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Contributor: Bezalel Naor

Book Review: Yosie Levine, Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate

Book Review: Yosie Levine, Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate

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Yosie Levine has tackled the enigmatic figure of Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi (1658-1718), a man whose title alone beggars the imagination. At first blush, the terms “Hakham” and “Ashkenazi” present an oxymoron. The term “Hakham” is generally reserved for Sephardic sages. (An outlier would be Hakham Isaac Bernays of Hamburg [1792-1849], but that is a discussion for another paper.) Hakham Tsevi went so far as to add to his signature the letters samekh teth, in typical Sephardic fashion. (Levine grapples with…

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Review: Contemporary Uses and Forms of Hasidut, edited by Shlomo Zuckier

Review: Contemporary Uses and Forms of Hasidut, edited by Shlomo Zuckier

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When the ‘Ilui of Denenburg was in Lublin, he visited the Rabbi of the city, the Gaon Rabbi Shneur Zalman [Fradkin]. Upon parting, he asked him if there is to be found in Lublin another gaon. Rabbi Shneur Zalman replied: “There resides here Rabbi Zadok HaKohen, a great gaon.” The ‘Ilui of Denenburg went to the “Kohen,” who received him with great honor. (Shmuel Ungar, Sefer Toledot Hakohen mi-Lublin, ed. Zevi Moskowitch [Jerusalem, 1966], chap. 9, p. 36) When the…

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“Seeing the Infinite in Torah” A Memorial to the Gaon Rabbi Shelomo Fisher (Author of Beit Yishai)

“Seeing the Infinite in Torah” A Memorial to the Gaon Rabbi Shelomo Fisher (Author of Beit Yishai)

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Rabbi Shelomo Yehonathan Yehudah Fisher was born in Jerusalem in 1932 to Rabbi Aharon and Devorah Fisher. He was named after his paternal grandfather, Shelomo Fisher (1852-1932), Rabbi of Karlsburg, Siebenbürgen. Rabbi Shelomo Fisher the Elder, an Oberlander, was a disciple of Rabbi Abraham Samuel Benjamin Schreiber of Pressburg (Ketav Sofer) and of Rabbi Isaac Dov (Seligmann Baer) Bamberger (Würzberger Rav). When Rabbi Fisher assumed the rabbinate of Karlsburg in 1891, it was a Status Quo community. Eventually, he prevailed…

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The Anonymous Author of Tikkunei Zohar and Ra‘ya Mehemna: An Antinomian or a Radical Maimonidean?

The Anonymous Author of Tikkunei Zohar and Ra‘ya Mehemna: An Antinomian or a Radical Maimonidean?

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Today, it is an accepted fact in scholarly circles that Tikkunei Zohar and Ra‘ya Mehemna form a single unit that postdates the main body of Zohar. More than one reader has been scandalized by statements in Tikkunei Zohar and Ra‘ya Mehemna likening the Mishnah to a shifhah or maidservant. Predictably, in response, there grew an apologetic literature that attempts to justify how such shocking statements are compatible with normative Halakhah. One cannot rule out altogether the assertion by various secular…

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The Religious-Zionist Manifesto of Rabbi Yehudah Leib Don Yahya

The Religious-Zionist Manifesto of Rabbi Yehudah Leib Don Yahya

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In 1901 there appeared in Vilna a 32-page booklet entitled, Ha-Tsiyoniyut mi-nekudat hashkafat ha-dat (Zionism from the Viewpoint of Religion). The author was Yehudah Don Yahya. The final eight pages of the work contain a supplement (Milu’im) by one Ben-Zion Vilner, criticizing the anti-Zionism of the Rebbe of Lubavitch. (One ventures that “Ben-Zion Vilner” is a pseudonym.) What is remarkable about this manifesto that argues that Zionism is totally compatible with traditional Judaism, is that the author, Rabbi Yehudah Leib…

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When Rav Kook Was the Kana’i (Zealot) and His Opponent the Melits Yosher (Advocate)

When Rav Kook Was the Kana’i (Zealot) and His Opponent the Melits Yosher (Advocate)

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In 1891, there appeared in Warsaw an anonymous work entitled Hevesh Pe’er, whose sole objective was to clarify for the masses the proper place on the head to don the tefillah shel rosh or head-phylactery. According to halakhah, the tefillah must be placed no lower than the hairline and no higher than the soft spot on a baby’s head (i.e. the anterior fontanelle). In ancient times, there were sectarian Jews who deliberately placed the tefillah on the forehead, as attested…

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The Universalism of Rav Kook

The Universalism of Rav Kook

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© 2018 Bezalel Naor Stereotypes are difficult to overcome. Until recently, the stereotype of Rav Avraham Yitzhak Hakohen Kook (1865-1935) was of a nationalist (perhaps even ultranationalist) who lent his rabbinic aegis to the Zionist enterprise in the first third of the twentieth century. In his seminal work Orot [Lights] (Jerusalem, 1920), the very first section of the book is entitled “Erets Yisrael.” The punchline of the first chapter reads: The expectation of salvation (tsefiyat ha-yeshu‘ah) is the force that…

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Bridging the Kabbalistic Gap Nefesh HaTzimtzum by Avinoam Fraenkel reviewed by Bezalel Naor

Bridging the Kabbalistic Gap Nefesh HaTzimtzum by Avinoam Fraenkel reviewed by Bezalel Naor

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Recently there has been a spate of English translations of the classic of Mitnagdic philosophy, Nefesh ha-Hayyim by Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin (1749-1821), eminent disciple of the Vilna Gaon. This is perhaps the most glorious—certainly the lengthiest—of the translations, one that attempts to rewrite the debate between Hasidim and Mitnagdim. The present edition, the most extensive to date, is divided in two volumes. Volume One consists of a Hebrew-English edition of the entire book with the exception of the famous…

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Rav Kook’s Missing Student

Rav Kook’s Missing Student

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Recent years have seen a breakthrough regarding the elusive identity of “Monsieur Chouchani,” the mysterious vagabond who in the capacity of mentor, exerted such an incredibly profound effect upon the Nobel-laureate novelist Elie Wiesel as well as the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas in the post-war, post-Holocaust years in France. I am referring to the identification of Chouchani as none other than Hillel Pearlman, an early student of Rav Kook in his short-lived Jaffa Yeshivah. Pivotal to the identification (which we shall…

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Israel ben Shabtai [Hapstein]. ‘Avodat Yisrael – Book review by Bezalel Naor

Israel ben Shabtai [Hapstein]. ‘Avodat Yisrael – Book review by Bezalel Naor

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Rabbi Israel ben Shabtai Hapstein, the Maggid of Kozienice (or more commonly, the “Kozhnitser Maggid”) (d. 1814) was a major figure in the third generation of East-European Hasidism founded by Rabbi Israel Ba’al Shem Tov, and specifically, a towering luminary within Polish Hasidism. Like his contemporary Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liozhno (and later Liadi), Rabbi Israel studied under Rabbi Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezritch (who led the Hasidic movement after the death of the founder, Ba’al Shem Tov). Unlike…

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The Head Movements of Shema’

The Head Movements of Shema’

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Rabbi Bezalel Naor is a multifaceted scholar, recognized as the leading interpreter of R. Kook in the English language. His newest book is The Limit of Intellectual Freedom: The Letters of Rav Kook. It can be purchased from his website, www.orot.com. The most important utterance in Judaism is the Shema’: Shema’ yisrael adonai eloheinu adonai ehad. (Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.) This declaration of the absolute unity of God is the cornerstone of our…

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