Marc B. Shapiro – Forgery and the Halakhic Process

Forgery and the Halakhic Process
by Marc B. Shapiro


What is the role of academic learning in the determination of halakhah? In particular, I am referring to knowledge which is not available to the posek and which would affect his halakhic decision. This is, of course, a wide-ranging issue of which I will only discuss one aspect here, that relating to forgery. However, since the issue of the Mosaic text and R. Moshe Feinstein is relevant here, and I mentioned both of them in my last posting, let me make a few brief preliminary comments on this.


In The Limits of Orthodox Theology I quoted the following comment of R. Bezalel Naor, who was quoting his teacher, the Gaon R. Shlomo Fisher of Jerusalem: “The truth, known to Torah scholars, is that Maimonides’ formulation of the tenets of Jewish belief is far from universally accepted.” For those who don’t know, R. Fisher is one of the gedolim of our time, and you can see many of his shiurim on yeshiva.org.il. Many of these shiurim focus on Talmud (and he has published the great rabbinic work, Beit Yishai), but R. Fisher is also the only one of our gedolim who is an expert in Jewish philosophy. This explains why his Derashot Beit Yishai are very different than other collections of derashot. Professor Zev Harvey told me that from R. Fisher’s edition of Crescas’ Or ha-Shem, it is clear that he used Wolfson’s Hebrew text found in Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle.[1]

Someone I know currently attends R. Fisher’s weekly shiur on Avnei Miluim, the last half-hour of which is devoted to issues of hashkafah. Interestingly enough, he reported to me that a few weeks ago R. Fisher declared that he believes the Rambam abandoned his system of 13 Principles, the proof being that they are never mentioned as a unit in the Mishneh Torah.[2] In my book, I noted that R. Shlomo Goren held the same view. R. Goren also makes another interesting point, that while in the Commentary on the Mishnah Maimonides requires one to actually believe in certain principles, in the Mishneh Torah he only requires you not to deny any principles. One who has never heard of a principle obviously does not believe in it, which makes him a heretic according to the Commentary on the Mishnah. But according to the Mishneh Torah, since this person does not actually deny the principle, he is not regarded as a heretic.


Getting back to R. Moshe, as is well known, he ruled that the Commentary of R. Yehudah he-Hasid was a forgery, as he could not imagine that a rishon would acknowledge that there were some post-Mosaic passages in the Torah.[3] Only after my book appeared did Rabbi Naor tell me that the comment I quoted above in the name of R. Fisher was stated precisely with reference to R. Moshe’s positon on this issue. After R. Moshe banned R. Yehudah he-Hasid’s Commentary, R. Fisher commented that R. Moshe assumes that R. Yehudah he-Hasid has to accept the Rambam’s Principles, but in truth there were many disagreements with the Rambam, and R. Yehudah he-Hasid’s position on Mosaic authorship is one of them.

Along these lines, I read a recent shiur by R. Moshe Zuriel, a well-known baal machashavah in which he affirmed that all must accept the Thirteen Principles. I wrote to him asking what he would say about those who accepted the views of sages who disagreed with the Rambam, and I specifically referred to Ibn Ezra’s (exoteric) position that the last twelve verses were written by Joshua, which is a rejection of Maimonides’ insistence in the Eighth Principle that the entire Torah is Mosaic. He replied (emphasis added):

ודאי אני מודה שהסומך על ראב”ע (או אברבנאל וכיו”ב) ביחס לפסוקים הנוספים, איננו
נחשב לכופר, והוא נחשב ישראל . . . וכן כל דבר שיש מחלוקת ראשונים
In fact, in addition to the sources I cited in my book, Ralbag also says something interesting in this regard. Joshua 24:6 states:
ויכתב יהושע את הדברים האלה בספר תורת א-להים
Regarding this verse, the Talmud records a view that the reference is to the last eight verses of the Torah. But Ralbag explains it as referring to different verses:

ויכרת יהושע ברית לעם: על זה להיותם עובדים את ה’ ולהשאיר זכר לזה המעשה למען יבושו ישראל אם יסורו מאחרי ה’ כתב יהושע את הדברים האלה בספר תורת הא-להים

Another relevant source, which I also recently found, is R. Solomon David Sassoon, who wrote as follows (Natan Hokhmah li-Shelomo, p. 106; emphasis in original):

הדגש הוא על מה שאומר כי משה אמר זה מפי עצמו, אבל אם יאמר פסוקים אלה נביא אחר כתב אותם מפי הגבורה ומודה שקטע זה הוא מן השמים ומפי הגבורה, אדם שאומר כך אינו נקרא אפיקורוס, מה שהגדיר אותו כאפיקורוס אינו זה שאמר שלא משה כתב את הקטע אלא בזה שהוא אומר שדבר שזה מדעתו ומפי עצמו אמרו ושאין זה מן השמים

According to R. Sassoon, one who believes that parts of the Torah were written by a post-Mosaic prophet is not a heretic. (In another post I might speak more about the great R. Sassoon and his unique family.)

One of the strange passages in R. Yehudah he-Hasid’s Commentary is his assertion that the Hallel ha-Gadol (Psalm 136) was originally part of the Pentateuch and was later removed by David and placed in the Book of Psalms. In my book I note that this idea is also found in both R. Avigdor Katz (a rishon) and R. Menahem Zioni. I wrote: “Apparently, there was some tradition regarding this verse, the source and nature of which is unknown.” After my book appeared, R. Yaakov Hayyim Sofer published his Hadar Yaakov, vol. 1. On page 39, he notes that in two works of R. Eleazer ben Judah of Worms (the Rokeah), he mentions that Hallel ha-Gadol was recited by the Israelites at the Red Sea, a notion that is not found in extant rabbinic literature. (In Pesahim 117a it states that they recited the regular Hallel.) In R. Eleazar’s Siddur, p. 214, he cites Seder Olam as the source for this tradition. The editors refer the reader to Seder Olam Rabbah, yet nothing relevant appears there. Either R. Eleazar had a different version or he was referring to another book with this title. What is important for our purposes is that this tradition ties in with what is quoted by R. Yehudah he-Hasid and R. Avigdor Katz, even though the Rokeah doesn’t mention anything about this section being removed by David. Hopefully, more research into the writings of Ashkenazic rishonim will further illuminate matters.

Let me now speak of another issue, not of falsely ascribing forgery where there is none, but accepting as authentic that which is actually a forgery. The classic example is, of course, Besamim Rosh. There is no doubt that the volume is a forgery. There are those who have believed that at least some of the responsa are authentic, but it is more likely that the non-controversial material is a smokescreen for the controversial responsa. I plan to write an article about Besamim Rosh so I will not now reveal an internal proof, arrived at by use of a computer, that the book is a forgery. In an earlier article, I called attention to the fact that the Besamim Rosh assumes that a suicide has no share in the world to come, which is a popular 18th century conception, but not found among Ashkenazic or Sephardic rishonim.[4]

There is a talmid hakham, Rabbi Reuven Amar, who republished the Besamim Rosh and argues in his introduction that Saul Berlin was one of the gedolim. For all of his talmudic learning, Amar is very ignorant in this matter. He knows nothing about the history of Berlin and his haskalah ties. If he did, he would not have wanted to defend him. Yet Amar did know that many halakhic authorities quoted the Besamim Rosh, and he therefore wanted to turn it into a kosher book.

The problem Amar was faced with is what concerns me. What is one supposed to do with pesakim that rely on the Besamim Rosh? Fortunately, there can’t be many. In fact, offhand, I don’t know of any responsum in which a decision is based entirely, or even heavily, on Besamim Rosh, so that if you took this work away the decision would fall.

However, this is not the case with another forgery, as here the forgery is cited by all halakhic authorities of the last 140 years. I am referring to the Sefer ha-Eshkol, attributed to Rabbi Abraham ben Isaac. It was published by Rabbi Zvi Benjamin Auerbach (1808-1878), one of the leading German rabbis of his time. He was also the most prominent member of the famous Auerbach rabbinic family, which together with the Bamberger and Carlebach families (the ABCs, as they were known) were the most prominent rabbinic families in Germany.

According to Auerbach, his Sefer ha-Eshkol came from a Spanish manuscript. The work quickly became popular among scholars and was adorned with Auerbach’s commentary Nahal Eshkol, which is a mine of rabbinic knowledge. It came as quite a shock when in 1909, many years after Auerbach had died, the great scholar R. Shalom Albeck accused him of having invented the story of the Spanish manuscript in order to enable him to forge the work. This accusation aroused a great storm and four of the leading Orthodox scholars – David Zvi Hoffmann, Abraham Berliner, Jacob Schor, and Hanokh Ehrentreau – rushed to defend Auerbach, publishing the booklet Tzidkat ha-Tzadik (Berlin, 1910).

It is obvious that Auerbach’s defenders never gave Albeck’s charge any serious consideration. In their eyes, the fact that Auerbach was universally regarded as a tzadik, as well as one of the gedolim of Germany, rendered the accusation invalid from the start. There was no way they could impartially consider the evidence. In their mind they knew that for a pious Jew, some things are just impossible. Albeck responded to Tzidkat ha-Tzadik with the booklet Kofer ha-Eshkol (Warsaw, 1911), which explains how Albeck knew that the work is a forgery. In discussing the dispute between the four scholars on one side, and Albeck on the other, R. Shlomo Yosef Zevin[5] showed which side he was on.


אחד מול ארבעה – וההרגשה היא, שהנצחון לצדו של האחד

As far as I know, every academic scholar who has examined the evidence has concluded that Albeck is correct, and Auerbach’s Sefer ha-Eshkol is a forgery. This is so despite the defense of Auerbach by Issachar Dov (Bernard) Bergman in his essay in the Joshua Finkel Festschrift (New York, 1974;[6] it also appears in Sefer ha-Eshkol, vol. 4 [Jerusalem, 1986]).[7]

Needless to say, the supposed Spanish manuscript has never been found. In the words of Prof. Haym Soloveitchik, “Auerbach’s Eshkol appears as a clear forgery, incorporating arguments found in sixteenth, seventeenth, and even eightennth-century writings. . . . [The work] should not be used for historical purposes.[8] For this reason, I criticized Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar for citing Auerbach’s Eshkol in their Giyur u-Zehut Yehudit.[9] R. Bezalel Naor writes:
I was told the following anecdote by Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein. Licthenstein’s father-in-law, Rabbi Joseph Baer Soloveitchik (of Boston) expressed to Rabbi [Hayyim] Heller his amazement that the same obscure opinion of Mordecai in Niddah was to be found in the Eshkol, to which his mentor Hayyim Heller responded: “That is all?! You can find in Auerbach’s Eshkol a peckel Peri Megadims.” (Yiddish, a pack of Peri Megadim). . . . Prof. S.Z. Leiman informs me he found other irregularities in Auerbach’s historical works.”[10]
The late Prof. Israel M. Ta-Shma assumed that Auerbach’s Eshkol is a fourteenth-century forgery that he innocently published.[11] In discussing the issue, Ta-Shma makes the following incredible statement:

לדעתי עשה זאת משה די ליאון, וכך שמעתי גם מפי חברי פרופ’ י. זוסמן

De Leon is commonly said to have died in 1305, so unless the forgery was done at the very end of his life, we would be dealing with a 13th century forgery. In his Ha-Nigleh she-ba-Nistar, p. 144 n. 203, Ta Shma indeed writes

ויש רגליים לדבר כי זיופו, במגמה לקרבו לספר הזהר ותכניו, נעשה כבר במאה הי”ג

Yet Ta-Shma’s assumption doesn’t take into account that Auerbach’s Eshkol almost certainly contains material from later centuries. Furthermore, Ta-Shma ignored the well-founded assumption Auerbach forged other documents. According to Moshe Samet, some of Auerbach’s forgeries were actually designed to further a Neo-Orthodox agenda.[12] (It is well known that people who forge rarely do so once. Rather, seeing that they got away with it, they continue in this path, getting some sort of perverse pleasure from fooling the world.)

In Mordechai Breuer’s Modernity Within Tradition, p. 202, in discussing Orthodox scholarship and how it was often not rated highly by others because of its binding preconceptions, he writes:

One such example was the attempt of some scholars, especially R. Kirchheim in Frankfurt and Schalom Albeck in Poland, to expose the chief scholarly work of the late Rabbi B.H. Auerbach of Halberstadt (Ha-Eshkol, with commentary and notes, Nahal Eshkol, Halberstadt, 1861), as a plagiarism and a forgery. In spite of certain discrepancies in Auerbach’s work, this attempt failed after his defenders could prove that the attacks had not been free of prejudice.

In Between The Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy, p. 77 n. 8, I responded to this as follows:

Breuer seems to be mistaken in pointing to the dispute over the authenticity of B. H. Auerbach’s edition of the Eshkol as an example of this phenomenon [i.e., Orthodox scholarship being looked down on]. To begin with, the main assault on Auerbach was led by Shalom Albeck (1858-1920), himself an Orthodox Jew. Secondly, this dispute had nothing to do with dogma interfering with scholarship, but was simply a question of whether Auerbach had forged the text. Finally, it is not so clear that Albeck’s attempt failed, as Breuer would have it. On the contrary, the authenticity of Auerbach’s edition is still highly questionable.
When I wrote this paragraph I didn’t want to appear disrespectful to Prof. Breuer, which is why I used soft language. In truth, as far as scholars of medieval halakhic literature are concerned, Albeck was entirely successful. As I note above, the attack of Albeck on Auerbach had nothing to do with the sort of “Orthodox scholarship” Breuer was referrring to, and which was subject to criticism by non-Orthodox scholars. Albeck wasn’t attacking Auerbach because of his supposed Orthodox close-mindedness.

