. They appear only rarely in the Aramaic translation, which also has contra-halakhic matter, and then only when they help readers understand the text’s simple meaning. MT’s “command” (5:2) is said to apply immediately and for future generations. MT’s “his sin” clarifies that one does not confess his father’s sins. MT’s “eyes” (5:11) excludes a blind person.
            Aside from its avoidance of anthropomorphisms, theology and morality are also generally absent from Onkelos, but abound in the midrash. Sifrei derives the lesson that strength is granted to those who are strong, and encouragement to those who are stout of heart (5:2), Aaron was righteous because he did exactly what Moses told him to do (8:1), and the Israelites were virtuous because they did what Moses instructed (9:1). Merit flows to the meritorious and humiliation to those who are disgraceful (9:1).
            Various legends and parables do not appear in Onkelos. For example, each of the seven days of preparing the Tabernacle, Moses set it up and then dismantled it (7:1). Aaron’s sons did not literally die before the Lord; they fell outside so as not to render the Tabernacle unclean. In fact, an angel sustained them after they had been struck with fire, helped them outside, and allowed them to fall in the courtyard (7:1). The Israelite desert leaders were the same individuals who were assigned as their supervisors while they were slaves in Egypt (7:3).
            In summary, the Onkelos targumist consistently drew the explanations and definitions from the late fourth century midrashim that helped explain the text’s simple meaning, and frequently even quoted the midrash. He ignored material that did not further this agenda. Thus he could not have composed his translation before the end of the fourth century.
Consistency With Other Biblical Books
 
The significant and unswerving reliance by Targum Onkelos on the tannaitic midrashim to Numbers to clarify the simple meaning of the biblical text also occurred in the other books of the Pentateuch. The Onkelos deviations from the literal Hebrew translation consistently reflect the late fourth century tannaitic midrashim in about a third of the verses where midrashic commentary are present.
Exodus
 
Although the tannaitic midrash Mekhilta d’R. Ishmael exists for only about fourteen Exodus chapters, Targum Onkelos deviates from rendering the biblical text literally 158 times. It consistently and remarkably uses midrashic words, including 95 instances where the targumist quotes the Mekhilta’s exact word, an average of eight times in each chapter. He parallels Mekhilta in more than thirty per cent of the verses where midrashic comments occur. This is startling since most of the midrash is derash, comments that are contrary to his purpose and which he avoids.
            The targumist never explains Exodus contrary to Mekhilta’s peshat, the text’s plain and explicit meaning. He uses all, or virtually all Mekhilta interpretations that are peshat and neglects only the Mekhilta’s derash, halakhah, theology, legends and parables, since the Targum, as we said, is a translation and not a commentary. The reverse is not true: He deviates to add clarifications that are not in Mekhilta since it was composed after this midrash.[26]
Leviticus
 
The findings for Numbers and Exodus are repeated in Leviticus and Deuteronomy: The targumist relied on the late fourth century tannaitic midrashim for the translation of the biblical text. His deviations in Leviticus parallel the midrash Sifra’s interpretation in 129 instances, including 82 times that he uses Sifra’s word. Again, he never explains Leviticus contrary to Sifra’s peshat, he incorporates all, or virtually all, of Sifra’s interpretations that are peshat and neglects its derash, halakhah, theology, legends and parables, and he has deviations that clarify the text that are not in Sifra.[27]
Deuteronomy
 
In Deuteronomy as well, Onkelos’ deviations remarkably reflect the late fourth century tannaitic midrash Sifrei’s interpretation in about a third of the verses in the less than half of Deuteronomy where there is extant midrash. The Targum deviates 201 times using words reflecting interpretations in Sifrei. This represents about thirty percent of Sifrei’s interpretations.
            A few statistics will demonstrate how remarkable this is. There are, for example, 489 verses in the first 17 chapters, the first half of Deuteronomy. Only 186 of these sentences, about 38 percent, have comments by Sifrei. The targumist’s deviations from a literal rendering of Deuteronomy parallel Sifrei in 56 passages (in 60 instances) or about thirty per cent. The sentences where he does not reflect Sifrei are all instances, as we noted previously, where the midrash has derash. Thus, again, Onkelos contains all of virtually all of the non-aggadic Sifrei material, and there is no instance where the Targum differs with this midrash except where the latter has derash or there is a scribal error in the Targum.[28]
Genesis
 
H. Albeck[29] noted that the author or authors of the fourth-century midrash Genesis Rabbah did not use Onkelos despite having difficulty in understanding verses that the targumist understood and translated. For example, Genesis Rabbah cites an incident where rabbis wanted to know the Aramaic equivalent of a biblical word and had to travel to a place where Aramaic was spoken, and they did not look at Onkelos where the word is explained in Aramaic. Albeck’s observations are supplemented in the author’s Targumic Studies.[30] We now know that the midrash’s authors could not have utilized Onkelos as a source because it did not exist when the midrash was composed.
Conclusion
 
My studies of the Targum Onkelos Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible compared the words used in the Aramaic translation when the translator did not render the Bible literally with the language used in the late fourth century midrashim. The study showed that Onkelos consistently used the language in the midrashim.  There were a total of 698 similarities between Targum Onkelos to the four biblical books that we studied (excluding Genesis) to the text contained in the five midrashic volumes that we analyzed, most of which were exact quotes.[31] The Targum parallels these midrashim in a third of the verses where there are midrashic comments. Since the targumist drew material from these volumes, his Targum Onkelos had to have been composed after the end of the fourth century CE.
Since the editors of the Babylonian Talmud had Targum Onkelos in hand and were unable to recall its author, it stands to reason that the Targum must have been completed before the editing of this Talmud began in the fifth century. Thus a dating of 400 CE is probably very close to the exact date of our Targum’s composition.
An afterword
 
It is worthwhile repeating the following from Targum Onkelos to Deuteronomy.
As to which composition, Sifrei or Targum Onkelos, is earlier there are four possibilities. First, Sifrei was composed after Targum Onkelos and follows an interpretative tradition that originated with or was incorporated into the Targum. This is possible, but in view of the subtle, concise, and often ambiguous nature of Targum Onkelos’s deviations, it is doubtful that the editor of Sifrei sat down, examined every deviation, found a reason for it, and then wrote an expansion of it, proving his point by citing the opinion of tannaitic sages who lived over a period of many generations. Furthermore, this would fail to explain Sifrei’s derash, the material in Targum Onkelos not included in Sifrei, the collection of divergent tannaitic views, and so forth.
            The second possibility is that both Sifrei and Targum Onkelos were composed during several generations, by a series of authors, with mutual borrowing, both basing their interpretations on the same rabbinic tradition, which was transmitted orally or which was in written form, but is no longer extant.
            Thirdly, it is similarly possible that both Sifrei and Targum Onkelos are based on an earlier, more expansive Targum that is no longer extant. While both (2) and (3) are possible, they are unlikely because of the remarkable and consistent parallels between the two documents and for the other reasons mentioned above. Furthermore, if Sifrei drew from a Targum, one would expect some mention of a Targum among the many other sources that are cited, but there is none in Sifrei.
            The fourth possibility is that Sifrei preceded Targum Onkelos and the author(s) of the Targum translated with “one finger in the MT and another in Sifrei.” This would explain the remarkable parallelism and the additional material in Targum Onkelos.
            The author recognizes that his late fourth or early fifth century CE date for Onkelos depends upon the generally accepted scholarly dating of the tannaitic midrashim. A point can be made that versions of these midrashim existed at an earlier time. The author would dismiss this idea because the targumist follows the present midrashic text consistently and must have used the final version. Another argument could insist upon the minority view of an earlier redaction date for the midrashim. In any event, however one dates the midrashim, the author’s contribution remains. The Onkelos targumist borrowed from the tannaitic midrashim and must be dated after them.’
Dr. Israel Drazin is the author of thirty-three books, twelve of which are on Targum Onkelos. His website is www.booksnthoughts.com

 


[1] The word
“Targum” means “translation”, “interpretation”, or “version.” See Targum
Onkelos to Genesis 42:23; Exodus 4:16, 7:1; Targum to II
Chronicles 32:31; and Targum Sheni to Esther 3:8, 7:5. The words
“Targum Onkelos,” as we shall see, denote “the Translation of Aquilas.”
In the Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 49a, Rabbi Judah said: “If
one translates a verse literally, he is a liar; if he adds thereto, he is a
blasphemer and a libeler. Then what is a proper translation? Our
translation.”
 
The first mention of Targum Onkelos after the Babylonian Talmud does not
occur until the seventh century. Sar Shalom in Sefer Shaarei Teshuvah,
ed. F. Hirsch (Leipzig. 1858), 29c, and Seder Rab Amram (1865), 29.
[2] The translation
is from The Babylonian Talmud, ed. I. Epstein, Soncino Press (London,
1938). This passage, it is important to note, is the only source for this
legend. The verse itself is discussed again in the Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 37b. If Onkelos received
guidance from R. Eleazer and R. Joshua, who lived around 130 C.E, this opinion
would date the translation to the early part of the second century.
[3] In the
Babylonian Talmud, Avodah Zarah 11a
and Gittin 56a, b, and 57a. Cf. Tosefta Shabbat 7(8):18; Haggigah 3:2 and 3; and the midrashim Genesis Rabbah 70:5 and Tanchuma 41a, Mishpatim 3.
[4] The Jerusalem
Talmud, Megillah 1, 71c; Kiddushin 1, 59a; Haggigah 2:5, 77a. Although the contemporary English spelling is
Aquila, the name is Aquilas in Greek and Hebrew. Those familiar with rabbinic
studies will recall that errors in names frequently occur in the Talmud. While
writing this note, the author was studying the Babylonian Talmud Bava Kamma and found the following
errors in a few pages; R. Abba v. R. Abin in 112a; R. Ashi v. R. Assi in 112b,
113a, 114a; Rava v. Rabba in 114a, R. Huna v. R. Kahana in 114a, Rav v. Abbahu
in 114b; and the Talmud itself was unsure of a name in 114b.
[5] See M. M.
Kasher, Torah Shelemah 24 (Jerusalem, 1974), pages 155-161; and J.
Reifman, Sedeh Aram (Berlin, 1875), pages 8-10.
[6] See Kasher, op.
cit., pages 195-238, and Reifman, op. cit., pages 12-14. Numbers Rabbah is hardly older than the
twelfth century. See The Jewish Encyclopedia, volume II, page 671, and Encyclopedia
Judaica, volume 12, column 1261.
[7] Babylonian
Talmud, Bava Bathra 99a: “Onkelos the
proselyte said, the cherubim were of tza’atzu’im (image work) and their
faces were turned sideways, as a student who is leaving his teacher.” The
statement is somewhat obscure. It probably comments upon II Chronicles 3:10 (where the word is spelt with ayins) by
referring to a similar word in Isaiah
22:24 (spelt with alephs). Targum Jonathan translates the latter word
“son,” which suggests “student.” The reference to Onkelos is certainly
incorrect. There is no Targum Onkelos to either the Writings or the Prophets,
and Onkelos in the Pentateuch never translates “cherubim.” It always repeats
the biblical Hebrew word. It is possible that the Talmud is referring to
Jonathan ben Uzziel or Aquilas and not Onkelos.
[8] R. Jeremiah
lived about 350 CE and his teacher R. Hiyya b. Abba, a generation earlier. It
is likely that he did not make the statement that tradition attributes to him.
First of all, the talmudic tradition is itself uncertain as to who made the
statement. Secondly, since both R. Jeremiah and R. Hiyya b. Abba were scholars
of Eretz Israel and not Babylon; the tradition, if correct, probably referred
to the Eretz Israel Greek translation of Aquilas, and not the Babylonian
Aramaic translation of “our translation.” Thirdly, in the Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 9b, R. Hiyya b. Abba is clearly
speaking about the Greek Bible translation and seems to know nothing of the Aramaic
version.
[9] H. Graetz, History
of the Jews (Philadelphia, 1893), volume 2, pages 387, 581, 582, argues
that the Aramaic translation “was made partly from that of Akylas (sic)
on account of its simplicity, and was called Targum Onkelos.” See the author’s Targum
Onkelos to Deuteronomy (Ktav, 1982), pages 2, 14, 15, and A. E.
Silverstone, Aquila and Onkelos (Manchester University Press, 1970), and
other volumes cited therein.
[10] Note, for
example, that תגי and מדע in Palestinian Aramaic are תנגי and מנדע in Babylonian
Aramaic.  Another difference is that
Onkelos is spelt with an aleph and Aquilas with an ayin. Many
Palestinian words with an ayin were transposed in Babylonia to an aleph
because Babylonians had difficulty pronouncing laryngeals; for example, עד=אד.
[11] See notes 4 and
5, and related text.
[12] See for example
Mishnah Aboth 6: 6; Babylonian
Talmud, Yevamot 97a; Jerusalem
Talmud, Berachot 2:1 (4b). Also, many
talmudic discussions are based on the idea that Amoraim never dispute a subject
that was previously disputed in a Mishnah without citing the earlier dispute.
See for example Babylonian Talmud, Gittin
4a and 16b, middle of pages.
[13] M. H.
Goshen-Gottstein, “The Language of Targum Onkelos and the model of Literary
Diaglossia in Aramaic,” JNES 37 (1978), pages 169-179; B. Grossfield,
“Onqelos, Halakhah and the Halakhic Midrashim,” in D. R. G. Beattie and M.
McNamara (editors), The Aramaic bible (1994), pages 228-46.
[14] See edition by
A. Berliner (Leipzig, 1877).
[15] See for example
P. Kahle, The Cairo Geneiza (Oxford, 1959), pages191-228; H. Albeck, Jubilee
Volume to B. M. Lewin (1940), pages 93-104; A. Diez Macho, Neophyti,
I: Genesis (1968), page 98;
Leopold Zunz, Die Gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden (Berlin, 1832). These views and others
are discussed in I. Drazin, Targum Onkelos to Deuteronomy (Ktav, 1982),
pages 2-6, and B. Grossfeld, Targum Onqelos to Genesis (Michael Glazier,
1988), pages 30-35. No critical evaluation was ever made of Berliner’s Masorah and every modern author refers
to it without comment. The book and the conclusions drawn from it require
extensive study. It should be noted that there was or were early Aramaic
translations of parts of the Hebrew Bible, as confirmed by the fragments found
in Qumran. See J. T. Milik, Discoveries in the Judean Desert, Volume 6: Qumran
Grotte 4, II: Tefillin, Mezuzot, et Targums (4Q128-4Q157) Oxford,
1977. The comparison between these finds and Onkelos are discussed in I.
Drazin’s Targum Onkelos to Leviticus (Ktav, 1994), pages 36, 146, 149,
151.
[16] With the
participation of the Center for Judaic Studies of the University of Denver, the
author published, through the Ktav Publishing House, Targum Onkelos to
Deuteronomy in 1982, Targum Onkelos to Exodus in 1990, Targum
Onkelos to Leviticus in 1993, and Targum Onkelos to Numbers in 1998.
Targum Onkelos to Genesis was written by Moses Aberbach and Bernard
Grossfeld, and was published in 1982. The latter authors ascribe a dating of
Onkelos “towards the end of the third century CE” (page 9).
[17] A tannaitic document
is one that transmits the views of the Jewish sages from the period of Hillel
to the compilation of the Mishnah. This period began about 20 BCE and ended
about 200 CE, although the documents may not have been committed to writing
until a later time. The tannaitic midrashim were not redacted until the end of
the fourth century.
    The tannaitic midrashim are Mekhilta deR. Ishmael and Mekhilta deR. Simeon b. Yochai to Exodus; Sifra to Leviticus; Sifrei and Sifrei Zutta to Numbers; and Sifrei and
Midrash Tannaim to Deuteronomy. Each is individualistic in halakhic view,
style, and character.
    Although the tannaitic midrashim appear, by
their name, to have been composed during the tannaitic period, ending in the
early third century, later scholars are mentioned therein. The tannaitic
midrashim, in their present form, were unknown to the scholars in the two
Talmuds and must have been composed in Eretz Israel no earlier than the end of
the fourth century, after the completion of the Jerusalem Talmud. They were
unknown in the Jerusalem Talmud because they were not yet composed. They were
unknown in the Babylonian Talmud because of their composition in Eretz Israel.
See Encyclopedia Judaica for sources regarding the dating of each
midrash.
    J. Neusner, Midrash in Context (Fortress
Press, 1983), dates the tannaitic midrashim in the fifth and sixth centuries.
We will see in this study that (1) our targumist drew material from the
midrashim, which must have pre-existed the Targum, and (2) the scholars of the Babylonian
Talmud, composed and edited in the fifth and sixth century, mention our Targum
but did not know the name of its author. Therefore, the Targum must have been
composed before the Babylonian Talmud. Thus, a sixth-century date for the
composition of the midrashim is incorrect.
[18] This was done
first in the Deuteronomy volume in
pp. 8-10. This book showed the reliance of Onkelos upon the midrash Sifrei. The subsequent studies did the
same with the other midrashim.
[19] The midrash Sifrei to Numbers comments on parts of
nineteen of the thirty-six biblical chapters of Numbers (5-12; 15; 18-19; 25:1-13; 26:52-31:24; and 35:9-39), less
than a third of the biblical text. It contains a considerable amount of aggadah
and halakhah, items that Onkelos avoids, and has little narrative, areas
where Targum Onkelos deviations abound.
[20] Onkelos has
many Hebraisms because its audience’s language included many Hebrew words. They
were used in the translation whenever the Hebrew was more familiar or
understandable to the reader than the Aramaic equivalent. Similarly, although
the midrash was composed in Hebrew, there are many Aramaic words in it.
[21] שקר twice, 5:6; כיור, 5:17; יפרש used in
6:2 to help define גזר; equals Sifrei’s pisqahs
7, 10, and 23, respectively.
    The exception of דבר in 12:1 (=pisqah 99) is
understandable. Sifrei interprets דבר as “harsh
speech.” This is derash, a homiletical exposition, and not a true
definition; and Onkelos only translates according to the peshat, the
simple meaning of the text. Yet, even in this instance, although the Targum
does not quote the adjective “harsh,” it differentiates the two words,
rendering מלל
for “speak” and retaining אמר for the second.
[22] A chart of
these instances is in I. Drazin, “Dating Targum Onkelos by means of the
Tannaitic Midrashim,” Journal of Jewish
Studies, Autumn 1999.
[23] The 106
instances are listed in the Journal of
Jewish Studies article.
[24] Like Sifrei, Sifrei Zutta was composed at the
end of the fourth century CE. But, unlike the former, the latter disappeared
and only fragments were rediscovered in the Genizah, in Yalkut Shimoni, Midrash ha-Gadol, and other works. H. S. Horovitz
compiled these findings and published them in Sifrei al Sefer be-Midbar
VeSifrei Zutta (1917). Later, J. N. Epstein published an additional large
fragment in Tarbiz 1/1 (1930). Sifrei
Zutta contains many halakhot that are not mentioned elsewhere and many that
differ with those in the Mishnah. Its style and terminology are unique.
[25] These deviations
are identified and explained in the author’s Targum series. See Note 16. Targum
Onkelos’s understanding and use of peshat will be addressed in the next
chapter.
[26] See the
author’s Targum Onkelos to Exodus (Ktav), pages 8-11, 32-33, for
details.
[27] See the
author’s Targum Onkelos to Leviticus (Ktav), pages 9-11, 26-28, for
details.
[28] See the
author’s Targum Onkelos to Deuteronomy (Ktav), pages 9-10, 43-44, for
details.
[29] “Mekoroth
Ha-Bereshit Rabbah,” Einleitung und Register zu Berechit Rabba volume 3
(Jerusalem 1965), pages 44-54. Albeck did not reach the author’s discovery that
the Onkelos targumist took material from the tannaitic midrashim.
[30] See the
author’s Targumic Studies, “Analysis of Targum Onkelos Deviations to
Genesis” (University Microfilms International, 1981), pages 1-76.
[31] No study was
made of Bereshit Rabbah, Mekhilta deR.
Simeon b. Yochai and Midrash Tannaim.
The author believes that more parallels will be found between Targum Onkelos
and the other tannaitic midrashim when these books are studied.


