The Illusory Portrait of R. Yom Tov Lipmann Heller: Deceptive Art and Jewish Images in Vienna

The Illusory Portrait of R. Yom Tov Lipmann Heller: Deceptive Art and Jewish Images in Vienna

By: Dan Rabinowitz

For if I am deceived, I am.
for he who is not, cannot be deceived;
and if I am deceived,
by this same token I am.

Wolfgang Kemp after St Augustine of Hippo
(Epigraph to Rembrandt Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion)

On October 8, 2024, Vienna’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, opened the exhibit “Rembrandt – Hoogstraten Colour and Illusion.” The museum’s permanent collection features remarkable works by Rembrandt, including a self-portrait and a now-confirmed portrait of his son, Titus van Rijn. This exhibit showcased many more items from its collection and loans from other museums. The term “illusion” in the exhibition’s title primarily refers to Samuel van Hoogstraten, a student of Rembrandt, and his exceptional use of the trompe-l’oeil technique. Trompe-l’oeil, from French, “fools the eye,” is an art that typically uses architectural elements, light, and perspective to trick the viewer into seeing a three-dimensional image, even when rendered on a single plane. Hoogstraten was one of the most skilled practitioners of this technique. It remains among the canonical approaches to art. Most recently, the Metropolitan Museum of Art recently held an exhibition, “Cubism and the Trompe-l’oeil Tradition,” featuring works by Picasso and his contemporaries.

In the lead-up to the Vienna museum’s exhibit, the city’s Morris columns were adorned with posters, and large billboards were scattered throughout the city announcing the exhibit. There were three variations of these advertisements: one featuring a Rembrandt self-portrait and two “illusory” portraits, Rembrandt’s “Girl in the Window” and Hoogstraten’s “Old Man at a Window.” In Rembrandt’s painting, the girl gazes directly at the viewer, gripping the exterior window frame, with her fingers extending beyond it. Combined with Rembrandt’s unparalleled usage of light and color, the image is unsettlingly realistic, even when reproduced in books.

Hoogstraten’s painting, “Old Man at a Window,” depicts an old, wizened, bearded man, crowned with a round fur hat, seemingly poking his head out of the window like a gargoyle protruding from the building. While the exhibit’s advertisements are silent about the man’s identity, many Orthodox Jews might recognize him as R. Yom Tov Lipman Heller, the author of, among other works, the Tosefos Yom Tov commentary on the Mishna. Heller is associated with Vienna, having served as its Chief Rabbi in the early 17th century; however, art historians and Jewish scholars have conclusively shown the impossibility of this being an authentic representation of Heller. Nonetheless, much like the trompe l’oeil technique, the Old Man at a Window continues to deceive, and many still believe it is Heller.

Figure 1 Samuel Von Hoogstraten, Old Man at a Window, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rabbi Heller’s Chronicle of Imprisonment & Redemption

Rabbi Yom Tov Lipman Heller was born in 1578 in Wallerstein, a small village in Southern Germany, home to around twenty Jewish families (Davis 21). As a teenager, he married into a prominent family in Prague. His perspicacity and deep knowledge were quickly recognized, and at 19, he was appointed to serve on the Prague Beis Din, overseeing the largest Jewish community in Christian Europe (Davis 25-33). A year later, he published his first book, a somewhat unusual choice for a traditional rabbinic scholar, a commentary on the philosophical work Behinas Olam. He subsequently authored dozens of books across varied genres, completing his magnum opus, Tosefos Yom Tov in Heshvan 1616 (Davis 225-231). His identity quickly became bound up with this work, and even on the epitaph of his daughters’ headstone from 1639, he is referred to by the book and not his given name (Muneles 321). (The book’s original title is Tosefes Yom Tov, and later Tosefos Yom Tov. While some posit that this change was first documented in 1653, it already appears on the epitaph. (cf. Haberman 125n1)). He also “left ample records of himself… books, letters, archival documents, responsa, poems, prayers, sermons, commentaries, and even a memoir” (Davis 1). Nevertheless, there are no surviving portraits or other images.

Rabbi Heller spent time in Vienna on two occasions. The first, in 1625, he was induced to leave Prague for Vienna’s chief rabbi position. Despite his short tenure of only two years, he scored a significant victory for the Viennese Jewish community. Until then, it was dispersed throughout the city, and Heller secured the right for the community to reside in a single area and strengthen its ties. That cohesion was shattered in 1670 when Emperor Leopold I expelled them (one of the many expulsions Viennese Jews suffered), and the area was renamed after its extirpator, Leopoldstadt. Prague, however, drew him back, and in 1627, he took on the role of chief rabbi there.

Just two years later, some of the city’s Jewish community bristled at his involvement in tax collection, accusing him of determining tax rates unfairly. In June 1629, they denounced him to the government, which resulted in his arrest and summons to Vienna. He recounts the events in his autobiographical work, Megilas Eivah—an allusion to the first letters of the first four words of Megilas Eicha, written between 1644 and 1648. Initially placed under house arrest, he was imprisoned on the 17th of Tammuz and confined in a common jail with prisoners awaiting execution. He was denied visitors and remained isolated, “no one could speak with him, even via the window.” Two days later, following appeals from the Jewish community, he was transferred to a special prison and granted visitation rights. After forty days, the community agreed to pay a substantial fine, and he was released, almost immediately departing for Prague, never to return to Vienna. By 1643, he arrived in Krakow, where he served as chief Rabbi until his death in 1654.

Megilas Eivah circulated in various manuscripts but was published only in 1836 (Davis 228 n31). While its authenticity is beyond doubt, the additional section that first appeared in the Hebrew 1880 edition is considered a forgery. Allegedly written by Heller’s son Samuel, it “has a quality reminiscent of Dumas and The Three Musketeers: [Heller] saves a young woman from a bull, and her husband, the French ambassador, intercedes on behalf of Rabbi Yom-Tov.” In 1905, “Moritz Steinschneider identified the source as based on a short story written by Ludwig Philippson (1811‒89), a rabbi and journalist, and the author of a series of Jewish historical novelettes and stories for young readers” (Davis 146 n36).

Samuel van Hoogstraten, Master of Illusion

Samuel van Hoogstraten was born in Dordrecht, one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands, on August 2, 1627. He was the eldest child of the artist Dirk van Hoogstraten and Maeiken de Coninck. Samuel started his art studies with his father, continuing until his father passed away in 1640. Around 1642, Samuel moved to Amsterdam and began studying under Rembrandt. He rapidly proved himself to be a standout student, leading classes, reviewing his classmates’ work, and so effectively absorbing his teachers’ lessons, that some of his works were mistakenly attributed to Rembrandt (Brusati 16-31). As part of the preparation for the current exhibit, “Young Woman at an Open Half-Door” (1645) has been reassigned to Hoogstraten (Illes; Van Sloten 125).

In 1651, Samuel traveled to Vienna, the epicenter of power and prestige within the Hapsburg Empire, seeking to enhance his reputation and standing among elite society. He succeeded almost immediately. Samuel’s student, Arnold Houbraken, recounted how, on August 6, 1651, Samuel presented three of his paintings to the emperor. The first two were well received, but “the third piece,” in the trompe l’oeil style, was a still life that captivated the Emperor, who appeared to be completely taken by it. He looked at it for a long time and, finding himself still deceived, said, ‘This is the first painter who has deceived me.’ And he went on to say that he would not get the picture back as a punishment for that deception, for the Emperor wished to keep it forever.” (Houbraken 2:157-58). However, Samuel did not leave empty-handed. The Emperor awarded him an imperial medallion and a gold chain, which he took immense pride in; this would become a standard element in his subsequent self-portraits and among the items he viewed as symbolic of successful artists (Hoogstraten 371-72; Brusati 54).

Hoogstraten broadly characterized art as a form of deception. In his magnum opus on the theory of painting and color, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst: anders de zichtbaere werelt (Introduction to the Academy of Painting; or, The Visible World), he describes what he considers the “perfect painting.” It “is like a mirror of nature; it makes things that are not there appear to exist and deceives in a permissible, pleasurable, and praiseworthy way” (Hoogstraten 79). One way to achieve this effect is by combining architectural elements such as open doors or windows and adding “some figures” to the composition, “by which many have been artfully deceived” (Hoogstraten 304). He takes pride in having accomplished this with his paintings completed in Vienna. One is “Old Man at a Window,” painted in 1653. (Brusati 65).

The Religious Conversion and Reversion of the Old Man at a Window

The earliest catalogs describing the painting Old Man at a Window do not mention the man’s religious affiliation. It was not until the 19th century that two scholars suggested a Jewish connection, and even then, there was no mention of Heller. Nonetheless, this association never gained traction, and the painting continued to be described without any reference to Jews. We must wait until the 1950s for Heller’s connection to emerge. However, that link lacked any supporting evidence, leaving us in the dark about what prompted the change from an Old Man to Heller. Even that association was quickly dismissed due to the significant gap between when Heller was imprisoned and when Hoogstraten painted Old Man at a Window.

The 1653 painting is one of the first works by Hoogstraten that Emperor Charles II acquired for his castle in Prague, possibly commissioned specifically for him. The painting is described in detail in an early catalog:

No. 4. By Samuel van Hoogstraten. A lifelike, grey-bearded old man looks out of a window. His fur hat, the furrows on his face from his age, and his grey beard are so well painted that one believes one can see nature itself in each one. Hoogstraten, who did not only paint as a mere colorist, showed his deep insight into the subject and reflected light in the chiaroscuro and the deep and penetrating shadows. Just look at the head . . ., and you will find that in it, the master’s hand, which . . . expresses itself quite magnificently. The lead on the round window pane, the wooden frame, that is the glass frame, is also very well painted, but the window’s stone frame makes you believe entirely that it is the work of a mason, almost as if you can see the mason’s hand on it. The straw stalk lying on the window stone, the feather, and the bottle standing there are no less well-painted and serve to prove the excellence of the whole. This picture is painted on canvas, 3 feet 6 inches high, 2 feet and 9 inches wide. The head is life-size. The artist has engraved his monogram and the year 1653 on the window stone of this painting” (Rigler 163-164).

During the 17th century, two inventories were created for the collection. In both, the painting is described as “a man sticking his head out of the window through the shutter,” without any reference to the man’s religious affiliation or any connection to Rabbi Heller (Köpl clvnn330; Brusati 361n76). Hoogstraten’s Old Man at a Window was relocated to Vienna after the Habsburgs acquired the Belvedere Palace in the 1730s. The Palace is perhaps best known today for Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss” and other notable Viennese Expressionists. In one of the earliest catalogs of the Belvedere by Christian van Mechel from 1783, the subject is referred to simply as a “grey-bearded man with a round fur hat on his head, looking out curiously from a window” (Mechel 84n4). That is how the description remained, unadorned with any religious identity until the 19^th century.

In the 19th century, two descriptions of the Old Man at a Window added his religion: he was a Jew. In 1839, German art historian Georg Rathgeber, in his study of Netherlandish art, asserts that “this picture’s title is “Böhmischen Juden,” “Bohemian Jew.’” Rathgeber disputes the identification not for its lack of historicity but because “the character of the facial features does not seem to correspond very well to” his antisemitic views on Jewish physiognomy (Rathgeber 147). Similarly, in 1861, French art critic Charles Blanc, in his encyclopedic work Histoire des Peintres de Toutes les Écoles, asserts that the Belvedere catalog now refers to the painting as “Un vieux juif (dit le Catalogue)” or “an old Jew (as it appears in the Catalog)” (Blanc 4). This portrait impressed Blanc and is among the few he reproduced in his discussion of Hoogstraten (Blanc 1). However, Blanc is notorious for identifying Jews in Rembrandt’s and his school’s works without any supporting evidence (Knotter and Schwartz 7-9). Contrary to the “catalog’s identification,” Blanc, like Rathgeber, asserts that the face “is not Israelite” (Blanc 2). Neither Blanc nor Rathgeber mentions Rabbi Heller.

Figure 2 Charles Blanc, Histoire des Peintres de Toutes les Écoles

Blanc’s and Rathgeber’s Jewish association did not take hold. For example, G.H. Veth, in his 1889 article discussing artists from Dordrecht, including Hoogstraten, cites Blanc and notes his reproduction of Old Man. However, Veth describes it without mentioning any Jewish connections (Veth 145). Similarly, a 1903 tour guidebook of Vienna confirms that at the Belvedere, the painting’s title remains unchanged as “Old Man at a Window” (Baedeker 73; cf. Gerson, 282).

Despite the absence of objective evidence and the dismissal of Blanc’s and Rathgeber’s 19th-century Semitic connection, one scholar in the 1950s cryptically associated Rabbi Heller with Hoogstraten’s painting. Margarethe Poch-Kalous, the head of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (Akademie der bildenden Künste in Wien), in her 1959 survey of Dutch art in Vienna, refers to the figure as “ein bärtiger alter Mann (Rabbi Heller),” “a bearded old man (Rabbi Heller)” (Poch-Kalous 198). The basis for her identification is opaque. Poch-Kalous’ two citations offer no support; neither mentions Heller nor suggests that the figure is even Jewish, nor does she reference Blanc or Rathgeber (Poch-Kalous 198 citing Engerth 207n928 and Köpl clvnn330).

Oddly, unlike other personalities, artists, and subjects discussed in her article, which consistently include personal names and birth and death dates, Poch-Kalous provides nothing beyond “Rabbi Heller.” This is especially puzzling for an article in the Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorische Sammlungen, whose readership is unlikely to be sufficiently familiar with the history of 17th-century Bohemian rabbis to provide the missing details.

Whatever the basis for Poch-Kalous’s connection between Hoogstraten’s painting and Heller, it was swiftly dismissed. In 1972, Klaus Demus, the art historian and curator at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, demonstrated that it was impossible for Heller to be the model. He explains that Heller was imprisoned in 1629, and by 1644, he was serving as a rabbi in Krakow, where he remained until his death in 1654. Hoogstraten, who was only two years old when Heller was imprisoned in Vienna, painted Old Man at a Window in 1653, long after Heller had left Vienna (Demus 47-48). Today, the Kunsthistorisches Museum’s website alludes to Poch-Kalous’ attribution and rejection: “According to a tradition that is now presumed to be mistaken, the man is Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller.” Hoogstraten’s “deception” and “illusion” did not extend to rendering persons he never saw.

Illustrious Jews and Illusionary Jewish Sources

Jewish sources similarly are not more persuasive in linking Heller to Hoogstraten’s painting. Generally, rabbinic portraits prior to the 19th century lack authenticity (Cohen), and Heller is no exception. Most of the few early verifiable images exist as frontispieces in books rather than as paintings, and none depict Eastern European rabbis. Heller’s image first appears in Jewish sources in the early twentieth century. It depicts an old man, yet he is completely different from Hoogstraten’s version. The first instance of Heller masquerading as the Old Man at a Window is over a decade after Demus debunks that theory!

Figure 3 Bader, Drasig Doyres, 175

The first Jewish source of an alleged portrait of Rabbi Heller appears in a Yiddish collection of stories and hagiographies of rabbis in Gerson Bader’s Drasig Doyres Yiden in Poylen, published in 1927 (Bader 175). Bader’s depiction of Rabbi Heller does not resemble the individual shown in Hoogstraten. Bader claims that his source is an “old drawing,” yet he does not provide any further details, such as where or when it was published.

Bader’s book features other alleged rabbinic images from “old drawings” that are demonstratably false. For example, Bader’s portrait of R. Aaron Shmuel Kaidanover, author of the Birkas ha-Zevach on Kodshim, is of the Karaite and forger Avraham Firkovich (1787-1875) (Bader 185). It is undoubtedly Firkovich, as it appears in his Avnei Zikaron, published in 1872, during his lifetime. Similarly, Bader misattributes Joseph Delmedigo’s (1591-1655) portrait from the frontispiece of his Sefer Elim (Amsterdam, 1629), and the photo of R. Shmuel Salant by Zadok Bassan, assigning them to alternative rabbinic figures (Bader 204, 321). Nonetheless, Bader’s depiction of Heller was often reproduced, to the extent that in a 2000 biography of Heller, it is referred to as “iyur amimi nafuts shel ha-Tosefos Yom Tov,” “the widespread folk image of the Tosefos Yom Tov” (Herskovics 32).

Figure 4 Bader, Drasig Doyres Yiden in Poylen, 175.

Figure 5 Firkovich, Avnei Zikhron, From the Gross Family Collection, The Center for Jewish Art

It was only in 1984 that a Jewish source connected the Hoogstraten painting to Rabbi Heller. The cover of the book The Feast and the Fast: The Dramatic Personal Story of Yom Tov Lipman Heller, a translation of Megilas Eivah, depicts Rabbi Heller in prison and is modeled on the figure in the Hoogstraten painting. To eliminate any doubt about the source of the cover art, the back of the book features reproductions of title pages from Heller’s works and his gravestone, along with a photo “of the drawing in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria, entitled ‘Man at the Window’ (1653) by Samuel Van Hoogstraten (1627-1678)” (Lipschitz and Rosenstein). A similar image was used for the cover illustration of another translation of Megilas Eivah published in 1991 (Heller). The English section of the 2000 biography of Heller reproduces the cover of The Feast and the Fast, describing it as “featuring a picture of the Tosefot Yom Tov” (Herskovics 101). However, it does not attempt to reconcile this image with the clearly different “widespread folk image” presented in the Hebrew section of the biography. Although not mentioned in any of these sources, they were presumably misled by the bars on the window. However, those are not prison bars; rather, as was common in that era, the windows were supported by these architectural elements (Hermans 249).

Figure 6 Cover, Feast and the Fast, 1984

By 1999, however, Jewish sources also recognized the impossibility of associating Heller with the painting. R Ya’akov Yeruchum Wreschner republished Megilas Eivah based on four editions and two manuscripts and includes a comprehensive introduction regarding Heller. In two footnotes within the introduction, Wreschner briefly addresses Heller’s connection, or lack thereof, to Old Man at a Window. Like Demas, Wreschner contends that the nearly twenty-five-year gap between Heller’s departure from Vienna and Hoogstraten’s painting of Old Man renders it impossible for Heller to have been the model. Wreschner asks rhetorically, how could Hoogstraten “paint Rabbenu [Heller] when he never set eyes on him?” (Wreschner Megilas 48n3). Wreschner also contacted the Kunsthistorisches Museum and received a response confirming that “not only is it not the Rabbi, but it is not even a Jew” (Wreschner Megilas 17n4). As a result, Wreschner refused to reproduce that portrait in his book. Similarly, despite being titled Portrait of a Seventeenth-Century Rabbi, the most recent academic biography of Heller by Joseph Davis includes neither the Hoogstraten portrait nor any other image of Heller (Davis).

In 2024, Wreschner published a significantly revised and retitled edition of his book. Despite discrediting Heller’s connection to the painting over twenty years ago, various Jewish books, newspapers, and other ephemera continue to publish Old Man at a Window and link it to Heller (e.g., Alfasi 137; Stern 184-86; Berman). Wreschner was, therefore, compelled to revisit the painting, presenting additional arguments and greater detail regarding his discussions with the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Wreschner, in 1999, first spoke telephonically with the Director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Dr. Karl Schütz, who confirmed that the painting was not connected to Heller. Schütz followed up with a letter detailing the sources for his rejection. Schütz stated that, with one exception, from the earliest catalogs to contemporary analyses of the painting, it was never associated with any specific individual, Jewish or otherwise. This is consistent with Hoogstraten’s intent, showcasing the trompe l’oeil technique rather than portraiture. The only time it appears – in Demus’s “detailed catalog of Dutch painters from 1972”—is solely to repudiate Poch-Kalous’s chronologically impossible and otherwise undocumented connection to Heller. Schütz also discredited the claim that following the Anschluss, the painting was categorized as Jewish art and consigned to the museum’s basement. On the contrary, a coterminous catalog lists the painting among those on display.