Yet the point Breuer makes actually has relevance to another aspect of this dispute, and here I refer to the defense of Auerbach by the four scholars. Here we do find dogma of a sort, since they make it clear in their defense that the whole accusation is ipso facto invalid, and they even cite the Rambam, Commentary to Avot 1:6, that if you see a tzaddik do something that looks like a sin, you must assume that there is a reasonable explanation, even if it is very far-fetched.

Albeck’s response to this is that the Rambam is referring to a tzaddik who commits a sin between him and God, but not someone who


מתעה את לבות גדולי ישראל מורי ההלכה ודורשי החכמה, ודאי מצוה וחובה על כל איש המכיר בו, להוציא את בלעו מפיו, למען יהיה לאות לבני מרי, ולא יוסיפו לחלל ש”ש ולזייף את התורה

The issue mentioned by Albeck, that of the poskim being misled by a forgery, is what I would now like to raise. What is one to do if one sees that a posek has decided a halakhah based on the forged Eshkol? Is this person obligated to reject the pesak, or can he rely on the authority of the posek, even though the posek himself was misled. This obviously has implications for the use of the Zohar in pesak as well, as the poskim regard it as a tannaitic work. Yet I think everyone outside of the haredi community who has studied the issue assumes that it is a medieval work.

Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg raised a similar concern with regard to the Shulhan Arukh. There are certain halakhot which are based on false readings. He wondered if in a case like this we have to establish a new halakhah, or since we have accepted the Shulhan Arukh’s ruling we don’t change the halakhah but rather find a different justification for it.

Some might also see some connection with another position of R. Weinberg. As I noted in my book. R. Tam’s states that sex with a Gentile does not cause a woman to become forbidden to her husband. R. Weinberg had ethical problems with the reason R. Tam gives, and I don’t think it goes too far to say that he thought that, from our modern perspective, R. Tam’s justification is to be regarded as immoral.[13] Yet I also note that in seeking to find a heter for a woman who committed adultery with a non-Jew to return to her husband he is prepared to make use of R. Tam’s position.[14] I don’t think this raises any problems, since at the end of the day, R. Tam’s position is part of the halakhic tradition. If it can be used to to reach a lenient decision, then it serves a purpose, even if the contemporary posek doesn’t agree with the underlying assumptions of R. Tam’s pesak (Parallel to this is the widely accepted view that there is nothing wrong with using information derived from Nazi experiments on humans if it can help people. Obviously, everyone agrees that the experiments should never have been carried out, but once they were, the information can be used) As I said, I don’t see this as problematic, but I mention it since some might see it as an inconsistency in R. Weinberg.

An example which is more directly relevant is the following. In June of this year Prof. David Berger gave a presentation at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah on Jewish views of Christianity (as well as how to relate to Chabad). In his discussion of Christianity he explained the concept of shittuf, first mentioned by the Tosafists, and how in its original meaning it did not mean that non-Jews are permitted to believe in one God divided into different parts. Those who want the details on this can see Katz’ discussion in Exclusiveness and Tolerance. Katz was the first academic scholar to point to what he regarded as the common misinterpretation of the Tosafot. In addition, a number of poskim have concluded similarly, most notably the son of the Noda bi-Yehudah, whose responsum was published in his father’s work.

In my response to Berger I asked the following question (addressing myself to him):

You are certain that the common understanding of Tosafot is mistaken. Yet this understanding became the standard for poskim in Western Europe. It is also shared by the Rama. Do you feel that there is anything wrong with someone who agrees with you as to the historical truth nevertheless relying on those poskim who misinterpreted the Tosafot? In other words, do the decisions of the poskim based on Tosafot have independent validity even if their interpretation of Tosafot is incorrect?[15a]
Prof. Berger replied that he did not regard as illegitimate to rely on a pesak even if from the standpoint of historical scholarship, the pesak is incorrect. In the case we were discussing, one could legitimately rely on heterim which are based on the notion that according to Tosafot Gentiles are not obligated in shittuf, even though from a historical, i.e., factual perspective, Tosafot never said this. Historical truth and halakhic pesak thus occupy different realms.

While I understand Berger’s point, I think some reading this might be very uncomfortable with such a notion, namely, that one can have a historical truth and a halakhic truth, with the two being at odds with each other; or to put it another way, that a halakhic truth can be based on a historical error and yet still have validity. This brings us dangerously close to the old Latin Averroist notion of “double truth.” [15b]


Returning to Auerbach’s Eshkol, I am aware of only one posek who has refused to grant it any validity, and I daresay that the overwhelming majority of poskim are not even aware that it has been subject to controversy. The posek I am referring to is Rabbi Yitzhak Ratsaby. For those who don’t know, R. Ratsaby is one of the leading – if not the leadiing – Yemenite posek in Israel. He is an incredible scholar whose many works are particularly valuable as he records a variety of Yemenite practices and quotes from relatively unknown Yemenite writings, including from manuscript. He comes from the Kabbalah-friendly Yemenites, as uses the appellation of אחר in referring to R. Joseph Kafih. [16] Reflecting the typical haredi outlook, when he needs to refer to R. Kook, he writes “הרא”ק.” Doing so denies R. Kook the rabbinic titles given other great rabbis, and also spares haredi eyes from even seeing the name “Kook” in print.[17] Most haredi readers won’t even recognize who he is referring to. This is particularly unfortunate as it was R. Kook who stood together with many of the great Yemenite rabbis in opposing R. Yihye Kafih’s anti-Kabbalah stand. In Emunat ha-Shem, the volume published against R. Yihye Kafih, R. Kook’s two letters appear at the beginning. R. Kook is referred to as

רבנו הכהן הגדול נר ישראל וקדושו גדול הדור ונזרו מרן

R. Ratsaby is an example of how Ashkenazic haredi extremism and close-mindedness has also influenced those who do not come from this tradition.

Despite this flaw, there are many very interesting things in his works. Because my last post dealt with issues of dogma, let me refer to what R. Ratsaby states in Olat Yitzhak vol. 2 no. 259. He refers to the list of 24 heretics with no share in the world to come, enumerated by Rambam in Hilkhot Teshuvah, ch. 3. Among those are people who say there is no God, or there is more than one god – in other words, classic heretics. But according to R. Ratsaby, even though these people are heretics with no share in the world to come, that doesn’t mean that they can’t fulfill someone else’s religious obligation. As R. Ratsaby puts it

אפילו אותן עשרים וארבעה והנוספים עליהם שברור ומוסכם שאין להן חלק לעוה”ב, לא שמענו שאינן מוציאין אחרים ידי חובתן בברכות וכיוצא בזה, דסוף סוף הוא מחוייב בדבר וכל המחוייב מוציא יד”ח

R. Ratsaby is not referring to allowing such a person to daven for the amud, for which someone must be a proper Jew. Rather, he is speaking of the halakhah per se, i.e., if a heretic can be motzi someone else. I think the instinctive response of people would be that, of course, someone who is a heretic cannot be motzi someone else, and R. Moshe Feinstein states so explicitly. R. Ratsaby removes the issue from one of belief, and instead focuses on the obligation.which all Jews share.

In this same teshuvah, R. Ratsaby also points out something else quite interesting. Following the list of the twenty four who have no share in the world to come, Rambam gives a list of another group who, if they persist in certain evil actions (e.g., embarrassing someone in public, shaming scholars, etc.) also have no share in the world to come. He quotes R. Avraham ben ha-Rambam (hiddushim at the beginning of Ma’aseh Rakah) who cites his father as explaining that the way this works is that someone who is accustomed to do such bad things things will, almost of necessity, not be inclined to do what needs to be done to achieve immortality. In fact, it is much more likely that he will be led to those sins that really do deprive you of the world to come. But one should not take what Rambam writes literally, namely, that these sins by themselves cause one to lose his share in the world to come.


Returning to the Eshkol, many years ago I was studying R. Ratsaby’s Olat Yitzhak, vol. 1, and on page 410 I came across the following:

לענ”ד אין לחוש לדברים מחודשים שבספר זה שהוא בחשש גדול של זיוף, ואין להכחיש מה שהלב מרגיש

I found this quite amazing, since I knew of no other posek that recognized what modern scholars had determined. I was curious if he came to this on his own or had read Albeck’s pamphlet. He replied to me on 13 Iyar 5750


חשד הזיוף אצלי הוא מתוך העיון בדברים החדשים שם בקרב הראשונים ולקוחים מדברי אחרים (מה שראיתי דר”כ [=דרך כלל] היה לקוח מהבית יוסף) וגם הסגנון, שחנני השי”ת להכיר כזאת בטביעות-עין והלואי שאני טועה, אבל רחוק בעיניי מלצרפו עכ”פ לענין הלכה. ספר כופר האשכול לא בא לידי


I wrote back to him asking why, if he regards Auerbach as a forger, does he cite the Nahal Eshkol. He replied

נחל אשכול שאני מביא על אף החשד שלי נגד ספר האשכול גופו משום שאין לפסול גוף הדברים אם הם ניתנים להאמר מצד עצמם, רק לא לסמוך על ספר האשכול כמשקל בהכרעה בהלכה

R. Ovadiah Yosef offers the same justification in his haskamah to Amar’s 1983 edition of Besamim Rosh

חרף הביקורת שנמתחה על הספר “בשמים ראש”, במילי מעלייתא דאית ביה דרשינן

The last words come from Sanhedrin 100b, where R. Joseph says about the book of Ben Sira, “we may expound the good things it contains.” It would seem that using this logic, there can be no objection to studying the talmudic commentaries and halakhic writings of non-Orthodox rabbis, since one might find there a good argument or explanation of the sources. After all, Saul Berlin, the forger of Besamim Rosh, was a subversive, trying to destroy traditional Judaism from within. This makes him much worse than the typical Reform rabbi who has nothing to do with the Orthodox.


The summer is fast coming to an end, and with it, my free time to write things like this. But I have a number of other examples of forgery which I might post here, if people are interested (I am saving my examples of censorship for the book which I am hard at work on). Many people have told me that they like my “derekh agavs,” so I threw a lot of them in here, and I apologize to those who don’t like the many tangents.


Appendix


Since I don’t know when I will have a chance to write a new introduction to my book, and it is once again in the news with Rabbi Leff’s review, let me quote the following passages from R. Kook’s Shemonah Kevatzim 1:30-31 (I hope that R. Kook is still an acceptable authority for Jewish Action). Two important things stand out. First, while not condoning orthopraxy, R. Kook states that one who is observant, despite the fact that he denies ikkarim, is to be regarded as an erring Jew, not as a heretic. R. Kook’s position is a complete rejection of the idea that people who are shomrei Torah u-mitzvot can be read out of the fold and be regarded as heretics because of their incorrect beliefs. The second important point is that he rejects the Rambam’s entire theological conception of Principles of Faith and alligns himself with the Ra’avad, showing once again that the Rambam’s position has not attained unanimity.

אף על פי שהטעות בדברים האלהיים הוא דבר מזיק עד מאוד, מכל מקום אין עיקר ההיזק הנמשך מהמושגים המשובשים יוצא אל הפועל, עד כדי להמית את בעליו מיתת נשמה, רק כשהוא מתגלם במעשים, או לפחות כשהוא יורד לתוך דעות ורגשות כאלה שסופן מוכרח להתגלות במעשים. אבל כל זמן שהדבר עומד בצורתו המופשטת, אין כאן עקירה עקרית
ובזה הננו קרובים לסברת הראב”ד, שהשיג על הרמב”ם במה שקרא למי שמאמין ההגשמה באלהות מין. ונוכל להסכים, שכל זמן שאותו המגשם לא יעשה לו פסל ותמונה, הרי לא גמר את מחשבתו, ונשארה היא עדיין בחוג הרוח שלא תוכל להיות נכללת בשם עקירה ויציאה מן הדת

In a wide-ranging article which deals among other things with R. Kook’s view of heresy, the important scholar R Yoel Bin Nun[19] explains why R. Kook rejected the Rambam’s approach to heresy. R. Bin Nun also states that if you take what the Rambam says seriously, the Rambam himself, if he were alive today and saw how Aristotelian science has been overthrown, would not regard people who disagreed with his principles as heretics. In R. Bin Nun’s words (emphasis added):[19]

שיטת הרמב”ם ברורה: יסוד שתלוי באמונה, ואין בו הוכחה שכלית, וכל החכמים מתווכים עליו, אי אפשר להגדיר את מי שאינו מאמין בו כ”כופר” או כ”מין”. עצם העובדה שהדבר נתון בוויכוח שכלי בין החכמים מאפשר ומחייב לבנות על עולם האמונה, אך אינו מאפשר לשפוט ולדון את הכופרים. רק ודאות שכלית מוחלטת מאפשרת לדון אדם כמזיד בשאלות של אמונה וידיעה

In other words, according to R. Bin Nun there is no justification today for calling people heretics because they reject one (or more) of the Thirteen Principles.[20] (when he refers to hakhamim disputing matters, he is not referring to Torah scholars, but the general scientific-intellectual world). Whether R. Bin Nun is correct in his analysis of Rambam is not my purpose at present; I only wish to show that this outstanding rabbinic figure has a very tolerant view, one which rejects the Thriteen Principles as determining who is a heretic.