Rabbi Zeira – Forgetting the Teachings of Babylon

|

Rabbi Zeira – Forgetting
the Teachings of Babylon

By Chaim Katz
We read in the Talmud (Baba Metziah
85a):

R. Zeira, when he moved to the land of
Israel, observed a hundred fasts to forget the teachings of Babylonia, [1] so
that they should not disturb him.
He fasted another hundred times so that R.
Elazar should not die during his years and the responsibilities of the
community not fall upon him.He fasted another hundred times so that
the fire of Gehenna should have no power over him.

Figure 1 From the first print of Baba Metziah Soncino, Italy 1489
There are some difficulties with R. Zeira
forgetting the teachings of Babylonia:
1) Both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud
contain many interactions between sages who travelled from the land of Israel
to Babylon or from Babylon to the land of Israel. These sages shared their own teachings
and traditions with their counterparts. By forgetting Babylonian teachings, R.
Zeira is choosing not to participate in this knowledge transfer. Why? [2]
2) R. Zeira is mentioned many times in
the Jerusalem Talmud and sometimes he transmits in the name of his Babylonian
teachers. Many of these exchanges clearly took place when he already was in the
land of Israel. How can he transfer Torah information that he has supposedly forgotten?
[3]
3) The Talmud (Shabbat 41a) relates that
when R Zeira was about to leave for the land of Israel, he went out of his way to
hear one more teaching from his teacher, Rav Yehuda.  Why would he go to the trouble of amassing
more Babylonian teachings if he intended to immediately forget them?
4) Forgetting one’s learning purposefully
isn’t a pious thing to do. The Mishna Pirkei Avot 3:10 strongly discourages it,
as does the Talmud:  R. Elazar said:  One who forgets a word of his learning (Talmud)
causes his descendants to be exiled – Yoma 38b. Resh Laqish said:  One who forgets a word of his learning (Talmud)
transgresses a negative commandment – Menachot 
99b.
We can find a simple solution to these
questions in one of the manuscripts of Baba Metzia, written around 1137
and housed in the National Central Library in Florence. The manuscript disagrees
with the premise that R. Zeira ever forgot his learning:
R. Zeira fasted so that he would not
forget the teachings of Babylon.
He observed another forty fasts so that
R Il’a should not die in his lifetime.
He observed another forty fasts that the
fire of Gehenna should have no power over him.

Figure 2 Florence
Manuscript BM 85a

As far as I know, this manuscript is unique among the
manuscripts that exist today in defining “not to forget” as the purpose R.
Zeira’s fast. [4] The manuscript is also attractive for a couple of other reasons:

The passage is shorter here
than in the standard version. The explanations “when he moved to the land of
Israel”, “so that it should not disturb him”, [5] “so that the responsibilities
of the community not fall upon him” are all missing. This reduction most likely
indicates that the manuscript reflects an early version of the story – a
version in which marginal commentary had not yet been copied (inadvertently) into
the text.
The paragraph that precedes the story of
R. Zeira (in all versions) tells of Rav Yosef (R. Zeira’s colleague) who also observed
a series of three sets of forty intermittent fasts. The purpose of Rav Yosef’s
fasts was to guarantee that the knowledge of the Torah would not depart from
himself, from his children and from his grandchildren. The goal of Rav Yosef’s
fasts seems to agree with the goal of R. Zeira’s fasts; to remember (i.e., not
forget) the teachings of Babylonia.
According to this manuscript, all of R.
Zeira’s fasts have something in common with each other. He fasted so he would
not forget, he fasted so that R. Ila’i would not die, and he fasted so that the
fire of Gehina would not harm him. He always seems to be fasting so that
something should not happen.
However, many authorities have discussed
the standard version, and no one (as far as I know) has relied on this reading
to resolve the original questions. [6]
Here
are some of the classical interpretations that attempt to solve the problems of
R. Zeira’s forgetting.
Rashi
writes (BM 85a) that the students in the land of Israel were not בני מחלוקת, were not contentious, ונוחין זה לזה, they were pleasant to each other]  . . .   ומיישבין את
הטעמים בלא קושיות ופירוקין and they explained their reasoning without challenging each
other with difficulties and rebuttals.
According
to Rashi , R. Zeira forgets the “atmosphere” of the Babylonian academies.  [7]
Maharsha (1555-1631), disagrees with
Rashi. He argues that the sages in the land of Israel do engage in questioning
and answering like their counterparts in Babylonia.  He cites the Gemara (Baba Metzia 84a) where
R. Yohanan says about Reish Laqish:  he
would raise twenty-four objections, and I would reply with twenty-four answers.

Therefore, Maharsha explains that
possibly the Babylonian piplul was faulty and similar to a style of piplul
that existed in his own time דוגמת חילוקים
שבדור הזה. He objects to this style of questioning and answering because it
distances one from the truth, and can’t help one rule on halakhic issues. Accordingly,
R. Zeira fasted in order to forget how to piplul the Babylonian way.
Abravanel (1437-1508) in his commentary
on Pirkei Avot (on the Mishna in chapter 5 which begins: There are four types
who study with the sages) writes somewhat similarly. The problem with the one who
is compared to a sponge, who soaks up everything – is that he retains things
that are untrue. In the search for truth, there are necessary steps which themselves
are untrue:  כי לא תברר האמת כי אם בהפכו truth can only
be evaluated when compared with its opposite. R. Zeira fasts to forget the stages in
the arguments of the Babylonian Talmud that were untrue.
In summary, all three of these
interpretations agree that R. Zeira didn’t literally forget the Babylonian
teachings. He forgot the “atmosphere” of the Babylonian academies or the
interim discussions that took place there.  [8]
I’d like now to give some examples of
how the story of R. Zeira is presented in some early Hassidic sermons, to show
how the Rebbes and their audiences understood the story of R. Zeira. These
sources aren’t concerned with explaining our Gemara; R. Zeira’s story is cited
to support an ethical or moral lesson.
Torah Or is a collection of sermons by
R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812). On
page 69c, in a discussion about spiritual worlds, the author says:

The purpose of the river diNur, (fiery
river (or maybe fiery light)), in which the soul submerges itself as it passes from
this world to Gan Eden, is to erase its memories of this physical world. If the
soul remembers its encounter with materiality, it can’t experience Gan Eden.
And when the soul goes from the lower Gan Eden to the higher Gan Eden it also must
pass through a river diNur to forget the comprehension and pleasures of the
lower Gan Eden. (Zohar part 2 210a) This is the idea in the Gemara: R. Zeira
observed 100 fasts to forget the Talmud of Babylonia even though he had studied
it with devotion.

In Likutei Moharan (ch. 246), R. Nachman
of Bratslav (1772 – 1810) writes:

A
person sometimes has to feel self-important גדלות, as it says (2
Chronicles 17:6) His heart was elevatedויגבה לבו  in
the service of G-d.  This helps the same way
as fasting helps. For when one needs to attain an understanding or needs to
reach a higher level, he has to forget the wisdom he had previously acquired. R.
Zeira fasted to forget the Talmud of Babylon in order to reach a greater level
of comprehension – the level of the Talmud of the land of Israel.  Similarly through self-importance, one forgets
his wisdom . . . 

In these examples of Hassidic thought there
is no difficulty with the idea that R. Zeira forgets his learning in order to reach
higher spiritual plateau. Forgetting is a purification process that is both
necessary and exemplary. [9]
Returning now to the literal sense of the
Gemara:
R. Issac Halevi (Rabinowitz)
(1847-1914), the author of Dorot Harishonim addresses our problem in a footnote
(Dorot II p 427 footnote 93). He posits that in R.  Zeira’s time there were already two canonized
collections of Talmudic material arranged around the Mishna; each in its own
distinct form and style.

כבר הי׳ להם סתמא דהש”ס על המשנה שגרסו כבר במטבע קבועה,
וכן הי׳  להם אז כבר גם בארץ ישראל.

R. Zeira chose to
forget the Babylonian Talmud (as it existed in his time), because it interfered
with his studies in the land of Israel.
According to this
interpretation, R. Zeira forgot only the redaction or arrangement of the
teachings he had learned.  He didn’t forget
the teachings themselves (or the study method). [10]
I’d like to suggest
an original explanation. It’s based on passages in the Talmud about R. Zeira
and additionally can explain why only R. Zeira decided to forget the teachings
of Babylon when he moved to the land of Israel.

1)     
R.
Yitzhak b. Nahmani said in the name of R. Eleazar: The halakha agrees with R.
Jose b. Kipper.  R. Zeira said: “If I
merit, I’ll go there and learn the halakha from the Master himself”. When R.
Zeira came to the land of Israel he found R. Eleazar and asked him: “Did you
say: The halakha is in agreement with R. Jose b. Kipper?” – Nidda 48a
2)     
R.
Zeira said to R. Abba b Papa: When you go there, detour around the Ladder of
Tyre and visit R. Yaakov b Idi. Ask him if he heard from R. Yohanan if the
Halakha is like R. Aqiba or not – Baba Metziah 43b
3)     
R
Zeira, commented: How can you compare R Binyamin b Yefet’s version of R.
Yohanan’s statement with the version of Rabbi Hiya b Abba. R Hiya b Abba was
precise when he studied the halakhic traditions from R Yohanan but R. Binyamin
b Yefet was not precise. Moreover, R Hiya b Abba reviewed his learning (Talmud)
with R. Yohanan every thirty days.  – Berachot
38b
4)     
R.
Nathan b. Tobi quoted R. Johanan . . . Rabbi Zeira asked: “Did
R. Johanan say this?” Yes, he answered. Rabbi Zeira recited this teaching forty
times. R. Nathan said to R. Zeira: Is this the only teaching that you have
heard or is it a teaching that is new to you? R. Zeira replied: “It’s new to
me. I wasn’t sure if it was taught in the name R. Yohanan or R Yehoshua b
Levi.” – Berachot 28a
We
see that the teachings of the land of Israel (especially R. Yohanan’s) did
reach R. Zeira while he was still in Babylon [11]. R. Zeira, however, didn’t really
trust these teachings. Sometimes he thought they were attributed incorrectly,
or their content was not accurate. He doubted if a statement in the name of R.
Eleazar was correct. [12] He was unsure if R. Yohanan agreed with R. Aqiba’s
position or not. He distinguished between the different amoraim who
transmitted teachings. In general he looked at Torah that reached Babylon as
something that was possibly unreliable, inaccurate or “damaged in transit”.
  