Despite Wreschner’s certitude about Schütz’s rejection, for unclear reasons, Wreschner attributes an otherwise unrecorded episode to Schütz. This alleged event appears to offer some support for linking Heller to the painting, but it is completely absent from the letter. According to Wreschner, the letter references an event in 1972 when an unidentified Jew approached the museum and claimed there was “a tradition that it was Tosefos Yom Tov” (Wreschner 2024, 24-26). The museum expressed skepticism about that tradition but did not completely dismiss it. In Wreschner’s retelling, it suggested the possibility that “a Jew conjured up Heller’s image and Hoogstraten copied it.” The actual text of the letter directly contradicts Wreschner’s account. Schütz references 1972 not as the date of an important meeting that supports the “legend” but as the first substantial discussion – by Demus – and his definitive rebuttal without mentioning a meeting with the Jew.

Beyond Schütz’s letter, Wreschner adds internal reasons why the painting cannot depict Heller in jail. The window is large enough for the man to stick his head out and features high-quality glass, an uncommon design for a prison. Furthermore, the expensive fur hat worn by the Man at a Window is an unlikely accessory in a prison housing hardened criminals sentenced to death and an incongruous headpiece for the July heat when Heller was imprisoned. Wreschner could have included another element in the painting that contrasts with a prison – the wall behind the Old Man has patterned wallpaper.

Following his earlier edition, Wreschner learned of an earlier source linking Heller to the painting, which is summarily dismissed. R. Shimon Fuerst, who lived in Vienna before 1940, in his book, Shem mi-Shimon, published in 1967, recalls visiting the museum where he saw firsthand “the painting made during the imprisonment” (Fuerst 426). Wreschner is unmoved by Fuerst’s identification. First, Fuerst was not an expert on Heller. Fuerst writes that Heller left Vienna to assume the Chief Rabbi position in Krakow, which is false. After his release, Heller returned to Prague, only leaving for Krakow fifteen years later. Aside from this obvious mistake, Fuerst’s opinion is irrelevant. Wreschner does not dispute Fuerst’s rabbinic bona fides, yet he is not an art historian. When faced with questions of rabbinic law, we defer to rabbis, but, according to Wreschner, “when it comes to questions of attribution of art, we look to experts in that field” (Wreschner 2024, 26). Regardless of the reliability of Fuerst’s claim, the mystery of Poche-Kalous’ source remains unsolved as her work predates Fuerst’s by four years.

Going Once, Twice, Three Times – Sold!

The identification of Heller with the Old Man at a Window is not the first, nor likely the last portrait erroneously attributed to a well-known Jew. One such example is the “traditional” portrait of the founder of the Hassidic movement, R Yisrael Ba’al Shem Tov. This portrait depicts a Ba’al Shem, a Wonderworker, but not Yisrael; rather, it is of Ya’akov Falk of London (Oron). He was an alchemist and an eccentric, and according to R Ya’akov Emden, a crypto-Sabbatian. However, evidence does not always prevail. Books and numerous sukkah decorations continue to utilize this portrait.

There is even another Hoogstraten portrait that falls into this category. A 1670 Hoogstraten portrait now in the Jewish Museum in New York was previously associated with Baruch (Bento, Benedictus) Spinoza. This is just one of many alleged portraits of Spinoza. Yet, most, if not all, lack independent verification or directly contradict the existing evidence (Ekkart). Indeed, “It is the same with the portraits as with so many other aspects of Spinoza’s life: little can be said with any certainty” (qtd. in Ekkart 25). This portrait was first linked to Spinoza in 1929, partly based on “a slip of paper on the back bearing the scholar’s name” (Ekkart 5). It is unclear who made that determination or even when the paper was inserted into the back of the painting. Consequently, the Jewish Museum now describes the painting as “Portrait of a Man (previously thought to be Baruch Spinoza).”

Similarly, despite art historians and Jewish sources resoundingly rejecting Heller’s connection to the Old Man at a Window, it seems unlikely that the idea of Hoogstraten depicting Heller will be dislodged in the collective Jewish consciousness. The attribution is so deeply ingrained that someone spent a staggering $120,000 before fees on a late 19th-century reproduction of Hoogstraten’s painting.

Figure 7 Lot 318, Kestenbaum Auctions, March 12, 2014

In 2014, the American Judaica auction house Kestenbaum & Company listed an 1887 painting described as “Yom Tov Lipman Heller, Portrait: Imprisoned in Vienna,” with a $12,000-$18,000 estimate. The portrait also served as the front cover image of the catalog. It is described as “the celebrated portrait of the Tosefos Yom Tov” and claims that Hoogstraten “painted Rabbi Heller in 1653 and entitled it ‘Old Man in the Window.’” The catalog warns that “it is not known if van Hoogstraten ever met or saw [Heller]; however, it is likely that he was aware of the Rembrandt (School) painting of 1643 entitled ‘Portrait of an Old Jew’ (today in the National Gallery of Denmark) – where a similar, bearded Jewish man, with head cocked, looks emotively at the viewer.” Scholars acknowledge that elements of Man at a Window and other Hoogstraten paintings evoke “the face studies of costumed figures routinely produced in Rembrandt’s studio,” but this does not transform the man into a Jew, let alone Rabbi Heller. The Jewish identification of the painting in the National Gallery of Denmark is also of questionable relevance. Some aspects of that painting, most notably the chain around the man’s neck, make it highly unlikely that it depicts a Jew (Alexander-Knotter 80-81). The catalog’s only citation for attributing the subject to Heller is the 1984 book, The Fast and the Feast, mentioned earlier. It does not reference Demus’ or Wreschner’s discussions that challenge that attribution.

The significance assigned to the artistic rendition of the original is also debatable. The 1887 reproduction bears the signature of the artist “Paul Krüger.” However, Krüger was not a recognized artist; instead, it was a commercial reproduction company in Vienna that commonly attached its labels to the works. Its full name is “Paul Krüger Atelier für Porträtmalerei in Wien” (Paul Krüger Studio for Portrait Painting in Vienna). The studio functioned in the late 19th century and reproduced numerous paintings from the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Today, for those wanting to display a similar commercial reproduction of the painting on their wall, it is available through many websites that specialize in creating highly accurate copies of famous artworks. One such site offers a hand-painted version, almost the exact size of the original, with a similar frame, for about $1,400.

If the buyer had waited a year, they could have acquired an earlier reproduction by a recognized and significant artist. On May 18, 2015, Ferdinand Waldmüller’s (1793-1865) painting “Old Man at the Window,” modeled after Hoogstraten and executed in 1819, was auctioned with an estimate of €22,400 to €28,000. Unlike Krüger’s shop, which served as a commercial entity, Waldmüller is regarded as one of “the most important Austrian painters of the Biedermeier period.” Nevertheless, the lot remained unsold.

The Krüger copy may not be the best reproduction, but the auction catalog description proved worthwhile for reproduction. Rabbi Moshe Bamberger is the author of a series of books on “Great Jewish” items published by Artscroll. One book focuses on letters, another on important Jewish books, and another titled Great Jewish Treasures, is “A Collection of Precious Judaica, Associated with Torah Leaders.” This work contains a chapter dedicated to “Artwork” that discusses some well-known examples of rabbinic images. He ably covers several of these topics and discusses the traditional portrayal of Yisrael Ba’al Shem Tov, accurately aligning it with London’s Ba’al Shem, Jacob Falk.

Bamberger also includes a section focused on the “famous depiction of Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1579-1654) peering through the window of his prison cell” and reproduces a version of the Hoogstraten painting. Bamberger tries to reconcile the inconsistency between the dates of imprisonment and the time when Hoogstraten painted Old Man. Bamberger’s source is the auction catalog, yet he seems to disagree with one item: which of Rembrandt’s “Jews” Hoogstraten supposedly used as a model for Heller. Rather than the 1643 “Portrait of an Old Jew” attributed to Rembrandt’s school and currently housed in the National Gallery of Denmark; according to Bamberger, the model was the subject of a painting by Rembrandt, also titled “Portrait of an Old Jew,” now held in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. Bamberger does not provide a rationale for selecting the Hermitage painting over the one in the National Gallery. Nevertheless, the Hermitage painting is equally unlikely to depict a Jew and is now referred to generically as “Man in an Armchair.” (Schwartz 371-373). Ironically, Bamberger’s use of the Hermitage painting only reinforces the unlikelihood that Heller served as a model for Hoogstraten. The Hermitage Rembrandt originates from 1654, one year after “Old Man in a Window.” Hoogstraten certainly did not use a nonexistent painting to model his artistic expression.

Whether we will ever fully explicate to our satisfaction the enigmatic history of Hoogstraten’s 1653 painting Old Man at a Window, Hoogstraten’s masterful execution of the Trompe l’oeil technique makes the painting worth seeking out on its own. The exhibition closed in Vienna on January 12, 2025, but relocated to Rembrandt House in Amsterdam, “The Illusionist. Samuel van Hoogstraten,” from February 1 to May 4, 2025. The Amsterdam exhibition is entirely dedicated to Hoogstraten. To accompany the Vienna exhibit, the Kunsthistorisches Museum published a collection of articles titled Rembrandt Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion, edited by Dr. Sabine Pénot, the Curator of Netherlandish and Dutch Paintings at the museum. This book is of excellent quality, beautifully reproducing many of the exhibit’s paintings and etchings. One article is a detailed study of Hoogstraten’s process and technique in Old Man at a Window (Hermens). While it employs various infrared and other technologies to uncover what lies beneath the surface, no rabbi is lurking behind the layers of paint.

* I want to thank Dr. Shnayer Leiman for bringing to my attention Gershom Bader as the earliest source of Heller’s representation within Jewish sources. I also wish to thank Professor Marc Michael Epstein, Professor Marc Shapiro, Dr. Lara Lempertienė, and Menachem Butler for their thorough review of the draft and invaluable feedback, Dr. Sabine Pénot for scouring the Kunsthistorisches Museum’s collection for information regarding Heller’s link to the painting, and Shaul Seidler-Feller for his expertise in translating Yiddish. Additionally, I am grateful to Rabbi Yaakov Yeruchum Wreschner for sharing his correspondence with the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and, as always, Eliezer Brodt, whose enviable encyclopedic knowledge, which he freely shares, ensured I did not overlook crucial materials.

Sources:

Alexander-Knotter, Mirjam, et al. The ‘Jewish’ Rembrandt, The Myth Unraveled. Waanders Publishers/Jewish Historical Museum, [2006].

Bader, Gershom. Drasyig Doyres Yiden in Poylen. Oriom Press, 1927.

Bamberger, Moshe. Great Jewish Treasures. Artscroll, 2015.

Blanc, Charles. Histoire des Peintres de Toutes les Écoles, vol. 2, “Samuel van Hoogstraten”. Paris, 1861.

Brusati, Celeste. Artifice and Illusion: The Art and Writing of Samuel Van Hoogstraten. University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Cohen, Richard I. Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe. California UP, 1998.

Davis, Joseph M. Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller: Portrait of a Seventeenth-Century Rabbi. Littman Library of Civilization, 2004.

Demus, Klaus. Friderike. Katalog der Gemäldegalerie: Holländische Meister des 15., 16., und 17. Jahrhunderts. Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1972.

Ekkart, Rudi. Spinoza in Beeld: Het onbekende gezicht/Spinoza in Portrait: The Unknown Face. Amsterdam Vereniging het Spinozahuis, 1999.

Engerth, Eduard van. Gemälde Beschreibendes Verzeirchness, vol. 2. 1884.

Gerson, Horst. Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts. De erven F. Bohn n. v, 1942.

Haberman, A.M. “Piyutav ve-shirav shel R. Yom Tov Lipman Heller.” Le-Kovod Yom Tov, edited by Judah Leib Maimon. Mosad HaRav Kook, 1956, pp. 125-145.

Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann. A Chronicle of Hardship and Hope. Translated by Avraham Yaakov Finkel, C.I.S. Publishers, 1991.

Hermens, Erma, et al. “Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Illusionistic Paintings for Emperor Ferdinand III – Two Case Studies.” Rembrandt Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion, edited by Sabine Pénot. Hannibal, 2025, pp. 232-51.

Herskovics, Mayer. Two Guardians of the Faith: The History and Distinguished Lineage of Rabbi Yom Tov Lipman Heller and Rabbi Areyeh Leib Heller. Graphit Press, 2000.

Hoogstraten, Samuel Van. Introduction to the Academy of Painting; or, The Visible World. Edited by Celeste Brusati and Translation by Jaap Jacobs. Getty Research Institute, 2021.

Illes, Angelina. “List of Works.” Rembrandt Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion, edited by Sabine Pénot. Hannibal, 2025, 258.

Knotter, Mirjam, and Gary Schwartz, editors. Rembrandt Seen Through Jewish Eyes: The Artist’s Meaning to Jews from His Time to Ours. Amsterdam UP, 2024.

Lipschitz Chaim Uri, and Neil Rosenstein, The Feast and the Fast: The Dramatic Personal Story of Yom Tov Lipman Heller. Moriah, 1984.

Mechel, Christian van. Verzeichniß der Gemälde der Kaiserlich Königlichen Bilder-Gallerie in Wien, Vienna, 1783.

Oron, Michal. Rabbi, Mystic, or Imposter. Translated by Edward Levin. Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2020.

Poch-Kalous, Margarethe. “Das Legat Wolfgang van Wurzbach-Tannenberg an die Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste in Wien,” in Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien vol. 55, 1959.

Rathgerber, Georg. Annalen der Niederländischen Malerei und Kupferstecherkunst: Van Rubens Abreise nach Italien bis auf Rembrandt’s Tod. Gotha, 1839.

Rigler, Hieronumus. “Beschreibung und Beurtheilung verschiedener Gemälde der S.S. Bildergalerie in Belvedere van Hieronymus Rigler aus dessen 1783 herausgegebenen, ausser Wien wenig bekannten und bereits geendigten mächentlichen Anzeigen van Künstlern und Kunstsachen,” in Miscellaneen artistischen Innhalts, 21, 1784, pp. 158-177.

Schwartz, Gary. The Rembrandt Book. Abrams, 2006.

Stern, Yechiel Michel. Gedoli Ha-Doros. Minchas Yisrael, 1996.

Van Sloten, Leonore and David de Witt. “Challenged by Rembrandt,” in Samuel van Hoogstraten, The Illusionist. Edited by Nathalie Maciesza and Epco Runia. WBOOKS, 2025.

Wreschner, J. Megilat Eivah le-Ba’al Ha-TY”T. [], Jerusalem, 1999.

Wreschner, J. Ha-Tosefos Yom Tov u-Megilaso. [], Beni Brak, 2024.

Appendix:

Hoogstraten’s painting was copied and reinterpreted multiple times, with variations in style and even gender. (See Brusati 361, which discusses two copies in royal collections.)

A few more examples:

A more compact version with a whiter and shaped bear is attributed to a Dutch painter of Hoogstraten’s school and possibly one of the versions mentioned by Brusati.

Described as 18^th Century Flemish School, without identification of a specific artist, sold for CHF 800.

Two versions: a man that is a crude likeness of Old Man in a Window and a woman wearing a linen cap sold for $2,000.

An alternative version of a woman was painted by Josef Hauzinger, (1726-1787), currently at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. A later version of this rendering appeared at auction in 2022.

Another example of a woman at the window is a 1936 Picasso painting.

The 1908 Student Strike at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary: A Newly Discovered Document

The 1908 Student Strike at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological
Seminary: A Newly Discovered Document

By Eli Genauer

I would like to thank Dr Zev Eleff for his invaluable assistance in helping me frame this article. I would also like to thank Sharon Horowitz of the Library of Congress for providing research assistance.

The Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), present day Yeshiva University, was officially founded on March 20, 1897. RIETS was the first unequivocally Orthodox Jewish seminary on American soil. Initially, its mission was entirely religious, limited “to promote the study of the Talmud and to assist in educating and preparing students of the Hebrew faith for the Hebrew Orthodox Ministry.”[1] RIETS’ first years were difficult ones. It did not move into a building of its own until 1904.[2] Additionally, RIETS faced difficulty meeting its financial obligations. including a student stipend. As a result, in 1906, RIET’s was beset by a major student strike. Among the student’s demands was that RIETS expand its mission beyond religious education and they demanded that they be instructed in secular subjects, including learning English.[3] While that strike was settled, another student strike and a lockout occurred over similar issues in May 1908. The strike was ended when changes were promised by the board of directors. Yet, that settlement proved fleeting.

By August 1908, the students were striking again. The students’ strike received notice from the national press, when on August 19th,
the New York Times reported:[4]

the Talmuds are lying idle on the shelves of the Rabbi Isaac
Elchanan Theological Seminary at 156 Henry Street, and the drone of the voices
of the students as they walked back and forth reading aloud from the Hebrew
text is heard no more. For the last few weeks the students have not received
the $3.50 a week which they are paid while they are learning to become Rabbis.
Consequently, they have gone out on strike. Boruch Shapiro, Louis Mahler and
Samuel Broida, the leaders of the demonstration, stationed themselves at the
door of the school yesterday and effectively blockaded the entrance of all the
smaller boys. Nathan Lamport of the Lamport Manufacturing Supply Company, at
278 Canal Street, president of the school, and David Abramowitz of 47 Forsyth
Street, the Secretary, do not know what to do.[5]

On August 20th, citing financial reasons, the board locked out the students and
closed the school.[6] As a result of the closure of the school by the board of directors, some of the students and some Rabbinic leaders tried to form a new school called Yeshiva le-’Rabbanim which was designed to address some of the deficiencies of RIETS.[7]

Although the closure of the RIETS has been documented, the August 1908 student strike that led to the closure is not reflected in any published histories discussing the unilateral closing of the school and lockout of the students by the board ofdirectors on August 20th.[8]

One of the difficulties in piecing together exactly what happened during that August 1908 strike, lockout and its immediate aftermath is the dearth of contemporary records. This lacuna is in part attributable to a general lack of documntation of REITS’ early years. And, “there are no records extant of the Seminary from its inception in 1897 to its merger with Yeshivat Etz Chaim in 1915. Only the Certificate of Incorporation, scattered newspaper accounts, one or two contemporary citations, and passing references in the memoir literature of the time remain as silent witnesses to the great vision and determination of a few men who…created the first Orthodox rabbinical seminary in America.”[9] As an example, in reporting on the August 1908 closure of the school by the board of directors and its aftermath, one scholar quotes mainly from newspaper accounts of the day.[10] There was an important memoir of that period written by Hayim Reuben Rabinowitz, who was an 18 year old student at the time, but Rabinowitz published his account 60 years later.[11]

Recently, however, a contemporaneous account of the events of 1908 has come to light. This account was discovered as a result of construction at Congregation Bikur Cholim Machzikay Hadath in Seattle, Washington, when workers came upon a box of papers labeled, “Rabbi B. Shapiro Papers, 1920s-1960’s.” Rabbi Boruch Shapiro (1883-1970) was born in Szmorgon, Lithuania and was recognized as a Talmudic genius (Iluy) at an early age.[12] He was a student of, and received ordination from, Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk, (Or Sameakh), one of the outstanding rabbinic leaders of his time.[13] While in Dvinsk, R. Shapiro also received ordination from Rabbi Joseph Rozin, known as the “Rogatchover Gaon”.[14] R. Shapiro immigrated to America in the early 1900’s and visited Seattle in 1913 on a fundraising trip. His visit became permanent when he ended up marrying a local woman, Hinda Gershonowitz and remained in Seattle until his passing in 1970. Rabbi Shapiro is perhaps best remembered as the Rav of Congregation Machzikay Hadath in Seattle, a position he held for forty years.