Notes:
A future post will deal with other issues of this controversy, and at that time S. Z. Havlin’s article on the issue in Yeshurun vol. 13 will be discussed.

[1] Professor Isadore Twersky once mentioned in class that although this book’s title should have mentioned Maimonides, in 1929 Harvard University Press would not publish a book with such a title. In this regard, he also called attention to the title of Sarah Heller Wilensky’s doctoral dissertation, “The Teaching of Issac Arama in the Framework of Philonic Philosophy.” This, too, is a false title, and the subject of the dissertation is seen more clearly by the title of the Hebrew book: R. Yitzhak Arama u-Mishnato. As Twersky explained, Harvard’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations did not want a dissertation on a Spanish Jewish thinker unless it was given a more universal theme, hence the “Philonic Philosophy,” an allusion to Wolfson’s theory of philosophy, but this was put in just for show. Incidentally, Fisher’s edition of Or ha-Shem is responsible for my taking credit as being the only student ever to have made Prof. Twersky laugh in class. It was the 1990-1991 year and we were studying Crescas in his seminar. Twersky would often ask me to read, during the course of which he would often correct my pronounciation. When Fisher’s edition of Crescas appeared I immediately bought it and brought it to class. When Twersky called upon me to read, I replied that this time he wa not going to be able to correct my pronounciation. He asked, “why not?” to which I replied, holding up my new book, that I just purchased a new edition of Or ha-Shem, and it is “menikid.” This was too much for even the eternally staid Twersky, and he too was brought to a chuckle. (From inyana de-yoma, someone asked me if Noah Feldman studied with Prof. Twersky. He was not in any of Twersky’s seminars that year. He was, however, in Prof. Septimus’ seminar as well as that of Prof. Leiman, who was at Harvard in fall 1989 as a visiting scholar. In those years, long before he became famous [now, notorious] I would often tell people that one of my fellow students, an undergraduate taking graduate classes, was perhaps the most brilliant person I knew – a much better head than mine – and I have known many intellectual heavyweights. Yet I have read some people, who certainly don’t know him, describing Feldman as an expert in Shas and poskim. This is laughable. He has a great mind, and can grasp a Tosafot quicker than almost anyone, but he never spent any serious time in limudei kodesh after high school. I think my father best summed matters up after reading his article. He said: “Feldman may be very smart, but he isn’t very wise.”).

[2] R. Fisher has also expressed his support for the position of those rishonim – in opposition to the Rambam and R. Chaim Soloveitchik – who believe that one who, through no fault of his own, holds a heretical view is not to be regarded as a heretic.

[3] R. Moshe also detected a forgery in that R. Yehudah he-Hasid asks why homosexuality is forbidden, and then explains that the prohibition is to ensure that men procreate. According to R. Moshe, even asking such a question, and offering such a weak explanation, is a sign that the passage was not written by R. Yehudah he-Hasid but by a gay-friendly subversive. Yet as R. Chaim Rapoport points out, R. Yehudah he-Hasid is also quoted saying the same thing in the medieval Moshav Zekeinim al ha-Torah. Furthermore, the explanation he offers is also found in Ramban, Sefer ha-Hinnukh and Radbaz. See Rapoport, Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View (London, 2004), pp. 155-156.

[4] See my “Suicide and the World to Come,” AJS Review 18.2 (1993): 257 n. 54. Perhaps Prof. Shlomo Zalman Havlin will also use a computer to prove the forgery, much like he used a computer to show that R. Joseph Hayyim also wrote the book Torah li-Shma (link).

[5] Soferim u-Sefarim (Tel Aviv, 1959), p. 107.

[6] See also D. Simonsen, “Ueber die Vorlage des Sefer ha-Eshkol,” in Studies in Jewish Bibliography and Related Subjects in Memory of Abraham Solomon Freidus (New York, 1929), pp. 290-291.

[7] Israel M. Ta-Shma writes, concerning this defense (falsely attributing it to the editors of Sefer ha-Eshkol, vol. 4, rather than Bergman):

אולם לא מפיהם אנו חיים, ואילו זקוק היה הרב אויערבך להגנתם זו היה לוקה בכפלים

See Rabbi Zerahyah ha-Levi Ba’al ha-Meor u-Venei Hugo (Jerusalem, 1992), p. 40 n. 27.

[8] Haym Soloveitchik, “Review of Olam ke-Minhago Noheg, by Yishaq (Eric) Zimmer,” AJS Review 23.2 (1998): 227-228.

[9] See my “Review of Circles of Jewish Identity: A Study in Halakhic Literature by Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar,” AJS Review 27.1 (2003): 120-122.

[10] Post-Sabbatian Sabbatianism (Spring Valley, 1999), p. 209.

[11] Rabbi Zerahyah ha-Levi Ba’al ha-Meor u-Venei Hugo, pp. 40-41.

[12] He-Hadash Asur min ha-Torah (Jersualem, 2005), pp. 69-70, 152 n. 255.

[13] Regarding judging positions of rishonim as immoral, R. Shlomo Aviner writes (Am ve-Arzto (Jerusalem, 2002), vol. 2 pp. 436-437):

וברור שבהלכה פנים לכאן ולכאן. לכן כיוון שנתיבים אלה הם נתיבים מוסריים יותר, עלינו להכריע על פיהם. לפעמים ההלכה מוכרעת, בגלל שעת הדחק, ולפעמים ההלכה מוכרעת כי כך המנהג. אם כן, בימינו ‘המנהג’ הוא להיות מוסרי . . . שאלה: האם ראשונים אחרים, שלא סוברים כרש”י הם מוסריים פחות? תשובה: כולם מוסריים בתכלית המוסריות, אך יש גם מושגים מוסריים המשתנים על פי המציאות. אב הסוטר לבנו הקטן, אינו דומה לאב הסוטר לבנו בן השמונה עשרה. האם סטירת לחי לבנו היא מעשה מוסרי או לא מוסרי? תלוי בנסיבות. לא כל הכרעות הפוסקים הן הכרעות נצחיות. לכן מזכירים במשנה גם דעת יחיד כדי לסמוך עליה בעתיד (עדויות א, ה). במצבנו כיום ישנם שיקולים מוסריים שמצטרפים להכרעותינו ההלכתיות דוד המלך היה מודד אנשים בחבל, ובוודאי הוא ראה כורח מוסרי לנהוג כן. מרן הרב קוק מסביר, שלא היתה אז דרך אחרת להרתיע את הרשעים (איגרות א, ק). יתכן שבנסיבות שלנו, דוד לא היה נוהג כן

[14] Kitvei R. Weinberg, vol. 1, p. 58.

[15a] One should not assume that this is a verbatim transcription of my remarks, as they were not written out at the time.

[15b] Prof. Berger recently noted to Menachem Butler the following point: “At the same time, those realms [i.e., history and halakhah] are not so distinct that someone weighing the question of which position to adopt must, or even should, ignore his judgment about historical truth. Thus, I personally do not regard the pesak that Christianity is not avodah zarah for Gentiles as one I should adopt, even though it has desirable consequences. I do, however, grant legitimacy to an opinion affirmed by major authorities and do not quarrel with those who rely on it.”

[16] Olat Yitzhak, vol. 2, p. 51.

[17] See ibid., p. 440.

[18] See his biography at http://www.ykd.co.il/hebrew/hebrew.htm.

[19] “’Kahal Shogeg’ Hiloniyim ve-Hiloniyut be-Halakhah,” Akdamut 10 (2000), p. 263.

[20] For those who don’t have access to the article, I should note that when he refers to hakhamim disputing matters, he is not referring to Torah scholars, but the general scientific-intellectual world.



Rabbi Steinman and the Messiah, part 1

Rabbi Steinman and the Messiah, part 1

Marc B. Shapiro

Since in a recent post I discussed Maimonides and the Principle of the Messiah, let me add one more thing. Yet before doing so, I need to make a few preliminary comments. Many readers know about the Peleg, which has caused all sorts of problems in Jerusalem. After the passing of R. Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the simmering dispute in the Lithuanian world broke out into the open, and a minority of the Lithuanian community refused to accept the leadership of R. Aharon Yehudah Leib Steinman, who was backed by R. Hayyim Kanievsky. The opponents, known as the Peleg, were led by the late R. Shmuel Auerbach.

While people are aware of the wild behavior of the Peleg youth as they are the ones who block streets in Jerusalem, there is very little awareness of what was another element of the battle in the Lithuanian community, and that was the attempt to delegitimize R. Steinman. An entire literature was created that focused on two things. The first was citing all sorts of things that R. Steinman said which were believed to be in opposition to haredi ideology. The point was to show that because of his supposedly liberal views he was not suited to lead the haredi world, and that he had departed from the approach of R. Shakh.[1]

The other focus, also found in Peleg publications, was to show that R. Steinman did not have the requisite Torah scholarship to lead the community. For obvious reasons, they never made this claim about R. Hayyim Kanievsky, and never explained why they felt able to disagree with R. Kanievsky who was the most outstanding backer of R. Steinman.

While this dispute was playing out, R. Steinman said something that was like manna from heaven for the Peleg, for now they had a chance to use some heavy “ammunition” on him, as they could claim that he rejected the Rambam’s Twelfth Principle which affirms the coming of the Messiah. In response to the attacks on R. Steinman, his defenders claimed that his words were taken out of context. During the dispute, a couple of people in correspondence with me wondered if R. Steinman should be added to the list of people who disagree with one of the Principles.

Here is a poster put up against R. Steinman by some unnamed extremist (found here).

So what did R. Steinman say that created such a mini-explosion in the haredi world. You can find the transcript of R. Steinman’s words here. You can hear the actual conversation here.

R. Meir Zvi Bergman, in discussion with R. Steinman, said that according to the Rambam one must wait for the Messiah’s arrival and not merely believe in his coming.[2] In other words, there are two separate things that are required: 1. Belief that he will come, and 2. Actively awaiting his arrival. R. Bergman referred to the Rambam’s words in the Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim 11:1, which seem to say exactly this:

וכל מי שאינו מאמין בו או מי שאינו מחכה לביאתו לא בשאר נביאים בלבד הוא כופר אלא בתורה ובמשה רבנו

R. Bergman later notes that this is also included as part of the Twelfth Principle. What he must mean is the following: In the Principle the Rambam says that we must believe that the Messiah will come, and he cites the verse from Habakkuk 2:3: “Though he tarry, wait for him.” By citing this verse, the Rambam is adding a second aspect to the principle, just like he later does in Hilkhot Melakhim.

I would add to this that presumably the Rambam also had in mind Shabbat 31a, which says that in the next world everyone will be asked if צפית לישועה. How this sentence should be translated is itself a problem. Soncino translates it as “Did you hope for salvation?”, while Koren translates as “Did you await salvation?” Hoping for salvation and waiting for it are two separate things.[3] Artscroll’s translation combines the approaches of both Soncino and Koren: “Did you wait in hope for the [Messianic] salvation?”

In response to R. Bergman’s point, about the need to actively wait for the Messiah, R. Steinman replies that no one fulfills this, namely, no one is really waiting for the Messiah. My understanding of what he said is that no one is consciously focusing on, and anxiously awaiting, the Messiah’s arrival. They believe that the Messiah will come, but in the meantime they are learning Torah and doing mitzvot and when he comes, he comes, but until then Jews have plenty to do to keep themselves busy.

R. Bergman is surprised by R. Steinman’s comment and states that the Rambam says that if one does not wait for the Messiah he is a heretic, to which R. Steinman repeats his earlier point that no one does this. Upon being questioned again, R. Steinman replies that this is a “decree that the community cannot follow.” He adds that people say that the Chafetz Chaim “waited” for the Messiah. “Maybe yes, I don’t know. This is what they say, maybe yes.” R. Steinman then adds that the Chafetz Chaim was unique, but the Torah was not given just for such special people.[4]

R. Steinman’s statements are quite provocative, first, because he expresses uncertainty if the Chafetz Chaim can really be said to have actively waited for the Messiah, and second, because he makes it clear that the other great rabbis did not really wait for the Messiah. It would have been controversial enough if all he said was that he himself, or the people of this generation, do not really wait for the Messiah, but he applied this statement also to great ones of previous generations.

As the conversation continues, R. Bergman insists that waiting for the Messiah is one of the Thirteen Principles, and that in earlier times people indeed did wait for the Messiah. R. Steinman replies that in earlier days the Jews suffered greatly and that is why they had a focus on the Messiah.

R. Moshe Schneider, who was R. Steinman’s havruta and present at the conversation, adds: “The Rambam in the Thirteen Principles says, ‘Even though he may delay, nevertheless, I wait daily for him to come.’ Doesn’t he mean that there is an obligation in the Thirteen Principles to wait [for the Messiah]?” R. Steinman could have pointed out that the version of the Principle found in the siddur which R. Schneider quoted was not written by the Rambam, and its words do not appear in the actual text of the Principle found in the Rambam’s commentary to Mishnah, Sanhedrin. However, I don’t know how much this would help, for as we have seen, in the Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim 11:1, the Rambam is explicit about the need to wait for the Messiah.

וכל מי שאינו מאמין בו או מי שאינו מחכה לביאתו לא בשאר נביאים בלבד הוא כופר אלא בתורה ובמשה רבנו

R. Bergman adds that if people do not fulfill this aspect of the Principle, then all the Thirteen Principles are weakened.