R. Zeira was
only able to resolve his doubts when he moved to the land of Israel and learned
the Torah of the land of Israel there. He then forgot the imprecise version of
these teachings that he had previously memorized in Babylon – “the teachings of
Babylon”. He could forget them because they were superseded by accurate
teachings that he now received in the land of Israel. [13]

I’d like to thank Reb Gary Gleam who
provided the cabbage rolls and coffee, and the late night sounding board.

————————————————————————————————————————–

[1] תלמודא בבלאה is sometimes translated
as Babylonian Talmud, which I think is an anachronism. I will use the translation
“Babylonian teachings”. All the available manuscripts have תלמודא דבבל  =  the teachings of Babylonia. The phrase Talmuda
dBabel or Talmuda Babelah occurs only here
(Google). Talmud in the sense of teachings occurs many times, often in
comparison to mikra or mishna.
 [2]
Compare Rosh Hashana 20b: “When R. Zeira went up [to the land of Israel], he
sent [a letter] to his colleagues [in Babylonia]  . . .”  R.
Zeira didn’t break off all contact with the old country. He taught them what he
heard and learned in the land of Israel.
[3] See Goldberg, Abraham. “Rabbi Ze’ira
and Babylonian Custom in Palestine” (Hebrew) Tarbiz vol. 36 1967 (pages
319-341), for examples of Babylonian traditions that R. Zeira brought to the
land of Israel. The following quote is from the online abstract:
“R.
Zeira is the outstanding figure among many who came from an area of unmixed
Babylonian tradition and who tried to impose their own Babylonian practice upon
Palestinian custom.”
[4]
The crucial word דלא, is crossed-out
in the manuscript, but I’m assuming that the strikethrough is not the work of
the original sofer. (Didn’t scribes write dots on top of the words they
wanted to erase?) The facsimile shows a number of other emendations that were written
after the manuscript’s creation.
[5] The words “so that it should not disturb
him” would be out of place in this version of the story, since according to
this version, R. Zeria never forgot the Babylonian teachings, but the idea is
that the text is short. There is a geniza fragment from The Friedberg
Project for Talmud Bavli Variants and it is equally as short. (Note
that it matches the standard editions with regard to the goal of R. Zeira’s
fast.)

 Figure
3 Geniza fragment
of our Baba Metziah 85a

Translation of the geniza fragment:
R. Zeira observed forty fasts to forget
the teachings of Babylon.
He fasted another forty times that R
Il’a should not die in his lifetime.
He fasted another forty times that the fire of
Gehenna should have no power over him.
[6]
The author of Dikduke Soferim mentions this version but doesn’t suggest that its
reading is better than the standard one. Dikduke Sofreim has written elsewhere
that this specific manuscript belonged to Christians who translated (into Latin)
passages that were regularly used against Jews in inter-faith disputations.
There’s no Latin on this page, but you can see Latin on some other pages.
[7]
Rashi mentions his source as Sanhedrin 24a. He understands that the students of
Babylon were antagonistic to each other unlike the students in the land of
Israel who were pleasant to each other. Rashi apparently was thinking of this in
his commentary on the prayer of R. Nehunya ben HaKanah – Berachot 28b. The
prayer reads: “May it be Your will that I don’t make a mistake in a halakhic
ruling, and that my colleagues rejoice with me  . . .”  Rashi
understands the prayer this way – May it be Your will that I don’t make a
mistake in a halakhic ruling and my colleagues make fun of me.
[8]
The explanations of Maharsha and Abravanel have prompted subversive
interpretations by the school of the German Jewish historians of the
Talmud.  In the Soncino translation of
Shabbat 41a, the translator, Rabbi DR. Freedman (1901-1982) writes:  “Weiss, Dor, III, p. 188, maintains that R.
Zera’s desire to emigrate was occasioned by dissatisfaction with Rab Judah’s
method of study; this is vigorously combatted by Halevi, Doroth, II pp. 421 et
seq.”

Jacob Neusner’s
in his book A History of the Jews in Babylonia page 218, also questions the
idea that sages of the land of Israel rejected the Babylonian methods of study,
and finds “Halevi’s strong demurrer quite convincing”.
[9]
In this context, the Talmudic statement: גדולה עבירה לשמה ממצווה שלא לשמה   – מסכת הוריות י’ ע”ב may be somewhat
relevant.
[10] I’m not sure, according to R.
Halevi,  did R. Zeira also forget the
anonymous Talmudic layer (stam or redactor) that existed in his time? 
[11]
The first of these conversations definitely took place in Babylon. The fourth
interaction occurred in the land of Israel but revises a teaching that R. Zeira
probably heard in Babylonia. The middle two quotes are may describe R. Zeira in
Babylon, but even if they occurred when R. Zeira was already in the land of
Israel, they reflect doubts that he had while in Babylon.  The number 40 in the last example is also
remarkable. He repeats something 40 times in order to remember. He fasts 40
times to forget. 
[12]
R. Eleazar teaches without citing his source but everyone knows that his
teachings are R. Yohanan’s (Yerushalmi Berakot 2:1 and Yerushalmi Shekalim 2:5).
[13] R. Zeira didn’t forget the native
Babylonian teachings, authored and recorded by the Babylonian amoraim. He
never doubted their accuracy. He brought those teachings to the land of Israel
and enriched the Torah of the land of Israel with them. 


The Man who Tried to Put it All Together: A Hesped for Rav Kook on His Eightieth Yahrzeit

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The Man who Tried to Put it All Together: 
A Hesped for Rav Kook on His Eightieth Yahrzeit 
By Yehudah Mirsky 

Yehudah Mirsky is an Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, Brandeis University, and the author of Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution (Yale University Press), available here (link).  

This is his first contribution to the Seforim Blog. 

Jerusalem of the 1930s was boiled in fury. The inevitability of bitter conflict with the Arabs of Palestine had become too clear to deny, while the fighting among Jews, if not quite as violent, was bitter and unmistakable. How to deal with the Arabs, how to deal with the British, how to bring new immigrants and, once they were there, sustain them, how to deal with Hitler’s shadow looming large over Europe – and how to deal with Zionism’s revolution not only against centuries of Jewish politics, but centuries more of Jewish religion and history. The arguments were as heated as the stakes were high. 
All the more striking it was that on Monday, September 2, 1935, the fourth day of Elul 5695, some fifteen thousand people, amounting to one third of Jewish Jerusalem and nearly five percent of Jewish Palestine, religious and secular alike, joined by foreign diplomats, scholars, day laborers and rabbis, came out to follow the coffin of Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook, dead at age seventy. The procession wound from his yeshiva near Zion Square, in three columns through the Old City, to his freshly dug grave on the Mount of Olives, as thousands more watched from the rooftops. 
The night before, just a few hours after his passing, the Nineteenth Zionist Congress, meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland, had held a memorial service of its own. Menachem Ussishkin, president of the Jewish National Fund responsible for land-purchases in Palestine and incoming President of the Zionist Executive, had long been Rav Kook’s chief interlocutor in the Zionist leadership, navigating between the movement’s relentlessly secularizing thrust, and the rabbi’s dogged insistence that the movement was bound to be the very vehicle of spiritual rebirth, for Jews and the world. Ussishkin said the rabbi had told him the building modern-day Palestine, its roads, factories and farms was nothing less than rebuilding the Temple – and that now, as then, all the ranks were meant to work together, the secular, itself charged with divine energy, being the indispensable foundation of the sacred. 
Ussishkin was followed by Meir Berlin, leader of the perpetually-embattled Religious Zionist movement, the Mizrachi (whose Hebraized name would later garnish Israel’s religious university, Bar-Ilan). Rav Kook, Berlin said, “loved the Jewish people the way only a father can love his children. Nobody is left after him who will love his nation that fiercely…He understood his people, the situation of the generation, and its life conditions, and that is why he forgave them everything.” There was a lot to forgive. 
Berlin and Rav Kook went back a very long way, longer than the former’s own lifetime. In the fall of 1884, then aged nineteen, Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook had become a student and disciple of Berlin’s father, Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin, known as “The Netziv,” dean of the great yeshiva of Volozhin. The yeshiva teemed with prodigies, future rabbis and future revolutionaries, among whom young Kook stood out, for an unfamiliar mix, appealing to some, off-putting to others, of intellectual prowess, intense piety, and lyric sensibility. 
In the early years of his career, begun in a tiny Lithuanian shtetl, Kook was drawn to Maimonidean rationalism. With time, and intense grief at the death of his first wife, he turned inward, undertook deep introspection and extensive study of Kabbalah, on his own and with Rav Shalom Elyashiv (grandfather of the recently departed Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv). Alongside his command of Talmud and halakha, he mastered an extraordinary range of Jewish mystical, philosophical and other texts, read widely in the rich Hebrew and Yiddish periodical literature of the day, and became an autodidact of contemporary philosophy. In a departure from rabbinic conventions, he made serious study of the non-halakhic portions of the Talmud, the Aggadah and all its divergent voices. 

“There are those who erroneously think that world peace will only come from a common character of opinions and qualities. But no – true peace will come to the world precisely by multiplication of all the opinions and perspectives… all facets of the larger truth… peace (is) the unification of all opposites. But there must be opposites, so that there be those who labor and that which will be unified… Hence peace is the name of God, who is the master of all the forces, omnipotent and gathering them all.” (Eyn Ayah to Massekhet Berakhot, vol. 2, pp. 397-398, 9:361, on BT Berakhot 64a.) 

In another, marking his burgeoning conviction that God is to be found in the stormy recesses of one’s own inner life, he began to keep a spiritual diary. 
In the summer of 1904 Kook moved to Palestine after accepting an offer to become the rabbi of Jaffa and the surrounding colonies, effectively becoming rabbi of the New Yishuv (Jewish collective). The year of his arrival marked the beginning of the Second Aliyah, the migration wave that brought a small but influential cadre of young intellectuals and revolutionaries who left an outsized mark on the political and cultural development of the New Yishuv. The combined effect of his encounters with their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the Jewish people and for the ethical universalism of Socialism, with the vibrancy of the New Yishuv and sheer embodied-ness of the land was electrifying. In public, he became the leading rabbinic champion of the New Yishuv, and thus the target of traditionalist attacks. In private, as time went by he wrote more and more furiously and extensively in his diaries, lost in a torrent of thought as he began to train the dialectical worldview which he had developed to understand the complex mix of his own soul and the ideological debates of Eastern Europe onto larger historical patterns. His thinking also became explicitly Messianic. 
Thus in his reading, and in a move which astonished and enraged many of his Rabbinic peers, the rebelliousness of the pioneers was neither accidental, nor evil, but in fact nothing less than part of God’s plan to restore to Judaism a vitality and universal spirit worn thin in centuries of exile. The young rebels against tradition in the name of Jewish nationalism and social justice were nothing less than the bearers of a new revelation. 
In a major essay of 1912, Li-Mahalakh Ha-Ideiot be-Yisrael, (“The Progression of Ideals in Israel,”) he presented a philosophy of Jewish history structured along series of mirroring, theses and antitheses, whose collective synthesis is redemption: The vital, collective, bodily Judaism of the Bible followed by its antithesis, the subdued, individualized, spiritualized,Judaism of Exile, all to be synthesized in the fullness of redemption. 
The Land of Israel was central to his reflections. 

“The holiness within nature is the holiness of the Land of Israel, and the Shekhinah that went down into exile with Israel (BT Megillah 29a) is the ability to preserve holiness in opposition to nature. But the holiness that combats nature is not complete holiness, it must be absorbed in its higher essence to the higher holiness, which is the holiness in nature itself, which is the foundation of the restoration and tikun olam… And the holiness in exile will be joined to the holiness of the land, and the synagogues and batei midrash of Bavel will be reestablished in the Land of Israel.” (Ibid; and Shemonah Kevatzim 2: 326-327, Orot pp. 77-78). 

Here and throughout he was reinterpreting a rich skein of Kabbalistic thought, in which the divine presence, the Shekhinah, as the Oral Torah, is Knesset Yisrael, the sacred community of Israel, and thus the Land, are all ultimately as one, constituting, as Sefirat Malkhut the very meeting point of God and the world. The “Ideals” under discussion in his 1912 essay were not only the Ideals of Western philosophy and the moral, spiritual and aesthetic ideas driving all human yearning, but also, and more deeply, the Sefirot, the nodal points of divine energy that in Kabbalistic teaching are the deep structure of all of Being, and, animated as it is with divine energy, its endless Becoming. 
The outbreak of World War One caught Rav Kook in Germany, where he’d hoped to attend a rabbinic conference and mollify some of his peers’ fierce opposition to the Jewish national revival. He spent the war years in Switzerland and then England, in horrified witness to the great civilizational suicide. 
The world crisis and slaughter were redeemed for him by the Balfour Declaration, which he took as electrifying confirmation of his messianic reading of world events. As always, the national was for him complemented by the universal, and in the midst of the war, in the pages of his diaries, he reached some of the farthest heights of his universalism: 

“There is one who sings the song of his self, …And there is one who sings the song of the nation, who cleaves with gentle love to Knesset Yisrael as a whole, and sings her song with her, grieves for her sorrows and delights in her hopes…And there is one whose soul expands further beyond the bound of Israel, to sing the song of man…And there is one whose spirit expands and ascends even higher, to the point of unity with all creation, with all creatures and all worlds, and sings with them all…And there is one who ascends above all these songs in a single union, and all sound their voices…The song of the self, of the nation, of man, of the world – all come together within him at every time, in every hour. And this perfection in all its fullness ascends and becomes a sacred song, God’s song, Israel’s song…a simple song, doubled, tripled, fourfold, the Song of Songs of Shlomo (Cant. 1:1), (as the Midrash says) The King to Whom Peace, belongs.” (Midrash Shir Ha-Shirim Rabbah, 3:1(6), Vilna ed.) (Shemonah Kevatzim, 7:112, Orot Ha-Kodesh, vol. 2, pp. 444-445). 