Before arriving in Seattle and shortly after arriving in America, Rabbi Shapiro studied at RIETS. Because he already possessed rabbinic ordination, he was considered in a special class of students, receiving a higher weekly stipend than most others who studied there. [15] He was sent by the school to give lectures at a synagogue in Brooklyn during the Sukkot holiday of 1905 as an example of the quality of students that were studying in the yeshiva.[16]

The box of papers discovered contains Rabbi Shapiro’s account of the events surrounding the student strike in August 1908, and the subsequent founding of the Yeshiva Le’Rabbanim. The account was written on October 7th, 1908 and covers the period from August 20 until that time. Because Rabbi Shapiro was one of the three student leaders of the strike, his account is particularly relevant to filling in the picture of the details of the August 1908 RIETS student strike.[17] Rabbi Shapiro’s writings, it should be noted, reflect that he and his fellow students had been involved in a struggle with, in his view, a dysfunctional and stubborn board of directors for over two years.[18]

Rabbi Shapiro records that:

On Thursday night, 24 Av 5668(20 August 1908), the Rabbi Isaac
Elchanan Yeshiva was closed in a very unseemly fashion. Mr. [Jonathan] Shepp,
the treasurer of the Yeshiva called the police several times to evict the
yeshiva students from the building in which they learned.[19]
But despite all his efforts, the police declined to do harm to the students.
They remained there despite his displeasure until midnight and at that time
they left for their residences.”[20]

After the students of the Yeshiva had concluded that there was no
hope to improve both the physical and spiritual conditions of the Yeshiva due
to the obduracy of the leaders whose concern was only for themselves, the
students decided to separate from the above named Yeshiva and move to “Adas Bnei
Yisroel” at 213 East Broadway, which welcomed them with open arms.[21] On
28Av (25 August-1908), the students of the Yeshiva moved their place of Torah
study to the above mentioned address in the company of well-known rabbis, such
as Rabbi [Shalom Elchanan] Jaffee[22],
Rabbi [Chaim Sholom] Shoher[23],Rabbi
[Aaron] Gordon [24],
and others, who had gathered there to guide them. After much discussion, it was
decided that the yeshiva students would study temporarily in Adas Bnei Yisroel,
and that they would acquire a charter. So that the leaders of Yeshiva Rabbeinu
Yitzchak Elchanan would not collect money in their name, they decided that this
yeshiva would be called “Yeshiva L’Rabanim”. Similarly, they decided to send
out boxes to collect members and to try to establish this yeshiva on a proper
foundation.

From 28 Av 5668 until 12 Tishrei 5669, three meetings of well-known
rabbis and prominent lay leaders were held. At the second meeting, an interim
leadership team for Yeshiva L’Rabanim was chosen: Rabbi Jaffe, chairman; Rabbi
Shoher vice chairman and treasurer; Rabbi [Joseph Judah Leib] Sossnitz,
administrator;[25]
Rabbi Dr. Rabinowitz from Brooklyn, administrator; Rabbi [Judah Leib] Lazeroff,
administrator,[26]
and others. The job of developing a “program” both in religious and secular
studies for this yeshiva was also assigned to the above leaders.

Even before the closure of the Yeshiva Rabbi Isaac Elchanan, the
physical situation of the students was very bad because for seven weeks prior
to the closure, all they received was a half a kilogram of bread per week.
However, the situation since they left the Yeshiva until now was much worse,
and the poverty and embarrassment they suffered is difficult to describe. Many
of them could have found other means of support, but because of their love of
Torah, they accepted their lot and did not abandon Torah study with which they
had been engaged their entire lives.

Many Rabbis, in writing, speech and action, promised to help. From
all the promises very little materialized, aside from Rabbi Lazaroff, who had
spoken up a few times in his synagogue on behalf of the Yeshiva. He assembled a
worthy number of members from whom he collected funds. The prominent Mr.
[Abraham J.] Goldstein and his brother-in-law, Mr. [P.] Feinberg from Jersey
City came to the assistance of the Yeshiva in the beginning. [27]With
the help of other prominent members of their congregation who worked alongside
their honored Rabbi [Shlomo David] Posner, that synagogue supported the yeshiva
a bit.[28]

To describe in detail all the problems faced by this new endeavor
and the stumbling blocks that were placed in front of this new Yeshiva from the
beginning until now would amount to an entire book. The task was difficult and
the conflict with the administration of the Yeshiva Rabbi Isaac Elchanan
weighed heavily on us. Many did not want to support the students of the Yeshiva
since they saw that the “Morgen Journal” had “sold out” to those above
mentioned administrators to do their bidding. They also felt that the “Tageblatt”
was leaning in the direction of those administrators, and not on the side of
the Yeshiva L’Rabanim. Many rabbis knew and admitted that the yeshiva students
were right, but kept silent due to fear. So much so, even those who had joined
the new Yeshiva were not really able to help it.

The primary laborers on behalf of the new Yeshiva were the students
themselves and especially a student council that was chosen from among them to
lead the struggle. The five members of this council were Mr. A.[vraham]
Shapira, Mr.[Ben Zion] Perl, Mr. [Chaim Yechezkel] Mosesohn, Mr. [H.S.] Linfeld
and Mr. B.[aruch] Shapira who was the leader.[29]
The politics were so intense that oftentimes those in the Yeshiva did not
confide in their fellow students for fear that they were supporting the other
side. The council worked diligently with the three main activists, Rabbi B.
Shapira, Rabbi A. Shapira, and Rabbi Perl who were most instrumental. They abandoned all their other pursuits such
as attending “Preparatory School,” working day and night to battle with the
administration of Yeshiva Rabbeinu Isaac Elchanan. Nothing was too difficult for them or beneath
their dignity. Their physical situation was worse than the conditions of other
students, as they had no other means of sustenance and they also received a
more meager stipend compared to what they had been entitled to. They suffered
immensely during this time. They knew that they were making great sacrifices
and losing precious time. Nevertheless, they did not consider their own
personal situations so that they could help establish this new Yeshiva on a
proper foundation. There were times that matters grew so bad that many of the
yeshiva students echoed the complaints of the Jews in the desert: they wanted
to return to their previous Yeshiva, but thanks to many of the yeshiva students
and the student council, especially Rabbi B. Shapira, these complaints were set
aside and it allowed the Yeshiva to attain the status it claims today. The
result of what has been done so far is small compared to what needs to be
completed. Nevertheless, laying the foundation, which was the most difficult to
accomplish, has been done. More effort is required to establish this Yeshiva on
a firm foundation and to transform it into an excellent school that will train
great rabbis in Torah, wisdom, fear of Heaven; who will work within the spirit
of ancient Israel and the spirit of this new generation; and who will unite
both old and young, thereby bring blessing to our people, our Torah and our
holy faith.”

In the end, Yeshiva Le-Rabbanim did not exist for very long because it never had substantial financial backing and support from the general community.[30] The attempt to form an alternative yeshiva apparently did not deter some of the student dissidents to return to RIETS. In 1917, in a RIETS publication, Rabbi Baruch Shapiro and his brother Rabbi Abraham Shapiro along with Rabbi Ben Zion Perl are listed among those ordained by RIETS now serving as rabbis in America.[31] Even more curious, the strike leader Rabbi Baruch Shapiro went on a fundraising tour in 1917 to raise money for the Rabbinical College of America, one of whose components was RIETS.[32]

The strike’s impact, however, on one of the most important future leaders of RIETS and Yeshiva University was profound. Chaim Rabinowitz wrote “The strikes stimulated the mind of a young Rabbi who had recently arrived in America. This young Rav was Rabbi Dov Revel.” Rabinowitz cites a letter that Dr. Revel wrote to Rabbi Zvi Masliansky in the spring of 1908, where he grieves about the turmoil in RIETS that Rabbi Masliansky had told him about and hopes for better days for the Yeshiva. Rabinowitz concludes “the dream of Rabbi Revel came to fruition in 1915 when he became the Rosh Hayeshiva…and instituted great changes in the order of studies.”[33]

Here is a sample page of the document:

[1]
“Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary Association Certificate of
Incorporation,” March 20, 1897, (quoted in Gilbert Klaperman, “Yeshiva
University: Seventy-Five Years in
Retrospect,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 54,1 (September,
1964), 6). William Helmreich, however, states that teaching “the language of
the land” and Talmud was articulated in the RIETS charter, and, as such, “the
first such mention of combining secular and religious studies in one
institution.” William B. Helmreich, “Old
Wine in New Bottles: Advanced Yeshivot
in the United States,” American Jewish History, 69, 2 (December 1979),
235. But, the 1897 certificate does not
mention “language of the land,” and Helmreich’s assertion is without
citation.

[2]
Gilbert Klaperman, The Story of Yeshiva University: The First Jewish
University in America (New York: Macmillan, 1969) 71-72.

[3]Alexander
Dushkin, Jewish Education in New York City (New York: Bureau of Jewish
Education, 1918), 77-78.

[4]
“Boys Go On Strike,” New York Times, August 19, 1908.

[5] The Times
report may have been the result of the RIETS’ students, who, to gain
sympathy to their cause alerted it to the unrest. See Klaperman, Story,
95

[6] The
most complete report on the student unrest from 1906-1908 can be found in Klaperman,
Story, 94-112.

According
to Rabbi Klaperman, the closure and lockout on August 20th was
reported by the Jewish Morning Journal on Friday August 21st,
1908 and the Judisches Tageblatt on Sunday August 23, 1908. Idem.
217n8.

[7] Gurock,
Men and Women, 40; Rabinowitz, “60 Shana,” 553; and Klaperman, Story,
118.

[8] There
are three discussions regarding the closure of RIETS on Thursday, August 20th,
1908

See Klaperman, Story, 111-12. There is no mention of a
strike immediately preceding the board’s action. Rabbi Klaperman does not cite
the Times article in any of his footnotes. Additionally, in footnote 21,
p.218, he writes that there was no clear picture of presidential succession of
RIETS between February 1906 and fall of 1908, despite an indication in the NY
Times article that Nathan Lamport was the president of the school in August of
1908.

The
second is Hayim R Rabinowitz’s recollections that appeared in Hadoar in
1968. Hayim R. Rabinowitz, “60 Shana le-Shvitot be-Yeshivat Rabbeinu Yitzchok Elchanan,”
Hadoar, June 14, 1968, 552-554. In 1908, Rabinowitz was an
eighteen-year-old student at RIETS, and writes at length regarding the
situation leading up to the closing of the school on August 20th,
with the resultant lockout of the students from the building at 156 Henry
Street, but does not mention that the students had been on strike immediately
preceding this event. Although Rabinowitz was a contemporaneous observer, his
reminiscences were only published sixty years after the events in question.

The third discussion is by Jeffrey Gurock. Jeffrey Gurock, The Men and Women of
Yeshiva: Higher Education, Orthodoxy, and America Judaism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) 39-40. Citing
Rabinowitz, p.553, he writes “Frustrated, feeling that a double cross was in
the making, RIETS students were once again talking strike in the late spring
and early summer of 1908.” Gurock, however, does not mention that a strike and
blockade of the building took place in August as indicated by the headline of
the New York Times and in the subsequent article.

[9] Klaperman,
Story, 48.

[10] Idem, 217-19.

[11]
Rabinowitz, “60 Shana,” 552-554, quoted extensively in Gurock, Men and Women,39-41.

[12] The
Jewish American Family Magazine and Gazette (Amerikaner Familian Magazin un
Gazetten), vol. XXXIX, no. 47, September 19, 1941, 2.

[13]
Rabbi Meir Simcha was the author of “Ohr Sameach”, an important commentary on
Maimonides’ “Mishna Torah”, and of “Meshech Chochmah”, a commentary on the
Torah. Rabbi Meier Simcha wrote of Rabbi Boruch Shapiro “he has the ability to
formulate outstanding novella acceptable to all”. The Jewish American Family,
2.

[14]
Prior to coming to America, Rabbi Shapiro obtained letters of support from two
other leading rabbinic figures in eastern Europe, Rabbi David Hirsch Eisenstein
and Rabbi Shlomo Vilner. The Jewish American,2. Rabbi Vilner wrote that
he never gives ordination to one so young, but in the case of Rabbi Shapiro, he
was willing to make an exception.

[15]
Rabinowitz, “60 Shana,” 553. Rabinowitz
also refers to Rabbi Shapiro as a “Gadol B’Torah”

[16] Klaperman,
Story, 62.

[17] The
New York Times article identifies him as one of the three student strike
leaders. See also, Rabinowitz, p.553 As early as 1906, R. Shapiro held a
leadership role. He was among the four
students chosen to represent the students’ views before RIETS’ board of directors. Rabinowitz, “60 Shana,” 553; The Jewish American,
2, which states that Rabbi Shapiro was chosen as a representative by the
students in dealing with the board.

[18] Regarding
the student’s relationship with the board of directors, Klaperman describes an interaction
between the students and the directors as follows: “The student’s
dissatisfaction and the obduracy of the directors brought about continuous
agitation in the school and highlighted the confusion of aims in the
curriculum” Klaperman, Story, 86.

[19] Klaperman,
Story,99 writes that in 1906, Jonathan Shepp was elected as the new
treasurer, and that Jonathan Shepp was part of the finance committee appointed
on August 31, 1908 to assist in reopening the school after it was closed on
August 20. Klaperman, Story, 99, 113.

[20] Gurock
indicates that the treasurer threatened to call the police, but that in fact
the police were never called. Gurock, Men
and Women, 40 (citing Rabinowitz, “60 Shana,” 553).

[21]
Regarding the address of the building to which the students moved, Rabbi
Shapiro was physically at this new address so it is reasonable to assume that
he recorded it correctly. Additionally, on June 3, 2015, there was an auction
of documents associated with the newly founded Yeshiva La-Rabbanim (Kedem
Auction No.8, Lot 301). One of the documents evidences a stamp which says 213
East Broadway. Rabbi Klaperman lists the address
as 123 East Broadway. Klaperman, Story,
116, 219n38.

[22] Rabbi
Shalom Elchanan Jaffe (1858-1923) was an important early American Orthodox
Rabbi. He received Semicha from both Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin and Rabbi
Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor. He arrived in America in 1890 and served as a Rav in
St Louis and in Brooklyn before becoming the Rabbi in 1901 of the prestigious
Beth Midrash Hagadol synagogue on the Lower East Side of New York. He was one
of the most influential of Rabbis at the time, especially when it came to the
supervision of kosher meat. Jaffe’s motivations for his involvement with this breakaway
school, may have less to do with issues than his personality. According to Klaperman, Jaffe was not one
wedded to the idea of secular education, one of the central demands of the
students. “On the other hand, Rabbi Jaffe was the stormy petrel on the rabbinic
scene, known as an impetuous non conformist who rushed in without fear when his
mind was made up.” Klaperman, Story, 117.

[23] Rabbi
Chaim Sholom Shochar (Rabbi H.S. Shoher) came to Boston in 1882 to be the Rabbi
of Bais Avraham synagogue and subsequently served as the Rabbi of Hadrath
Israel and Mishkan Tefillah among other synagogues in Boston. In 1905, he moved
to New York City to become the Rabbi of the prestigious Shaare Zedek synagogue
located at 38-40 Henry Street. In 1910, he is listed as living at 215 East
Broadway, next door to the location of Yeshiva Le-Rabbanim. He authored a
pro-Zionist book Shalom Yerushalyim in 1909 and passed away in 1918.

[24] Rabbi
Aaron Gordon (1845- 1922) known as the Miadziol (Myadel) Iluy, emigrated to
America in 1890 and was the chief Rabbi of Rochester, New York until 1900 when
he moved to New York City. He was one of the founders of the Agudath Harabanim
and served as head of a Bet Din on the lower east side. He served as the Rabbi
of Congregation Talmud Torah Tiphereth Jerusalem at 147 East Broadway. He was a
prolific writer, authoring many books on Halacha, among them Even Meir
(Pietrokov 1909), Teshuvat Meleat Even (Pietrokov 1912), Minchat Aharon
(Jerusalem, 1920) and Sha’arei Da’at (Jerusalem, 1921).

[25]
Rabbi Joseph Judah Leib Sossnitz (1837-1910) was born in Birzhi, district of
Kovno. He has been described as a Talmudic scholar, mathematician and
scientific author. He settled in New York in 1891 and in 1893, founded a Talmud
Torah on 104th street in Manhattan. In 1899, he was appointed a
lecturer in Jewish ethics at the Educational Alliance at 197 East Broadway.

[26]
Rabbi Judah Leib Lazarov (1875-1939), studied inTelz, Mir, Volozhin and Radin
before immigrating to America in 1898.He was hired as a preacher at Beth
Midrash Hayei Adam at 89 Henry Street in 1903 and succeeded Rabbi S.E. Jaffee
as Rabbi of Beth Midrash Hagadol in 1910. He authored a multi volume work Divrei
Yehudah (New York, 1906-1910).

Except for Rabbi Dr Rabinowitz who was from Brooklyn, all the above
named rabbinic leaders were from the Lower East Side near both Rabbi Isaac
Elchanan Yeshiva on Henry Street and Yeshiva La’Rabanim on east Broadway. They
most likely would have been aware of the struggles of the students with the
board of the Yeshiva and had possibly allowed them to speak in their synagogues
during the May strike. See Klaperman, Story, 104. It is also possible
they were consulted by the students on an ongoing basis even before they tried
to start a new school.

[27] Abraham
J. Goldstein emigrated to America in 1884 and immediately settled in Jersey
City. One book, Distinguished Jews of America, (New York, 1917), describes
him as “a strict Orthodox Jew in every sense”, “one of the richest and most
prominent citizens of Jersey City”, and “a member of almost every Jewish
organization in Jersey City”. He owned a grocery wholesale business, was
president of the Erie Building and Loan Association, and was one of the largest
real estate owners in Jersey City.

[28] Rabbi
Shlomo David Posner (Rabbi S.D Posner) was a Rabbi in Jersey City, New Jersey,
for many decades. He signed his letters “Rav V’Av Beit Din” of Jersey
City. He authored a book of homilies Eshed
Hanahar (New York, 1932). In the introduction, he writes candidly about
being a Rabbi in America over many years. He was involved on a national level
in many Rabbinic organizations and he helped raise money for the Jewish
community in Palestine

[29] It
is interesting to note that Rabbi Shapiro refers to this group as Mr. but later,
refers to three of the group as Rabbi. The two Shapiro brothers and Ben Zion
Perl are referred to by Rabinowitz as having Rabbinic ordination already at
that time. Rabinowitz, “60 Shana,” 553.

The four referred to by Rabbi Shapiro aside from himself are:

(1) Rabbi Abraham Shapiro was the brother of Rabbi Boruch Shapiro.
Like his brother, Abraham already possessed Semicha from Eastern Europe at this
time. He later served as a Rabbi in Canton, Ohio and in Utica, New York. He was
considered to be a prominent Musmach of RIETS in later years.

(2) Rabbi Ben Zion Pearl served as a Rabbi in Harlem. He was the
director of the Uptown Talmud Torah Association which had 2,400 students in
1919. In 1925, he was involved in raising money for the building fund of Rabbi
Isaac Elchanan Yeshiva. He passed away in 1929.

(3) Rabbi Chaim Yechezkel Moseson came
from Lodz Poland, learned in the Yeshiva in Lomza Poland and received Smicha
from Rabbi Yechial Michal Epstein, author of the Oruch Hashulchon. He was the
principal of Yeshiva Torah Vadath, Mesivta Tiferes Yerushlayim, and other
Yeshivot. He wrote many articles for Dos Yiddishe Licht, a newspaper
financed by Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt.

(4) Harry Sebee Linfield
(1889-1978), was a rabbi and statistician. His Jewish Statistical Bureau
conducted research on Jews in America and published numerous reports and other
publications on their findings, specifically the Statistics of Jews. He was born in
Lithuania and came to the United States in 1905. He was awarded a PhD by the
University of Chicago in Semitic language in 1916, and the following year was
ordained a rabbi by the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati

[30] Klaperman,
Story, 118.

[31] Idem.
262

[32] The
Reform Advocate, December 29, 1917, p.501

[33]
Rabinowitz, “60 Shana,” 553-554.

The Rabbi, the Rebbe, and the Messiah

By Brian Schwartz

If someone were to ask you of an instance where a rabbi was declared the messiah by his followers, the first example that would probably come to mind is the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, R’ Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, who to this very day many of his chasidim regard as the Messiah, despite his death. Many people would struggle to point to any other similar times in history, besides for the Shabbethai Tzvi affair and his various successors[1], where someone was thought of as the Jewish Messiah. However, throughout the past few hundred years, there have been a handful of rabbis who have been explicitly or implicitly declared the messiah, suggested it, or have been accused of suggesting it.