So far we see that R. Steinman held that the Principle is to believe in the coming of the Messiah, but this does not mean that one has to “wait” for him, which I think means to have a focus on the Messiah and actively wait in hope for his return.[5] We also see that R. Steinman himself was not “actively waiting” for the Messiah. Although Chabad claims that a focus on the Messiah is basic to Judaism,[6] it appears that R. Steinman thought otherwise. The Hatam Sofer already mentioned—in opposition to Maimonides—that the Messianic idea, while of course true (and denial of it is heresy), is not an essential element of Judaism, namely, basic to the very structure of the religion.[7]

א“א לי בשום אופן להאמין שיהי‘ גאולתנו אחד מעיקרי הדת, ושאם יפול היסוד תפול החומה חלילה . . . ועכ“פ הגאולה וביאת המשיח איננה עיקר

Many have wondered about these words of the Hatam Sofer. Yet they are simply a repetition of what appears in Nahmanides, and as is well known, the Hatam Sofer greatly valued the writings of Ramban. Here is what Nahmanides states (and as with the Hatam Sofer, despite these words he continues by noting that denial of the messianic idea is indeed heresy):[8]

ודע, יעזרך הא–להים, כי אם נסכים בלבנו שפשעינו וחטאת אבותינו אבדו ממנו כל הנחמות, ושיארך ויתמיד עלינו הגלות מאין קץ וסוף, וכן אם נאמר שרצה הא–להים לענותנו בעולם הזה בשעבוד המלכיות לרצון או לתועלת, כל זה לא יזיק בעיקר התורה, כי אנחנו אין תכלית גמולנו ימות המשיח, ואכול פירות הארץ ההיא, והתרחץ בחמי טבריה וכיוצא בהן מן התענוגים, גם לא הקרבנות ועבודת בית המקדש תכלית רצוננו רק גמולנו ומבטנו העולם הבא, והתענג הנפש בתענוג הנקרא גן עדן והנצל מעונש גיהנם

Returning to R. Steinman’s conversation, in response to R. Bergman he cites R. Hillel’s view (Sanhedrin 99a) that there will be no Messiah for Israel, “because they have already enjoyed him in the days of Hezekiah.” It is not clear why he cited this. Was R. Steinman stating that one does not need to believe in an individual Messiah at all, in accord with the commentary to attributed to Rashi’s understanding that R. Hillel’s point is that in the future there will only be a messianic era, not a Messiah? R. Bergman asks R. Steinman point blank if he holds like R. Hillel in opposition to the Rambam, and R. Steinman does not answer the question, instead replying, “It is enough for us to observe the mitzvot that we can.”[9] 

R. Steinman’s point in mentioning R. Hillel could also be that R. Hillel certainly did not “wait” for the Messiah, as he thought that the Messiah had already arrived. Nevertheless, he is not regarded as a heretic, thus showing that this point is not essential. In any event, it is obvious that R. Steinman was not happy with R. Bergman’s focus on the details of the Twelfth Principle, and instead wanted the focus to be on the performance of mitzvot.

Not surprisingly, when the tape of R. Steinman speaking to R. Bergman was released it created a great controversy, which was called סערת המשיח. For attacks on R. Steinman by Satmar rabbis, which degrade him in the most harsh way, including one that says that R. Steinman is “worse than Kook,” see here.

A Chabad rabbi, R. Yechezkel Sofer, also responded to R. Steinman’s words (see here), and he makes a very interesting point which could explain what R. Steinman was getting at. R. Sofer states that one is not a heretic if he is lacking an emotional connection to the coming of the Messiah. The problem is only if one develops an intellectual position that there is no reason to wait for the Messiah. R. Sofer adds, however, that from a hasidic perspective a higher level of “waiting” is required, which he acknowledges not everyone is capable of. Here is how he concludes, and the second part of the sentence must be seen as a put-down of all those who do not put a stress on constantly waiting for the Messiah.

רק במישור החסידות ופנימיות–התורה נדרש רף גבוה של ‘ציפייה‘ שלאו כל מוחא סביל דא: ובהעדר–הציפייה מורה, שבתוככי–נפשו, חלשה אמונתו במשיח, אחרת ודאי היה כולו משתוקק “אמתי קא אתי מר“

I think R. Steinman can be explained very simply, that despite what the Rambam says, it is difficult for virtually anyone to be emotionally invested in the coming of the Messiah, and thus have a sense of waiting for him, especially waiting constantly (every day) which is how the Principle is formulated in the siddur. R. Steinman was saying, what is the point of speaking about something which hardly anyone can fulfill? At the end of the day, it is enough to believe in the coming of the Messiah without adding anything else to this basic belief.

R. Avraham Yehoshua Soloveitchik defended R. Steinman, and this is some of what he said before he moved into a general attack on the Peleg:[10]

גאון אחד נכנס לביקור בביתו של ר‘ יחזקאל אברמסקי זצ“ל וראה על השולחן בסמוך אליו ספר שעוסק ב“ציפייה למשיח” שחיבר אדם בן זמנינו. מיד הוא פנה אל ר‘ חצקל‘ ושאל: “מה הספר הזה עושה אצלך על השולחן“? השיב לו ר‘ חצקל‘: לפניך נכנס כאן יהודי שאיני מכיר והביא לי את הספר הזה שהוא חיבר. והוסיף ר‘ חצקל‘: פעם נכנס לרוגוטשובער יהודי שהיה מאוד מוטרד ושאל מה עושים ואיך מחזקים בציבור את העניין של אמונה בביאת המשיח? השיב לו הרוגוטשובער: פרנסה כבר יש לך? אוכל לאשתך ולילדים אתה נותן? קודם כל תדאג לעניינים הללו אחר כך תדאג למשיח.

סיים ר‘ חצקל‘: גם אני רציתי לשאול את היהודי שחיבר את הספר הזה האם פרנסה כבר יש לך? אוכל לאשתך ולילדים אתה נותן? אלא שנמנעתי רק מפני שחסתי על כבודו

The upshot of R. Soloveitchik’s point is that thinking about the Messiah is not something that needs to be at the top of our concerns. Using Scholem’s terminology, we can say that R. Soloveitchik’s approach is that of neutralization of the messianic impulse. Should we be surprised that after R. Soloveitchik’s words were made public he too was attacked.[11] Here is a poster against him that was plastered on walls in Jerusalem.

Whatever you may think of R. Soloveitchik’s words, I don’t know how to square them with what his grandfather, R. Isaac Zev Soloveitchik (the Brisker Rav), is quoted as saying, that not only must we await the Messiah every day, but we must do so the entire day and every instant.[12] R. Moshe Mordechai Shulzinger notes, based on the Brisker Rav’s understanding, that all those who give dates when the Messiah will arrive are undermining Maimonides’ Principle (which he explains in line with Maimonides’ words in Hilkhot Melakhim), because the result of their predictions is that they (and those who follow them) will not believe that the Messiah can come at any minute, as they will only be expecting him at a future time.[13]

R. Shulzinger also explains the meaning of the Brisker Rav in a different way than his words are usually understood. He says that what the Brisker Rav meant is that one must believe that the Messiah can come at any instant, and that is the meaning of “waiting” for the Messiah. Understood this way, the Brisker Rav’s point is exactly in line with what R. Steinman said, for R. Steinman never denied that the Messiah could come at any time. He simply said that the idea of consciously waiting for the Messiah is not something that a typical person can do. Here are R. Shulzinger’s words:[14]

זה חיוב של אמונה, שמאמין שיכול לבוא בכל רגע, וה“אינו מחכה” – הוא מי שהחליט בלבו ח“ו על זמן מסוים שעדיין לא יבוא, ומפני זה – הזמן ההוא מופקע אצלו מלחכות ולצפות, וזה הוא חסרון אמונה, וזה מיקרי “שאינו מחכה לביאתו“, רח“ל . . . כשמאמין שיכול לבוא בכל רגע – הרי זה “מחכה לביאתו“.

R. Shulzinger also prints a letter he sent to an unnamed rabbi who had argued that when the Rambam speaks of “waiting” for the Messiah, it does not mean that you must really believe that he can come at any minute. This rabbi compares it to someone who has a son in prison. He waits for the son to return home, even though he knows that this will not happen in the near future. According to the unnamed rabbi, this too falls under the Rambam’s understanding of “waiting,” a point that R. Shulzinger strongly rejects.[15]

In line with his understanding of the meaning of “waiting”, R. Shulzinger also makes the following very interesting point, which I don’t know if everyone would agree with: A person says that he would prefer that the Messiah not come in the near future, but only in a few years as he will by then have completed study of the entire Talmud, and will be more prepared to greet the Messiah. Nevertheless, this person knows that God does not take into account his wishes, and he believes that the Messiah can come at any instant. R. Shulzinger says that this person has not violated Maimonides’ Principle. In other words, the Principle requires the belief that the Messiah will come, and can come at any instant. Yet it does not require you to actually desire the Messiah’s arrival. Thus, to give a different example than that offered by R. Shulzinger, if someone has a very good business in the Diaspora, it could be that while he believes in the coming of the Messiah, he does not actually want this to happen, because he thinks that after the Messiah’s arrival all Jews will have move to Israel, and he does not want to give up his thriving business. According to R. Shulzinger, these sentiments would not be in contradiction to Maimonides’ principle:[16]

שהצפי‘ המחכה הוא שיעור בהצהרת גודל האמונה שלי בזה [לא הצהרה של רצון או לא רצון], כמדו‘ שזה נקרא מאמין ומחכה ומצפה לביאתו בכל רגע

To be continued

Excursus

Is there anywhere in tannaitic or amoraic writings where it says that all Jews will live in Israel is messianic days? I ask because this certainly does appear to be a widely held view throughout Jewish history. Maimonides states that “all Israel” will be gathered around the Messiah (Hilkhot Melakhim 12:3), but I don’t think this can be taken literally. I say this since according to Maimonides the messianic era will not be an era of open miracles, and people will still have free will, including free will to sin, so one can assume that some Jews will choose to remain in places outside of Israel. For those who see the messianic era as a time of miracles, when life will not continue as it does now, then it makes sense to imagine a time when all Jews will come to Israel. Thus, R. Isaac Abarbanel states that in messianic days not even one Jew will remain outside of Israel. See his commentary to Ezekiel 39:28 (p. 583), Mashmia Yeshuah, ed. Golan (Bnei Brak, 2014), pp. 72, 208. This is also stated on many occasions by the Lubavitcher Rebbe. See e.g., Likutei Sihot, vol. 11, pp. 1ff.

On the other hand, R. Shmuel Tuvyah Stern understands the issue in a purely naturalistic way. He states that the Jewish people are themselves obligated to go to Israel, as God will not be bringing them there. Those who refuse to go, or delay in going, are preventing the Jewish people in the Land of Israel from the performance of certain mitzvot that come into effect when the majority of the Jewish population lives there. (Regarding these mitzvot, see R. Yehudah Amihai here.) In other words, R. Stern acknowledges that even in messianic times not everyone will follow the Torah path. See She’elot u-Teshuvot ha-Shavit, vol. 9, p. 62:

ובאמת כשם שהקב“ה הבטיח לגאול אותנו כך חייב אותנו להגאל ולקרב את הגאולה, ואלו בני עמנו שהם מאחרים לצאת מן הגולה ומעכבים את הגאולה מבטלים אחת מהמצות הכי עיקריות של התורה, כי הגאולה היא כמפתח להרבה מצות התלויות בארץ ובגולה . . . ואלו שמעברין זאת מבטלין מצות הרבים מישראל, והנה זכות הגאולה היא מצד הקב“ה שהוא מזכה אותנו בגאולה, וחוב הגאולה היא מטעם ישראל

This topic has relevance to the issue of Yom Tov Sheni. Will it still be celebrated in messianic days for those Jews living outside of Israel? Since we will return to the old way of declaring Rosh Hodesh, rather than by a calendar, the assumption in pre-modern times would presumably have been yes, as far flung places would still not know what day was declared the New Moon. However, with modern communications, it would seem that there will be no Yom Tov Sheni in messianic days, even for people who live in the Diaspora.

Writing before the invention of modern communications, R. Moses Sofer states that there will indeed be Yom Tov Sheni in messianic days. See Derashot Hatam Sofer, vol. 2, p. 274b, s.v. למען. He sees this as in remembrance of our time in exile. See, however, ibid., p. 208a, s.v. כל, where he says that Yom Tov Sheni will be abolished in messianic days, and that this is the meaning of the rabbinic teaching in Yalkut Shimoni, Mishlei no. 944: “All the festivals [i.e., Yom Tov Sheni] are to be abolished in the future [messianic era], but Purim will never be abolished.”

Elsewhere, in speaking of Yom Tov Sheni in the messianic era, R. Sofer refers to it as ב‘ ימים טובים של גאולתינו. He makes this comment while discussing R. Judah’s position in Gittin 8a: “R. Judah holds that all islands fronting the coast of Eretz Israel are reckoned as Eretz Israel” (see his commentary to Beitzah 4b. See also his commentary to Beitzah 24b and She’elot u-Teshuvot Hatam Sofer, Orah Hayyim no. 145 [end]). R. Sofer notes that this means that all islands in the Mediterranean on the same latitude as the biblical Land of Israel (which extends into Lebanon), are regarded as belonging to Israel. If you look on a map (and you can actually see a good one in the Koren Talmud, Gittin 8a) you will see that this means that Cyprus, Crete, and Sicily are part of the territory of Israel. R. Sofer states that Jews who live in these places in messianic days will have to observe a second day of Yom Tov.

It is not clear to me why R. Sofer assumes that R. Judah’s position is accepted. See Tosafot, Gittin 8a, s.v. Rabbi Yehudah, where Rabbenu Tam states that we do not accept his position. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Terumot 1:7, also rejects R. Judah’s opinion.