On his return to Palestine be became, first, chief rabbi of Jerusalem, and in 1921, the co-founder, with his Sephardi colleague Yaacov Meir, of the Chief Rabbinate. What was for the British an extension of established colonial policy of delegating religious services and some legal jurisdiction to local religious authorities was for him an opening to institutions that would gradually reshape the law into a new Torah for a redeemed Eretz Yisrael. He hoped to create institutions that would move the historical progression forward, creating the halakha and institutions to guide the great changes to come. 
The reality was more complicated. That which made him the obvious choice to head the Rabbinate and indispensable to the burgeoning project of building the Jewish national home – his mix of erudition and piety, his engagements with modern thought and culture, a deeply conciliatory personality and a theology and historical perspective to make that conciliation the basis of a new philosophy – his ability to square seemingly incommensurate circles, left him out of the political mix and unable to make headway on his most prized projects, the new Rabbinate and bringing the Zionist movement into deep dialogue with Judaism. 
It all came to a head in 1933 with the murder of the general secretary of Ben-Gurion’s Mapai party, Chaim Arlosoroff. Suspicion fell on Jabotinsky’s Revisionists, who had been doing rhetorical and sometimes physical battle with Mapai over its willingness to negotiate Jewish immigration with Hitler, and several were arrested. Rav Kook himself had never affiliated with a party, or even formally joined the Zionist movement as such. But once convinced of the Revisionists’ innocence, Rav Kook threw himself and all his stature into their defense. The accused were exonerated, but his ties to the Left were irrevocably broken. 
The ultra-Orthodox, for their part, throughout his Jerusalem years, saw him as their gravest foe and attacked him relentlessly, even while on his deathbed, and after. 
The ensuing decades saw growing interest in Rav Kook’s teachings and their significance. The thousands of pages of his diaries were edited and published, in different series, by his disciple “ha-Rav ha-Nazir,” David Cohen (see here) and by Rav Kook’s son, Zvi Yehudah. 
The latter eventually assumed the deanship of his father’s yeshiva, renamed Mercaz Ha-Rav, and in the late 1960s and early ‘70s became spiritual leader of the new vanguard of Religious Zionists. 
When in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War of October 1973 religious Zionists decided to capture the flag and lay hold, not only of the hilltops of Judea and Samaria but of the Zionist movement as a whole, they were taking the religious language that Labor Zionism had made into a functional tool for a political program and re-infuse it with its classical religious meaning. And they did so, with the conceptual tools provided them by Zvi Yehudah, in his interpretation of his father. 
The central question for Zvi Yehudah, his own successors, and for his and their critics within Religious Zionism, (most notably Rav Yehudah Amital) was what his father would have said, and how his ideas ought to be interpreted. It’s hard to think of another Jewish theologian whose legacy has been as consequential as AvrahamYitzhak ha-Kohen Kook. 
Those arguments continue in present-day Israel, where new volumes by and about Rav Kook, academic, sectarian and popular, continue to be published at a dizzying pace year after year. The publication in recent years of his diaries in their original form has heightened interest in him, while showing the depth of his immersion in Kabbalah, and the depths he was plumbing in his own complicated soul. He simultaneously embraced both universalism and particularism with rare vehemence. He saw genuine revelation in the spiritual life of all peoples, and in the very body of Israel, whose unique collective vocation was the salvation of mankind. He affirmed both pragmatism and utopia, or in his terms, sagacity and prophecy. The common thread to this entire way of thinking is the dialectic, a principled appreciation of complexity, and the ways in which precisely that complexity, that coincidence of opposites, is that which gives birth, slowly, to whatever it is that we can know of truth. 
The last day of his life was the third day of Elul, sixteen years to the day since his arrival, after the Great War, in Jerusalem. He had been ailing with cancer for months and gone to the then-suburb of Kiryat Moshe. In his last days he’d received a number of visitors, including a disciple of the Rebbe of Munkacs, come to query Rav Kook’s support for the Zionists, and the young rabbi and theologian, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who was visiting from America on what would be his only visit to the Land of Israel (see here). And, after asking his physician how long he had left to live, did his best to read through the Mishna, Bible and Bahya ibn Paquda’s eleventh-century classic, Duties of the Heart, one last time. 
On the first day of Elul, the penitential month, Ha-Nazir had brought him the elegantly designed title page of the theological compendium he’d wrought out of the spiritual diaries, to be entitled, “Light of the Holy,” Orot Ha-Kodesh. Rav Kook wept and asked that on the title page he be referred to simply as “Rav” and nothing more. He was surrounded by treasured rabbinic colleagues – Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, Rav Yechiel Michel Tukachinsky, Rav Aryeh Levine – and Ha-Nazir stood in the courtyard downstairs, his face buried in a tree. At the very end, Rav Kook’s lips were moving. His disciple and soul-mate, Rav Yaakov Moshe Charlap leaned over him, and heard him say, “Even now, my hope in God doesn’t falter.” 
Rav Kook turned his face to the wall as the attending physician rinsed the blood from his body, and once his visitors re-entered the room, he faced them all once again. They began to say the Shema together, and he joined them on the final word, “Echad / one.”


Easing the Donkey’s Burden: Nitkatnu Hadorot or Nitgadlu?