Messiahship was a chasidic and mystical phenomenon, with chasidic rebbes; R’ Yisrael Ba’al Shem Tov[2], R’ David of Tulna[3], R’ Yisrael of Ruzhin[4], R’ Nachman of Breslov[5], R’ Yitzchak Isaac Safrin of Komarna[6], R’ David Moshe of Chortkov[7], and mystics; R’ Chaim Vital[8], R’ Chaim ibn Attar[9], R’ Moshe Chaim Luzzato[10], Shukar Kuchayil I[11], and Shukar Kuchayil II[12], and more recently Yisrael Dov Odesser[13], all being labeled one way or another as the Messiah[14]. Despite the characterization of these individuals as the Messiah, most lived on without any scandal associated with the eschatological attribution. There is one instance however, which unfortunately did cause a great uproar. I refer to you the case of R’ Menachem Mendel Hagar, the scion of the Vizhnitz chasidic dynasty, and the Transylvanian town of Borşa.

Borşa was a mountain village located in Northern Transylvania, in the Maramureș region of Romania. In 1830 it had a Jewish population of 250, rising to 1,432 in 1890. Most of the people in Borşa were chasidim of the Kosov-Vizhnitz dynasty. In 1855, R’ Yaakov Tzvi Waldman, a chasid himself, though an adherent of R’ Chaim Halberstam of Sanz, was chosen as rabbi of Borşa. Considered a great talmid chacham by his peers[15], Rabbi Waldman was defrocked by his own kehillah because of his harsh words towards the Vizhnitz Chasidim of his town. The story behind this is relayed by R’ Avraham Yehuda Schwartz, author of the Sh”ut Kol Aryeh, in two letters he sent; one to the townspeople of Borşa, and one to R’ Menachem Mendel Hagar, the Rebbe of Vizhnitz. In the letters, he mourns over the great bizuy talmid chacham that transpired because of the people of the town removing Waldman from his position as rabbi, replacing him with a boor, and threatening anyone who still considered him rabbi with excommunication.

What caused all this to transpire? In the year 1870, the Chasidim of Borşa decided that since the gematria of “Menachem” (the Vizhnitzer rebbe’s name) is equivalent to that of “Tzemach” (a term used by the prophets to refer to the messiah, see Zachariah 6:12, and Midrash Eicha Rabbah 1:57), Menachem Mendel Hagar, the Rebbe of Vizhnitz must be the messiah. Reacting to this, Waldman said, “כי אמונה כזאת ועבודת האנשים המאמינים בה זרה.”

Here are the two letters printed in the Toldos Kol Aryeh, and if you look at the footnote to the letter to Borşa on p.147, you’ll notice that it says that it was first printed in the beginning of Shu”t Vayitzbor Yosef:

The Vayitzbor Yosef was written by R’ Yosef Schwartz[16], the grandson of R’ Avraham Yehuda Schwartz. The copy I initially had, was the second edition printed by R’ Yosef’s nephew in Brooklyn in 1987[17]. Here is the title page:

However, a thorough search for the letter through the entire work came up with nothing. It seems to have vanished. After an exhaustive hunt, I was finally able to procure a first edition of the Vayitzbor Yosef, and upon examination, I was able to realize the full extent of how doctored the second edition is. In the second edition, there are approbations added from R’ Yosef Schwartz’s other work Ginzei Yosef, and the index is in the back of the sefer, unlike the first edition where they were printed in the front, right after the hakdamah and before the pesicha. These changes are quite innocuous. However, in the second edition, a picture of the original title page is presented with a glaring omission.

Here is how it is presented:

And here is it in actuality:

Notice anything different? That’s right, on the original title page, there is mention of a separate part of the sefer, “Naftali Savah Ratzon” which is supposed to be a collection of things that the author heard from his father R’ Naftali Schwartz. If you guessed that the second edition is devoid of this section in its entirety, you would also be correct. Here is a picture of the beginning of that missing section, which also happens to be printed in the back of the New York edition of Toldos Kol Aryeh:

Having gone through the Naftali Savah Ratzon, I couldn’t find any objectionable material that would have motivated the publishers from removing it. So what was their motivation? Remember the missing letter from R’ Avraham Yehuda Schwartz, the Kol Aryeh? Well, in the first edition, there is another small section right after the pesicha, called “Hashmatah V’hosafa L’kunteres Naftali Savah Ratzon.”

Here is how the second edition appears:

And here is how it’s supposed to look like:

This section is four pages long, and in it can be found the censored letter from R’ Schwartz to the people of Borşa. It would seem that this sensitive letter was behind the publisher’s motivation to totally remove any mention of the Naftali Savah Ratzon, since it was officially part of it as a hashmatah. So not only was an important document lifted from the sefer, a whole section became a casualty along with it. Why the publishers couldn’t just take the letter out and keep the rest of the Naftali Savah Ratzon, I’m not sure. I guess they wanted as “clean” of a job as possible.

I must point out how Leopold Greenwald, Yaakov Tzvi Abraham, Dr. Yehuda Speigel, and Gedaliah Stein explain the rationale of the people of Borşa’s belief that Menachem Mendel Hagar was the Messiah, and how their explanation is mistaken. Greenwald[18], Abraham[19], Speigal[20], and Stein both suggest how the belief was formulated as a reaction to Hagar’s sefer, Tzemach Tzadik. In his work Zichron Borsa[21], Stein explains that since Hagar gave no explanation to the title of his sefer, which was perplexing since it did not have Hagar’s name within its title as do other sefarim, such as “Kedushas Levi” by R’ Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, or “Ahavas Yonasan” by R’ Yonasan Eibeshutz, his chasidim saw in it an esoteric meaning. As the gematria of “Tzemach,” which is used to refer the Messiah in Zachariah 6:12, is equivalent to “Menachem,” and likewise the gematria of “Tzaddik,” which is also used in Zachariah 9:9 to refer to the Messiah, is equivalent to “Mendel,” this must mean that their rebbe, R’ Menachem Mendel Hagar is indeed the Messiah!

This explanation is simply untrue. In no way, could the work Tzemach Tzadik have had any influence on what happened in Borşa in 1870, when it was only published for the first time in 1885. As for the reason why it was called Tzemach Tzadik, Hagar’s son Baruch, explains in the preface to the work that he simply named it because the gematria is equivalent to Menachem Mendel. It is also untenable to argue that a manuscript, or knowledge of one with the title Tzemach Tzadik, was floating around at the time of the dispute, because R’ Baruch Hagar writes in the preface that the material for the work was only written a few years before his father’s passing in 1885. Consequentially, we must take the letters of the Kol Aryeh for their simple meaning, that the people themselves came up with the gematria of tzemach and its link to the Messiah and the Vizhnitz Rebbe.

Many leading rabbis of the time came to R’ Waldman’s defense, including; R’ Moshe Schick[22], R’ Chaim Sofer of Munkatch[23], R’ Chaim Halberstam of Sanz[24], R’ Yosef Shaul Nathansohn[25], and the previously mentioned R’ Avraham Yehuda Schwartz. It seems that the only rabbi that came to the defense of the Vizhnitz Chasidim, was R’ Yehuda Modern[26]. What happened next isn’t very clear, but it seems that a tribunal was held by Schwartz to settle things[27], and Waldman was reinstituted as rabbi of Borşa. Waldman died in Vienna in 1883.

As a side note, take a look at the last page of the letter of R’ Schwartz, printed in the first edition of the Vayitzbor Yosef, on the very bottom:

That is a stamp referring to the responsum of R’ Moshe Schick to Borşa! I don’t know if this appears in every first edition copy, or if some private owner went to the trouble to specially stamp this, but it would be interesting to find out!

[1] Mordechai Mochiach of Eisenstaedt, Baruchia Russo, Jacob Querido, Abraham Cordozo, Yehuda Leib Prossnitz, and Jacob Frank

[2] See Ba’al Shem Tov Al Hatorah (Jerusalem 1998) in the Hakdamah #23 in the name of Nachum from Chernobyl, though this is seemingly a contradiction to the Iggeres Hakodesh of the Ba’al Shem Tov where he writes that he spoke with the Messiah.

[3] See Aharon Wertheim, Halachos V’halichos B’Chasidus (Mossad Harav Kook, 2002), pp. 20-21 fn. 52

[4] See David Assaf, The Regal Way (Stanford University Press, 2002), pp. 257-261

[5] See Yehuda Leibes, Studies in Jewish Myth and Jewish Messianism (State University of New York Press, 1993) p. 115

[6] See the hakdamah to Chumash Heichal Bracha (Lemberg 1864), “וגם דודי מורי החסיד השלם הצדיק אא”ק מוהר”ר משה הוא קרא אותי בפעם הראשון בשם מורה מורנו בפ’ בהר וקרא לפני או דודו יגאלנו ואמר עשיתי אותך גואל ואמר זה באנפין נהרין.”. See Heichal Bracha on Leviticus 25:49 where he says that the verse is referring to Mashiach ben Yosef. See also Megilas Starim (Jerusalem 1944) where he says he was born in the year משיח בן יוסף, here.

[7] See Nochum Brandwein, Imrei Tov (1891) p.29a where he writes, “כמו ששמעתי מפי מרן הק’ והטהור איש צדיק תמים שמו נאה לו מוהר”ר דוד משה שליט”א. וזאת ידוע כי “משה” עולה :”אלקים אחרים”, כי בכוחו נמתק אלקים אחרים , “משה דוד” עולה: “שטן”,כי בכוחו להמתיק את השטן מישראל, ואז נמשך גאולה לישראל, כי: “משיח” עם הכולל עולה: “משה דוד”, ואז יקויים “ועינינו תראינה מלכותך” ע”י דוד משיח צדקך . here.

[8] See Chaim Vital, Sefer Hachizyonos (Jerusalem, 2001) pp. 8, 17-18

[9] See Ohr Hachaim, Deuteronomy 15:7 at the end, here.

[10] See Isaiah Tishby, Messianic Mysticism (Littman Library, 2014) pp. 196-199

[11] See Yaakov Sapir, Iggeres Teiman Hasheni (Mainz, 1873) here and Amram ibn Yachya Kerach, Sa’aras Teiman (Jerusalem. 1954) pp.36-39 here.

[12] See ibid.

[13] See the blog http://saba-is-moshiach.blogspot.com/.

[14] Though R’ Shalom Shachna of Lublin allegedly wrote on his gemara about the debate in Sanhedrin 98b over the name of the Messiah, “אני אומר שכנא שמו שנאמר לשכנו תדרשו”, referring to Deuteronomy 12:5, See Reuven Margolyos, Margolyos Hayam, Sanhedrin 98b #14, it was probably from a disciple in jest. See Asher Ziv, Rabbeinu Shalom Shachna Milublin, Hadarom No.57, p.119.

[15] His two volume halachic work, Shu”t Tzvi V’Chamid, was printed from a manuscript in 2008.

[16] Here is a picture of R’ Schwartz with his wife:

[17] Unfortunately, hebrewbooks.org doesn’t yet have the sefer online. You can still look at the first forty pages for free on Otzar Ha-Hochma online with this link, here, even if you don’t have a subscription.

[18] Matzevat Kodesh (New York 1951) p.24 fn.57 here, L’toldos Hareformatzian Hadatis B’Germania U’bungaria p.20 fn.40 here.

[19] L’koros Hayahadus B’trasylvania (New York) p.84

[20] Toldos Yisrael V’hispatchus Hachasidus B’Rusia H’Karpatis p.32

[21] (Kiryas Motzken, 1984) part 2 pp.68-71

[22] Shu”t Maharam Schick, Yoreh Deah #219, here. The published teshuva is written to an anonymous kehillah, though it is attributed to the town of Borşa.

[23] Toldos Sofrim (London, 1962) pp.37-38, here. From Sofer’s letter we see how this was also part of the greater dispute between the Sanz and Sadigura chasidim, on this see David Assaf, Heitzitz V’Nifga Ch.19.

[24] Measef Ha’be-er year 7 p.42, here. I was very pleased when I first saw this letter. In it, Halberstamm argues that even an evil person that learns torah, his torah isn’t נמאסת, how more so then to a righteous person. He brings a proof from the famous gemara in Chagiga 15b where a fire came down from heaven in front of Yehuda Hanasi to defend Elisha ben Avuya from disparagement. I always made the same argument to fanatics who would say disparaging remarks about R’ Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

[25] Shu”t Shoel U’Meishiv Sheviah #16, also in Kerem Shlomo Tamuz 5743

[26] Tzfunos no.10 Teves 5751 p.118, here.

[27] See Toldos Kol Aryeh p.79 #122, here.

Marc B. Shapiro – Responses to Comments and Elaborations of Previous Posts III

Responses to Comments and Elaborations of Previous Posts III

by Marc B. Shapiro

This post is dedicated to the memory of Rabbi Chaim Flom, late rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Ohr David in Jerusalem. I first met Rabbi Flom thirty years ago when he became my teacher at the Hebrew Youth Academy of Essex County (now known as the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy; unfortunately, another one of my teachers from those years also passed away much too young, Rabbi Yaakov Appel). When he first started teaching he was known as Mr. Flom, because he hadn’t yet received semikhah (Actually, he had some sort of semikhah but he told me that he didn’t think it was adequate to be called “Rabbi” by the students.) He was only at the school a couple of years and then decided to move to Israel to open his yeshiva. I still remember his first parlor meeting which was held at my house. Rabbi Flom was a very special man. Just to give some idea of this, ten years after leaving the United States he was still in touch with many of the students and even attended our weddings. He would always call me when he came to the U.S. and was genuinely interested to hear about my family and what I was working on. He will be greatly missed.

1. In a previous post I showed a picture of the hashgachah given by the OU to toilet bowl cleaner. This led to much discussion, and as I indicated, at a future time I hope to say more about the kashrut industry from a historical perspective.[1] I have to thank Stanley Emerson who sent me the following picture.

It is toilet bowl cleaner in Israel that also has a hashgachah. Until Stanley called my attention to this, I was bothered that the kashrut standards in the U.S. had surpassed those of Israel. I am happy to see that this is not the case. (In fact, only in Israel can one buy a package of lettuce with no less than six (!) different hashgachot. See here)

But in all seriousness, I think we must all be happy at the high level of kashrut standards provided by the OU and the other organizations. This, of course, doesn’t mean that we have to be happy with what has been going on at Agriprocessors. I realize that this is a huge contract, but it was very disappointing to see that the first response of the OU to the numerous Agriprocessors scandals, beginning with the PETA video, has been to circle the wagons and put out the spin. Any changes from the OU only came after public outrage, and if the hashgachah is eventually removed from Agriprocessors, it will once again be due to this outrage. To be sure, we no longer can imagine cases of meat producers locking the mashgiach in the freezer,[2] but it does seem that the company was being given pretty free reign in areas where the hashgachah could have been using more of its influence. (Let’s not forget that Agriprocessors needs the OU more than the reverse.) At the very least, we need some competition in the glatt kosher meat business. Agriprocessors has a near monopoly and as we all know, competition is what forces businesses to operate at a higher standard.

In fact, the entire glatt kosher “standard” should be done away with and turned into an option for those who wish to be stringent. This has recently been tried in Los Angeles, with the support of local rabbis, but I don’t know how successful it has been. The only way this can happen on a large scale is if the OU once again starts certifying non-glatt. The masses have been so brainwashed in the last twenty years that they will not eat regular kosher unless it has an OU hashgachah. There is no good reason – there are reasons, but they aren’t good – why the OU does not certify non-glatt. As is the case with the Chief Rabbinate in Israel, the OU should certify both mehadrin (glatt) and non-mehadrin.

It might be that people in Teaneck and the Five Towns don’t feel the bad economic times. Yet there are many people who are having difficulty making ends meet. It is simply not fair to create a system where people are being forced to pay more money for meat than they should have to. The biggest problem Orthodoxy faces, and the factor that makes it an impossible lifestyle for many who would otherwise be drawn to it, is the enormous costs entailed. Anything we can do to lower this burden, even if it is only a couple of hundred dollars a year–obviously significantly more for communal institutions–should be done.

Returning to Agriprocessors, while the current issue focuses on the treatment of workers, the problem of a couple of years ago focused on the treatment of animals. Yet the two should not necessarily be seen as so far apart. According to R. Joseph Ibn Caspi (Mishneh Kesef [Pressburg, 1905], vol. 1, p. 36), the reason the Torah forbids inflicting pain on animals is “because we humans are very close to them and we both have one father”! This outlook is surprising enough (and very un-Maimonidean), but then he continues with the following incredible statement: “We and the vegetables, such as the cabbage and the horseradish, are brothers, with one father”! He ties this in with the command not to cut down a fruit tree (Deut. 20:19), which is followed by the words כי האדם עץ השדה. This is usually understood as a question: “for is the tree of the field man [that it should be besieged of thee?] Yet Caspi understands it as a statement, and adds the following, which together with what I have already quoted from him will make the Jewish eco-crowd very happy.

כי האדם עץ השדה (דברים כ’ י”ט), כלומר שהאדם הוא עץ השדה שהוא מין אחד מסוג הצמח כאמרו כל הבשר חציר (ישעיה מ’ ו’) ואמרו רז”ל בני אדם כעשבי השדה (עירובין נד ע”א)

Finally, in Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld’s op-ed on Agriprocessors in the New York Times (see here) he wrote as follows: “Yisroel Salanter, the great 19th-century rabbi, is famously believed to have refused to certify a matzo factory as kosher on the grounds that the workers were being treated unfairly.” Herzfeld was attacked by people who claimed that there is no historical source to justify this statement. While the story has been garbled a bit, the substance indeed has a source. I refer to Dov Katz, Tenuat ha-Mussar, vol. 1, p. 358. Here R. Yisrael Salanter is quoted as saying that when it comes to the production of matzah, one must not only be concerned with the halakhot of Pesah, but also with the halakhot of Hoshen Mishpat, i.e., that one must have concern for the well-being of the woman making the matzah.

אין כשרות המצות שלמה בהידוריהן שבהלכות פסח לבד, כי אם עם דקדוקיהן גם בדיני חשן משפט

2. In my previous post I wrote: “With regard to false ascription of critical views vis-à-vis the Torah’s authorship, I should also mention that Abarbanel, Commentary to Numbers 21:1, accuses both Ibn Ezra and Nahmanides of believing that the beginning verses of this chapter are post-Mosaic. Yet Abarbanel must have been citing from memory, since neither of them say this. In fact, Ibn Ezra specifically rejects the notion that the verses were written by Joshua.” I made a similar point in Limits of Orthodox Theology, p.106 n. 102.

I looked at Abarbanel again and would like to revise what I wrote. I don’t think it is correct to say that Abarbanel was citing from memory, since he quotes Nahmanides’ words. With regard to Ibn Ezra, I now assume that Abarbanel thinks Ibn Ezra is being coy. In other words, although Ibn Ezra cites a view held by “many” that Joshua wrote the beginning of Numbers 21, and then goes on to reject this view, Abarbanel doesn’t trust Ibn Ezra. He thinks that Ibn Ezra really accepts the “critical” view. I see absolutely no evidence for this. Ibn Ezra has ways to hint to us when he favors a critical view, and he never does so with this section. Furthermore, I am aware of no evidence that the “many” who hold the critical view are Karaites, as is alleged by Abarbanel.

What led Abarbanel to accuse Nahmanides of following Ibn Ezra in asserting that there are post-Mosaic verses in Numbers 21? As with Ibn Ezra, Abarbanel sees Nahmanides as hiding his critical view and only hinting to it. Numbers 21:3 reads: “And the Lord hearkened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities; and the name of the place was called Hormah.” Yet as Nahmanides notes, it is in Judges 1:17 that we see the destruction of the Canaanites and the naming of the city Hormah. How, then, can the city be called Hormah in Deuteronomy when it won’t be conquered and named for many years?

Nahmanides writes that the Torah here is relating “that Israel also laid their cities waste when they came into the land of Canaan, after the death of Joshua, in order to fulfill the vow which they had made, and they called the name of the cities Hormah.” In other words, the Torah is describing an event, including the naming of a place, which will only take place a number of years later. This event is described in the book of Judges. The verse in Numbers is written in the past tense, which would seem to render Nahmanides’ understanding problematic. Yet as Chavel points out in his notes to his English edition, this does not concern Nahmanides. “Since there is no difference in time for God, it is written in the past tense, for past, present, and future are all the same to Him.”