In describing how far the territory of Israel extends, the R. Sofer writes (Teshuvot, Orah Hayyim, no. 145 [end]):

דכל הנסין שבים הגדול עד אוקיינוס שייכים לארץ ישראל והוא עד מצר רמון ספרד

The word נסין, which he uses, is found in Gittin 8a and it means “islands”. See Jastrow, s.v. נס and ניסא.

(Regarding R. Judah’s position about the islands being included as part of Israel, R. Hayyim Kanievsky points to Psalms 97:1: “The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad – ישמחו איים רבים.” R. Kanievsky asks why does it say איים in plural. He answers that this makes sense according to R. Judah’s view that the islands opposite Israel are included in the territory of Eretz Yisrael. See R. Kanievsky, Ta’ama de-Kra to Ps. 97:1.)

In the quotation above, R. Sofer refers to רמון ספרד. In medieval Hebrew, this is how the kingdom of Granada is called. The word “Granada” means pomegranate, which are abundant in that part of Spain, and a pomegranate was on the kingdom’s coat of arms (and is also found on the contemporary Spanish coat of arms). The reason the kingdom was generally called Rimon Sefarad and not just Rimon, which would be the literal translation of “Granada”, is because the expression רמון ספרד is a play on the biblical place רמון פרץ that is mentioned in Num. 33:20. See R. Meir Mazuz, Bayit Ne’eman, vol. 1, p. 32. In Yehudah Halevi’s poem בעברי על פני רמון the first line reads בעברי על פני רמון מפחד. Some scholars believe that instead of מפחד it should read ספרד. See Halevi, Diwan, ed. Brody (n.p., 1971), vol. 1, p. 78 (note to poem no. 34). Yet Halevi elsewhere does refer simply to רמון. See Diwan, vol. 1, p. 153, line 59, and vol. 2, p. 280, line 46

Since the Hatam Sofer is absolutely clear in what he writes, that the boundary of Israel extends until the end of Granada, which means the Atlantic Ocean, I don’t understand how R. Mordechai Winkler can cite without objection a report that R. Sofer said that England also falls within the borders of Israel. See Levushei Mordechai, Yoreh Deah vol. 3, no. 49.

R. Hayyim Hirschensohn interprets R. Judah’s position differently than the Hatam Sofer. He assumes that R. Judah is speaking not of the Mediterranean but of the Atlantic Ocean, and thus the territory of Israel extends all the way to the United States. He also interprets R. Judah to be including not merely the islands but also the land territory that is on the same latitude as Israel. What this means is that a good deal of the southern United States is included in the territory of Eretz Yisrael! Furthermore, R. Hirschensohn claims that according to R. Judah you can pray in the direction of these southern states, and those in the U.S. who want to fulfill all opinions should do this!. (Interestingly, he also does not see any significance for people in the U.S., who are so far from Israel, to face the Holy Land in their prayers.) See his article in Avraham Moshe Luntz, ed., Yerushalayim 8 (1909), p. 196:

והרוצה לצאת ידי כל הדעות יתפלל באמירקא [!] נגד הדרום כי לדעת ר‘ יהודה (בגיטין ד“ח ע“א) שכל שכנגד ארץ ישראל הרי הוא כארץ ישראל . . . זה כולל חלק גדול מצפון אלגריא, ובאמירקא: דרום סויט קארליינא, צפון דזארזי, צפון אלאבאמא, צפון מסיסיפי, צפון לוזיאני, דרום אריקאנסיס, צפון טעקסיס, דרום ניו מעקסיקו, דרום אריזאנא, דרום קאליפארנע, כל אלה המקומות לדעת ר‘ יהודה הם ארץ ישראל, והעומד בתפלה נגדם כעומד נגד ארץ ישראל

See also R. Yeshayahu Steinberg in Ha-Ma’yan, Tishrei 5775, pp. 43-44, who has a different approach according to which even Northern France is perhaps regarded as having the holiness of Eretz Yisrael. He even says that if someone is forced to live in the Diaspora, it is better to live in northern France since it is in some sense part of Eretz Yisrael!

ויש נפ“מ מסוימת בדיון זה לעניין בדיעבד: אם אדם נאלץ לדור בחו“ל ויש לו אפשרות בחירה – יעדיף לגור בצפון צרפת במקום שאותו הזכירו בעלי התוס‘ הנ“ל, כי יש במקום זה צד של קדושת א“י ומניעה של עזיבת א“י לגמרי

If one has to live in the United States (or west of it), then R. Steinberger says that it is best to live in places on the latitude of Israel (that is, the places mentioned by R. Hirschensohn).

I don’t mean the following to be disrespectful, but I can’t help commenting that what R. Steinberger says might make sense on paper, but I am certain that no one in history has ever  made living plans based on the assumption that there is some spiritual advantage due to the holiness of Eretz Yisrael to living in northern France or South Carolina over anywhere else in the Diaspora.

**********

It has been a while since I have done a quiz, so let me offer one now. Email me with answers at shapirom2 at scranton.edu

1. If you look at older machzorim, in the Tekiat ha-Shofar between the first two sets of blasts you find the letters שב. What is this about?

2. Where in Rashi’s commentary on the Talmud does he say that a certain individual knew all of Shas?

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[1] In addition to citing “liberal” passages in R. Steinman’s works in order to discredit him, they also cited a number of strange things that he supposedly said, also in order to discredit him. As always with these types of attacks, it is hard to know if R. Steinman really said what they claim he did. There is a long history of famous rabbis being misquoted, both by opponents and even more so by supporters. Thus, I find it incredibly difficult to believe that R. Steinman ever said the following which is quoted in his name by an unnamed student.

פעם אמר רבנו הגראי”ל, שאודות השואה כולם חושבים על האסון שנהרגו הרבה מכלל ישראל, אבל יש כאלו שבאמת היה עדיף שיהרגו, כי הם היו מחללי שבת וע”י זה שנהרגו עשו פחות עבירות. היטלר הרג את כל המשומדים שהתבוללו בזדון, וזה דבר אחד טוב שיצא מהאסון הזה, שנהרגו כל המשומדים

Me-Ahorei ha-Pargod (Bnei Brak, 2012), p. 454.
[2] R. Bergman discusses this matter in his Sha’arei Orah, vol. 1, pp. 264ff.
[3] Generally, we understand “salvation” to mean the Messianic era. However, see R. Zvi Shapira in his commentary on the Sefer Mitzvot Katan, vol. 1, p. 5, who explains that for the Semak, it refers to individual salvation of various kinds.

דרבינו ז“ל אית לי‘ פירושא אחרינא בהך דצפית לישועה, וס“ל דלא קאי אישועה הכללית, אלא קאי אישועה פרטית לפי הזמן, והיינו דכל אחד לפי מצבו בעת שנצרך לאיזה דבר וקשה לו להשיגו, מקרי שהוא נזקק לישועה ונצטוה לצפות לה

[4] See also the Chafetz Chaim, Mahaneh Yisrael (Jerusalem, 1973), p. 172:

וכמו שאנו אומרים בתפלה כי לישועתך קוינו כל היום וכתבו בספרים שלא דוקא על הגאולה בלבד צריך לצפות אלא על כל מין צרה שלא תבא צריך לצפות לישועת ה‘ וכבר כתבו בשם האר“י ז“ל שבכל יום כשאומר כי לישועתך קוינו כל היום יכוין שמצפה לישועה על כל צרה שנמצא בו

Regarding the Chafetz Chaim, in his Mahaneh Yisrael there is an entire chapter (ch. 25 in the 1973 edition [in the first section]) on the issue of the future redemption. The chapter’s title is

גאולת ישראל: בו יבואר שצריך האדם לצפות תמיד לגאולת ישראל

At the beginning of the chapter he writes:

שלא דיי [!] באמור בפה שהוא מצפה לישועה אלא צריך להיות מצפה לישועה בלב שלם ואמונה שלמה

R. Shmuel Greineman writes as follows about the Chafetz Chaim (Chafetz Chaim al ha-Torah, p. 229):

והי‘ מרגלא בפומי‘ תמיד, כי משיח צדקנו יבוא פתאום, אם רק נחכה עליו, רגילים אנו לומר “כי מחכים אנחנו לך“, “ואחכה לו בכל יום שיבוא“, אבל אנו אומרים זה רק בפינו, ולבנו בל אתנו

R. Yehezkel Levenstein, Or Yehezkel, vol. 3, p, 298, writes:

התעוררתי לדבר בעניני הגאולה מפני שהתעוררתי בעצמי לזה לכן הנני מרגיש שמחובתי לדבר בענינים אלו. וזכורני שהחפץ חיים ז“ל היה ממשיל את צורת הצפיה למלך המשיח לחולה אנוש היודע כי רופא גדול בא לבקרו ולהמציא תרופה למחלתו. ועומד וממתין לביאתו וכל נקישה בדלת גורמת לו להתרגשות שהנה בא הרופא אליו, וכל שעת איחור אינה ממעטת מצפיתו אלא להיפך עומד ומצפה הנה בודאי עתה יבוא וירפאהו. כן חייב להיות הציפיה לביאת הגואל, וכל שאינו ממתין כן חייב לחזק את עצמו באיזה אופן שהוא כדי שיוכל להיות מהמחכים לביאתו

The same analogy that R. Levenstein cites in the name of the Chafetz Chaim is cited by R. Elijah Dessler in the name of his father-in-law, R. Nahum Zev Ziv. See Beit Kelm, vol. 2, p. 131.
[5] Regarding Maimonides’ Principle of the Messiah, R. Moses Salmon, Netiv Moshe (Vienna, 1897), p. 44, makes the interesting comment that in the days of the Sages, belief in the Messiah was not a dogma, denial of which would have been regarded as heresy:

שבדורות חכמי המשנה והתלמוד לא היתה אמונת המשיח עוד אמונה עיקרית בישראל כ“כ עד שיהי‘ הכופר בה ככופר בעיקר הדת אשר הוא אמונת האחדות . . . ואף שהר“מ ז“ל מנה אותה בעקרים, הנה הוא ז“ל דבר מהדורות האחרונים ואילך ולא מהדורות התנאים, כי מצאנו בתנאים את ר‘ הלל שאמר אין משיח לישראל (סנהדרין צט ע“ב) ור“ע גם הוא טעה בבר כוזיבא ודרש עליו הפסוק דרך כוכב מיעקב שהוא משיח (איכה רבתי פסוק בלע ה‘) ובכל זאת לא מצאנו שהרחיקום מכל [!] ישראל בעבור זאת.

I don’t understand his point about R. Akiva, as unlike R. Hillel, he did not deny the concept of a Messiah. He just falsely identified Bar Kokhba as the Messiah. Also, it is not clear whether R. Hillel was a tanna or an amora. See my Limits of Orthodox Theology, p. 141 n. 10.
[6] Regarding Chabad and the Messiah, it is worth noting that Elliot Wolfson has argued that the Rebbe’s secret teaching is that there will be no physical redeemer. Rather, the messianic redemption is able to occur within each person. See Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (New York, 2009).
[7] She’elot u-Teshuvot Hatam Sofer, Yoreh Deah, no. 356. The Hatam Sofer’s descendant, R. Akiva Glasner, was shocked by what his forefather wrote. See R. Glasner, Ikvei ha-Tzon (London, 1958), p. 104:

אני עומד ומתמיה על ק“ז החת“ס זצוק“ל אשר בניגוד אל מה שהעתקתי מדבריו הקדושים הנ“ל פלטה קולמוסו הטהורה דבר המפליא ומבהיל כאחד בתשובותיו

[8] Kitvei Ramban, ed. Chavel, pp. 279-280. See also ibid., p. 324, where Nahmanides has strong words about those who only focus on their personal lives rather than praying for God to bring the messianic era.

כולנו כצאן תעינו איש לדרכו פנינו: יאשים את ישראל בעבור כי הם בגלותם ישימו כל כוונתם בעסקי העולם, ומשים כל אחד כוונה לעצמו ביתו ועסקיו, וראוי להם להיות בוכים ולהתפלל לפני ה‘ לילה ויום שיכפר על עוון ישראל ויחיש קץ הגאולה.

[9] R. Meir Mazuz offers the fanciful suggestion that the reason the Ashkenazic version of Kaddish—and I guess he would include R. Amram Gaon as well—did not include ויקרב משיחיה is so as not to decide against R. Hillel. See Or Torah, Tevet 5778, p. 337. Yet as R. Mazuz himself notes, even Ashkenazim say in the Amidah: ומביא גואל לבני בניהם.