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 Easing the Donkey’s Burden: Nitkatnu Hadorot or Nitgadlu?
By Rabbi Simcha Feuerman
“If the earlier generations were like angels, we are like humans. But if they were like humans, then we are like donkeys.”
(Talmud Shabbat 112b)
One of the basic and fundamental tenets of our tradition is respect and deference for the previous generations.  Although there are notable exceptions, generally, rabbinic authorities do not override or disagree with the rulings of authorities from a previous class, such as Amoraim disagreeing with Tanaim, Gaonim with Amoraim, Rishonim with Acharonim and so on.  While this may be due largely to conceding that their knowledge of, and access to Torah Sheb’al Peh is more accurate[1], there is also an aspect of deference and respect for those who are considered to be of higher moral and spiritual character. [2]
This principle has a subtle but pervasive impact on the chinuch we give our children; it is not uncommon for rebbes and rabbanim to speak of “Nitkatnu Hadoros – The generations have become diminished” as a reason to explain how we are unable to fulfill a particular spiritual, moral or halachic ideal.  For example, while it is virtually unheard of to fast for more than 25 hours today, there were minhagim to fast for two days consecutively – on the 9th of Av and the 10th of Av[3], as well as those who were able to make vows of abstention for penitence.[4]  Apparently, we consider ourselves too morally and physically weak to live up to this standard.  Likewise, based on the accounts of many individuals from the previous generations, it was not uncommon for persons to spend the entire Yom Kippur night standing and reciting Psalms, and THEN praying the full day.  This seems beyond reach for most of us today.  When contemplating this, most people wearily sigh, “Oy, the doiros get more shvach (weak).”  These are but two examples of many instances where the deterioration of subsequent generations is an accepted fact of life in our tradition and our culture.
Is this principle absolutely true in all areas?  Is each successive generation truly less spiritual and less moral than the previous ones?  Are we riding a one-way train down to the depths of oblivion waiting to be rescued by the arrival of Messiah?  This resonates with the midrashic tradition about our ancestors in Egypt, who would have descended past all forty-nine levels of impurity had they not been rescued.[5] While such a belief seems to be well-supported by everything we have studied so far, there is a basic illogic to this position.  What is the spiritual purpose in the divine plan for sustaining us, if indeed each generation is less worthy?  Why not just throw in the metaphysical towel and bring Mashiach now, while we are still partially ahead of the game?
The answer must be, as was undoubtedly true in regard to our ancestors who were slaves in Egypt, that despite our continuous moral deterioration, our experiences must be preparing us and priming us for an ultimate experience of higher spirituality and achievement.  Presumably, the experience as slaves in Egypt somehow was a necessary preparation for acceptance and fulfillment of the Torah.  Indeed, many commandments in the Torah, ranging from Shabbat to the laws of usury, are supplemented with a reminder that we are obligated to follow them “Because I am your G-d who took you out of Egypt.”[6]  Furthermore, in regard to the capacity of empathy and caring for the plight of the downtrodden, the Torah reminds us “And you know the soul of the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”[7]  If the experience of slavery in Egypt helped elevate and prime our ancestors for the accepting of the Torah, it may likewise be a fair assumption that while each generation may be undergoing spiritual and moral deterioration, there also is some new quality that is being
developed.  Perhaps this quality is not fully expressed and lays dormant until the time of redemption, or perhaps its quality is available and accessible to all of us right now.
In this essay, I will suggest one specific area where each generation improves its ability and depth to comprehend and fulfill the Torah, as well as the practical implications for the chinuch of our children.  According to fascinating research and statistics regarding I.Q. scores, the ability to perform abstract reasoning increases significantly with every generation.  This has a distinct impact on the ability to understand the more esoteric parts of the Torah, such as the reasons for the mitzvot, ways of understanding reward and punishment, as well as the mystical aspects of religious activities.  The Talmud tells us that “Three things expand a person’s consciousness: A pleasant home, a pleasant wife and beautiful utensils”[8], and it is quite possible that the relative wealth and security of modern life allows for each generation to improve its capacity to understand abstractions, because our surroundings are more pleasant and engender sensitivity and perception. As we shall see, the Sages of the Talmud did not believe the average not-so-learned Jew to be capable of grasping and comprehending many of the deeper aspects of the Torah.  There are numerous examples of this, and we shall study a few of them found in the Talmud and Medieval authorities.
The Truth about the Scrolls
The Talmud tells us that one of the early rabbinic decrees was a form of impurity applying to holy scrolls.  While it seems rather strange to declare holy scrolls to be impure, the rabbis had good reason to do so.  According to the Talmud, the common folk developed an ill-advised habit of storing food consecrated as Terumah in the same areas where they stored the holy scrolls.  The people reasoned, “The Terumah is holy and the scrolls are holy so why not store them together?”  The problem with this practice is that the rodents would come to eat the Terumah and inevitably also chew on the scrolls.  Therefore, the rabbis brilliantly declared that the scrolls are always impure, greatly discouraging people from storing them near the Terumah, which was required to be ritually pure.[9]
This clever bit of social engineering begs one basic question:  If the people were compliant and agreeable to following rabbinic rules and injunctions, why did the rabbis have to complicate matters by decreeing that the scrolls were impure, and of all things, have the audacity to suggest that holy scrolls are impure?  Would it not have been simpler to merely forbid storing holy scrolls alongside Terumah?  This suggests that actually the rabbis could not easily or completely secure compliance via this route and therefore could not directly forbid the co-placement of Terumah and scrolls.  Instead, they needed to tap into an apparent cultural taboo and respect for the laws of Terumah purity as a way to mobilize the people to comply and refrain from storing scrolls next to the Terumah.  In other words, to simply tell people that rodents will chew on the scrolls and therefore it is forbidden to store Terumah next to them would not have been as effective as creating a new form of impurity.  By creating a rabbinic decree of impurity, the rabbis were able to tap into a deeply ingrained respect for the laws of purity and fear of violating them.  This was apparently the most effective deterrent.
Another possible instance where the Sages used the taboo of impurity to shape behavior is in regard to the rabbinic mitzvah of washing hands before eating bread.  The stated reason for this law seems highly convoluted and begs for a deeper explanation.  The reason supplied is that since, when the Temple is rebuilt and the Cohanim will eat Terumah they will need to wash their hands before eating, the rabbis wanted to accustom everyone to wash.[10]  This reason is a quite a stretch, because the original ruling itself that required the Cohanim to wash was only based on another rabbinic declaration that hands are automatically considered ritually unclean.  So, in effect you have a rabbinic injunction to safeguard a rabbinic injunction, in effect a double safeguard, which is usually not the modus operandi of the sages.[11]  Furthermore, let us study the original reason for declaring unwashed hands as impure in regard to Terumah bread.  The Talmud tells us it is because one’s hands absentmindedly touch many objects.[12]  The rabbis therefore enacted a strange form of impurity declaring only the hands and no other part of the body impure, and then allowing a special ritual of water poured from a vessel to act as a mikvah for the purpose of removing the impurity.  This is in itself quite remarkable, because indeed had a person’s hand absentmindedly touched an impure
object such as dead rodent as the stated reason fears, the entire person’s body would be rendered impure and he would need to immerse himself in the mikvah.  Washing his hands from a vessel would accomplish nothing.  So, what problem if anything, did the rabbis
solve?
In fact, Rashi (Ad loc.) finds this explanation so implausible that he suggests another explanation, admittedly overriding what his rabbis taught. Rashi proposes that the requirement to wash before eating Terumah was enacted in order to ensure that the person eats clean hands out of respect for the holy food.  If so, it is not implausible that the rabbis ultimately extended this requirement to all bread in order to encourage sanitary eating habits.[13]   In any case, it is clear that according to Rashi, the rabbis once again used the taboo of impurity to shape social behavior, at least to show deference for Terumah by eating with clean hands, and possibly to eat with general cleanliness.
This deeply ingrained fear and respect for the laws of ritual impurity and regard for the sanctity of Terumah bread cannot be underestimated.  So much so, that according to some interpretations of the Mishna Nedarim, even a thug and a murderer will still be “pious” and careful to make sure he does not defile Terumah.  The Mishna states that if one is accosted by bandits, he may make a false oath declaring his produce as Terumah, so bandits and/or self-appointed tax collectors will leave him alone.  Incredibly, this implies that a bandit, who has no qualms robbing and murdering, will not want to transgress the boundary of defiling Terumah. This brings new meaning to the concept of honor among thieves![14]
These were not the only instances where the rabbis tapped into the taboo against impurity as a way to shape society. The Sages were quite concerned about Jewish children being exposed to inappropriate sexual contact during playtime with their gentile neighbors. They therefore decreed that gentile children be considered to have the impurity of a zav (a certain disease that was considered to cause a high degree of impurity, see Leviticus ch. 15) so that the Jewish children would not play with the gentile children. This decree was enacted to protect them from being subjected to improper contact.[15] One would think it would have been more effective to just educate and warn parents about the dangers of inappropriate sexual contact and/or abuse, as we attempt to do nowadays. Apparently, the rabbis who enacted this decree felt the standards of tznius would be violated if they stated their concerns directly, and/or their warnings would go unheeded because the average parent considered such acts unthinkable. They therefore resorted to the fear of impurity as a way to influence parental behavior and protect the children, taking care of safety concerns without violating tznius or overwhelming people with information beyond their ability to emotionally process.”
We see from the above examples that the rabbis had no qualms about withholding information and influencing people via their taboos, so long as it was for a worthy cause.  Apparently, at least in regard to the examples of the scrolls and molestation prevention, the rabbis did not have enough faith in the average person’s ability to grasp or handle the entire truth.  One wonders if this is an approach that would work well nowadays.  It does not seem likely.  As members of a democratic and open society, people expect and demand transparency from their leaders.  While these may or may not be Torah values, they are expectations that are accepted as our rights.  Furthermore, as we shall see later in this essay, the research shows that in modern times the average person is indeed more capable of understanding and grasping nuances than in previous generations.  [16]
As If They Are Children
In his introduction to Perek Chelek, Maimonides tells us that the pleasures of the soul are as inconceivable to us as color is to person who
is blind from birth.  The ultimate reason for doing mitzvot should not be about reward or punishment, rather one’s focus should be on wanting to become attached to G-d by performing his will.  In the World to Come, the soul will experience great ecstasy to whatever degree it can attain attachment to G-d, and the greatest possible punishment is that of karet, which is the soul’s disconnection from G-d.[17]  Maimonides tells us, despite the value and importance of this lofty concept, the Torah exhorts people in terms of reward and punishment as a concession to the limits of human understanding and motivation.  Few people would be motivated by the abstract notion of connection or disconnection to G-d.  Instead, for most people, the expectation of concrete reward and punishment is necessary to propel people in the direction of spiritual growth.  In time, as the person ascends to greater heights, he may be become capable of fulfilling the commandments completely lishmah, as is prescribed by Antignos Ish Socho in Pirke Avot.[18]   Maimonides explains that this is no different than a parent or teacher who motivates a young child to study by offering him sweets, and then as he gets older, offers even more significant prizes.  Only when the child is a full adult will he realize the value of what he is studying, and will he no longer require material rewards and prizes.
But, again one must wonder, is it true that people today would be insufficiently motivated by a vision of spiritual ecstasy and attachment to G-d?  The thousands of Jews and non-Jews who flock to gurus, ashrams, so-called “Kabbalah” Centers and other similar places seem to indicate this is not quite true.  In fact, perhaps to the modern man, the idea of heavenly reward and punishment may seem juvenile and much less of a motivator than the notion of performing good and moral deeds for their own sake.  Furthermore, although in the intimacy of my counseling practice as a psychotherapist, I indeed have encountered a fair share of clients who express nihilistic sentiments and profess atheism or agnosticism, I also have been deeply moved by persons of high moral character who profess a firm conviction that there is no G-d, nor any afterlife whatsoever.  I have seen such persons withstand remarkable moral tests.  Are they deluding themselves and actually, deep down, fear a final accounting in the Afterlife, or are they truly capable of being moral for its own sake?[19]   Has modern Man expanded his capacity for spirituality, and if so, in what way?
Midrash and Aggadot
Midrash have been explained and interpreted throughout the ages in accordance with various Jewish exegetical and philosophical approaches.  Medieval commentaries throughout the ages have instructed us to understand midrashic stories as allegorical in nature, hinting at lofty concepts such as mystical and kabbalistic teachings which the rabbis were reluctant to state explicitly.[20]   
In his introduction to his commentary on the Mishna, Maimonides states that the aggadot were taught to a general audience, which included children and those who were not scholars.  He therefore explains:
“One cannot teach the general public except by means of parable and riddle so as to include…the youth, in order that when their intellect reach a more complete level, they will understand the meaning of the parables.”
The proper and meaningful study of midrash is in general a vastly unexplored area of learning for most Jews, even those who spend many hours a day studying Torah in depth.  Unfortunately, aggadot are often relegated to the status of Jewish tales told to entertain children without enough thought being given to their deep meanings.
Are children today truly incapable of understanding the deeper meanings of these midrashim?  Personally, I recall studying a midrash with a nine year-old boy which stated that the Torah was primordially written with “Black fire on top of white fire.”[21]  When I asked him what he thought it meant, he told me “The black is the Yetzer Hara, and the white is the Yetzer Hatov.  The Torah needs both in order to be complete.”
Admittedly, this was a particularly precocious young man who had a track record of ingenious insights.  Nevertheless, it is worth considering that children today are quite capable of seeing deeper meanings in aggadot when challenged to do so.  All we need to do is keep an open mind and ask them what they think.  Here is one example of how this can be done with a famous midrash taught to all children.
The Sun and the Moon
“In the beginning of the creation of the world, G-d made the Sun and the Moon to be the same size and equally bright.  After they were created, the Moon approached G-d and said to him, “It does not make sense that two rulers should wear the same crown.”  G-d answered, “Okay, then you be the one who is shrunken to a smaller size and the Sun shall rule!”   The Moon then replied, “Because I said one smart thing you punish me so severely?”  G-d answered the Moon, “I’ll tell you what.  Go, and you shall rule over day and night.”  The Moon then replied, “What purpose is there in my ruling over the day, when there is plenty of light and no one needs my light?”  G-d replied, “Go, and through you the Jewish people will measure the days and the years, and thereby establish the dates of the holy days.  After some additional give and take, G-d saw that the Moon still was not satisfied, and in response he made following
request of the Jewish people: “On every Rosh Chodesh bring a sacrifice on my behalf in order that I obtain forgiveness for having reduced the light of the Moon.””[22]
If encouraged to do so, even young students will have no problem finding the obvious lessons in the story, such as how the Moon’s greed and grandiosity did not pay in the end.  But what about the other ideas in the story?  What can the students make of this give and take between the Moon and G-d?  Not only does the Moon gain concessions, in the end, G-d even asks the Jewish people to seek forgiveness on his behalf!
The Maharsha (Ad loc.) interprets this dialogue to be about the Jewish people.  In order for them to achieve their spiritual goals they must undergo great suffering in this world.  Ultimately, they will reap the reward in the world to come.  Nevertheless, the fact that the Jewish people must suffer so much in exile is, so to speak, painful to G-d, and he therefore tries to console the Jewish people.  First, by giving them the Jewish Festivals, but ultimately by reminding them that just as the Moon waxes and wanes through its cycles, so too the Jewish people will have moments in history when they are powerful and others when they are weak.
Given some chance to discuss this, children can easily be led to see these deeper meanings.  It also gives the teacher an opportunity to discuss the ways in which the Torah presents G-d with human emotions.  Though G-d is not subject to emotional whims, he chooses to reveal himself in such a manner so humans can relate to him.[23]  Within that light, from this story we see a willingness by G-d to enter into a dialogue with the sinner, to make accommodations, adjustments, and surprisingly, even to regret the harshness of the punishment he enacted.  From this story, any chutzpadik and misbehaving child could surely draw comfort.
Surely, with the right kind of instruction, this kind of analysis and understanding is well within the range of even many first graders.  We have a great opportunity to combine intellectual analysis with an emotional component to inspire internalization and practice of Torah values.  Yet previous generations seem to have preferred keeping this treasure trove of information in the form of a child’s tale.  It seems to me that our generation of children have an increased capacity for deeper reasoning and understanding and should be encouraged to look at these stories in a more symbolic light.   My experience talking to children today shows me that they are capable of great depth, analysis and interpretation.  Let us see why this might be true, and what has changed in recent history.
The I.Q.’s Keep Rising
One striking area where each successive generation is superior to the next is in regard to I.Q. Test scores.
“In 1981, New Zealand-based psychologist James Flynn…Comparing raw I.Q. scores over nearly a century… saw that they kept going up: every few years, the new batch of I.Q. test takers seemed to be smarter than the old batch. Twelve-year-olds in the 1980s performed better than twelve-year-olds in the 1970s, who performed better than twelve-year-olds in the 1960s, and so on. This trend wasn’t limited to a certain region or culture, and the differences were not trivial. On average, I.Q. test takers improved over their predecessors by three points every ten years – a staggering difference of eighteen points over two generations.
The differences were so extreme, they were hard to wrap one’s head around. Using a late-twentieth-century average score of 100, the comparative score for the year 1900 was calculated to be about 60 – leading to the truly absurd conclusion, acknowledged Flynn, ‘that a majority of our ancestors were mentally retarded.’ The so-called Flynn effect raised eyebrows throughout the world of cognitive research. Obviously, the human race had not evolved into a markedly smarter species in less than one hundred years. Something else was going on.
For Flynn, the pivotal clue came in his discovery that the increases were not uniform across all areas but were concentrated in certain subtests. Contemporary kids did not do any better than their ancestors when it came to general knowledge or mathematics. But in the area of abstract reasoning, reported Flynn, there were ‘huge and embarrassing’ improvements. The further back in time he looked, the less test takers seemed comfortable with hypotheticals and intuitive problem solving. Why? Because a century ago, in a less complicated world, there was very little familiarity with what we now consider basic abstract concepts. ‘[The intelligence of] our ancestors in 1900 was anchored in everyday reality,’ explains Flynn. ‘We differ from them in that we can use abstractions and logic and the hypothetical … Since 1950, we have become more ingenious in going beyond previously learned rules to solve problems on the spot.’
Examples of abstract notions that simply didn’t exist in the minds of our nineteenth-century ancestors include…the concepts of control groups (1875) and random samples (1877). A century ago, the scientific method itself was foreign to most Americans. The general public had simply not yet been conditioned to think abstractly.
The catalyst for the dramatic I.Q. improvements, in other words, was not some mysterious genetic mutation or magical nutritional supplement but what Flynn described as ‘the [cultural] transition from pre-scientific to post- scientific operational thinking.’ Over the course of the twentieth century, basic principles of science slowly filtered into public consciousness, transforming the world we live in. That transition, says Flynn, ‘represents nothing less than a liberation of the human mind.’
The scientific world-view, with its vocabulary, taxonomies, and detachment of logic and the hypothetical from concrete referents, has begun to permeate the minds of post-industrial people. This has paved the way for mass education on the university level and the emergence of an intellectual cadre without whom our present civilization would be inconceivable.
Perhaps the most striking of Flynn’s observations is this: 98 percent of IQ test takers today score better than the average test taker in 1900. The implications of this realization are extraordinary. It means that in just one century, improvements in our social discourse and our schools have dramatically raised the measurable intelligence of almost everyone.”[24] 
Chinuch Implications
According to these findings, our generation has the highest capacity for abstract reasoning and analysis than ever before.  Young children today who spend a great deal of time on computers, are even more used to hypothetical thought, layers of representation of symbolism, nuances and multiple perspectives than almost every computer game employs.  In fact, the actual use of a computer itself engenders recognition of symbolic content because the entire graphical interface is representation of acts rather than actual physical acts.  Opening “windows”, switching from one program to another, multi-tasking, becoming exposed to world events as they unfold in real time via newsfeeds, and playing role playing games can all lead to expanded consciousness and awareness. True, these same technologies can also lead children to be highly distractibility and crave constant stimulation, but let us focus on this generation’s gifts and strengths instead of bemoaning their shortcomings.
This is not the first time in Jewish history where a successor generation was superior in one aspect over a previous generation.  The Talmud records a remark of Rav Papa to Abaye, who ponders why miracles happened to the earlier generations and not nowadays.  Rav Papa states that it cannot be due to lack of Torah knowledge, as he declares their knowledge to be superior.[25]
I am not an educator by profession, so the definitive implications of these findings for the chinuch of our children require more extensive thought and discussion.  However, some areas that we might consider are :
  1. Increased focus on symbolic meaning, philosophy and the deeper aspects of the Torah.  Our children are indeed capable of understanding the Torah on a very deep level and we should not make the mistake of selling them short.  It is possible to engage them in actively interpreting and delving into a study of reasons for the mitzvot.  Maimonides encourages people to do, regardless of whether the mitzvah is a chok (law without an obvious reason) or a mishpat (law based on apparent logic.)  Maimonides states, “Though all the laws of the Torah are decrees [and not subject to debate]…it is fitting to contemplate them and, to whatever extent possible, try to find reasons for them.”[26]  One should pause to ask why Maimonides considers it important to find reasons for the laws of the Torah if they must be followed regardless of whether they seem logical or not?  Presumably the answer is that when one makes an effort to understand the laws, it helps guide a person to think in consonance with the morals and ethics of the Torah, thereby increasing the development of character.  With proper guidance and encouragement, our children can excel in this area.
  1. Likewise, in regard to the study of aggadot, we could help the children reach for the deep lessons and interpretations of these allegories, to strengthen their belief and respect for the insights found in our tradition.
  1. Every now and then, someone bemoans the fact that in prior generations, the yeshivot covered far more ground and mastered hundreds of blatt, instead of merely focusing on a few blatt per year, studied in great depth.  While this criticism is valid and important, perhaps we also should embrace this situation in recognition that the yeshivot might be indulging in a great deal of analysis for one simple reason – the students are good at it.  As a generation, more individuals are capable of this deeper learning than ever before.  Thus, the desire to do so is understandable, and may need to be given more recognition.  True, the knowledge of basics needs to be encouraged as well, but this can be tempered with a special appreciation that more and more young people have a thirst to study and analyze in greater depth and the drive should not be excessively stunted.  As the Talmud says, “A person should always study in the direction that his heart desires.”[27]
  1. It is well and good to teach our children humility and historical perspective but care might be taken not to overdo and engender an attitude of pessimism and defeatism.  They certainly should understand the brilliance, dedication and awesome spiritual and moral character possessed by sages of previous generations.  Nevertheless, no one wants to be on a losing team, so if we want children to stay loyal to Jewish tradition and practices, they ought to feel like winners.  We can also convey a message of confidence and belief in their ability as Jews and spiritual beings to make new and important contributions, as opposed to being mere paving bricks, biding time on the road to the Messiah.  Showing them their unique strengths and intellectual abilities is one way to do that.
Concluding Thoughts
As they mature in life, our children will be exposed to science and philosophy in various degrees.  Some may learn complex ideas as a result of the professions they choose such as medicine, psychology, sociology or other science-based courses of study, or may just read about these ideas on their own due to the readily available and popular works.  Today, your average person can go to a book store and purchase titles such as Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time, which makes physics and astronomy understandable to the common man.  Do we want to run the risk of our children having a grade-school understanding of the Torah, and then as they grow up and learn about the world, find secular ideas to be more sophisticated and exciting?  While indeed, in some respects, our generation is at a spiritual and moral low point, embarrassingly insignificant compared to the giants of years past, we do not have to wallow in self-pity.  Rather, we have an opportunity to modify our curriculum and include deeper and more profound aspects of the Torah, allowing our children to become stimulated as they capitalize on their ever increasing capacity to comprehend what previous generation considered secret, esoteric and beyond the reach of but a few.
Rabbi Simcha Feuerman, LCSW-R is psychotherapist in private practice specializing in high conflict couples and families.  He serves as Director of Operations for OHEL Children’s Home and Family Services, and as President of Nefesh International.  Simchafeuerman@gmail.com

 