This is certainly true with regard to God, but what about the Children of Israel? How are they supposed to read a section of the Torah that speaks about an event as having happened in the past but which in reality has not yet even taken place? These are problems that the traditional commentators deal with, but Abarbanel sees Nahmanides as departing from tradition and offering a heretical interpretation. He is led to this assumption because Nahmanides uses the ambiguous words “Scripture continued” and “Scripture, however, completed the account.” Why didn’t Nahmanides say that Moses wrote this? It must be, according to Abarbanel, that Nahmanides is hinting that this was written down after Moses’ death. In Abarbanel’s words:

כי הרב כסתה כלימה פניו לכתוב שיהושע כתב זה. והניח הדבר בסתם שהכתוב השלימו אבל לא זכר מי היה הכותב כיון שלא היה משה עליו השלום והדעת הזה בכללו לקחהו הראב”ע מדברי הקראים שבפירושי התורה אשר להם נמנו וגמרו שלא כתב זה מזה והרמב”ן נטה אחרי הראב”ע והתימה משלימות תורתו וקדושתו שיצא מפיו שיש בתורה דבר שלא כתב משה. והם אם כן בכלל כי דבר ה’ בזה.

From here, let me return for the third time to what some would see as an aspect of biblical criticism in Radak. To recap, in his commentary to I Sam. 4:1 Radak writes:

על האבן העזר: כמו הארון הברי’ והכותב אמר זה כי כשהיתה זאת המלחמה אבן נגף היתה ולא אבן עזר ועדיין לא נקראה אבן העזר כי על המלחמה האחרת שעשה שמואל עם פלשתים בין המצפה ובין השן שקרא אותה שמואל אבן העזר שעזרם האל יתברך באותה מלחמה אבל מה שנכתב הנה אבן העזר דברי הסופר הם וכן וירדף עד דן.

Dr. H. Norman Strickman convinced me that Radak means that the words “and pursued as far as Dan” are a later insertion, since the city was only named Dan after it was conquered in the days of Joshua (Joshua 19:47). In a comment to the post, Benny wrote:

There is no reason to assume that Radak is not referring to Moses prophetically writing the word Dan. It just means that in the time that the story took place, the name was not Dan. . . . I think that it is definitely possible that Radak understood that Moshe is the one who wrote “Et HaGilad Ad Dan”.

Dr. Yitzchak Berger wrote to me as follows:

I think the commenter ‘Benny’ was right about Radak’s view of Gen. 14:14. At I Sam 4:1 he’s probably merely contrasting the author-narrator’s [i.e. “sofer’s”–MS] perspective with that of the players in the story, concerning the phrases in both Samuel and Genesis (in the case in Samuel there would be no reason for him to introduce a later editor).”

As is often the case in these sorts of disputes, I find myself being moved by the last argument I hear. As I noted in the earlier post, Radak elsewhere insists on complete Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Thus, it is certainly easier to read this text in a way that would not create a contradiction.

While on the subject of Mosaic authorship, let me also add the following. David Singer recently wrote an interesting article on Rabbi Emanuel Rackman.[3] With the recent passing of Rabbi Moses Mescheloff,[4] Rackman, born in 1910, might be the oldest living musmach of RIETS. If this is so, don’t expect this to be acknowledged in any way by the powers at YU.[5] The ideological winds have blown rightward in the last thirty years, and Rackman has moved leftward. He is thus no longer regarded as representative of RIETS or worthy of any acknowledgment.[6]

A similar thing happened at Hebrew Theological College in Skokie. Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits (died 1992) was, in my opinion, the most significant and influential person ever to teach on its faculty. (Unfortunately, they didn’t let him teach Talmud, only philosophy.) Yet not only does HTC currently have no interest in recognizing him, in 2001, some eighteen years (!) after the appearance of Not in Heaven, a very negative review appeared in the Academic Journal of Hebrew Theological College.[7] To show how insignificant Berkovits is in Skokie, neither the author, Rabbi Chaim Twerski, nor any of the editors, realized that his last name is not spelled Berkowitz! Were he alive today, can anyone imagine that HTC would allow him to speak? (It would be interesting to create a list of people who founded or taught at institutions and today would be persona non grata there. A few come to mind, and for now let me just mention R. Zev Gold, the outstanding Mizrachi leader who was one of the founders, and first president, of Yeshiva Torah Vodaas. Gold, who was also a rabbi in Scranton, was one of the signers of Israel’s declaration of independence.[8])

Some people pointed out that in Twerski’s negative review, Berkovits is never even referred to as Rabbi, only as Dr. (A cynic might add that in his zeal to use the title “Dr.” instead of “Rabbi” for those he doesn’t approve of, Twerski even gives R. Judah Leib Maimon a doctorate, referring to him as Dr. Maimon.) In the following issue, Twerski apologizes for any disrespect, noting that while some people took offense at how he referred to Berkovits, others “who know [!] him well have told me that he always preferred to be addressed as ‘Dr. Berkovits.'” I think this is a fair response. After all, would anyone criticize an author for referring to “Dr. Lamm”? Yet I must also say that someone reading the article will not learn that Berkovits was a great talmudic scholar, and I don’t even know if Twerski recognizes this.

Returning to Singer, in his article he writes that Rackman accepted the Documentary Hypothesis. I discussed this issue with Rackman some years ago and this is definitely not what he told me. The most he would say was that he would not regard someone as a heretic if he accepted biblical criticism. Yet he personally was not a believer in the theory. In support of Singer’s assertion to the contrary, he quotes the following passage from Rackman: “The most definitive record of God’s encounters with man is contained in the Pentateuch. Much of it may have been written by people in different times, but at one point in history God not only made the people of Israel aware of his immediacy, but caused Moses to write the eternal evidence of the covenant between Him and His people.” He also quotes another statement by Rackman: “[T]he sanctity of the Pentateuch does not derive from God’s authorship of all of it, but rather from the fact that God’s is the final version. The final writing by Moses has the stamp of divinity – the kiss of immortality.”

Singer misunderstands Rackman. There is no Higher Criticism here, no Documentary Hypothesis. What Rackman is saying is that the stories in the Pentateuch might have been recorded by various people before Moses, but that these stories were later included in the Torah at God’s command, with Moses being the final author. In both of these passages Rackman is explicit that the Torah was written by Moses. Rackman’s position in these quotations is very traditional, asserting that all that appears in the Torah is Mosaic. With this conception it doesn’t matter if, for example, the stories of Noah or the Patriarchs had earlier written versions passed down among the Israelites, since what makes them holy and part of the Torah is God’s command to Moses that they be included in the Holy Book. This was done by Moses’ “final writing.” I can’t see anyone, even the most traditional, finding a problem in this.

While on the subject of Rackman, let me make a bibliographical point. R. Moshe Feinstein, Iggerot Moshe, Yoreh Deah IV, no. 50:2 refers to:

המאמרים של רב אחד שמחשבים אותו לרב ארטאדקאקסי שנדפסו בעיתון שבשפת אנגלית . . . והנה ראינו שכולם דברי כפירה בתורה שבעל פה המסורה לנו.

R. Moshe goes on to further attack the heresy of this unnamed rabbi, who is none other than Rackman. This can be seen by examining Ha-Pardes, May 1973, p. 7, where R. Moshe’s letter first appeared. It is not a private communication but is described as coming from Agudat ha-Rabbonim of the United States and Canada, and R. Moshe signs as president of the organization. Earlier in this issue (it is the lead article) and also in the April 1973 Ha-Pardes, R. Simhah Elberg published his own attack on Rackman, referring to him as ראביי ר. Elberg refers to Rackman’s articles which appeared regularly in the American Examiner, and which so agitated the haredim – and also many of the centrist Orthodox. This paper then joined with the Jewish Week, and became known as the Jewish Week and American Examiner. Rackman continued to publish in the paper until around 2001. (His article discussing my biography of Weinberg was one of the last ones he would write, and it is reprinted in the second edition of One Man’s Judaism [Jerusalem, 2000], pp. 402-404.)

3. Many people were interested in the claim, quoted in an earlier post, that rabbis turned over their own children to become soldiers if these children were no longer observant. If something like this ever happened it would have been very heartless, and there were, of course, many children of gedolim who became non-religious. While in some cases the child choosing a different path led to estrangement with his father, in others, father and son remained close, and I think today everyone realizes that this is the only proper approach to take.

R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg thought that it might be a good idea for a father to attend his son’s intermarriage, in order not to break ties completely. (Believe it or not, this statement was published in Yated Neeman.) Yet to see how different things were in years past, at least among some parts of our community, consider the following responsum by the important Hungarian posek, R. Jacob Tenenbaum.[9] The case concerned an Orthodox shochet whose son went to the בית האון (This means the non-Orthodox rabbinical seminary in Budapest, against which the Orthodox rabbis carried on a crusade.) The problem was that during his vacations the son came home to his parents’ house. Tenenbaum was asked if this meant that the shochet was disqualified and could no longer serve the community. The father pleaded that he loved his son, and Tenenbaum replied that התנצלות זה הוא הבל. Tenenbaum also rejected the father’s claim that if he doesn’t show love to his son, the latter will go even further “off the derech.”

Tenenbaum demanded that the father make a complete break with his son (that is, if the father wanted to be regarded as a Jew in good standing). The choice was clear: The father had to decide between loving his son and making a living (for if chose the former he would be blacklisted throughout the country):

ואם אביו יתן לו מקום בביתו או יתמכהו באיזה דבר בזה יגלה דעתו שגם בו נזרקה מינות [!] ובזה אין חילוק בין שו”ב לאיש אחר . . . אם יחזיק ידו או יתן לו מקום בביתו הנה ידו במעל הזה אשר בנו פנה עורף לדת ה’ ועל כן צא טמא יאמר לו, ושלא יוסיף עוד ראות פניו אם לא ישמע לדבריו לעזוב דרך רשע.

I know this sounds like a Hungarian extremist approach, but R. Kook had basically the same viewpoint. In Da’at Kohen no. 7, he too is asked about a shochet whose non-religious sons live at home. R. Kook replies that while technically the actions of the sons do not destroy the hezkat kashrut of the father, nevertheless, the matter is very distasteful (מכוער). Even if the father could not be blamed at all in this matter, nevertheless, it is a hillul ha-shem. Since the beit din has the power to legislate in matters beyond the strict law, “there is no migdar milta greater than this.” He explains the reason for his uncompromising viewpoint:

שלא ילמדו אחרים להפקירות עוד יותר, כשרואין שבניו של השו”ב הקבוע הם מחללים ש”ק, ע”כ לע”ד ברור הדבר, שכ”ז שבניו הם סמוכין על שולחנו, ואין פוסקין מחילול ש”ק, איננו ראוי להיות שו”ב קבוע, ומה גם בעדה חרדית.

If this is said about a shochet, how much more would it apply to a rav of a community. It is therefore easy to understand why non-religious children of some well-known rabbis are no longer welcome in their parents’ home. (Other well-known rabbis have a completely different outlook, and reject what they would categorize as the conditional-love approach of Rabbis Tenenbaum and Kook).

4. Since I have mentioned R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg a few times, I must call attention to something that was pointed out to me by Rabbi Chaim Miller. Miller might be known to some readers for his wonderful editions of the Chumash and Haggadah with a commentary based on writings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. He has also published the first volume of a multi-volume work on the Thirteen Principles.[10]

I have often been asked if Weinberg gave semikhah to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. There is such a story yet I always found it suspicious that it was never mentioned in the Rebbe’s lifetime. Furthermore, Weinberg never mentions this in his letters. (He does mention that R. Yosef Yitzhak Schneersohn loved him.) So when asked, I always replied that I didn’t believe the story to be correct, as there is no evidence. In fact, I thought that the story was created as a clever way of giving the Rebbe semikhah. There is no record of him receiving semikhah before he arrived in Germany or after he left, so it made sense to have him receive it during his time in Berlin. Once you assume that the semikhah is received in Berlin, who better than Weinberg to give it to the Rebbe? Yet I always assumed that that this was a legend and wondered if the Rebbe even had semikhah.

Rabbi Miller called my attention to the new book, Admorei Habad ve-Yahadut Germanyah, pp. 103ff., where R. Avraham Abba Weingort, who is completely trustworthy (and far removed from Habad), records the testimony of two other reliable people from Switzerland who knew Weinberg well. Although there is probably some exaggeration in the details of the story they tell, they report being told by Weinberg that he indeed gave semikhah to the Rebbe, and the circumstances of how this came about (including requiring that the Rebbe come to some of his shiurim at the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary).[11] I can now better understand why the Rebbe’s contact information given to the University of Berlin was the address of the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary.[12] From now on, whenever I am asked if the Rebbe received semikhah from Weinberg, I will reply yes.

5. In recent years a few volumes from the writings of R. Yehudah Amital have been translated into English, allowing many new people to be exposed to his thoughts. Here is a provocative passage from his newest volume, Commitment and Complexity: Jewish Wisdom in an Age of Upheaval, p. 48:

We live in an era in which educated religious circles like to emphasize the centrality of Halakha, and commitment to it, in Judaism. I can say that in my youth in pre-Holocaust Hungary, I didn’t hear people talking all the time about “Halakha.” People conducted themselves In the tradition of their forefathers, and where any halakhic problems arose, they consulted a rabbi. Reliance on Halakha and unconditional commitment to it mean, for many people, a stable anchor whose purpose is to maintain the purity of Judaism, even within the modern world. To my mind, this excessive emphasis of Halakha has exacted a high cost. The impression created is that there is nothing in Torah but that which exists in Halakha, and that in any confrontation with the new problems that arise in modern society, answers should be sought exclusively in books of Halakha. Many of the fundamental values of the Torah which are based on the general commandments of “You shall be holy” (Vayikra 19:2) and “You shall do what is upright and good in the eyes of God” (Devarim 6:18), which were not given formal, operative formulation, have not only lost some of their status, but they have also lost their validity in the eyes of a public that regards itself as committed to Halakha.

This reminds me of the quip attributed to Heschel that unfortunately Orthodox Jews are not in awe of God, but in awe of the Shulhan Arukh. In truth, Heschel’s point is good hasidic teaching, and R. Jacob Leiner of Izbica notes that one can even make idols out of mitzvot.[13] He points out that the Second Commandment states that one is prohibited from making an image of what is in the heavens. R. Jacob claims that what the Torah refers to as being in the heavens is none other than the Sabbath. The Torah is telling us that we must not turn it into an idol. In this regard, R. Jacob cites the Talmud: “One does not revere the Sabbath but Him who ordered the observance of the Sabbath.”[14]

I believe that the “halakho-centrism” that Amital criticizes has another pernicious influence, and that is the overpopulation of “halakhic” Jews who have been involved in all sorts of illegal activities. A major problem we have is that it is often the case that all sorts of halakhic justifications can be offered for these illegal activities. One whose only focus in on halakhah, without any interest in the broad ethical underpinnings of Judaism, and the Ramban’s conception of Kedoshim Tihyu, can entirely lose his bearings and turn into a “scoundrel with Torah license.” The Rav long ago commented that halakhah is the floor, not the ceiling. One starts with halakhah and moves up from there. Contrary to what so many feel today, halakhah, while required, is not all there is to being a Jew, and contrary to what so many Orthodox apologists claim, halakhah does not have “all the answers.” One of the most important themes in Weinberg’s writings is the fact that there are people in the Orthodox community who, while completely halakhic, are ethically challenged.

Since I already mentioned Rabbi Rakow, let me tell a story that illustrates this. I went to Gateshead to interview him about his relationship with Weinberg. When I got there I had a few hours until our meeting so I paid a visit to the local seforim store. I found a book I wanted and asked the owner how much it cost. He gave me a price, and then added that if I was a yeshiva student there was a discount. When I later met with Rakow I asked him if it would have been OK for me to ask one of the yeshiva students to buy the book at discount, and then I could pay him for it. He replied that there was certainly no halakhic problem involved. After all, the first student acquires the book through a kinyan and then I buy it from him. But he then added: “Yet it would not be ethical.”

Weinberg’s concerns in this area were not merely motivated by the distressing phenomenon of halakhically observant people who showed a lack of ethical sensitivity. His problem was much deeper in that he feared that this lack of sensitivity was tied into the halakhic system itself. In other words, he worried that halakhah, as generally practiced, sometimes led to a dulling of ethical sensitivity. Weinberg saw a way out of this for the enlightened souls, those who could walk the middle path between particularist and universal values. Yet in his darkest moments he despaired that the community as a whole could ever reach this point. This explains why he esteemed certain Reform and other non-Orthodox figures. Much like R. Kook saw the non-Orthodox as providing the necessary quality of physicality which was lacking among the Orthodox, Weinberg appreciated the refined nature of some of the non-Orthodox he knew and lamented that his own community was lacking in this area. It was precisely because of his own high standards that he had so little tolerance for ethical failures in the Orthodox community. Weinberg’s sentiments, which focused on inner-Orthodox behavior, were not motivated by fear of hillul ha-shem. It was simply an issue of Jews living the way they are supposed to. [15]

In his opposition to halakho-centrism, Amital finds a kindred spirit in R. Moses Samuel Glasner and cites the latter with regard to the following case. What should someone do if he has no food to eat, except non-kosher meat and human flesh. From a purely halakhic standpoint, eating non-kosher meat, which is a violation of a negative commandment, is worse than cannibalism. The latter is at most a violation of a positive commandment (Maimonides) or a rabbinic commandment according to others.[16] Yet Glasner sees it as obvious that one should not eat the human flesh, even though this is what the “pure” halakhah would require, for there are larger values at stake and the technical halakhah is not the be-all and end-all of Torah.[17]

Glasner writes as follows in his introduction to Dor Revi’i:

כל מה שנתקבל בעיני בני אדם הנאורים לתועבה, אפילו אינו מפורש בתורה לאיסור, העובר על זה גרע מן העובר על חוקי התורה . . . ועתה אמור נא, בחולה שיש בו סכנה ולפניו בשר בהמה נחורה או טרפה ובשר אדם, איזה בשר יאכל, הכי נאמר דיאכל בשר אדם שאין בו איסור תורה אע”פ שמחוק הנימוס שמקובל מכלל האנושי, כל האוכל או מאכיל בשר אדם מודח מלהיות נמנה בין האישים, ולא יאכל בשר שהתורה אסרו בלאו, היעלה על הדעת שאנו עם הנבחר עם חכם ונבון נעבור על חוק הנימוס כזה להינצל מאיסור תורה? אתמהה!

In other words, the Torah has an overarching ethos (Natural Law?) which is not expressed in any specific legal text, and this can sometimes trump explicit prohibitions.[18]

Glasner has another example of this: Someone is in bed naked and a fire breaks out. He can’t get to his clothes and has two choices: He can run outside naked or put on some women’s clothes. The pure halakhic perspective would, according to Glasner, require him to go outside naked, since there is no biblical violation in this. But Glasner rejects this out of hand:

ובעיני פשוט הדבר דלצאת ערום עברה יותר גדולה . . . כי היא עברה המוסכמת אצל כל בעלי דעה, והעובר עליה יצא מכלל אדם הנברא בצלם אלוקים.

While I don’t know if the Rav would agree with Glasner, he too acknowledged that ethical concerns are a part of halakhic determination, meaning that not everything is “pure” halakhah. “Since the halakhic gesture is not to be abstracted from the person engaged in it, I cannot see how it is possible to divorce halakhic cognition from axiological premises or from an ethical motif.” Yet he adds: “Of course, in speaking of an ethical moment implied in halakhic thinking, I am referring to the unique halakhic ethos which is another facet of the halakhic logos.”[19] I wonder, though, if the approach set out here stands in contradiction to how, in his famous essay, he portrays the Halakhic Man’s mode of thinking. Would Halakhic Man, whose values arise exclusively from the halakhic system, be able to write the following, which acknowledges a significant subjective element?

Before I begin the halakhic discussion of the subject matter I wish to make three relevant observations . . . I cannot lay claim to objectivity if the latter should signify the absence of axiological premises and a completely detached attitude. The halakhic inquiry, like any other cognitive theoretical performance, does not start out form the point of absolute zero as to sentimental attitudes and value judgments. There always exists in the mind of the researcher an ethico-axiological background against which the contours of the subject matter in question stand out more clearly. . . . Hence this investigation was also undertaken in a similar subjective mood. From the very outset I was prejudiced in favor of the project of the Rabbinical Council of America and I could not imagine any halakhic authority rendering a decision against it. My inquiry consisted only in translating a vague intuitive feeling into fixed terms of halakhic discursive thinking.[20]

How often have I seen Orthodox polemicists criticize this very approach?