In Kevatzim mi-Ketav Yad Kodsho, vol. 1, p. 37, R. Kook explains R. Hillel’s position as follows:

הלל הי‘ חושב שמציאות מלך באומה בא מצד חסרון המוסר, אמנם ברוממות המוסר צריך רק תוקף לאומי גדול ונעלה,על כן אמר אין משיח לישראל, כי אם בא יבא לנו תוקף לאומי נהדר מאד, וכח שלטון של ישראל הוא המשיחות

Yeshayahu Leibowitz claims that R. Hillel’s statement was directed against the Christians. He was telling them not to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, as the Jews already enjoyed the messianic era in the days of Hezekiah. See Sihot al Torat ha-Nevuah shel ha-Rambam(Jerusalem, 1997), pp. 400-401. Graetz already offered this suggestion. See Encylopaedia Judaica, s.v. Hillel.
[10] See here where the poster against him that I include is also found.
[11] Unlike R. Avraham Yehoshua, R. Meir Soloveitchik spoke out against what R. Steinman said. See here. As long as we are speaking about the Jerusalem Soloveitchiks, let me also mention that R. Meshulam Dovid Soloveitchik writes that one who truly waits for the Messiah understands what the Zionists are all about. He also adds that those who have any happiness about the State of Israel are lacking in their belief in the coming of the Messiah. See Shiurei Ha-Gaon Rabbi Meshulam ha-Levi: Derush ve-Aggadah (Jerusalem, 2014), p. 601:

והנה מי שברור אצלו לגמרי ענין האמונה והציפיה לביאת המשיח הוא יודע להסתכל כראוי על הציונים, ומי שיש לו משהו של שמחה על המדינה ועל השלטון והחוקים שלהם הדבר מוכיח שחסר אצלו באמונה בביאת המשיח.

R. Meshulam Dovid Soloveitchik has many pages in which he blasts Zionism and the State of Israel in the harshest way imaginable. Yet after all this, he adds that nothing he says should lead to the degrading of any Torah scholar who is mistaken in this matter—a lesson Satmar authors would do well to learn— and this was the path of both his father, the Brisker Rav, and his grandfather, R. Chaim. See ibid., pp. 601-602:

אמנם צריך לדעת שכל מה שאנו מדברים . . . זהו על השיטה ולא לזלזל באנשים חרדים אפילו אם טועים בהשקפתם לילך אחריהם, ובודאי שאסור לבזות ת“ח וצריך להיזהר בכבוד התורה ולהתנהג עמם בדרך ארץ, ובנפש החיים כתב דהמבזה ת“ח שאין לו חלק לעוה“ב זהו אפילו ת“ח שלומד שלא לשמה. צריך לרחם עליהם על שטועים טעות מרה שכזו, אבל אסור לבזותם. בכל השנים שהייתי אצל מרן ז“ל לא ראיתי מעולם שביזה מישהו, וגם הגר“ח ז“ל לא ביזה שום אדם. הרבה מעשים שמעתי בבית ומעולם לא שמעתי שביזה מישהו.

[12] Haggadah shel Pesah mi-Beit Levi, p. 120. R. Moshe Feinstein had the same basic approach. See Iggerot Moshe, Orah Hayyim 5, no. 8:

משום דהחיוב בכל יום ויום לצפות כעין וודאי שיבא היום

As the Messiah can come at any time, including during the Covid pandemic, R. Gamliel Rabinowitz wonders if kohanim would be permitted to wear masks while performing their service in the Temple. See Or Torah, Elul 5780, p. 1327.
[13] Peninei Rabbenu Ha-Griz, p. 376. R. Yekutiel Yehudah Halberstamm, Shefa Hayyim: Derashot Humash-Rashi 5742, p. 431, goes so far as to say (emphasis added):

שהרמב“ם הק‘ פוסק הלכה ברורה שאסור לאדם אפילו לחשוב שמא יתאחר זמן ביאתו של מלך המשיח, אלא להאמין באמת שמשיח צדקנו יכול לבוא בכל רגע

R. Jacob Sasportas, Tzitzat Novel Tzvi, ed. Tishby (Jerusalem, 1954), p. 41, writes:

 כי אמונת הדת היא שבכל יום ויום ובכל שעה ורגע בוא יבוא האדון אשר אנו מבקשים

[14] Peninei Rabbenu ha-Griz al ha-Torah, p. 383.
[15] Peninei Rabbenu ha-Griz al ha-Torah, pp. 382ff.
[16] Peninei Rabbenu ha-Avi Ezri, p. 417. There are myriads of other possible reasons why one might not wish the Messiah to come soon or even at all. Consider this hypothetical case: A man who intermarried and had children later became a ba’al teshuvah and divorced his wife. He is now hoping that his former wife and children will convert. However, it will take some time for him to convince them that this is the best path. This man, who now goes to Daf Yomi, learned from Yevamot 24b that in the days of the Messiah no converts will be accepted. So while the man believes in the coming of the Messiah, and wants him to come, he does not want him to come too quickly, since he figures he needs a couple of years before his family will be ready to convert. While some will regard this man as a heretic for not waiting in hope for the Messiah every single day, according to R. Shulzinger’s understanding of the Brisker Rav, there is nothing lacking in this man’s belief in Maimonides’ Twelfth Principle.



Altering of Rabbinic Texts?, Shlomo Rechnitz and the Eighth Principle of Faith, R. Yair Hayyim Bacharach, the Ridbaz and “Chemistry,” and R. Yitzhak Barda