[1] Menachem Kellner in Maimonides on the Decline of
the Generations (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996) suggests that according to
Maimonides the previous generations of rabbis have superiority on the basis of
their access to a less distorted masorah,
but not due to an inherent supernatural superiority.
[2] See Eruvin 53a which suggests that the deterioration
in Torah knowledge of successive generations as due to many factors including
lack of spiritual breadth and lack of studiousness.
[3] Ba’er Heytev, Shulchan Aruch, O.H. 558:3
[4] Shulchan Aruch, O.H. 563:4
[5] Zohar Chadash, on Parashas Yitro, by the first verse of the Aseret
Hadibrot, 20:1.
[6] Leviticus 25:35-38
[7] See Exodus 23:9 and Leviticus 19:33
[8] Berachot 57b, see also Maimonides, Shemoneh Perakim,
ch. 5, where he elaborates on this concept.
[9] Shabbat 14a
[10] Chulin 106a
[11] Beitzah 3a, see Mesoras Hashas ad loc. for further
references
[12] Shabbat 14a
[13] See Mishna Berurah 158:1 which offers both reasons,
that of habituation in ritual purity for Terumah,
and also physical cleanliness as an aspect or representation of spiritual
purity.
[14] Nedarim 3:4, see Bartenura ad loc.
[15] Shabbat 17b
[16] See R. Eliezer Lippmann’ Neusatz’ Mei Menuhot,
published in 1884.  Here is a quote from
Dr. Marc Shapiro’s discussion on the Seforim Blog (here)
“On p. 16a, after citing Maimonides’ words that the majority err in
understanding aggadot literally, Neusatz comments that this was the situation
in earlier times, which were less religiously sophisticated than later
generations. The proof that the earlier generations were religiously naïve is
that belief in divine corporeality was widespread then. According to Neusatz,
people who were so mistaken about God that they imagined him as a corporeal
being would obviously not be able to understand Aggadah in a non-literal
fashion. He contrasts that with the generation he lived in, which was able to
properly understand Aggadah.
אמנם בדורנו זה נזדככו יותר הרעיונות ונלטשו הלבבות והמושגים האלהיים
הנשגבים האלה מצטיירים בלבות המאמינים בטוהר יותר ורוב זוהר, ונתמעטו אנשי הכת
הזאת, ותה”ל רובם יודעים שחז”ל כתבו אגדותיהם ע”ד משל ומליצה וחדות
וכפי הצורך אשר היה להם לפי ענין הדורות אשר היה לפניהם, פנימיותם הם ענינים
אמתיים נשגבים עומדים ברומו של עולם.”
[17] Also see Maimonides, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Teshuvha
chapters. 8 and 10 where he elaborates on this theme
[18]  Avot 1:3
[19] It is important to point out that though this is
superficially similar to Maimonides’ position, and certainly relatively
admirable, being moral for its own sake with no belief in the ultimate goal of
connection to G-d is problematic.
According to Maimonides, doing a mitzvah
lishmah – for its own sake, does not
mean without connection to G-d.  It just
means without a need or desire for reward as a motivator.  In fact, in Hilchot Melachim (8:11),
Maimonides definitively states that a Gentile who fulfills the seven Noachide
Laws out of logic and morality alone without doing them with the intent to
fulfill the Creator’s mitzvot, will
not merit reward in the World to Come among the righteous gentiles.  This is even more striking because there is
no apparent source for this ruling, which suggests that Maimonides considered
this principle obvious and self-evident, perhaps stemming from his
philosophical beliefs about the nature of the soul and how immortality is
attained through a process of elevating the intellect and character, which
would be impossible without correct beliefs.
It would seem, according to Maimonides, that morality without acceptance
of the yoke of Heaven is simply not considered moral.
[20] See for example Rabbi Moses Chaim Luzzato’s
introduction to Aggadah, found in the beginning of most editions of the Ein
Yaakov, and Maimonides’ commentary on Mishna Sanhedrin, introduction to chapter
10, “the third group”, p. 137, Kapach Edition, and Ibn Ezra’s
introduction to his commentary on Chumash.
[21] Midrash Tanchuma Bereishis 1
[22] Chulin 60b
[23] See Maimonides, Mishne Torah, Yesodei Hatorah
1:9.
[24]
Shenk, David,
The Genius in All of Us, Doubleday Copyright 2010, pp. 35-37.
[25] Berachot 20a
[26] Mishne Torah, Hilchot Temurah 4:13
[27] Avoda Zara 19a

 



Waiting Six Hours for Dairy- A Rabbanite Response to Qaraism

|
Waiting Six Hours for Dairy- A Rabbanite
Response to Qaraism
By Tzvi H. Adams
tzviha@gmail.com

Qaraites are a Jewish group that began around 760 CE. They rejected the Talmud
and rabbinic Judaism and insisted that Jews only observe halacha as expressed
in the literal text of the Torah. “Qaraite” means “Scriptualist”. The movement
started in Iraq and Persia by Jews who objected to the authority of the leaders
of the Babylonian Talmud Academies, the Gaonim. The Gaonim and their
successors, the rishonim, are called Rabbanites because of their stance in
defending the Talmud and rabbinic laws. 
Scholars have noted that many minhagim began as a response to the Qaraite
movement. For example, the recital of במה מדליקין
on Friday evening  after davening [1] was
started in the times of the Gaonim to reinforce the rabbinic stance on having
fire prepared before Shabbos, in opposition to the Qaraite view that no fire
may be present in one’s home on Shabbos [2]. There is evidence that the reading
of Pirkei Avos [3] on Shabbos afternoon, which began in Gaonic times, was to
emphasize to the Jewish masses that the Oral Law was passed down since Moshe
Rabbeinu as stated in the first mishna of Pirkei Avos.

Professor Haym Soloveitchik [4] has argued
convincingly that the unique arrangement of Hilchos Shabbos in Rambam’s Mishna
Torah was organized specifically with anti-Qaraite intent. Briefly, Rambam’s
formulation of the Shabbos laws does not follow a chronological order or any
other expected logical order. In his opening chapters, Rambam lays down the
following rules: preserving lifesaving overrides the restrictions of Shabbos;
only work done on Shabbos itself is forbidden (e.g. shehiyah and hatmanah are
allowed); work done by a Gentile upon a Jew’s request is only forbidden by
rabbinic law. These three rulings were denied by Qaraites. Rambam is then
careful to segregate the Torah laws (di’Oraisas) into one group of
chapters (7-12) and all the rabbinic rulings (di’rabbanans) into another
set (21-24), with eight chapters separating the two. Soleveitchik argues that
this was done to “highlight the very existence and legal force of rabbinic
enactments, both of which were denied by the Qaraites”. Finally, Maimonides
concludes the laws of Shabbos with an uplifting positive note: the laws of kibbud
ve’oneg Shabbos. This further emphasizes the difference between the Qaraite
and Rabbanite Shabbos, because Qaraites treated Shabbos “as a day of ascetic
retreat and allowed only the barest minimum of eating and sleeping.” Rambam
emphasizesאיזה
הוא
עינוג:  זה
שאמרו
חכמים
שצריך
לתקן
תבשיל
שמן
ביותר,
ומשקה
מבושם,
הכול
לשבת  and
 [5] אכילת
בשר
ושתיית
יין
בשבת,
עינוג
הוא
לה. 
With this argument Soloveichik is suggesting that Rambam organized material in
Mishna Torah so that the differences between Qaraite and Rabbanite Shabbos are emphasized
to the reader. However, Soloveitchik takes matters one step further: He notes
that Rambam is the first to define intimacy on Shabbos as oneg Shabbos: תשמיש
המיטה,
מעונג
שבת
הוא.
 The Talmud only states that intimacy on
Shabbos is allowed, but does not elevate this act to the categorization of mitzvas
oneg Shabbos. Here, Soloveitchik argues that Rambam actually redefined
the Talmudic law for polemical reasons [6]. This is a revolutionary proposition
as we are generally under the assumption that the Mishna Torah is a practical
summary of the Talmud – as Rambam tells us in his introduction to Mishna Torah [7]. Professor Soloveitchik has opened the door for the
understanding that within Mishna Torah there may be Talmudic laws which have
been redefined or reformulated for anti-Qaraite reasons.

Waiting After Chicken: Rambam’s Innovation

I would like to suggest that Rambam’s interpretation of meat-milk
separation laws was also based on anti-Qaraite socio-political motivation. While
some earlier rishonim required waiting between eating beheima meat and eating
dairy, Rambam was the first to state that one must wait after eating poultry,
as well. (Beheima meat refers to meat from cows, sheep or goats.):

מִי שֶׁאָכַל בָּשָׂר בַּתְּחִלָּה,
בֵּין בְּשַׂר בְּהֵמָה בֵּין בְּשַׂר עוֹף–לֹא יֹאכַל אַחֲרָיו חָלָב עַד
שֶׁיִּשְׁהֶה בֵּינֵיהֶן כְּדֵי שֵׁעוּר סְעוֹדָה אַחֶרֶת, וְהוּא כְּמוֹ שֵׁשׁ
שָׁעוֹת:  מִפְּנֵי הַבָּשָׂר שֶׁלְּבֵין
הַשִּׁנַּיִם, שְׁאֵינוּ סָר בְּקִנּוּחַ
רמבם
משנה תורה מאכלות אסורות פרק ט’ הלכה כז

This contradicts the simple reading of the Gemara Chullin
104b:
 תנא
אגרא
חמוה
דרבי אבא
עוף
וגבינה
נאכלין
באפיקורן
הוא
תני
לה
והוא
אמר
לה
בלא
נטילת
ידים
ובלא
קינוח
הפה
which states plainly that poultry and cheese (even
in that order) may been eaten באפיקורן (in one kerchief)) or
without concern (לשון הפקר)  even without washing one’s hands or mouth in
between their consumption. See, for example, Ritva (Chullin 104b) [8]:
פירש”י שאם אכל זה ובה לאכול זה
א”צ לקנח פיו ולא ליטול. ונראה מלשונו אפי’ בשאכל בשר עוף בתחילה…
Earlier rishonim who required a long wait between beheima
meat and dairy did not require this waiting between poultry and dairy. R. Chananel
and R. Yitchak Alfasi required a waiting period only between beheima
meat and dairy, but not between poultry and dairy. Rishonim in the years close
after Rambam’s lifetime challenged his innovation.
Here are the core lines of the sugya (Chullin 105a) which are most relevant to
this discussion:

גופא אמר רב חסדא אכל בשר אסור לאכול
גבינה
אמר מר עוקבא אנא להא מלתא חלא בר
חמרא לגבי אבא דאילו אבא כי הוה אכיל בשרא האידנא לא הוה אכל גבינה עד למחר עד
השתא ואילו אנא בהא סעודתא הוא דלא אכילנא לסעודתא אחריתא אכילנא
R. Chananel comments:

וזה
לשון
רבינו
חננאל
ז”ל, ולא
מצינו
מי
שהתיר
לאכול
גבינה
אחר
בשר
בפחות
מעת
לעת
אלא
מר
עוקבא
דאכל
בשר
בסעוד’
אח’
בסעוד’
אחרת
גבינ’
ואמ’
על
עצמו
דבהא
מלתא
חלא
בר
חמרא
אנא
ואי
אפשר
להתיר
בפחו’
מזה…ע”כ הובא
בתוס’
הרא”ש וחי’
הרשב”א חולין
קה
ע”א))
R. Chananel is not cited in regards to poultry and
it can be assumed he is speaking only of red meat. This is more apparent in the
words of his disciple R. Yitchak Alfasi (1013 – 1103) who shares his master’s
view:
הרי”ף פרק
כל
הבשר- תנא
אגרא
חמוה
דרבי אבא
עוף
וגבינה
נאכלין
באפיקורן
וי”א באפיקוליס הוא תני
לה
והוא
אמר
לה
בלא
קינוח
הפה
ובלא נטילת
ידים…
ושמעינן
מהא
דהאי
דא”ר חסדא
אכל
בשר
אסור
לאכול
גבינה
דלא
שרי
למיכל
גבינה
בתר
בשרא
אלא
עד
דשהי
ליה
שיעור
מה
דצריך
לסעודתא
אחריתי
דלא
אשכחינן
מאן
דשרי
למיכל
גבינה
בתר
בישרא
בפחות
מהאי
שיעורא
It is clear from the Rif’s discussion of the
statement of אגרא that his use of the
words בשר
and עוף
denote two separate entities. Rif’s requirement to wait דשהי
ליה
שיעור
מה
דצריך
לסעודתא”
אחריתי”
is only for red meat, not poultry.  Rif
moved from North Africa to Spain in 1088 and was recognized there as the
leading halachic authority. The psak of R. Chananel and Rif became standard
over time in Spain and people waited after red meat before eating dairy; and
evidence suggests that they did not wait after poultry. One source is in the Sefer
Ittur of R. Yitchak ben Abba Mari (c. 1122 – c. 1193). In his discussion of
the view of R. Chananel, Ittur makes clear that for fowl there is no six
hour waiting requirement:
 ספר
העיטור
שער
ראשון
הל’
הכשר
בשר
דף
יג
ע”ב והלכתא
… אלא
קינוח
הפה
לגבינה
לבשר.
ושהייה
לבשר
וגבינה…
ועוף
וגבינה
א”צ
שהייה
לבשר
וגבינה
ולא
קנוח
הפה
ונט”י לגבינה
ובשר.   

Another source is from Meiri (1249-1306) in his Sefer
Magen Avos written about 100 years after Rambam’s Mishna Torah.
Meiri wrote Magen Avos to defend the customs of Provence against the
ridicule and challenge of Spanish rishonim:
 מגן
אבות
דף
יא’
הקדמה-
ומה
שהביאנו
לסדר
אופני
אלה
הדברים
שכתבנו…הוא,
שאנחנו
בעיר
הזאת
עיר
פרפיאגיאק
והחזקנו
בהרבה
מנהגים
היו
בידינו
בירושה
מאבותינו…
ביד
חכמי
העיר
ברדש
… ורב
גבול
ארץ
פרובינצה.
ועתה
מקרוב
באו
הנה
קצת
חכמים
מארץ
ספרד…
לערער
בקצת
מנהגינו…
וראיתי
לכתוב
על
ספר
מה
שנשאתי
ונתתי
עמהם
באלו
המנהגות…
He records the Spanish custom not to wait at all
between fowl and milk. He describes how in his time a new generation of Spanish
rabbis began to adopt the stringent view of Rambam and begin a new trend:
דף
מו’-מט’
הענין
התשיעי.
עוד
נשאו
ונתנו
אתנו
במה
שהם
נוהגים
לאכול
גבינה
אחר
עוף,
ואנו
מחמירים
עד
שישהא
שש
שעות
או
חמש
כשיעור
שבין
סעודה
לסעודה
כדין
האמור
בבשר
בהמה….ונמצא
כלל
הדברים,
שכל
מאכל
בשר
בין
של
בהמה
בין
של
עוף
אינו
אוכל
גבינה
אח”כ עד
שיעברו
שש
שעות
או
חמש…ויראה
לי
להקל
עוד
שאף
באכל
עוף
תחילה
אע”פ שצריך
שהיה,
אינו
צריך
שש
שעות,
אלא
כל
שסעודה
לסעודה
אפילו
בקירוב
זמן
הואיל
וסילק
, ועקר….אלא
שהדברים
ברורים
כשטתינו
ואף
הם
הודו
שחכמים
האחרונים
שבגלילותיהם
מחמירים
בה
ונוהגים
כמנהגינו
והנאני
הדבר
It is clear that the former norm in Spain was to eat
cheeses/dairy immediately after poultry with no 
kinuach ve’hadacha, like the Ittur indicates was the
accepted halacha in that country.
(Is interesting to note Meiri’s own leniency for poultry: …ויראה
לי
להקל
עוד
שאף
באכל
עוף
תחילה
אע”פ שצריך
שהיה,
אינו
צריך
שש
שעות,
אלא
כל
שסעודה
לסעודה
אפילו
בקירוב
זמן
הואיל
וסילק
, ועקר.)