Finally, with regard to the issue of cannibalism mentioned above, let me point to one more relevant source (I can’t resist). In a previous post I mentioned that since every topic in halakhah has been dealt with in such detail, scholars today have to find new areas to focus on. Because of this, large books constantly appear about all sorts of things that are found in the sources, but to which no one ever gave much thought in previous years. The example I gave was an entire book dealing with the halakhot of sex change operations. The halakhot of cannibalism is one of the last areas which hasn’t yet been given a book-length treatment. However, R. Yosef Aryeh Lorincz has recently published Pelaot Edotekha.[21] The author is a rosh kollel whose previous book won an award from the municipality of Bnei Brak (see here). He is also the son of Shlomo Lorincz, one of the elders of haredi politics. He raises the following question (before reading any further, make sure the digitalis is in easy reach): Is it permitted to eat the flesh and drink the blood of demons?! Let me quote some of what he says on the topic:

יש לעיין באותם השדים שיש להם דמות אדם ומתו מה דין בשרם ודמם האם אסורים באכילה, דפשוטו אינם אדם וגם אינם בהמה אלא בריה בפנ”ע ולא מצינו שאסרה תורה לבשר ודם דשדים, אולם להאמור לעיל דשד הוה מקצת אדם, א”כ הוה כעין חצי שעור ואסורים באכילה, עוד יש לעיין אם בשרו ודמו יש להם טומאה כמת עכו”ם, ואם אסורים בהנאה לשיטות דמת עכו”ם אסור בהנאה.

Whatever you may think about hashgachot on candles and toilet bowl cleaner, I am fairly certain that even if Lorincz can prove that demon’s flesh and blood is kosher, none of the kashrut organizations will be rushing to add their symbol to this product. But in all seriousness, I know that I am not the only one who thinks that it is very unfortunate that we have Torah scholars spending time on this sort of thing.

6. I have been asked to say something about the current conversion controversy. The halakhic problems will be sorted out by the poskim, but let me make a few comments about the historical issue. There have been a number of people who have stated that the lenient approach often associated with R. Uziel is a singular opinion, or that this view was original to him. That this is mistaken can be seen by anyone who examines Avi Sagi’s and Zvi Zohar’s book Giyur u-Zehut Yehudit. In fact, throughout most of Jewish history a lenient approach to conversion was the mainstream approach.

Now it is true that R. Herzog famously states that in earlier times one could be more lenient than today, because in a traditional society when someone converted he was immediately part of a community and was required to be observant.[22] Things are very different today when you can convert and move to a secular neighborhood in Tel Aviv. There is no communal pressure for you to be observant, and the convert can look around and see that the leaders of the Jewish people in Israel, Peres, Olmert and Livni, are not religious. In such a world, R. Herzog didn’t think we could rely on certain leniencies used in the past.

However, despite R. Herzog’s opinion, the lenient approach, which didn’t insist on a convert’s complete observance of mitvot remained popular in modern times. (Contrary to what has often been stated, the lenient approach, and this includes R. Uziel, always insisted on kabbalat mitzvot. The dispute concerns what “kabbalat mitzvot” means, and whether a formal acceptance, without inner conviction, is sufficient.) Until recent years the lenient approach was even a mainstream position, alongside the more stringent (and widespread) approach. Among the adherents of the lenient approach one must mention R. David Zvi Hoffmann, who was the final halakhic authority in Germany until his death in 1921. Almost every Orthodox rabbi in that country, and many in other parts of Western Europe, looked to him as their authority. Others who held this position include R. Unterman and R. Goren. In addition, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate batei din, which were full of haredi dayanim, until recently followed the lenient approach. Many non-Jews were converted in Israel by dayanim who knew perfectly well that these people were not going to live an Orthodox life. Some of them were even intent on marrying people who were living on secular kibbutzim.[23] No one ever challenged the validity of these conversions. The situation was similar in places outside of Israel. See R. Yitzhak Yaakov Weiss, Minhat Yitzhak, vol. 6, no. 107:

לצערנו הרב גם רבנים חרדיים ומומחים מגיירים כעין זה ומחשיבים אותה כבדיעבד.

Unlike what goes on today, in previous generations there were never any classes for future converts. In fact, according to R. Akiva Eger, these classes are improper, since one is not permitted to teach Torah to a non-Jew.[24] Now obviously, this is not the position we accept, but it does illustrate that in reality converts don’t need to know much about Judaism. R. Malkiel Zvi Tenenbaum writes similarly in dealing with a case from England where a man was with a non-Jewish woman and wanted to convert her. The man had stopped eating non-kosher and attended synagogue on Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur, but he was obviously not a completely observant Jew. Tenenbaum notes that even though it is possible that the only reason the woman is converting is so that she can remain with her husband–apparently she thought that this was in doubt due to his new religiosity– nevertheless, one should not be too exacting with her, other than telling her a few weighty and light mitzvot. This approach should be adopted because ex post facto the conversion will be fine, “and by doing this, we will save the Jew from living with her in a forbidden manner . . . but it is best that she learn everything [relating to Judaism] after she converts, and in particular in this case when we have to hurry to save the husband from sin.”[25]

Even R. Moshe Feinstein’s opinion regarding conversion is not uniform, and you can see changes in his view in the direction of leniency. But leaving that aside, although R. Moshe requires real kabbalat mitzvot, he acknowledges that a rejection of complete halakhic observance might not really be a rejection, because the person might not think that a particular law is really required. For example, what about a case where a woman converted in order to marry a Sabbath violator and was herself now a Sabbath violator? This is the exact sort of conversion that would be thrown out today. The fact that after the conversion she never observed Shabbat would suffice to show that there was no kabbalat mitzvot. Yet R. Moshe disagrees. He says that it depends on the woman’s mindset. In this case, perhaps she never intended on violating the halakhah, but she didn’t believe that Shabbat is really a law! And why should she, when she sees that most Jews don’t keep it? In R. Moshe’s words, she thought that observing Shabbat was hiddur be-alma, that is, something nice, but not required. This means that she never rejected the halakhah of Shabbat, she just didn’t know about it, and people are not required to know every halakhah before they convert. Therefore, R. Moshe concludes that the conversion is valid.[26] In another responsum,[27] R. Moshe explains that even if one rejects a particular mitzvah of the Torah, ex post facto the conversion is still valid:

ולכן צריך לומר שכיון שאיכא עכ”פ קבלת מצות אף שלא בכולן הוא גר ונתחייב בכולן אף שלא קבלם דהוה מתנה ע”מ שכתוב בתורה.

Anyone who reads responsa literature of the last hundred years often comes across cases where a man was intermarried and wanted to convert his wife, or wanted to convert his future wife. Often he had a child with the non-Jewish woman and wanted the child to be converted. A few different issues are discussed in these responsa, in particular nitan al ha-shifhah, but one thing you find very little discussion of is kabbalat mitzvot. The rabbis often give permission to convert the children even though the parents are not religious, and they give permission to convert the non-Jewish spouse even though there is no expectation that the person is going to lead a religious life. This obviously shows us that these rabbis had a different conception of conversion than what is today declared to be the only acceptable approach. Rabbi Yehudah Herzl Henkin [28] has recently called attention to Rabbi Abraham Price’s comments in this regard.[29] Price was the leading rav in Toronto, and he defends the lenient approach (which was being carried out all over the world). Yet today, these conversions would be thrown out. Here is the page from Price’s sefer.

In the recently published responsa of R. Eliezer David Rabinowitz-Teomim (the Aderet), Ma’aneh Eliyahu, no. 65, he discusses converting a Gentile who was involved with a Jewish woman. He raises the issue of whether it is proper to convert the man if he will not be observant. Even though the woman will be spared the sin of intermarriage, the man who is converted will now be violating the prohbitions of Niddah and Shabbat. This means that he was in a better place before he converted, as he was not obligated in these laws. The Aderet never assumes that the conversion won’t be valid because the man will be non-observant. Indeed, his entire responsum is based on the fact that it will be valid, which leads him to wonder if conversions like this are a good idea.

אם הם מדור החדש, וקרוב הדבר שלא תשמור לטבול בזמנה, ויחללו שבת, ויכשלו באיסור נדה החמורה, רחמנא ליצלן, ועוד ועוד, באופן כזה חלילה, צריך ישוב והתבוננות אם לטובלו לדת ישראל.

(There are many other responsa where halakhists show great annoyance that people who convert often don’t live a religious life, but very few of these halakhists mention anything about the conversions not being valid.)

Here is another example that nicely illustrates what I am talking about. It has not been quoted in any of the numerous discussions of the issue and can be added to the lenient side. Yet as I indicated, there is nothing unusual in this case as the approach seen here was very popular. R. Shlomo Sadowsky was a rav in Rochester and in 1918 he published his sefer, Parparaot le-Hokhmah. On page 63 he discusses converting a non-Jewish woman who is married to a Jewish man. In this case, he turned to R. Gavriel Zev Margulies, one of the leading poskim in America. (Joshua Hoffman wrote a wonderful masters dissertation on him.) The decision is made to convert her, and there is no mention of authentic acceptance of mitzvot. The halakhic concern focuses on a different matter, and the two rabbis are guided by the desire to help the man get out of the sin of intermarriage. Here is the responsum.

A few pages prior to this, Sadowsky has a responsum from 1906, when he was a rav in Albany. Here he discusses converting the son of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. The mother had no interest in converting. Sadowsky agrees to convert the child who would, of course, be raised in an intermarried home without any Torah or mitzvot. He sent his responsum to the great R. Moses Danishefsky, the rav of Slobodka, and Danishefsky agreed with him. There is absolutely no discussion about the fact that the boy will be brought up without Torah observance. Both Sadowsky and Danishefsky assume that there is a benefit to being Jewish, even if one is being brought up in an intermarried home.[30] Here are the responsa from Rabbis Sadowsky and Danishefsky.

The technical issues are probably easier in this last case, as a child doesn’t need to have kabbalat mitzvot to be converted. Yet it is still significant that the issue of being raised in a non-religious home is not considered. There have been cases in Israel where the rabbinate refuses to convert children in situations like this, since the parents are not religious. The parents are thus forced to raise non-Jewish Hebrew speaking children, who of course will serve in the army and then marry Jewish Israelis.

For another example of converting women where there is no real expectation that they will be “observant” (by current standards), since their husbands were themselves not religious, see this responsum by R. Judah Leib Zirelson, from his Atzei ha-Levanon, no. 63.

I could cite a number of other sources, but it should be obvious by now that the lenient approach is hardly a daat yahid, identified only with R. Uziel. I believe that an examination of the responsa literature reveals that until recently this was a mainstream approach among both rabbis doing conversions and poskim who dealt with this issue. I am not saying that it was the dominant approach, only that it was widespread. As we all know, however, many converts of years past would not be accepted by batei din today. (Nothing I have mentioned so far should imply that R. Druckman’s beit din followed any of the sources mentioned so far. From what I have been able to determine, his beit din required a lengthy instruction period as well as attachment to an Orthodox family during this period, and also complete acceptance of mitzvot. For one relevant article, see R. David Bass in Tzohar 30, available here.)

There is another important source, a pre-modern responsum that is not mentioned by Sagi and Zohar and is directly relevant to the issue of revoking of conversions. It is cited by the Shas member of Kenesset (and author of seforim), R. Hayyim Amselem,[31] as part of his responsum against the revoking of any conversions. R. Simeon ben Tzemach Duran, Tashbetz, vol. 3, no. 47, writes as follows:

מי שלא נתגייר אלא שעה אחת וחזר לסורו לאלתר ועבד ע”ז וחלל שבתות בפרהסיא כמנהגו קודם שנתגייר ומין הוא ומן המורדים הוא, דלא קרינן ביה אחיך כמ”ש למעלה, ואפ”ה חשבינן ליה ישראל משומד וקידושין קידושין . . . וכן ראיתי בתשובה למורי חמי הרב רבנו יונה שכתב כן, וכן כתוב בספר העיטור ובספר אבן העזר, שמעשה הי’ בכותי שקידש ואצרכוה גיטא מר רב יהודה ומר רב שמואל רישי כו’, והדבר ידוע שגזרו עליהם להיות כעכו”ם גמורים כדאיתא בפרקא קמא דחולין.

In other words, in a case where a convert immediately after the conversion practices idolatry and violates Shabbat, the rishonim mentioned hold that the conversion is valid and the person has the status of a sinning Jew. Today, we would be told that such a conversion is completely invalid, as it is obvious that the convert never intended to accept Judaism. The proof of this is that immediately following the conversion he continued in his old ways. Yet these rishonim hold that the conversion is binding.

R. Shlomo Daichovsky, until recently a dayan on the Supreme Rabbinic Court, held this position. Eight years ago he expressed his opinion against R. Avraham Sherman and wrote as follows:[32]

נשותיהן של שלמה ושמשון עבדו עבודה זרה – כך מפורש בתנ”ך. גירותן היתה מפוקפקת מלכתחילה, כלשון הרמב”ם: ‘והדבר ידוע שלא חזרו אלו, אלא בשביל דבר’. בנוסף: ‘הוכיח סופן על תחילתן שהן עובדות עבודה זרה שלהן’. ועוד יותר: ‘לא על פי בית דין גיירום’. יש כאן שלושה חסרונות גדולים. אין לי ספק, כי אם היתה באה גירות כזאת לפני בית הדין ברחובות, היו פוסלים אותה, ללא כל בעיה. יתכן, וגם אני הייתי מצטרף לכך. אף על פי כן, רואה אותן הרמב”ם כישראליות לכל דבר. ומוסיף בהלכה י”ד: ‘אל יעלה על דעתך ששמשון המושיע את ישראל או שלמה מלך ישראל שנקרא ידיד ה’ נשאו נשים נכריות בגיותן’. כלומר, אסור להעלות על הדעת, אפשרות כזו. ובעצם, למה לא?

אין מנוס ממסקנה כי בדיעבד, אינו כלכתחילה. ולא ניתן לפסול גיור בדיעבד, לאחר שנעשתה.

R. Ovadiah Yosef believes that we can void a conversion, but only if there was (or should have been) a certainty before the conversion that the whole thing was a sham. But if there was no reason to think so, even if the convert did not become an observant Jew the conversion is valid. He writes (Masa Ovadiah, p. 438 [33]):

“אם באמת היה הדבר גלוי וידוע מראש שאינם מקבלים עליהם עול תורה ומצוות, רק ע”ד האמור: ‘בפיו ובשפתיו כבדוני ולבו רחק ממני’, ואנן סהדי שלא נתכוונו מעולם לקיים המצוות בפועל, אז גם בדיעבד י”ל שאינם גרים. אבל אם לא היה כאן אומדנא דמוכח בשעת הגיור, אע”ג דלבסוף אתגלי בהתייהו, דינם כישראל מומר, שאע”פ שחטא ישראל הוא.

In the famous Seidman case, where R. Goren – based on R. David Zvi Hoffmann’s well-known responsum – converted a woman who was going to be living with a kohen after the conversion, R. Ovadiah agreed that the conversion was valid be-diavad. (See R. Shilo Rafael, “Giyur le-Lo Torah u-Mitzvot,” Torah she-Baal Peh 13 (1971), p. 131).

R. Yitzhak Yaakov Weiss was opposed to voiding conversions carried out by a valid beit din (Minhat Yitzhak, vol. 6, no. 107):

אם היה הגירות נעשה בפני בי”ד כשרים היינו מוכרחים לומר שהבי”ד בדקו היטב בשעת מעשה וראו שמקבלים בלב שלם, ע”כ אף שראינו שאח”כ אין מחזיקין במה שקבלו עליהם אמרינן דהדרו בהו ויש להם דין ישראל מומר

The rabbis at Kollel Eretz Hemdah were asked from Karlsruhe, Germany, about people who convert and continue to violate Shabbat and act no differently than before the conversion.[34] In other words, they fooled the Beit Din. Are they to be regarded as converts? The reply is that while le-hatkhilah one cannot convert people unless they accept to observe the Torah

אי-אפשר לבטל את הגירות של גרים שנתגיירו בבית-דין אורטודוקסי, אף על פי שלא היו כנים בבית-הדין ולא קיבלו על עצמם באמת לקיים את כל מצוות התורה, כל עוד שבאמת הם רוצים להיות יהודים, ורוצים להשתייך לעם ישראל.

As mentioned already, this is a matter that will have to be decided by the halakhic authorities. But I think that what I have written so far is sufficient to establish that there has been a great deal of distortion regarding this issue, often by well-meaning people. (In particular, I noticed that a number of writers, including talmidei hakhamim, have mistakenly claimed that the Bah is the only one to say that the Rambam didn’t require kabbalat mitzvot be-diavad.)

What is important to remember is that it is not just some modern Orthodox and religious Zionist rabbis who oppose the revoking of a conversion, but no less a figure than the Tashbetz. If today’s authorities disagree, that is their right, but it is simply wrong for haredi leaders to say that conversions have always required absolute commitment to mitzvah observance, and that lacking such commitment the conversions were always regarded as having no validity. As is often the case, there are different traditions. The adherents of the stricter approach are attempting to recreate the past, as if there has been only one approach. In fact, there is an even more radical view found in the rishonim. I refer to the Meiri’s position that be-diavad one can convert without a beit din. That is, following circumcision one can then accept the Torah and immerse all by oneself, and ex post facto it is a valid conversion.[35]

I understand that all the discussions about the revoking of conversions have been very difficult for converts. After all, they were taught that once they convert they are as good as any other Jew. They have begun to learn that matters are not so simple. What is one of these converts supposed to think when they see the heading of R. Menasheh Klein’s responsum, Mishneh Halakhot vol. 9, no. 237: גרים כשרים אין להם יחוס וראוי לזרע ישראל לרחק מהם ?

He explains:

וודאי שיש מצוה לקרב ולאהוב את הגרים אבל אין זה מחייב להתחתן עמהם והרי משה רבינו קבל כמה גרים דכתיב וגם ערב רב עלה אתם ואפ”ה לא נתערבו בהם ולא התחתנו עמהם בני ישראל.

(By the way, the heading of the responsum following this is בענין נשים בעצם אם הם במדרגה אחת עם אנשים. Maybe on another occasion I will return to this, but I think everyone can predict what his conclusion is.)

This is a theme that is found in a number of his responsa.[36] In fact, it appears that if he had his way there would be a complete ban on conversions.[37] Since not every convert will be able to find another convert to marry, I guess he would advise having them marry the community’s losers, as no self-respecting Jew should marry a convert, at least not if you want your children to turn out right.[38] As to why the children of converts don’t turn out properly, Klein has his own theory.[39]

ודע דעלה בלבי מפני מה גרים לא יצליחו בניהם ע”פ רוב לפמ”ש דגר שנתגייר בידוע שנשמתו גם כן היתה מאותם שרצו לקבל התורה מסיני ולכן סופה שתתגייר, והנה כל זה נשמתו אבל נשמת זרעו שממשיך לא היו במעמד הר סיני ולכן אין זרעיו מצליחין . . . ומעתה מי פתי יסור הנה לישא אשה אשר יצאו ממנה בני סורר ומרה, ואם לפעמים ימצא שלא יצאו בדור הזה אולי עד עשרה דרי לא תבזה ארמאה ויחזרו ח”ו לסורם, ועכ”פ ע”פ רוב הכי הוא, והגע עצמך אם יאמרו לו שישא אשה חולנית שבעוד חמשה שנים תמות ורק על דרך נס יש אחת מיני אלף שתחיה או שע”פ רוב תלד בנים חולי גוף או רוח ודאי לא ישאנה . . . וכ”ש הכא שיצאו ממנו ח”ו דורות כאלו וכיוצא בה, מי הוא בעל אחריות שייעץ לאדם לישא אשה כזו.