Altering of Rabbinic Texts?, Shlomo Rechnitz and the Eighth Principle of Faith, R. Yair Hayyim Bacharach, the Ridbaz and “Chemistry,” and R. Yitzhak Barda
Marc B. Shapiro
1. People continue to send me examples of censorship and altering of texts. If I would discuss all of them, I would have no time for other matters, but I do intend to get to some of these examples. Let me also share an “updating” of a classic rabbinic text that I discovered on my own in the old fashioned way. This is one of those examples that I wish I knew about when I wrote my book. It is not a case of someone in the Orthodox world altering a text, as this example goes back many centuries. Bereshit Rabbah 36:1 states:
ויהיו בני נח היוצאים וגו’: והוא ישקיט ומי ירשיע וגו’ (איוב לד, כט)  דרש ר’ מאיר “והוא ישקיט” מעולמו “יסתר פנים” לעולמו כדיין שמותחין כילה על פניו ואין יודע מה נעשה מבחוץ ]כך אמרו דור המבול (שם כב) “עבים סתר לו ולא יראה [“.א”ל דייך מאיר. אמר להון ומה הוא דכתיב “והוא ישקיט ומי ירשיע” וגו’. אמרו נתן שלוה לדור המבול ומי בא וחייבן.
And the Sons of Noah, that went forth: It is written, When he giveth quietness, who then can condemn, etc. (Job 34:29)? R. Meir interpreted it: He quieteneth Himself from His world, And He hideth His face (ibid.) from His world, like a judge before whom a curtain is spread, so that he does not know what is happening without. [So said the generation of the flood, Thick clouds are a covering to Him, that he seeth not (Job 22:14)] Let that suffice thee, Meir, said they to him. [Soncino: You have said more than enough – heaven forfend that this teaching should be true!] Then what is meant by, When He giveth quietness, who can condemn? he demanded. They replied: Was not ease given to the generation of the flood; who then can condemn them?
The words that I have included in the first brackets are not found in most manuscripts of Bereshit Rabbah consulted by J. Theodor for his critical edition. However, they do appear in Va-Yikra Rabbah 5:1. The words “So said the generation of the flood” are problematic, since if they said the prior sentence, why is Rabbi Meir being rebuked? If you remove those words then the text makes perfect sense, as we see that R. Meir is saying (or is attributing to Job[1]) the notion that God chooses to remove himself from knowledge of and guidance of the world.[2] This is a very radical statement and it is understandable why a later copyist would prefer to attribute such a statement to the generation of the flood, rather than R. Meir. In other words, it appears that the original text of the midrash was altered for theological reasons. 
In its note on the Bereshit Rabbah text, the Soncino translation explains: 
He [God] is unconcerned by what is done in the world and is not incensed by the deeds of the wicked – a remarkable teaching of God’s trancendence. Cur. edd. alter the meaning by adding: so said that generation of the Flood (according to this R. Meir merely puts these words into the mouth of the wicked), Thick clouds are a covering to Him, that He seeth not (Job xxii, 14). But in that case it is difficult to see why his colleagues so sharply rejected this interpretation.
Louis Finkelstein takes note of this midrashic passage and writes:
Even in the school of R. Akiba, we find R. Meir, the sage who so frequently expresses patrician ideas, denying Providence in individual human life. “God,” he says, “is like a judge who spreads a curtain before him and knows not what proceeds without.” The earnest protest of R. Meir’s colleagues against this heresy shows that it was meant seriously, and that R. Meir, in the second century of the Common Era, actually held views akin to those defended by the patricians for six centuries before him.[3]
It is also worth noting that the medieval R. Asher ben Gershom, as part of his defense of the medieval followers of Maimonides, refers to the Bereshit Rabbah passage and his text did not have any reference to the Generation of the Flood. He therefore understands the passage to mean that R. Meir indeed denied God’s providence. He also adds that it appears that R. Meir later rejected this view, although he doesn’t provide any evidence for this assertion. R. Asher contrasts the vehemence of the attacks on the followers of Maimonides with the calmer way the talmudic sages reacted when their colleagues put forth radical views.[4]
ראו מה בין רבותינו וביניכם. הנה להלל באמרו אין משיח לישראל. לא אמרו עליו אלא מריה שרא ליה [!]. ולר’ מאיר בדרשו בבראשית רבה הוא ישקיט בעולמו ויסתר פנים מעולמו כדיין וכו’. והוא דבר גדול בענין השגחת הבורא ית’ עד שנראה שחזר בו. לא אמרו חבריו אלא דייך מאיר.
2. In a previous post I referred to R. Menahem Navarra’s book Issur Kedushah. This book was published together with another book by R. Navarra called Kero Mikra which deals with grammatical points in the liturgy. On pp. 24a-24b he quotes Maimonides’ Eighth Principle of Faith and a passage by Abarbanel in order to reject the notion that the text of the Torah was ever in a confused state and that Ezra corrected the Torah in any way. He understands Maimonides’ principle to be teaching that the Torah text we have today is the exact same that was given to Moses.
שיחוייב כל בעל דת להאמין והוא שהתורה שבידינו היום היא הנתונ’ למשה בהר סיני מבלי חלוף ושנוי כלל . . . ומלתא אגב אורחין קמ”לן כמה יש להחמיר בענין הספרי’ וקריאתם.
The assumption of R. Navarra is also found in, of all places, Shlomo Rechnitz’s famous (or infamous, depending your perspective) speech on the Lakewood school situation.
In this incredibly courageous speech, delivered, as it were, in the lion’s den itself, Rechnitz strongly attacked the phenomenon whereby, he claims, many children in Lakewood are not allowed into the schools that their parents would like them to attend, as their families are not of the right sort. Since he is a major philanthropist, in general Rechnitz is given some leeway in what he says, but in this speech he went over the line and the powers that be responded very strongly, forcing Rechnitz to issue an apology and declare that he will no longer speak about this matter. It was interesting to see all the comments on the different haredi news sites that reported on the Rechnitz speech. The people were overwhelmingly in favor of what Rechnitz said. However, this creates an enormous problem for haredi society, since laypeople, even important wealthy philanthropists, are not the ones to be making communal policy, and certainly not to be criticizing this policy in public. By the leadership’s strong response, and seeing how quickly Rechnitz folded, it sent a clear signal who the bosses really are.
The entire video is of great interest in terms of the sociology of the American haredi community, but I want to call attention to a tangential point made by Rechnitz. At minute 21 he says that he has a difficulty with a formulation of Maimonides in his eighth principle of faith. He also states that he never saw anyone who discusses this difficulty (which I assume means he never read The Limits of Orthodox Theology). 
He begins by saying that Maimonides’ principles of faith are eternal, applying for all time. Thus, the principle that God created the world or that the Messiah will come are things that one must believe in all times. He then says that the eighth principle of faith is difficult since it requires belief that our Torah scrolls are the exact same as the one given to Moses. Rechnitz asks, how can this be a principle of faith? How can there be a guarantee that the text never changed? This is not a question of theology but of historical reality, and how could Maimonides know what would happen in the future? Maybe after recording his principle there would be confusion in the Jewish people, and it would lead to a mistake in the text. Rechnitz quotes the Ani Ma’amin version of the eighth principle and wonders, “How could Chazal [!] possibly make such a statement?” He then says that in the “last few thousand [!] years since that Ani Ma’amin was written” much has happened with the Jewish people, wars, pogroms, ghettoes, etc. So how can we know that there haven’t been any changes in the text? “How can we say with a straight face that the Torah we have in our hands today is letter by letter the exact Torah we received at Har Sinai. And more importantly, how did Chazal know that the Torah would never even slightly deviate ad sof kol ha-doros?” He then says that this is based on a promise from God that the Torah would never be forgotten.[5]
All this is of course incorrect, and I don’t mean to criticize Rechnitz on this account. He is not a scholar and isn’t expected to know these things. Yet what he says is illustrative of the common view of many who have no idea about masoretic matters, and it was precisely this sort of perception that Maimonides created with his formulation of the eighth principle. (In The Limits of Orthodox Theology I offer a suggestion as to why Maimonides put forth a formulation that he knew was inaccurate.)
In response to Rechnitz, and I hope someone shows him this post, let me go over what I wrote here where I cited R. Yosef Reinman who has the same basic misconception as Rechnitz (although unlike Rechnitz, he knows that Yemenite Torah scrolls are not identical to Ashkenazic and Sephardic Torah scrolls). 
Reinman writes as follows in One People, Two Worlds, p. 119:
[A]n examination of Torah scrolls from all over the world, from Ireland to Siberia to isolated Yemen, all handwritten by scribes, yielded just nine instances of one-letter spelling discrepancies. Nine! And none of them affect the meaning of the text. Why is this so? Because every week we take out the scrolls and read them in public. The people follow the reading closely and if something is wrong, they are quick to point it out.
Unfortunately, Reinman  [and Rechnitz] doesn’t realize that it was the invention of printing that unified Torah texts by creating a standard version that soferim could have access to and be guided from (and those who review the parashah each week with Rashi will know that Rashi’s Torah text was not identical to the one we currently have[6]). Printed humashim also enabled people listening to the reading to point out errors. Yet let us not forget that most of the differences in Torah scrolls have concerned male and haser. Contrary to Reinman’s implication in his last sentence, there is no way for the people following the reading to catch such an error.
I must also point out that Reinman’s first sentence is an egregious error, and one doesn’t need to go to Ireland or Siberia to prove this (and contrary to what he states no one has ever performed such an examination). If one simply takes fifty Torah scrolls from Lakewood one will find all sorts of discrepancies. I know this because the people who check sifrei Torah by computer claim that the overwhelming majority of scrolls they check, including those that have been in use for decades, have contained at least one error.[7] In other words, contrary to what Reinman has stated, the truth of Torah does not rise or fall because of scribal errors. If it did, then we would be in big trouble because as I just mentioned, almost every Torah scroll in the world has discrepancies. What Reinman doesn’t seem to get is that while contemporary halakhic authorities are in dispute about only nine letters, this has nothing to do with the quality of actual Torah scrolls, which are obviously subject to human errors by scribes.
3. In my post here I discussed a possibly fictional responsum by the fascinating figure R. Yair Hayyim Bacharach.[8] There is so much of interest in his responsa, but I want to offer one further example. In Havot Yair, no. 136, he mentions that some wicked Jews have become accustomed to bribing non-Jewish judges when they have a case before them, and even brag about this. He also mentions that his brother-in-law, R. Isaac, the rav of Mannheim, had a discussion about this issue with Karl Ludwig I, the Elector Palatine. R. Bacharach actually puts ז”ל after Karl Ludwig’s name. ז”ל is almost never added to the name of a non-Jew and thus shows the positive feelings R. Bacharach had for Karl Ludwig.[9]
והיה הדוכס קאריל לודוויג ז”ל המופלג בחכמה משתעשע לפרקים בגיסי הנזכר בדברי שכליים.
R. Bacharach records that Karl Ludwig once told R. Isaac that has a complaint about the Jews whose cases often come to the government courts. He says that they bribe the judges, an action “which is against all religion, and certainly against what is written in your Torah.” He also told R. Isaac that it was his responsibility to fix this problem.
R. Isaac agreed with Karl Ludwig that bribery of judges is a terrible thing, and he doesn’t deny that Jews have been guilty of this. He adds that even if there is no Torah prohibition to bribe a (non-Jewish) judge, it still needs to be forbidden in order for there to be a properly functioning society.
דאפילו לא נאמר איסורו בתורה ראוי לאסרו מצד השכל וישוב העולם ותיקון המדינה כמו רציחה וגזילה וגניבה ואונאה וזנות ועול מידות, וכלם דברים שהשכל מחייב, ודין ודת חק ומשפט עולה על כלנה שאם יקולקל המשפט איש הישר בעיניו יעזה.
R. Bacharach was not in the room when R. Isaac spoke to Karl Ludwig. It is possible that he is recording the gist of what R. Isaac told him he said, but is it also possible that what are seeing is R. Bacharch’s invention of a conversation, and that R. Bacharach is using the opportunity to put forth his own ideas about the matter?
R. Bacharach then records that R. Isaac told Karl Ludwig that if a Jew is owed money by a non-Jew and the non-Jew denies this, while there can be no permission for the Jew to offer the judge a bribe, from God’s perspective if a bribe was given it is not wrong since the Jew is entitled to the money and the only way he can get it was by bribing the judge. He also said that perhaps the bribe can be seen as evening the scales, since the Jew is afraid that his adversary has also bribed the judge. This argument is intended to show that the Jews of R. Bacharach’s time who bribed non-Jewish judges were really not doing something so bad.
R. Bacharach then says the following (again, supposedly in the name of his brother-in-law), which is just as true today as when he said it: והנה ידוע שאין שנאה כשנאת הדת. He explains that when the Jew and non-Jew come before the judge, the judge naturally inclines to favor his co-religionist. The Jew therefore assumes that the only way he can get a fair trial is by bribing the judge. In other words, he is not bribing him to have the case thrown his way, but only to get a fair trial. R. Bacharach concludes that what he has said should not be seen as a justification of bribery, but as a limud zekhut which explains the circumstances that lead Torah observant people to behave this way.
R. Bacharach tells us that Karl Ludwig liked what R. Isaac said but asked him what about when two Jews are having a court case and they still bribe the judge. In that circumstance there is no reason to think that the judge will favor one side, as neither side shares his religion. R. Bacharach reports how R. Isaac was able to respond properly to this question, but again, is it possible that this is an invention of R. Bacharach in order to enable him to get his ideas across?
After recording the supposed conversation between R. Isaac and Karl Ludwig, R. Bacharach elaborates on the matter of bribery and why there is no explicit Torah prohibition on giving a bribe, only on taking a bribe (Deut. 16:19). In this discussion he notes that he does not think that there is a prohibition to bribe a non-Jewish judge if do not know that you are in the wrong, and thus you are not asking the judge to award you something that doesn’t belong to you by right. He also says that one who offers such a bribe does not make it a quid pro quo that he gives the money and the judge rules in his favor. All he intends by the money is that the judge look carefully at his case and listen to his claims, and then render a just decision. In his description of R. Isaac’s conversation with Karl Ludwig, Bacharach reports that R. Isaac said that he was only offering a limud zekhut for those who bribe judges, but “halilah” to say that this is proper behavior. Here, however, R. Bacharach is saying that there is no prohibition. In other words, in the very same responsum R. Bacharach is showing the difference between an answer motivated by apologetics and one that needn’t be concerned with this.
ולכן בשוחד לשופטיהם אין בו חשש דלפני עיור אם הוא מדיני ממונות, שלא נתברר לבעלי דבר עצמן שחבירו עושה עול רק כל אחד סובר שהדין עמו, וגם השופט דעתו לשפוט צדק, וגם נותן השוחד אינו מתנה שיזכהו רק שיחפש זכותו וישים דברי טענתו אל לבו.
Examining what halakhic authorities say about the matter of bribing non-Jewish judges shows very clearly how at least some Jews regarded themselves as living in a parallel universe from non-Jewish society, and did not feel bound by the rules of the latter society, only by internal Jewish rules. Even though most halakhic authorities assume that it is forbidden to bribe non-Jewish judges,[10] the fact that some think it is permitted is also of great significance in showing that this was not regarded as an obvious matter. Thus, R. Jonathan Eybeschuetz[11] raises the question if one can bribe a non-Jewish judge. He refers to R. Bacharach’s responsum and tells us that R. Bacharach did not come to a conclusion in this matter. He then adds that the “world” has long been accustomed to be lenient in this matter, and R. Eybeschuetz provides a halakhic justification for the bribery, which would only be in a case when the Jew was in the right. 
והעולם נוהגין היתר משנים קדמוניות . . . וצ”ל דס”ל דכל הטעם של שוחד דהוא חד דמקרביה דעתיה גביה וזהו בישראל דקרובים אסורים לדון אבל בבן נח שכל הקרובים מותרים לדון אין לך קירוב יותר מזה והכל יודעין שדעת האב קרוב לבן יותר מאדם אחר שנותנים לו אלף דינרים ומכל מקום האב כשר לדון בנו הבן נח, אף ליתן שוחד להצדיק הצדיק וכו’ מותר דמ”ש מקרובים.
I think it is very likely that despite the halakhic justification provided, the real motivation for any Jewish bribery of non-Jewish judges was the assumption that the judge would not be fair when dealing with Jews as well as a fear that the non-Jewish litigant was also bribing the judge.
R. Abraham Zvi Eisenstadt, Pithei Teshuvah, Yoreh Deah 151:1, states that any bribery is only permissible באופן שאין בו חשש גזל, and even for this permissible bribery, it is only OK if the money is not given directly to the judge but to one of his assistants who will then give it to the judge. See also Pithei Teshuvah, Hoshen Mishpat 9:2, who after citing authorities who disagree with R. Eybeschuetz nevertheless justifies offering bribes when it is obvious that the non-Jewish judge is not going to render a just verdict.
R. Simeon Anolik, in a book published in 1907, states that there is no prohibition of lifnei iver if one bribes a non-Jewish judge, as the non-Jewish legal system is not in accord with Torah law. However, this is only permitted if the intent of the bribe is to arrive at the correct, Torah mandated result .[12]
לא שייך בזה לפני עור מה שנותן שוחד לזכות את הזכאי ולחייב את החייב אם דנו עפ”י חק שלהם. ומש”כ רמב”ן בפ’ וישלח בשם הירושלמי דב”נ מוזהר בלא תקח שוחד היינו בדין שהוא כדיננו. או דמרא דירושלמי הוא ר’ יוחנן ולדידיה מבואר ברמ”א שם [שו”ת הרמ”א סי’ י] דב”נ מחוייב בדינים שחקקו להם כרצונם. אבל לדידן דקי”ל דמצווים על הדינים היינו דינים שלנו שפיר פשט ההיתר מטעם זה.
The words that I have underlined would appear to show that Anolik’s position was widely accepted. 
Regarding bribery, in Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy, p. 35 n. 93, I mention a forthcoming article which will deal with paying off community leaders in order for someone to be given a town rabbinate. After completing the just-mentioned book, my interests moved in different directions, but I do still hope to write that article which will have a lot of material that has never been discussed in scholarly literature. Here is one interesting source from R. Elhanan Wasserman that I only recently found. In Kovetz Shiurim: Bava Batra no. 71, R. Elhanan suggests that if you are the most qualified to serve as a dayan in the community, then there is no prohibition to pay the community leaders to appoint you to the position, and no prohibition for the community leaders to accept this money. I don’t know of anyone else who holds this position which, needless to say, would open up a can of worms, since lots of people think that they are the most qualified. We obviously can’t have a situation where all such people feel that they can pay off the community leaders in order to be appointed to a position. Furthermore, the Rambam makes no distinction of the sort R. Elhanan does, but states flatly that it forbidden for a dayan to give money in order to be appointed. See Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Sanhedrin 3:9
כל דיין שנתן ממון כדי שיתמנה אסור לעמוד מפניו וציוו חכמים להקל אותו ולזלזל בו. ואמרו חכמים שהטלית שמתעטף בה תהי בעיניך כמרדעת של חמור.
4. In my post here I wrote:
The Ridbaz’s attack on the Brisker method is well known. In the introduction to his responsa, Beit Ridbaz (Jerusalem, 1908), Ridbaz writes as follows:
A certain rabbi invented the “chemical” method of study. Those in the know now refer to it as “chemistry,” but many speak of it as “logic.” This proved to be of great harm to us for it is a foreign spirit from without that they have brought in to the Oral Torah. This is not the Torah delivered to us by Moses from the mouth of the Omnipresent. This method of study has spread among the yeshivah students who still hold a gemara in their hands. In no way does this type of Torah study bring men to purity. From the day this method spread abroad this kind of Torah has had no power to protect its students. . . . It is better to have no rosh yeshivah than to have one who studies with the “chemical” method.
In his ethical will, printed at the end of his responsa, Ridbaz returns to this criticism and directs his sons: “Be careful, and keep far away from the new method of study that has in recent years spread through Lithuania and Zamut. Those knowledgeable in Torah refer to it as ‘chemistry.'” (Just before this post appeared, R. Eliezer Katzman sent word that in his opinion, Ridbaz is not referring to R. Hayyim and the Brisker approach, but rather to Telz and its method of talmudic analysis. I don’t believe this is correct, and hope to return to this subject in a future post.)
In the first edition of Shaul Stampfer’s Ha-Yeshivah ha-Lita’it be-Hithavutah, p. 113 n. 29, he quotes Saul Lieberman’s opinion that Ridbaz’ words were directed against R. Isaac Jacob Reines. This is clearly incorrect. Reines’ method had no influence whatsoever, and Ridbaz is speaking about a method of study that was widespread in the yeshivot. It is obvious that he can only be referring to the method of R. Hayyim. Lieberman’s incorrect speculation was removed in the second edition of Stampfer’s book. . . .[13]
Needless to say, because of his attacks on R. Hayyim, Ridbaz did not endear himself to the Soloveitchik family. Once when a student referred to Ridbaz, R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik became very angry and told the student never to mention his name again. He also said that some gedolim are always right, some are sometimes right, and some are never right, and the Ridbaz falls into the latter category![14]
Thus far what I wrote in my prior post. It is worth noting that Benjamin Brown defends Lieberman’s suggestion that the Ridbaz’s words were directed against Reines.[15] However, as I have written, I see no justification for this. Daniel Price called my attention to Shai Akiva Wosner’s recently published a book on R. Shimon Shkop, Hashivah Mishpatit bi-Yeshivot Lita: Iyunim be-Mishnato shel ha-Rav Shimon Shkop. On p. 32 he refers to my post and rejects my assumption that the Ridbaz was referring to R. Hayyim Soloveitchik. He claims that his negative comments were directed against Telz and its method, a view that as mentioned is also shared by Katzman.
I don’t deny that the Ridbaz could also have had Telz in mind, but this doesn’t change my assumption that the main target of his words was R. Hayyim Soloveitchik. Is there a source that can settle this argument conclusively? I believe there is, but I was not aware of it when I wrote my previous post. In 1935 Moshe Aharon Perlman published his Mi-Pi Dodi. Here is the title page.
This volume records things he heard from his uncle, R. Moses Kliers, the rav of Tiberias. R. Kliers knew the Ridbaz personally, and the information that appears on p. 35 is obviously of great importance to what we have been discussing: 
מסדר למוד הבריסקאי לא היתה דעתו נוחה וקרא לו חימיא
In other words, R. Kliers told Pearlman that the Ridbaz opposed the Brisker approach and referred to it as “chemistry”. This source is more significant than any speculation by contemporary scholars.
There is a good deal in Mi-Pi Dodi that I think readers will find of interest, but for now I will just mention one example.
P. 25. R. Kliers said that all manner of dress worn by the Slobodka students can be justified, but what can’t be justified is the forelock of hair that the students had. 
(In Changing the Immutable, p. 268 n. 156, I cited a fascinating passage from Mi-Pi Dodi, pp. 9-10, showing that R. Kliers thought that it was better for people to carry on a particular Shabbat and violate a rabbinic commandment rather than learning that a rabbi had made a mistake in setting up the eruv, and thus come to lose respect for him which would violate a Torah commandment. The eruv could be fixed after Shabbat, but the negative effect on the rabbi’s reputation would remain.[16])
5. In my last post I referred to R. Yitzhak Barda and his book Kinyan Torah which argues that Maimonides’ view is binding, even if this means rejecting the Shulhan Arukh. Here is the title page of Kinyan Torah, vol. 3. 