In the two generations following Rambam, the
greatest rishonim attacked the Rambam’s reform as it reversed the ruling of the
Bavli. Ramban (1194-1270) was the first to challenge Rambam’s alteration:

… אבל הרמב”ן ז”ל כתב דאגרא
אפילו עוף ואחר כך גבינה שרא דלישנא הכי משמע דקאמר עוף וגבינה…(ר”ן על
הרי”ף חולין דף לז’)
R. Aaron Halevi (1230-1300) was next:
…ואפילו הכי שרינן בעוף בלא נטילת ידים
משום דקיל דלא מיתסר אלא מדרבנן, ודאי לא שני לן בין עוף ואחר כך גבינה בין גבינה
ואחר כך עוף… הוא הדין לקנוח הפה דלא בעינן אפי’ בין עוף לגבינה…. ולהוציא קצת
מדברי רבי’ ז”ל (=הרמב”ם) שפרשו דההיא דאגרא דאמר עוף וגבנה נאכלין
באפיקורן דוקא גבינה תחילה ואחר כך עוף… (חידושי רא”ה לחולין דף קד’)
However, as Meiri noted, the trend in Spain began to
change [9]. Creative ways of reinterpreting the words of אגרא
were created to fit this new reform into the Talmud. Tur (1275-1340) YD 89
cites Rambam’s ruling on poultry as if none other exists.
Why did Rambam change the Halacha?  Perhaps it was an anti-Qaraite measure. By extending
the waiting requirement to include poultry, the divide between Rabbanites and Qaraites
became more apparent. Rabbanite Jews who followed Rambam’s ruling could
participate in only a limited way at a multicourse Qaraite meal which included
poultry and dairy.

Waiting 6 Hours- R. Chananel’s Innovation

Until R. Chananel’s time, waiting between meat and milk was not considered
mandatory by halachic authorities. One could choose instead to perform kinuach
ve’hadacha – clean out one’s mouth and rinse one’s hands, if they were soiled
from meat. The halachic modification of removing the kinuach ve’hadacha option
was likely planned as an anti-Qaraite legislation.

Two primary authorities report on the halacha as it was in pre- R. Chananel
times. One is the Baal Halochos Gedolos (BaHaG) of either R. Yehudai Gaon, head
of the yeshiva in Sura from 757 to 761, and/or Shimon Kayyara (8th
century). (The correct authorship of BaHaG is a matter of scholarly debate, but
its author was a recognized source of halachic tradition from the 8th century.)

הלכות גדולות הלכות ברכות פרק ששי ט’
א’ (הובא גם בטור או”ח קעג’)- אמצעיים רשות אמר רב נחמן לא שנו אלא שבין
תבשיל לתבשיל אבל בין בשר לגבינה חובה והאי דשרו רבנן גבינה בתר בשר
משמעתיה דרב נחמן … אמר רב חסדא אכל בשר אסור לאכול גבינה ודוקא בלא קינוח אבל
מקנח פומיה שרי למיכל…
A careful reading of BaHaG shows that the “רבנן” cited in BaHaG refers
to contemporaneous sages, not only earlier “Chazal”.
The second testimony is from R. Hai Gaon (939-1038), as cited by Rashba:

חידושי
הרשב”א חולין
קה
ע”א אבל
הרב
בעל
הלכות
גדולות
ז”ל כתב
בהלכו’
ברכות…
וכן
דעת
רבינו
יעקב
ז”ל וגאון זכרונו לברכה גם כן כתב אכל
בשר מותר
לסעודה אחרת למיכל גבינה וה”מ בחסידי אבל אנן מקנחינ’ ומחוורינן ידן
ופומן ואכלי’. אכל גבינ’ שרי למיכל בשר בלא קנוח בלא נטילת ידים וה”מ
דחזייה לידיה דלא מטנפא. (הובא גם בספר העיטור שער ראשון הל’ הכשר בשר דף יג
ע”ב)
The Rashba is clearly citing two separate sources, the
BaHaG and the “Gaon” (R’ Hai [10]). R. Hai Gaon speaks in the plural and says “we
rinse hands and wash out our mouths and eat”. Evidently, this was the common
practice amongst the gaonim.
What triggered the halachic transformation which we observe in the leading
North African and Spanish rishonim of the following generation? (R. Chananel
was about 48 years old when R. Hai passed away.) 
Let’s analyze early Qaraite halachic progressions and how they correlate with
inverse developments in Rabbanite halacha. To fully appreciate the reasons for
R. Chananel’s modernization of milk and meat laws, it is necessary to trace Qaraite
geographic, demographic, and halachic developments.

Historical Development of Qaraite
Halacha

Nathan Shur’s Toldoth haKaraim[11]
provides an overview of Qaraite history. Qaraism began gradually in the late
eighth and early ninth centuries CE. Anan Ben David (c. 715 – c. 795), who was later claimed to be the founder of the
Qaraite movement (though not historically accurate), maintained that it is
forbidden to eat meat until the Temple is rebuilt [12]. Benjamin Nahawendi (early 9th century), Sahl ben Matzliah Abu al-Sari (910–990), and Daniel al-Kumisi  (d. 946), all early
prominent Qaraite scholars and philosophers, forbade their followers from eating meat until the restoration of the
sacrifices [13]. The Tustaries
[14], a family of wealthy influential Qaraites with independent philosophic and
halachic views, also forbade eating meat. Qaraite views were not uniform on all matters; Yacob
Qirqisani, a
leading Qaraite scholar of the first half of the tenth century, limited this meat restriction to Jerusalem but
allowed consumption of meat and wine outside Jerusalem. Slowly over the course of the tenth
century the abstinent trend amongst Qaraites loosened and it became acceptable
to allow meat consumption [15].

From the
inception of Qaraism, its scholars read the passuk, “לא
תבשל גדי בחלב אמו” literally (al-Qirqisani, Kitab al-AnWar,
XII, 25:4 “‘in its mother’s milk’ refers only to the milk of its mother”). They
therefore had no hesitations against eating meat and dairy together and did so once
they had relaxed the mourning restriction. Shlomo ben Yehuda Gaon, (Jerusalem, 1025-1051), records that the
Qaraites ate dairy with meat [16].
These Qaraite
developments coincided with corresponding developments in Rabbanite circles. R.
Chananel
was born in the year 990 and passed away in 1053. We don’t know exactly when he
wrote his commentary to Tractate Chullin requiring a six hour wait, but it
probably was early in the eleventh century. Soon after the Qaraites
began breaching the rabbinic meat and milk halachos in the
mid-tenth century, the Rabbanites responded by building a fence to
guard those same halachos.

Qaraite Geography

In beginning of ninth and tenth century Qaraites were concentrated in Iraq and
Persia, but in the middle of the tenth century they began moving westward to
Jerusalem, North Africa, and Spain. During this time period, Qaraites lived throughout
the Jewish-inhabited world. In every important city besides those in France and
Germany, a Qaraite community could be found alongside each Rabbanite community
[17]. Many of the Qaraites were great philosophers, writers, and wealthy
merchants; some were invested with high political power. In Cairo, Qaraites
were so powerful and influential that many Rabbanites left the fold for Qaraism,
until Rambam came to Cairo in 1166 and stopped this drift by improving the
political power of the Rabbanites [18]. It is thus understandable why Rambam
would seek to modify Jewish practices to widen the separation between Rabbanites
and Qaraites. 
R. Chananel (990 – 1053) and R. Yitchak Alfasi (1013 – 1103), the first rishonim to make the six hour wait an
absolute requirement, lived in Fez, Kairouan, and Spain, side by side with Qaraite
communities. As the Qaraites allowed themselves to eat milk and meat together
over the course of the tenth century, they became nicknamed ‘the eaters of milk
and meat’. They surely influenced some from the Rabbanite community. In order
to protect the Halacha, highlight their symbolic differences, and erect a
social barrier between the two camps, these leaders extended the original kinuach
ve’hadacha obligation to a six hour wait.
Some historians believe that the Qaraites of the early Middle Ages
counted for close to half of the total Jewish population [19]. Furthermore, recent
analysis of Cairo Geniza documents shows that Qaraite and Rabbanite communities
of North Africa and Eretz Yisrael of the tenth through thirteenth centuries
collaborated in legal affairs, political endeavors, and commerce. There were
even frequent mutually respectful Qaraite-Rabbanite marriages [20]. The
two communities were dependent on each other in many ways. An excellent
description of this historical setting is found in Heresy and the Politics
of Community by Marina Rustow (2008). The need to defend the rabbinic
Halacha is understood better against such an historical backdrop. As the
divide between the communities was sometimes blurred, reinforcement was
necessary. It is understandable why we find a Rabbanite response to Qaraite
leniencies from North African Rabbanite authorities and not from the heirs
of the Gaonate in Iraq. This is because the center of Qaraite activity had
already migrated from Iraq to the Mediterranean Basin over the course
of the tenth century.

During the tenth and
eleventh centuries Rabbanites from all over the Mediterranean
would make yearly pilgrimages to Jerusalem for Sukkos. On Haosha’na Rabba the
custom was for all
to gather on Har ha’Zaisim and amongst other things declare blessings and bans.
In 1029 and 1038, the Rabbanites proclaimed a ban against the Qaraites. It is
the wording of these charamim which is very revealing. The ban was worded
“against the eaters of meat and milk”.
Rustow explains the deeper context and meaning behind the ban:

…the Rabbanites and the
Qaraites in the Fatamid realm conducted regular professional and personal
relations. The ban’s aim was not to correct Qaraite religious behavior, but to
achieve symbolic or ritual separation between the two groups. …. the principle
violation with which the Qaraites stood charged- challenging the rabbinic claim
to exclusive authority in interpreting biblical law …. The ban was couched, by
a synecdoche that stood for an entire theological aberration, in terms of a
specific infringement: eating meat with milk. [21]
The
milk and meat mixing of the Qaraites symbolized the divide between the Qaraite
and Rabbanite camps. It is clear why the leading rabbinic sages of this era
would fortify and tighten this particular area of law.
Precedent in Rabbeinu Tam

This argument for the political origins of the six hour wait may seem novel and
shocking, but in fact, the truth of its background was known from the
beginning. Rabbeinu Tam (1100-1171) of France who lived shortly after the
innovation of R. Channenel and Rif writes exactly this:

ספר
הישר
לרבינו
תם סימן
תעב.
כל
הבשר.
אמ’
רב
נחמן
לא
שנו
…פירש
רב
יהודאי
בשאלתות
שנשאלו
לפניו…
אבל
בין
בשר
בהמה
לגבינה
בעי
קינוח
והדחה.
והא
דאמר
מר
עוקבא
להא
מילתא
(חלא)
בר
חמרא
אנא
כו’
היינו
גבי
שיהוי
בלא
קינוח.
דהא
בעי
ר’
יוחנן
כמה
ישהא
כו’
היינו
היכא
דלא
קינח
אבל
אי
קינח
לא
בעי
שיהוי.
(ובין)
גבינה
לבשר
לא
בעי
קינוח
כלל….ובין
בשר
לגבינה
בעי
קינוח
או
שיהוי…
וכן
מוכיח
בהלכות
גדולות
של
ברכות….
וכן
עיקר.
ואע“ג
דר‘
חנינא
פליג
אהאי
פיסקא
לאו
דסמכא.
דהא
דאורי
שאינן
בני
דאורייתא.
ובקעה
מצא
וגדר
בה
גדר.
וכמו
שפסקתי
נר’
מתוך
ההלכה.
ורב
יהודאי
גאון
פירשה.
והיא
דסמכא….ספר
הישר
לרבינו
תם
חלק
החידושים
י”ל ע”י שמעון
ש.
שלזינגר
תשמ”ה 282-283  

(There appears to be printing error in this text: ר’ חנינא should be חננאל ר’.)
R. Avraham HaYarchi (c. 1155-1215) of Provence in his Manhig Olam paraphrases
Rabbeinu Tam’s words (without the printing error) [22]:

ספר המנהיג
הלכות סעודה אות ט’- ובהלכות ה”ר שמעון קיירא … ודאמר רב חסדא אכל בשר אסור
לאכול גבינה היינו בלא קינוח הפה אבל מי שיקנח פומיה וידיה שרי ליה למיכל…, ואפילו
באותו סעודה קאמר וכן כתב ר”י מנוחתו כבוד בספר הישר… פירש רב יהודאי גאון
בשאלתות שנשאלו לפניו… אבל בין בשר לגבינה בעי קינוח הפה והדחה ,,והא
דאמר
מר
עוקבא
אנא
להא
מילת
חלא
בר
חמרא
אנא
וכו’
היינו
גבי
שיהוי
ובלא
קינוח
הפה
דהא
דבעו
מיניה
דר’
יוחנן
כמה
ישהא
וכו’
היינו
בלא
קינוח
הפה
אבל
בקינוח
לא
בעי
שיהוי,
ובשר
שאכל
אחר
גבינה
לא
בעי
קינוח
ושיהוי
כלל…
וכן
מוכח
בהלכות
גדולות
של
ברכות….
ואע“פ
שרבינו
חננאל
פליג
אהאי
פיסקא
וכן
הרב
אלפאסי
לאו
דסמכא
נינהו
ולמקום
שאינן
בני
תורה
חששו
ובקעא
מצאו
וגדרו
בה
גדר
וכן
עיקר
… כפר”ת.
What is meant by בקעא
מצאו
וגדרו
בה
גדר? It refers either to the Qaraites or to
the weakening of Rabbanite community values due to Qaraite influence.