He then quotes some negative things said about converts in the Zohar, and concludes as follows, in words that the Eternal Jewish Family [40] will never include in its literature and which are very hurtful:

ומעתה מי זה יכול ליעץ לאדם מישראל אשר נתחייבנו עליו ואהבת לרעך כמוך ואמרו ז”ל מה דסני לך לחברך לא תעבד והאיך נעבור על יעצנו רע ח”ו לזרע קודש משרשא קדישא וגזעא דקשוט להתערב ולתתגעל בגיורת המזוהמה בזוהמת הנחש . . . ולכן ודאי דכל מי שחש וחס על עצמו ועל זרעו יראה להדבק בטובים.

It is interesting that R. Moshe Sternbuch expresses the exact opposite approach to converts.[41] We can see the same sort of dispute between them with regard to baalei teshuvah, with Klein having a suspicious and at times negative view toward them, and Sternbuch having the opposite approach. But before one assumes that Klein’s outlook is just another example of the far-out positions he often takes, take a look at the following from R. Kook,[42] commenting on Berakhot 8a which states: “Some say it means: Do not marry a proselyte woman”:

כי ראוי לדאוג שיהיו תולדותיו זרע ברך ד’ בטבעם קשורים ג”כ בקשר טבעי עם ד’. אבל הגיורת, קשורה אינו כ”א בחירי ואיננו חזק כ”כ כהטבעי. ע”כ יש לחוש על קיומו, גם המדות הקדושות שהאומה הישראלית מעוטרות בהן חסרות הנה בהכרח, והמזג פועל על הבנים.

Finally, let me say something about RCA’s agreement with the Chief Rabbinate that all conversions already recognized by the RCA will be accepted in Israel. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that the Chief Rabbinate can deliver on this. That is because, as we have seen in the latest controversy, the dayanim are not bound by the Chief Rabbinate’s agreements. The Chief Rabbinate can accept a convert for its own purposes, but local dayanim have the autonomy to issue their own rulings, as we saw Rabbi Sherman do.

Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the agreement with the Chief Rabbinate will be upheld for a more fundamental reason: It violates the conscience and halakhic standards of the haredi world, which is currently taking over the religious court system. Let me explain what I mean. Many people who converted through RCA rabbis did not become completely observant. Some didn’t become observant at all. (I have already mentioned that this was the case with haredi rabbis as well.) If a dayan feels that such a conversion is invalid halakhically, the fact that the Chief Rabbinate made an agreement that all RCA conversions from previous years will be accepted is irrelevant. An agreement of this nature cannot override halakhah. So the dayan in question will be forced to reject this conversion no matter when it took place.

To show how difficult the situation can become, take a look at this article from Yated Neeman that appeared a few years ago.[43] I think we can get a good sense from it where we are heading with regard to conversion, and why the only solution is to have two separate court systems dealing with this matter. Yes, it is true that people converted by the Religious Zionist courts might not be accepted by the haredim, but so what? In the unlikely event that one of these converts or their children will want to marry a haredi, they can undergo a second haredi conversion. This is hardly a big deal, and certainly not reason enough for the Religious Zionists to entirely abandon their vision of halakhah, all in order to satisfy the haredi demands for a “single standard,” which by definition always means the haredi approach.

[1] In the meantime, see my article in the Forward. R. Menachem Genack responded here.

Contrary to Genack, the Modern Orthodox world would unquestionably still be eating non-glatt if it was available under (what they viewed as) reliable hashgachah. I also think everyone understood that my comments about the D symbol was not in criticism of identifying a product as dairy, but that the OU does not use the DE symbol (Incidentally, neither of these symbols existed when I was growing up. You knew if a product was dairy by looking at the ingredients, and one does not need to be concerned with the equipment unless you are specifically told – as you now are – that a product was made on dairy equipment. Even then, there are poskim who hold that you can ignore the DE and eat the product with meat, since despite what it says on the label, we don’t actually know that the parve food we are eating was produced within 24 hours of a dairy run.) Why do I think the D symbol instead of DE reflects a turn to the right?: I called the OU on three separate occasions and spoke to three different rabbis, and all of them explained that the reason DE is not used is because they have a fear that some small bits of milk might still be in the product. This is an incredible chumra, which incidentally has no real basis, as companies have to be very careful about not allowing milk into products which are non-dairy. (The threat of major lawsuits from people who are allergic to milk is a constant concern for the companies.) Furthermore, to claim that any such milk might exist in large enough quantities not to be batel is incredibly far-fetched. Despite raising these points in all three conversations, I was told that the organization chooses to be strict.

[2] R. Gedaliah Silverstone, who for many years was the leading rav in Washington, D.C. writes as follows (Tokhahat Hayyim, 1928, p. 14):

מעשה היה בעירי שטבח אחד הסגיר את הרב המשגיח בתיבת המקרה לערך חצי שעה ולא נתן לו לצאת, ואמרתי אז בדרוש על הטבח הזה שלכל הפחות היה לו פעם אחת בתיבת המקרה (שנקרא איז באקס) שלו חתיכה של בשר כשר.

For those who don’t read Hebrew: When the Mashgiach was locked in the freezer, Silverstone quipped that at least on one occasion there was a piece of kosher meat found there! See Yosef Goldman, Hebrew Printing in America 1735-1926 (Brooklyn, 2006), p. 765.

[3] “Emanuel Rackman: Gadfly of Modern Orthodoxy,” Modern Judaism 28 (May 2008), pp. 134-148.

[4] See here.

[5] When planning its ninetieth anniversary celebration in 1976, Yeshiva University was upset to find that Mordecai Kaplan was its oldest living graduate. This squelched any plans to make a big to-do in honor of the graduate. See Jeffrey S. Gurock and Jacob J. Schacter, A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community (New York, 1997), p. 1.

[6] No one has yet written an article focusing on the Rackman-Lamm contest for election to the presidency of YU, and the historical significance of Lamm’s victory. I hope that a capable YU student takes upon himself this task. To do it right, he must interview the people still alive who were on the committee and can testify as to what led them to go with the younger and less distinguished Lamm. Until now, all we have had are rumors and fairy tales. One example of this is the following passage from R. Herschel Schachter’s Mi-Peninei ha-Rav (p. 170).

לפני כעשרים וחמש שנים, לאחר שנפטר הר”ר שמואל בלקין, והיו צריכים לבחור נשיא חדש לישיבה אוניברסיטה, החליט רבנו שאחד מהמועמדים לא היה ראוי לאותה אצלטא בגלל דיעותיו הבלתי-מסורתיות. רבנו כינס את כל הרמי”ם ביחד, וערך וניסח מכתב לועד-הנאמנים של הישיבה שהוא מתנגד מאוד להתמנותו של פלוני, וחתם את שמו למטה, ומסר את המכתב לשאר הרמי”ם שאף הם יחתמו. אחד מהרמי”ם פתח ושאל לרבנו, ומה כל הרעש הזה, מה פשעו ומה חטאתו של אותו פלוני. ענה רבנו ואמר, שיהודי המדפיס במאמר בעתון שלפי דעתו שני חלקי ספר ישעיה נכתבו על ידי שני בני אדם נפרדים, אפיקורס הוא, ואי אפשר למנותו כנשיא של הישיבה. והמשיך הלה לטעון ואמר, דהלא אף באברבנאל גם כן מצינו לפעמים דברים זרים אשר הם נגד מסורות רז”ל חכמי התלמוד. וענה רבנו ואמר, שאף את האברבנאל לא היה רוצה לראות כנשיא ישיבה-אוניברסיטה. ובזה נסתיים הויכוח. כל הרמי”ם שהיו נוכחים בשעת מעשה חתמו על מכתבו של רבנו, המכתב נמסר לועד הנאמנים, ונתבטלה מועמדותו של הלה.

I have it on very good authority (from conversations with two people who were intimately involved in the election process) that the event described here never happened. There might, however, be a kernel of truth in the story, as is often the case with such tales, and perhaps one of the readers can illuminate the matter. As for Rackman and Deutero-Isaiah, since he is not a Bible scholar I am certain that he never expressed his opinion in the way described here (I also hope that the Rav never said what is attributed to him. R Joseph Karo, Kesef Mishneh, Berakhot 3:8 refers to Abarbanel as הנשר הגדול)

What Rackman does say is as follows (One Man’s Judaism, pp. 248-249):

The Talmud itself was not dogmatic, but contemporary Orthodoxy always feels impelled to embrace eveery Tradition as dogma. The Talmud suggests that perhaps David did not write all the Psalms. Is one a heretic because one suggests that perhaps other books were authored by more than one person or that several books attributed by the Tradition to one author were in fact written by several at different times? A volume recently published makes an excellent argument for the position that there was but one Isaiah, but must one be shocked when it is opined that there may have been two or three prophets bearing the same name? No Sage of the past ever included in the articles of faith a dogma about the authorship of the books of the Bible other than the Pentateuch. . . . How material is it that one really believes that Solomon wrote all three Scrolls attributed to him? Is the value of the writings itself affected? And if the only purpose is to discourage critical Biblical scholarship, then, alas, Orthodoxy is declaring bankruptcy: it is saying that only the ignorant can be pious – a reversal of the Talmudic dictum.

The book about Isaiah he refers to is Rachel Margalioth’s The Indivisible Isaiah: Evidence for the Single Authorship of the Prophetic Book, published in 1964 by Yeshiva University’s Sura Institute. (She was the wife of famed scholar Mordechai Margalioth.)

[7] No one has yet written an article focusing on the Rackman-Lamm contest for election to the presidency of YU, and the historical significance of Lamm’s victory. I hope that a capable YU student takes upon himself this task. To do it right, he must interview the people still alive who were on the committee and can testify as to what led them to go with the younger and less distinguished Lamm. Until now, all we have had are rumors and fairy tales. One example of this is the following passage from R. Herschel Schachter’s Mi-Peninei ha-Rav (p. 170).

What Rackman does say is as follows (One Man’s Judaism, pp. 248-249):

[8] Here is a bit of Jewish Scranton trivia. Many people know that Harry Wolfson and R. Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz lived there. But did anyone know that R. Herschel Shachter was born in Scranton?

[9] Naharei Afarsemon, mahadurah tinyana, no. 15.

[10] See here.

[11] R. Pini Dunner writes: “I asked him [R. Yosef Tzvi Dunner] if he remembered the Rebbe from his time in Berlin (1932-36). He smiled and said he remembered him well – he was the rather modern-dressed young man with the neatly trimmed beard who stood at the back of the shiur room and who would talk in learning after almost every shiur with Rav Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg z”l.” See here.

[12] See Shaul Shimon Deutsch, Larger Than Life, vol. 2 (New York, 1997), p. 75.

[13] Beit Yaakov, vol. 2, p. 256.

[14] Yevamot 6b

[15] I think an important point, which I have not seen anyone make, is that the entire concept of hillul ha-shem has basically disappeared in the United States. This perhaps has had some impact on Orthodox misconduct. What I mean is that in years past people were held back from doing things because of a fear of how it would look to the non-Jewish world, i.e., it would lead to Jews and Judaism being degraded in their eyes. Today, very few Jews think like that. We live in a great country. If a Jew, or an Orthodox Jew, does something illegal, even if he is on the front page of the newspaper, the typical non-Jew does not take this as a reflection on Jews as a whole or on the religion – and we have had many examples to illustrate the empirical truth of this statement. People know that there are scoundrels in every religious group, and one should not judge another person or religion based on the actions of individuals. When we have reached this wonderful point, what room is there for hillul ha-shem as a motivating factor?

[16] See J. David Bleich, Contemporary Halakhic Problems, vol. 1 pp. 194-196.

[17] Ve-Ha’aretz Natan li-Venei Adam (Alon Shvut, 2005), pp. 38ff.

[18] In attempting to explain why there is no explicit prohibition against cannibalism in the Torah, R. Kook expresses a similar concept (Otzarot ha-Re’iyah [2002], vol. 2, p. 89):

לא הוצרכה תורה לכתוב עליו איסור מפורש, שאין האדם צריך אזהרה על מה שקנה לו כבר מושג טבעי בזה.

Weinberg speaks of cannibalism as being against “the will of the Torah,” even though not explicitly forbidden. See Seridei Esh, vol. 3, no. 127 (p. 342). See the discussion in Daniel Sinclair, “Musar u-Mishpat ha-Tiv’i be-Mishpat ha-Ivri: Akihlat Basar Adam ke-Mashal,” available here.

[19] Community, Covenant and Commitment, ed. N. Helfgot (Jersey City, 2005), p. 276.

[20] Ibid., pp. 24-25.

[21] (Bnei Akiva, 2008). The passage I refer to comes from vol. 2, pp. 125-126.

[22] See Pesakim u-Khetavim, Yoreh Deah nos.89, 92. R. Abraham Dov Ber Kahana Shapiro expressed the same sentiments. See Devar Avraham, vol. 3, no. 28.

[23] In referring to such a case, where after conversion the woman would live on a secular kibbutz where she would not be able to observe mitzvot, R. Yehudah Herzl Henkin writes (Bnei Vanim, vol. 2, p. 135):

אם היא סברה שסדורי החיים שבקבוץ לא איפשרו לה דהוי כעין אונס שעומד לבוא עליה לפי דעתה ואינו חסרון בקבלת המצוות אף על פי שלדינא אינו אונס שהרי לא נאנסה להשאיר בקבוץ.

[24] Teshuvot, vol. 1, no. 41.

[25] Divrei Malkiel, vol. 6, no. 19.

[26] Iggerot Moshe, Yoreh Deah I, no. 160. This notion, that even apparently obvious Jewish laws could be viewed by some people as not binding, has all sorts of ramifications and has often dealt with by poskim. One interesting example is Teshuvot Maharam Lublin, no. 15, where R. Meir of Lublin was asked about a man who was caught having sex with a Christian prostitute, and he was sentenced to death. He could escape this sentence by converting to Christianity. (The responsum, which was sent to the city of Apta, deals with a young man held prisoner by the “Ishmaelites” because he was found with an “Ishmaelite” prostitute. Obviously, R. Meir is speaking in code, as Muslims were not in large supply in Apta. I will speak more about this sort of code in a future post.) The local community wanted to know if they had an obligation to ransom him, as it could be that the imprisoned man had the status of a mumar le-teavon. R. Meir rejects this point and offers the following incredible justification:

ופרט בזמנינו זה בעו”ה שרבים נכשלים בעבירה זו שאין להחשיבה כמומר לתיאבון.

See also the famous responsum of R. Akiva Eger (Teshuvot, vol. 1, no. 96), who deals with otherwise otherwise religious Jews who shave with a razor. (While reading his words ask yourself if the community he describes sounds more like a haredi community or a Modern Orthodox one.):

י”ל דהשתחת בתער דנתפשט בעו”ה אצל הרבה לא חשב שזהו איסור כ”כ דלא משמע להו לאינשי דאסור, וכאשר באמת נזכר בג”ע שהשיב להמוכיח שהרבה אנשים חשובים עושים כן, וכיון דבאמת פשתה המספחת בזמנינו גם לאותן הנזהרים בשאר דברים נדמה להם דאינו איסור כ”כ.

R. Eliezer Papo, Pele Yoetz, s. v. hov, writes:

ע”פ מה דקיימא לן אומר מותר אנוס הוא ומאחר שדרך איש ישר בעיניו נמצא שהוא אומר מותר ואנוס הוא.

The last three sources mentioned are quoted by R. Zvi Yehudah Kook, Li-Netivot Yisrael, vol. 1 pp. 154-155.

[27] Iggerot Moshe, Yoreh Deah III, no. 106.

[28] See here.

[29] Mishnat Avraham, vol. 2, p. 274.

[30] R. Moshe Feinstein recognized the logic of this approach. See Iggerot Moshe, Yoreh Deah I, no. 158:

לא ברור הדבר במדינה זו שהוא זכות כיון שבעוה”ר קרוב שח”ו לא ישמור שבת וכדומה עוד איסורים. אך אפשר שמ”מ הוא זכות שאף רשעי ישראל עדיפי מעכו”ם.

Iggerot Moshe, Even ha-Ezer IV, no. 26:

וגם אף אם לא יתגדלו להיות שומרי תורה מסתבר שהוא זכות דרשעי ישראל שיש להם קדושת ישראל ומצותן שעושין הוא מצוה והעבירות הוא להם כשגגה הוא ג”כ זכות מלהיות נכרים.

R. David Horowitz, Imrei David, no. 172, also permits the conversion of the child, and holds out hope that the parents will do teshuvah (apparently even including the non-Jewish mother in this):

מה לנו להתחכם נגד מצות ד’ . . . מצינו כי אדם רע עשוי לעשות תשובה, וגם כאן נאמר כי עוד יבוא יום וישעה אדם אל עושהו ותפקחנה עיני עורים וידעו כי ערומים הם והרבה לחטוא.

[31] Or Torah, Tamuz 5768.

[32] See here.

[33] In Yabia Omer, vol. 10, Yoreh Deah no. 26, he decides that a particular conversion can be voided, and one of the reasons is subsequent non-observance. Yet this was not the main justification for his decision. In addition, this was a special case as it concerned an agunah.

[34] Be-Mar’eh ha-Bazak, vol. 3, p. 149

[35] Beit ha-Behirah, Shabbat 68a.

[36] See e.g., Mishneh Halakhot, vol. 10, no. 239:

ודאי דזרע אברהם יצחק ויעקב המיוחסים מתרחקים מן הגרים כפי האפשר הגם שמקרבים אותם מצד מצות ואהבתם את הגר אבל אין זה מצוה לנו להתחתן עמהם.

I certainly think he is going overboard when he writes (ibid., vol. 15, p. 151): ואין ממנים גר להיות שמש בביהכ”נ

[37] See ibid., vol. 16, p. 384: .ומשבח אני בזה מנהג הספרדים שאין מקבלין בקהלותיהם גרים He is referring to the Syrian ban on converts, which has its own racist elements, as in both the popular and even in some of the rabbinic mind of this community there is a stress on “pure Jewish blood.” This latter point is far removed from opposition to converts in order to prevent intermarriage, and leads to a shunning of all converts, even those converted as babies, as well as a shunning of children and even grandchildren of converts.

[38] ] See ibid., vol. 9, no. 239

[39] See ibid., vol. 10 no. 239.

[40] See here.

[41] Teshuvot ve-Hanhagot, Even ha-Ezer no. 728. See also ibid., vol. 2 no. 623, where he writes: עיקר היחוס הוא כששומרים מצוות.

[42] Ein Ayah, Berakhot 8a.

[43] Available here. The “so-called Orthodox rabbis” referred to in this article are Rabbis Gedaliah Dov Schwartz, Reuven Bulka and Shmuel Goldin. The RCA is described as an “organization of rabbis who call themselves Orthodox, but are known as modern.” The article also defames Rabbis Shear Yashuv Cohen and Shalom Messas. There are a number of falsehoods in the article, but let me just mention one: “The conversion was made for the purpose of marriage, and such types of converts are not to be accepted according to the halocho.” Yet the almost unanimous opinion of poskim, from all circles, is that when confronted with a possible intermarriage, one should convert the non-Jewish partner if all all feasible. The only dispute is how observant the convert must be in order to be accepted.

Emek ha-Netziv : The Manuscript

Emek ha-Netziv : The Manuscript

by Gil S. Perl

Rabbi Dr. Gil S. Perl is dean of the Margolin Hebrew Academy/Feinstone Yeshiva of the South in Memphis. The following selection comes from his new book, The Pillar of Volozhin: Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin and the World of Nineteenth-Century Lithuanian Torah Scholarship.

The manuscript of ‘Emek ha-Netziv remains in the possession of the Shapira family and there are no additional extant copies. The family are prominent members of a staunchly traditionalist Ḥaredi community in the Geulah neighborhood of Jerusalem. Members of this community generally oppose sustained contact with Western culture and its representative institutions, including universities of any type. The Shapira family seems to harbor additional skepticism toward those researching Netziv , due to the fact that his relative openness to certain aspects of non-traditional culture has made him a controversial figure in some ultra-Orthodox communities.[1]These facts, combined with the sheer value of their manuscript collection,[2] make the family understandably guarded about allowing access to thematerials they possess. However, with the assistance of Rabbi Zevulun Charlop, Dean of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary in New York City and a cousin of the Shapira family,[3] I was able to secure brief and accompanied access to the manuscript from which ‘Emek ha-Netziv was taken.[4]

The manuscript is handwritten in three volumes, corresponding to the three volumes of the printed text. The first two volumes were bound, but the binding has completely deteriorated and sections of each volume easily separate from one another. The third volume seems never to have been bound. The pages of all three volumes are severely frayed at the edges.