Minhag Ashkenaz

What was the accepted Halacha in the Franco-German Jewish communities of the
early Middle Ages? Their custom was to allow eating dairy after meat as long as
a disuniting action was performed in between. Some Ashkenazi
rishonim required only kinuach ve’hadach; others required birkas
hamazon. Rashi [23] (as cited by Siddur Rashi and Manhig) and Rashbam [24]
required birkas hamazon– the dairy foods must be consumed in a separate meal.
Rabbeinu Tam allowed their consumption in the same meal with an intermediary kinuach
vehadacha. Consistency exists between the two Franco-German views- a time waiting
intermission as an absolute requirement was foreign to them [25].
R. Zerachiah
HaLevi Baal Ha-Maor of Provence (c. 1125- c. 1186)
concurred independently [26] with the view of R. Tam and reports that this was
the general custom in France:

 המאור הגדול לרבינו זרחיה הלוי
פרק כל הבשר – נקיטינן מהאי עובדא … היכא דאכל בשר מקמי גבינה אי ההוא בשר דאכל
בשר חיה ובהמה הוא צריך נט”י והוא דאכל בלילה וצריך נמי קינוח הפה … ועוף
וגבינה נאכלין באפיקורין
ולא צריכי ולא מידי … אע”פ שהקדים עוף לגבינה ..
והיכא דשהה ליה ו’ שעות שיעור שהייה שבין סעודה לסעודה אע”פ
שאכל בשר בהמה וחיה מותר לאכול גבינה… בלא ובלא קנוח הפה ולא אמר רב חסדא אכל בשר אסור לאכול גבינה אלא באפיקורן
כלומר בלא נט”י”נט”י
ובלא קנוח הפה אבל בנט”י ובקנוח הפה הכל מותר… ועל
זה הדרך מתיישבת כל השמועות כולן וכן פסק בעל ההלכות הראשונות ז”ל ומזה יתבאר
לך מה שפסק הרי”ף בהלכותיו על לא נכון…וטעו בפירושיהם להעמיד מנהגיהם ומה
שכתבנו היא המחוור וכן נהגו כל חכמי צרפת

The custom of the sages of France and Germany reflects the original
Halacha and simplest reading of the Talmud. There were no Qaraite communities
in France and Germany during that time period and hence the Franco-German sages
saw no need to respond with a symbolic and social barrier. The existence of the
original gaonic custom in European communities is in line with Haym Soloveitchik’s recent “Third Yeshiva of Bavel” hypothesis
[27]. Soloveitchik argues that the Ashkenazi scholarly community was
transplanted from Iraq sometime between the years 930 and 960. This emigration occurred
before R. Chananel’s new legislation [28]. They therefore knew only the ancient
Halacha and stuck with it because they had no reason to change [29].
Rabbi David Bar-Hayim of
Machon Shilo delivered a series of
comprehensive shiurim
(2010) explaining all the fine detail of this sugya in Chullin-
how it was originally understood and how it was later re-explained.
Here are two additional
considerations regarding the words of מר
עוקבא:
 אמר
מר עוקבא אנא להא מלתא חלא בר חמרא לגבי אבא דאילו אבא כי הוה אכיל בשרא האידנא לא
הוה אכל גבינה עד למחר עד השתא ואילו אנא בהא סעודתא הוא דלא אכילנא לסעודתא
אחריתא אכילנא
1) Mar Ukva is well-known in the Talmud for
his extreme piety and righteousness. See Kesubos 67b and Rashi Sanhedrin 31b ד”ה לדזיו. Why shouldn’t this statement be
understood as another example of his extreme personal religiosity [30]? 
2) How could R. Chananel  say-לא
מצינו
מי
שהתיר
לאכול
גבינה
אחר
בשר
בפחות
מעת
לעת
אלא
מר
עוקבא? This statement is shocking. If Jews commonly
waited 24 hours before dairy after eating meat wouldn’t there be some hint of
it somewhere in the vast Tannaic, Amoraic or Midrashic literature? The truth is
to the contrary- מר
עוקבאand his father are the only sages we ever hear
of who waited so long. In fact, his words are expressed in a way which
indicates that he speaks of a personal private custom:  .”אנא
להא מלתא…
ואילו אנא…” R. Chananel
himself was surely aware of the shortcomings of his argument.. He may have only
said these words in order to allow for the creation of a new Rabbanite custom
which would aid in segregating the Qaraites from the Rabbanites.  For the sake of launching the new order of
dietary and hence societal and communal limitations, R. Chananel devised a
clever way of manipulating the brief quasi-aggadic words of Mar Ukva.

Conclusion

The Qaraites from the start understood the biblical verses of lo sevashal
literally, in contrast to the Talmudic/rabbinic interpretation. Qaraite law
allowed for cooking and eating meat with milk. However, this Qaraite departure
from the Oral Law did not cause strife between the two factions during the
first two centuries of the movement’s existence because Qaraites adopted an
ascetic mournful lifestyle, abstaining from any meat at all. Practically,
therefore, during these early years, Qaraites were not cooking and/or eating
any meat and milk together. In the middle of the tenth century, Qaraite
lawmakers gradually adopted a more lenient worldly approach, allowing meat
consumption. With authorization to eat meat, Qaraites did so with no
compunctions about preparing the meat with dairy. This Qaraite breach of the
Oral Law earned them the nickname “the eaters of meat with milk”. This transgression
of the Qaraites became symbolic of the entire conflict between the Rabbanite
and Qaraite camps.  Throughout this
period, the two camps were very connected socially, politically, and economically.
There were Rabbanite-Qaraite marriages, joint business ventures, and joint
communities. The lines between the two camps were not as distinct as we may
imagine. At some point in the early eleventh century, the Rabbanite rishonim devised
a way to create greater division and social split between the two camps.
Choosing the very topic which represented the heart of the schism, they
reinterpreted Talmudic passages in a manner which requires waiting six hours
between eating red meat and dairy products, further separating the Rabbanites
from the Qaraites both halachically and socially. However, Rabbanites and Qaraites
could still enjoy a poultry-dairy meal together during community gatherings or
business meetings. It was more difficult to redefine an explicit statement in
the Talmud allowing poultry and dairy together without any separation in
between (אגרא’s statement). Maimonides was the first to
attempt to further widen the gap by including poultry in the six-hour wait
category. He was quickly attacked by other Talmudists such as Nachmanides and
R. Aaron HaLevi for contradicting the Talmud’s legal allowance. However, in
time even Maimonides’ expansion found justification by means of rereading and
re-explaining the simple meaning of the passage תנא
אגרא
חמוה
דרבי
אבא
עוף
וגבינה
נאכלין
באפיקורן
הוא
תני
לה
והוא
אמר
לה
בלא
נטילת
ידים
ובלא
קינוח
הפה [31]. 

I am very grateful to Rabbi Bar-Hayim of Machon
Shilo. Only after hearing his shiur
was I able to fit in the missing puzzle pieces [32]. This paper
repeats his message but also adds by filling in the historical setting which
caused the new strict waiting practice.  Readers will probably enjoy Rabbi
Bar-Hayim’s restorative conclusions
on this sugya.
[1] See Naftali Vieder,  התגבשות נוסח התפילה במזרח
ובמעריבVolume I (1998), pgs. 323-351

[2]
Friday after davening was the best time for this recital as people returning
from shul would see the Qaraites in their dark homes- the rabbinic
interpretation of the passuk “לא תבערו אש”
needed to be reinforced by discussion in shul. Even the bracha said before
lighting the Shabbos candles was likely initiated to strengthen this practice
in response to the Qaraite custom. See Vieder ibid. pg. 343-346
[3] Vieder ibid. pg. 350
[4] Haym Soloveitchik, Collected Essays, Volume II
(2014), pgs. 378-395

[5]
Many of us are careful to drink some wine during every Shabbos seuda
shlishis. The source for this custom originally (before kabbalists created
other reasons) is from Rambam (Shabbos 30:9):
 חייב
אדם לאכול שלוש סעודות בשבת–אחת ערבית,
 ואחת
שחרית, ואחת במנחה…
 וצריך לקבוע כל
סעודה משלושתן על היין

I
don’t think there is any source for this in the Talmud. Like Prof. Haym Soloveitchik
has argued about intimacy, Rambam may have created this ‘halacha’ to oppose the
Qaraite custom of abstaining from wine on Shabbos.
[6]
A similar phenomenon is found in ספר העתים
pg. 25:
ובשבת תקנו חכמים לטמנו מבערב כדי שישתמר
המאכל בחמימתו ויהי’ חם בשבת ואיכא בהא מילתא עונג שבת. ורוב מן החיצונים תלמידי
ביתוס יהי’ אהליהם לנתוץ וירקבו עצמותם אשר הטעו… שהחמין אסור בשבת ותיפח
עצמותיהם… והלכך כל שאינו אוכל חמין בשבת בר נידוי הוא ודרך מינות יש בו וצריך
להפרישו מקהל ישראל…
When
studying the third and fourth perakim of Shabbos one sees a long list of
restrictions and limitations. R. Yehuda Barcelona depicts these halachos in a
positive light: Chazal required shehiya and hatmanna for the purpose of oneg
Shabbos.  The beloved Shabbos lunch cholent
may be an anti-Qaraite creation.
[7] Here is the relevant section from Rambam’s Introduction:
…ואין צריך לומר, התלמוד עצמו: 
הבבלי, והירושלמי, וספרא, וספרי, והתוספתות–שהן צריכין דעת רחבה ונפש חכמה וזמן
ארוך…ומפני זה נערתי חוצני, אני משה בירבי מיימון הספרדי, ונשענתי על הצור ברוך
הוא, ובינותי בכל אלו הספרים; וראיתי לחבר דברים המתבררים מכל אלו החיבורין,
בעניין האסור והמותר והטמא והטהור עם שאר דיני תורה:  כולן בלשון ברורה ודרך
קצרה, עד שתהא תורה שבעל פה כולה סדורה בפי הכול–בלא קושיה ולא פירוק, ולא זה
אומר בכה וזה אומר בכה, אלא.. על פי המשפט אשר יתבאר מכל אלו החיבורין והפירושין
הנמצאים מימות רבנו הקדוש ועד עכשיו
[8] Also other early baalei Tosfos in Or Zarua 1:480.
[9] See Ritva and Rashba on Chullin 104-105. A similar trend is seen amongst
Italian rishonim. R. Yeshaya Trani II writes:

אלא שמורי זקני הרב (=ר’ ישעיה דטראני
הזקן) מתיר גבינה אחר בשר עוף. ורבינו משה (=רמב”ם) אוסר. וכך נראה בעיני
שאסור לאכול גבינה אפילו אחר בשר עוף
[10] I am taking the liberty to assume Rashba refers to R. Hai
Gaon. See for example Rashba on Brachos פרק תפלת השחר
where he cites “הגאון ז”ל” several times and is
certainly referring to R. Hai.
[11]
(2003) Bialik Institute Jerusalem
[12] Ibid. pg. 28
[13] Ibid. pg. 65
[14] Ibid. pg. 55
[15] Ibid. pg. 39

[16]
Ibid. pg. 66
[17] Marina Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of
Community (2008), pg. 3
[18] Nathan Shur, Toldoth haKaraim
(2003)
pg. 60-61

[19]
Salo Wittmayer Baron
[20] See Elinoar Bareket , “Karaite Communities in the Middle East”, Karaite
Judaism: A Guide to its History and Literary Sources (2003) pg. 240: “The
Gaon Shelomoh ben Yehuda (gaon between the years 1025-1051) tells in one of
this letters that before his appointment as gaon he served as prayer leader of
the Karaites in Ramle, and would pray one day with the Rabbanites and the next
with the Karaites…. he pointed out that the two communities “complete each
other  as adultery to a bed…”, that is
sinners are to be found in both communities and there is no difference in this
matter.”

[21] pgs. 206-207
[22]
Also Or Zarua 1:480  :
…ופר”ח שלא פסק כך בקעא מצא וגדר בה
גדר.
[23] סידור רש”י סימן תקפז.
See Aviad Stollman, “מהדורה מדעית וביאור מקיף לסוגיות
ההרחקה בין בשר לחלב” Ramat Gan (2001) note 27.
[24] Compare Tosfos ד”ה לא שנו ,חולין דף קה:
with  .ד”ה לסעודתא אחריתא
[25] The idea of a waiting period only became popular in France and Germany
many generations later- probably because of influence of the seferim from the
Sefardic rishonim.

[26]
R. Aaron HaLevi also agrees with R. Tam in peirush to Chullin as well as סימן מח ויטרי מחזור.
[27] Haym Soloveitchik, Collected Essays, Volume II
(2014), pgs. 150-215

[28] As R. Hai (939-1038) still preserved the original kinuach
ve’hadacha tradition it is reasonable to assume that R. Chananel
(990-1053) was the very first rishon to require six hours. In fact, R. Tam
places the blame on R. Chananel and was not aware of any earlier source.
[29]
Aviad Stollman in his  “מהדורה מדעית וביאור מקיף לסוגיות ההרחקה בין בשר לחלב”  and
התרחבות בהלכה כהיתוך אופקים פרשני: המתנה
בין בשר לחלב כמקרה מבחן”” AJS Review 28/2 (2005), has made a thorough analysis of
this sugya. Some of the more obscure sources on this topic I found in his
articles. He argues that the minhag Ashkenaz here originates from minhag Eretz
Yisroel and that the custom of the Sefardim to wait six hours originates from a
minhag Bavel. To establish that such a minhag Bavel existed he found it
necessary to downplay the words of BahaG (which indicate lack of a
waiting custom in Bavel) by pointing to ambiguities in BahaG’s wording. I believe R. Hai’s
testimony וה”מ בחסידי אבל אנן מקנחינ’“
 ומחוורינן ידן ופומן ואכלי’” is
sufficient evidence that even the rabbinic elite in Bavel did not wait between
meat and dairy.

It
seems that Rabbi Stollman’s approach is based on the century old academic view
that minhag Ashkenaz had its origins in minhag Eretz Yisroel. The remainder of
Stollman’s arguments are built upon that model. More recently though, Haym Soloveitchik
in his Collected Essays, has made a very strong case for the
Babylonian origins of minhag  and
chachmei Ashkenaz (besides for the obvious Palestinian liturgical components of
minhag Ashkenaz). Stollman’s assumption that the non-waiting practice of
Ashkenaz originated from Eretz Yisroel should be reevaluated. Rather, the
minhag Ashkenaz here should be seen as pre-Qaraism Halacha.
It is evident from R. Hai that a small
group of pious men in Bavel did indeed have a waiting practice. Though this
cannot be considered “the minhag Bavel”, it may have been a kernel of precedent
which R. Chananel expanded for political reasons.
[30]
See Aviad Stollman, “מהדורה מדעית וביאור מקיף לסוגיות
ההרחקה בין בשר לחלב” (2001) note 40.
[31] Many later rishonim explained that though the order in Agra’s statement
is- poultry then cheese- it means –cheese then poultry!
[32] Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin’s post on Qaraism here
also inspired this article. His insightful essays on all areas of Jewish
thought are always filled with depth and wisdom.