As suspected, the manuscript contains a core text with countless interlinear and marginal additions as well as words and entire lines that have been crossed out:

It is important to note that the brackets and parenthesis which appear throughout the printed text do not correspond to these additions. Rather, they correspond to places in which Netziv placed parenthesis or brackets around his own words both in the core text and in the additions. The additions and the notes he appended to the end of the manuscript (referred to by the Netziv as hashmatot )[5] were incorporated without indication into the printed text.

The script of the core text through the first two volumes and half of the third is a fairly consistent narrowly-spaced brown cursive[6] written with a fairly wide-tipped pen. In the second half of the third volume the script of the core text changes to a blacker, wider-spaced cursive seemingly done with a thinner-tipped pen. The script of the later marginal additions varies.

The notes which appear scattered throughout the printed text (referred to by the Netziv as hagahot) were written at the same time as the core text,[7] as evidenced by the identical script used and the intentional indentations left in the text of the core commentary in order to create space for the hagahot. The hagahotalso contain marginal additions. A typical page in the manuscript containing hagahot, then, is represented in the following diagram:

The reference to the newly printed book ‛Emek Halakhah mentioned above appears as an interlinear addition to the core text, thus implying that for that particular section of the commentary on Naso, the core text was written prior to 1845 and the addition was included after 1845. The references to Reb ‘Iẓele are also found in the core text with the word “she-yiḥyeh,” which dates those passages of the core text to the years prior to 1849 as well.[8]

The orderly progression of chapters in the core text, which begin at varying places on the physical page of the manuscript, indicates that Netziv wrote down his comments in this manuscript in proper sequence, following the order of Sifre. [9]That is, one can safely assume that in this particular copy of the manuscript, the core text of Netziv’s comments on Parashat Bamidbar were committed to writing before those of Parashat Naso, and his comments on pesikta’ aleph were committed to writing prior to those of pesikta’ bet.[10] If the core text of the manuscript was written sequentially, and the core text of EH Naso 49 (I:181) was necessarily written prior to the publication of Zev Wolf ben Yehudah Ha-Levi’s 1845 publication of ‘Emek Halakhah, one can deduce that, at the very least, the entire core text until that point was also committed to writing prior to 1845. Likewise, from the appearance of the word “she-yiḥyeh” in the core text of Be-ha‛alotekha andShelaḥ[11] one can assume that the text up to that point was written prior to Reb ’Iẓele’s death in 1849. If we then add that the handwriting remains rather constant in the core text until the second half of the third volume, we have reason to believe that all of the core text until that shift in appearance was committed to writing prior to 1849.

Thus, one can safely conclude that a good portion of the printed edition of‘Emek ha-Netziv was indeed written while Netziv was a young man in his twenties and thirties. As such, the general character and main attributes of the work must be seen as a product of the cultural and intellectual atmosphere of Lithuanian Jewish society in the 1830s and 1840s. At the same time, given the large number of later additions and the lack of any demarcation in the printed text, one can not firmly ascribe a date to any specific passage found in it, with the exception of those which contain explicit or implicit references to the time of composition.

Censorship

The process of preparing ‘Emek ha-Netziv for publication was painstakingly performed by the Shapira family over the course of many years, and thus the printed text seems to be relatively free of printing errors. However, there are two hints in the printed text which suggest the possibility of editorial censorship.

As noted above, Netziv’s relative openness to sources of information beyond the pale of the current traditionalist canon is a character trait which is at odds with the values of the contemporary ultra-Orthodox community. As we will describe at length in the pages that follow, ‘Emek ha-Netziv is filled with citations and references to such sources of information. On two such occasions the reference found in the printed text appears to be intentionally altered so as to prevent proper identification of the source. In his comments on ‘Ekev, Netziv writes that for further study one should consult the book called “thirty-two Middot of [sic] in Vilna.”[12] In all probability Netziv is referring to the book published in 1822 called Netivot Olam: Beraita de-32 Middot with the commentary of Ẓvi Hirsch Katzenellenbogen. Katzenellenbogen is known to have been a member of Vilna’s more “enlightened” circles.[13] As such, the possibility exists that the publisher intentionally left out Katzenellenbogen’s name. This prospect is bolstered by the fact that the manuscript contains a name in the standard acronymic form where the printed edition has a blank space. When I asked to look at this reference in the manuscript, it was reviewed by two members of the Shapira family and I was denied permission to look at it. Nonetheless, I did manage to see what seemed like a legible acronym ending in the letter qof.[14] Although it is possible that the editor could not discern the letters of the acronym, if such had been the case one would expect a bracketed editorial note, such as those which appear on several occasions in the printed text where the manuscript is illegible due to stains or frayed edges.[15]

The second possible instance of editorial censorship concerns a passage in Netziv’s commentary on Shoftim which refers the reader to “hakdamat ḥumash besau[16] ve-‘tav’’alef’.”[17] The most common referent for the initials tav”alef in the context of Torah commentary is Targum Onkelos, the ancient Aramaic translation of the Bible. However, if the bet of the word “besau” is replaced with adaled so as to read “desau” we might suggest that the tav”alef stands for targum Ashkenaz, German translation, rather than Targum Onkelos. As such, the citation would be of the well-known introduction to Moses Mendelssohn’s Torah commentary, which was printed in Dessau and contains a German translation of the biblical text. The fact that the subject matter under discussion in this passage of Netziv’s commentary correlates to subject matter discussed by Mendelssohn in the introduction to his Bible commentary supports the latter suggestion.

We might raise the question, then, as to whether the printed text was intentionally manipulated so as to prevent easy identification of Mendelssohn’s work or whether the daled of Dessau was simply mistaken as a bet by the printsetter.[18]The fact that this particular citation was underlined in pink pencil in the manuscript bolsters the suspicion that the publishers of ‘Emek ha-Netziv were sensitive to the potential controversy the citation of Mendelssohn might have caused in the ultra-Orthodox community and that they therefore intentionally altered the printed text.[19]

Both of the above instances of possible censorship beg the question as to why the references were included altogether if the printers wished them to remain unidentified. Furthermore, as will be discussed below, the printed text of ‘Emek ha-Netziv contains references to numerous other works that lie well beyond the traditional contemporary ultra-Orthodox canon which were not censored. As such, the evidence for editorial censorship cannot be considered conclusive. Nonetheless, these two passages do raise the possibility that other parts of the text were more cleverly censored or that other citations were completely deleted.

The End of ‘Emek ha-Netziv

The end of Netziv’s commentary on Sifre, as it appears in the printed edition of ‘Emek ha-Netziv , is also an issue of concern to the critical reader. The commentary in both the printed edition and the manuscript comes to an abrupt halt halfway through the parashah of Ki Teẓeh[20] and well before the end of the text of Sifre itself. One is therefore led to question whether Netziv truly ended his commentary there, or whether there was more to the commentary that does not appear in the printed text.

Several factors indicate that Netziv’s commentary did, in fact, extend beyondpiska’ 27 of Parashat Ki Teẓeh.[21] To begin, Netziv starts his commentary at the beginning of Sifre with an introductory double couplet, and thus one would expect a similar poetic composition at the end of the work, but none appears in the printed text or in the manuscript. Furthermore, a statement of completion marks the close of each parashah throughout the text, but none appears at the end of Parashat Ki Teẓeh. Likewise, the completion of the Book of Numbers is marked by two rhyming stanzas of nine lines each,[22] while Deuteronomy, and the commentary as a whole, has no formal conclusion at all.

One must entertain the possibility that the abrupt ending of the work suggests not that the final portion of the commentary is missing from the printed text but that Netziv never completed the commentary. This theory might be supported by the fact that the statements of conclusion which follow everyparashah are in poetic form in the first two volumes, whereas in the third volume, which consists of the Book of Deuteronomy, the statements consist of nothing more than “Piska’ 8 is complete and [so too] the entire portion of ve-’Etḥ anan.”[23] One might interpret this phenomenon as suggesting that the final touches, such as the transformation of abrupt closing statements into clever couplets, were never applied to the third volume of the work.

Such a conclusion seems unlikely, however, when one considers the numerous revisions and recensions to which Netziv subjected the rest of the commentary. One generally does not spend the time editing, expanding, and re-copying a work that one has yet to complete. Furthermore, in his introduction toHa‘amek She’elah Netziv regrets that he has not yet brought his commentary onSifre to press, but he makes no mention of not having completed writing the text. Similarly, in a comment found in his Harḥev Davar, published along with his Ha‛amek Davar in 1878, Netziv writes that while he has not elaborated on a particular point in this work, he will do so at length when God grants him the merit of “publishing the commentary on Sifre.”[24] Here too, Netziv does not ask for God’s help in finishing the work, but in bringing it to press. Likewise, Avraham Yiẓḥak Kook, one of the outstanding students of Netziv , publically called upon his teacher to publish his Sifrecommentary in a footnote to a biographical article on Netziv published in 1888.[25]He too seems to suggest that the work was complete.

The physical form of the third volume of the manuscript makes the possibility of missing material rather plausible as well. The printed text contains commentary to every piska’ in Sifre up until piska’ 27 of Parashat Ki Teẓeh.[26] There is no commentary on piska’ot 27-54, but the text resumes with brief comments on piska’54[27] and then ends completely. In the manuscript, piska’ 27 ends at the bottom of a page, which raises the possibility that further commentary followed on subsequent pages which are now lost. The brief comments to piska’ 54 appear on the reverse side of comments labeled as hashmatot; therefore, they may well represent hashmatot to a core commentary, now lost, on the end of Deuteronomy.[28] When one considers the fact that, unlike the first two volumes, the third volume of the manuscript is not bound and does not appear to ever have been bound, the notion that pages from the end of the commentary were lost must be seriously considered.[29]

Conclusions

The conclusion one must draw from the above investigation of the text of‘Emek ha-Netziv is that a historical analysis of the content found in the printed text must be made with caution. The possibility of the text being incomplete must always be considered both in regard to possible editorial censorship and in regard to the possibility that the text originally contained additional chapters that are currently lost. Whereas the core text of the commentary prior to Shelaḥ [30] can be rather definitively dated prior to 1849, the printed text makes no distinction between the core text and later additions. As such, with the exception of a few passages which include embedded historical evidence, no single passage in the printed text can conclusively be dated to the 1830s or 1840s. Nonetheless, there is sufficient evidence, both in Netziv’s own testimony with which this chapter began and in the clues offered by the text and corroborated by the manuscript, to conclude that the bulk of the commentary does indeed reflect a project with which Netziv was engrossed in his early years. Thus, trends which can be identified throughout the printed text and which comprise its general character must indeed be seen as reflective of the intellectual currents of Lithuanian Jewish culture in the 1830s and 1840s.

[1] In recent years, certain circles in the ultra-Orthodox community recommended that Moshe Dombey and N.T. Erline’s adaptation of Barukh Ha-Levi Epstein’s Mekor Barukh, entitled My Uncle the Neẓiv (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Mesorah Publications, 1988), not be read due to its portrayal of Neẓiv as one who did not share all of the values of the contemporary ultra-Orthodox community. See Jacob J. Schacter, “Haskalah, Secular Studies, and the Close of the Yeshiva in Volozhin in 1892,” Torah u-Madda Journal 1 (1989): 76-133; Don Seeman, “The Silence of Rayna Batya: Torah, Suffering, and Rabbi Barukh Epstein’s Wisdom of Women’,” Torah u-Madda Journal 6 (1995-1996): 91-128; Don Seeman and Rebecca Kobrin, “’Like One of the Whole Men’: Learning, Gender and Autobiography in R. Barukh Epstein’s Mekor Barukh,”Nashim 2 (1999): 52-94; Brenda Bacon, “Reflections on the Suffering of Rayna Batya and the Success of the Daughters of Zelophehad,” Nashim 3 (2000): 249-256; Dan Rabinowitz, “Rayna Batya and Other Learned Women: A Reevaluation of Rabbi Barukh Halevi Epstein’s Sources,” Tradition 35: 1 (Summer 2001): 55-69. This position toward Neẓiv, however, was already espoused a century earlier when a series of articles appeared in the Galician newspaper Maḥzike Ha-Da’at (volumes 16, 17, and 18) warning traditionalist Jews to stay away from Netziv’s Bible commentary,Ha‛amek Davar, due to its modern stance toward the authority of the Talmudic Sages. A similar sentiment is reflected in the fact that many ultra-Orthodox houses of study have refused, and continue to refuse, to include Ha‛amek Davar in their libraries.

[2] A value which stands in stark contrast to the overwhelming poverty of most of Geulah’s inhabitants.

[3] See Neil Rosenstein, The Unbroken Chain. (New York: CIS Publishers, 1990) 433-440.

[4] My examination of the manuscript took place in July of 2004 with the assistance of a Summer Travel Grant awarded by the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University.

[5] The hashmatot probably represent additions to the text which Neẓiv could not fit in the margins of the page of the core text due to lack of space.

[6] The letters are in cursive form, but Neẓiv generally did not attach his letters to each other. The brown color was probably black when originally applied but has lost its vibrance with the passage of time.

[7] The hagahot seem to have been intended as tangential footnotes to the main commentary in a manner similar to the way in which Netziv’s Harḥev Davar was intended to supplement his Ha‛amek Davar on the Bible. This format was typical of Lithuanian Torah commentary, for reasons which will be explained in Chapter Three below.

[8] I had hoped to demarcate the beginning and end of each addition in my own printed text along with a description of the script used in each addition. The Shapira family, however, was not willing to grant me the sustained access to the manuscript required for such an endeavor.

[9] If it had not been written in order, one would expect to find empty spaces on the bottom of a page where a particular chapter or section ended and new sections beginning on the top of new pages. Instead the end of each section in the manuscript is followed immediately by the beginning of the next section, indicating that they were written sequentially.

[10] There is reason to believe that this manuscript itself is a later recension of an earlier edition. The family showed me what they said were the few extant leaves of an earlier version of the commentary written by Neẓiv which predates the manuscript used for the printed text, but I was not allowed to study them at length. As such, the above analysis does not suggest that Neẓiv actually composed his commentary according to the sequence of the Sifre text, but simply that the transcription of the core text of the commentary into the manuscript at hand was done in sequential order.

[11] See note 14 above.

[12] EH ‘Ekev 4 (III: 52).

[13] See Chapter Two below.

[14] My access to the manuscript was always limited to sitting next to a member of the Shapira family, who would turn to the page I wished to check and look at the specific textual anomaly before deciding whether to let me look as well. In this case I was able to peer over his shoulder and attempt to decipher the acronym. The exact answer this member of the Shapira family gave me was, “Suffice it to say, it is not a siman in Shulḥan Arukh.”

[15] E.g., EH Naso 42 (I: 162); EH Naso 44 (I: 173); EH Matot 1 (II: 279); EHMatot ‛Ekev (III: 45); EH Re’eh 9 (III: 92).

[16] Bet-ayyin-sameh-vav.

[17] EH Shoftim 16 (III: 189).

[18] In cursive Hebrew writing the bet and daled look quite similar.

[19] A glaring example of this type of censorship recently appeared in a photo-offset of the 1926 Frankfurt edition of David Ẓvi Hoffmann’s responsa, Melamed le-Ho‛il, published by the Lebovitz-Kest foundation. In Responsa #56 in the original printing (II: 50), Hoffmann gives his approval, in exigent cases, for an Orthodox Jew to swear before a civil court without a head covering. In the context of his piece, Hoffmann also attests to the fact that Samson Raphael Hirsch instructed the students in the Frankfurt Orthodox school which he founded to cover their heads only for Judaic studies and allowed them to remain bare-headed for their secular studies. The recent photo-offset contains an introduction by a grandson of Hoffmann, David Ẓvi ben Natan Naftali Hoffmann, which gives the reader the impression that the grandson belongs to the ultra-Orthodox community of Jerusalem. Responsa #56, however, permits a practice clearly anathema to that community. Hence, when one turns to page fifty in the off-set, in place of what was earlier Responsa #56, one finds a blank space. I thank Rabbi Moshe Schapiro, librarian at the Mendel Gottesman Library of Yeshiva University, for bringing this example to my attention.

[20] EH Teẓeh (III: 296).

[21] Note that the piska‘ot of Neẓiv do not correspond to those of the Sifre text with which the commentary is printed. In the text of Sifre the last piska’ for which there is continuous commentary is 43, and it then resumes in 54. See Chapter 5.

[22] EH Mas‛ai (II: 334).

[23] EH Ve-’Etḥanan (III: 43).

[24] HrD Num. 6: 19.

[25] Avraham Yizhak Kook, “Rosh Yeshivat Eẓ Ḥayyim,” Kenesset Yisrael, ed. S.J Finn (Warsaw, 1888), 138-147. Also in Ma’amarei HaRe’iyah (Jerusalem, 1984), 123-126.

[26] EH Teẓeh (III: 296). Piska’ot here are according to Netziv’s division. For more on Netziv’s method of dividing piska’ot see Chapter Three below.

[27] EH Teẓeh (III: 299). In the absence of Netziv’s commentary, piska’ot here refer to the division found in the standard Sulzbach edition.

[28] When I asked the Shapira family about the strange ending of work, they too suggested that there might have been more that was lost. When I asked them who had possession of the manuscript prior to them, they declined to give me any names and replied instead, “Suffice it say, it has been handed down, son after son.”

[29] The existence of commentary on the latter parts of Deuteronomy could have been conclusively proven had Neẓiv included a reference to it in his other writings. I have found no such reference, but no conclusions can be drawn from silence.

[30] EH Shelaḥ 1 (II: 10)

Review of Reckless Rites

While it is a bit out of season, I wanted to review Elliott Horowitz’s new book Reckless Rites. In this book, subtitled “Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence,” everything is viewed through the prism of the violence inflicted by the Jews upon their enemies at the end of Esther.

While arguably, the violence at the end is only a minor part of the story for some that aspect has clouded everything about the Book of Esther and Purim. First Horowitz looks at how the Book was viewed by non-Jews. Some had a very negative view due to the Jewish revenge. They considered that motif, un-biblical (read non-Christian). Horowitz goes through each of the characters and how first non-Jews interpreted their actions. For instance, Mordechi was treated rather harshly by many of these commentators as was Esther due to her passivity. What is especially fascinating is how these non-Jewish understandings, at times, crept into Jewish thought as well. Thus, Horowitz documents Jews parroting these rather un-Jewish, at it were, interpretations.

Horowitz then tackles the overarching theme of Amalek and how this has been understood throughout history. Some hold there is no obligation of destroying Amalek today while others are willing to label any perceived enemy of Jews as deserving of the harsh consequences of Amalek. Some of these examples are rather disturbing.

After dealing with the Book of Esther specifically, Horowitz turns his focus to Jewish practice on Purim. Specifically, he deals with Jewish violence or violent acts on Purim directed at non-Jews. He provides a discussion of the stereotype of the “mild” (read the wimp) Jew including its origins and whether it is borne out by history. He then discusses numerous, diverse examples spanning from the 5th century until today of Jewish violence. Some is not physical violence, instead it is host desecration or general enmity of non-Jewish symbols while other, most recently Barukh Goldstein is physical violence in its worst form.

In an effort to play down some of these incidents, we have Jewish historians who decided to avoid discussion of such matters, or at times downplay their significance. However, in light of the many examples here, it is very difficult to ignore such examples. Horowitz is very convincing in the scope of this idea and how prevalent this is. It is especially telling when tracing and seeing how systematically Jews have decided to sweep under the rug these examples, it demonstrates that censorship is not limited to any one group and even amongst supposedly dispassionate scholars, they too can fall prey to their own biases.

The detail and research is amazing , Horowitz leaves no stone unturned. All in all, this book sheds new light of the story of Purim, the Book of Esther and Jewish history. It provides a new way of viewing the story of Esther and Jewish ideas towards violence.