At least one reader was wondering if R. Barda is Yemenite. He is not, and his view granting final authority to the Mishneh Torah is unique among Sephardic authorities. R. Barda is in charge of a group of Torah institutions in Ashkelon called Yitzhak Yeranen. He is also the brother-in-law of R. Meir Mazuz and often appears together with him at events. Here is a picture of them during the last Israeli elections.

Halakhic authorities have had different perspectives on how to relate to newly discovered manuscripts that contain halakhic rulings. The Hazon Ish did not pay these texts much mind, not regarding them as having been part of the halakhic tradition. Most halakhic authorities, on the other hand, had a more positive opinion of such newly published texts. However, even those who welcomed the newly published texts and integrated them into the halakhic system generally agreed that halakhot that that were recorded in the Shulhan Arukh and were thus generally accepted could not be rejected based on a newly published text.[17] That is one reason why the 2014 appearance of R. Yitzhak Barda’s tenth volume of responsa Yitzhak Yeranen is of interest, as in this volume one finds that the author indeed rejects a universally accepted halakhah.[18]

The question R. Barda deals with is whether one can bake or cook on the first day of Yom Tov for the second day (and his conclusion would apply to other relevant matters, such as setting the table on one day for the next). This would appear to be an easy question to answer, as the Talmud, Betzah 17a, states: “Our Rabbis taught: One may not bake on the first day of a festival for the second.” This halakhah is recorded in Shulhan Arukh, Orah Hayyim 503:1. One might think that this would be the end of the matter, and for centuries it was. However, R. Barda has reopened the discussion. According to him, it is permitted to bake or cook on the first day of Yom Tov for the next day. How does he arrive at such a decision, one at odds with the Shulhan Arukh?
R. Barda begins by pointing out that R. Hananel records a different version of the talmudic text. In his version, the Talmud states that it is forbidden to bake on Yom Tov for Shabbat or for after the holiday, but it says nothing about baking from the first day of Yom Tov for the next next day. R. Isaac Alfasi, R. Asher ben Jehiel, and other geonic and medieval sources also have the version recorded by R. Hananel.[19] Not noted by R. Barda, but certainly a support for his position, is that the Tosefta and Jerusalem Talmud also have nothing about baking on the first day of Yom Tov for the next day.[20]
R. Barda further points out that Maimonides must also not have had our version of the talmudic text, since in the Mishneh Torah all he says is that on Yom Tov one may not bake or cook anything that will be eaten after the holiday.[21] He says nothing about not baking or cooking on the first day of Yom Tov for the next day. Also important for R. Barda’s case is that Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Shevitat Yom Tov 6:14, states that the observance of the second day of Yom Tov is not on account of doubt, but is a minhag. What this means is that it is not a question of maybe the second day not really being a Yom Tov, in which case one could understand the prohibition of baking or cooking on the first day for the second. I would only add that R. Barda’s point also works if you adopt Maimonides’ other formulation that Yom Tov Sheni is an actual decree of the Sages.[22] In either case, the second day is treated like Yom Tov no different than the first day, and thus R. Barda states that there is no reason why one cannot bake or cook on the first day for the second. As for Rosh ha-Shanah, he tells us that the two days of this holiday are regarded by the Talmud as one long day,[23] and therefore there is even more reason for it to be permitted to bake on the first day for the second.
R. Joseph Karo, in the introduction to the Beit Yosef of which the Shulhan Arukh is an abridgment, tells us that he is going to decide the halakhah based on the three central authorities, R. Isaac Alfasi, Maimonides, and R. Asher ben Jehiel. As R. Barda points out, in the case we have been discussing, none of these three authorities state that it is forbidden to bake or cook from one day of Yom Tov to the next, and yet the Shulhan Arukh does forbid this. 
R. Barda notes that there are medieval authorities who record the prohibition, most prominently R. Jacob ben Asher, Tur, Orah Hayyim 503. Prior to this, Halakhot Pesukot[24] and Halakhot Gedolot[25] also record this prohibition, even though according to R. Barda their version of the Talmud did not state that it is forbidden to bake on the first day of Yom Tov for the next day, only that it is forbidden to bake on Yom Tov for after the holiday. In other words, even though baking or cooking on the first day of Yom Tov for the next day is forbidden by Halakhot Pesukot and Halakhot Gedolot, this is an original deduction made by these authorities, not a recording of earlier talmudic halakhah. (Actually, it would have made more sense for R. Barda to say that the rulings in Halakhot Pesukot and Halakhot Gedolot originated in an earlier source.) Yet the stringent position codified by these two sources and later by R. Jacob ben Asher and other rishonim is not determinative for R. Barda, since as mentioned this halakhah does not appear in the more important sources, namely, R. Isaac Alfasi, Maimonides, and R. Asher ben Jehiel (R. Jacob ben Asher’s father).
Readers might be convinced by R. Barda’s argument that R. Isaac Alfasi, Maimonides, and R. Asher ben Jehiel did not view it as forbidden to bake or cook on the first day of Yom Tov for the next day. But this still does not mean that it should be permitted today, for as we have seen the Shulhan Arukh forbids this action. R. Barda’s assumption is that R. Joseph Karo’s text of the Talmud was not pristine, but as with our version had incorporated the addition of the Halakhot Pesukot and Halakhot Gedolot, forbidding baking on the first day of Yom Tov for the next day. Since the Shulhan Arukh’s ruling is based on an error, namely, R. Karo’s false assumption that the Talmud forbids baking or cooking on the first day of Tom Tov for the next day, R. Barda declares that one need not accept the Shulhan Arukh’s ruling. (This statement is directed towards the Sephardic community as a whole, which follows the Shulhan Arukh. R. Barda personally follows Rambam, and since the Rambam does not record the prohibition, that alone is enough for him to permit baking and cooking on the first day of Yom Tov for the second day.)
R. Barda further states that had R. Joseph Karo known what has been mentioned so far, he, too, would have decided differently. He adds that to refrain from baking or cooking on the first day of Yom Tov for the next day takes away from some of the joy of Yom Tov, as it makes it more difficult to prepare food for the second day of the holiday.[26] He also calls attention to a responsum of R. Isaac Bar Sheshet from which we see that there were people who indeed baked and cooked on the first day of Yom Tov for the second day. (R. Isaac Bar Sheshet himself states that this is forbidden.[27])
After many pages of justification of his ruling, R. Barda publishes two letters he received from R. Serayah Deblitzky in which the latter takes issue with what R. Barda wrote. R. Deblitzky begins by stating that it is an absolute principle that a halakhah that has been accepted among all of Jewry cannot be overturned due to the discovery of new manuscripts or based on the fact that important earlier authorities did not record this particular halakhah. He further notes that R. Jacob ben Asher did forbid baking and cooking on the first day of Yom Tov for the next day, even though his father, R. Asher ben Jehiel, did not mention this prohibition. R. Deblitzsky does not think it is reasonable that R. Judah would disagree with his father in this matter, and assumes that R. Asher ben Jehiel’s omission of the halakhah does not imply that he had a more liberal perspective.

[1] See Mordechai Margaliyot’s note in his edition of Va-Yikra Rabbah, ad loc.
[2] Malbim, Deut. 13:7 (p. 87a) cites the Midrash without the words כך אמרו דור המבול. Yet as far as I can determine, every printed edition of the Midrash has these words. Does this mean that the Malbim independently concluded that the words should be deleted?
[3] The Pharisees (Philadelphia, 1938), p. 260.
[4] The text is published in Joseph Shatzmiller, “Les tossafistes et la premiere controverse maïmonidienne: le témoignage du rabbin Asher ben Gershom,” in Gilbert Dahan, et al., eds., Rashi et la culture juive en France du Nord au moyen âge (Paris, 1997), p. 67.
[5] Rechnitz also says that the Torah cannot be changed, “no Reform, no Modern Orthodoxy.” Does Rechnitz really feel that Modern Orthodoxy is akin to Reform? Or was this comment strategic? In other words, since he is attacking a widespread practice in Lakewood, he has to show them that despite the attack he is still on the “right” side, and the way to do this is by slandering Modern Orthodoxy.
[6] See Rashi to Ex. 25:22. Even the ArtScroll-Sapirstein Rashi translation is forced to admit: “Rashi’s Sefer Torah evidently had a ו where ours does not.” Siftei Hakhamim writes:
 אע”פ שאין כתיב ואת בוא”ו בס”ת של רש”י היה כתוב בוא”ו.
See also Rashi to Gen. 25:6. Artscroll writes: “Rashi’s text of the Torah had the spelling פילגשים, without the letter י of the ים suffix which indicates the plural.”
[7] For the information on errors in Torah scrolls, including eye-opening pictures, see Kolmos, Elul 5748. Here is part of R. Shmuel Wosner’s letter quoted on p. 7:

עכשיו שנכנס עבודת הקאמפיוטער בזה למסלולו, ונתברר על ידו לתמהון לבב כולנו, שמבערך ששים ספרים, ס”ת שהיו בחזקת בדוקים יצאו רק תשע ספרים נקיים מכל שגיאה וברובא דמינכר מאד נמצאו שגיאות פוסלות לרוב. וכן בדידן הוי עובדא בס”ת שנכתב ע”ש תלמידים גדולים וצדיקים שנספו בעו”ה, נמצאו ה’ טעיות ממש בחסר ויתר.

[8] I am inclined to see the responsum’s description of a storybook romance as fictional, and I think there might be other fictional responsa in Havot Yair. None of this can be proven, and it is just a sense I have that some of the questions were created by R. Bacharach in order to establish halakhic principles. I think this might be the case with no. 183 where he discusses a man confronted with a choice to drink non-kosher wine or have his ear cut off. See also no. 79 regarding a convert to Judaism, if he needs to return money he stole from Jews and non-Jews before he converted.
[9] In no. 139 R. Bacharach mentions the hillul ha-shem that results when a Jew is a thief, as the non-Jews blame the entire Jewish community for his actions. Yet R. Bacharach adds that it is only the masses who have this feeling, while the wise people and the government leaders don’t engage in such stereotyping.
ואף כי יש חילול השם באשר הגוים מרשיעים על כלל יהדות בשביל כך, אין אלו רק דברי המון עם ולא חכמים שבהם ושלטונים.

[10] See R. Asher Weiss, Minhat Asher, vol. 1, no. 92.
[11] Urim ve-Tumim, Hilkhot Dayanim 9:1.
[12] Orah Mishpat (Petrokov, 1907), p. 17a.
[13] [See p. 124, n. 30, where Stampfer quotes Prof. Chimen Abramsky, a descendant of the Ridbaz, that in the family it is accepted that the Ridbaz was referring to R. Hayyim.]
[14] I heard this from an eyewitness. The event took place in the 1950s.
[15] Ha-Hazon Ish  (Jerusalem, 2011), p. 321 n. 44.
[16] See also Shabbetai Dov Rosenthal, Geon ha-Hora’ah (Jerusalem, 2011), vol. 2, pp. 186-187, for two similar cases with R. Samuel Salant and R. Zvi Pesah Frank.
[17] However, what should a posek do if it is clear that a halakhah in the Shulhan Arukh is based on a mistaken text? R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg was unsure. See Kitvei ha-Gaon Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg, vol. 2, p. 433:
הוכחתי שהב”י השתמש בכת”י מקולקלים וע”י נדחק לפרש ולהסיק הלכה מנוסחאות של ספרי ראשונים שהי’ בהם השמטות בשגיאת סופרים – השאלה היא אם להניח הכל כמו שהוא ורק להסביר ולנסח בלשון ובהגיון מתקבלים על הלב, או לשוב למקורות הראשונים ולחקור ולבדוק הכל מחדש.
[18] We will be focusing on nos. 20-24, where R. Barda explains his position and defends it against criticism. Here is the title page of Yitzhak Yeranen, vol. 11, R. Barda’s most recent volume of responsa.

[19] R. Barda mistakenly states that the Munich manuscript of the Talmud is also missing the words מיו”ט לחברו. This error does not affect his argument, as the Munich manuscript is from the 14th century and R. Barda acknowledges, p. 262, that there were medieval texts of the Talmud that had מיו”ט לחברו. Yet he believes that these words are not original but were inserted based on what appears in the Halakhot Gedolot (which I will soon discuss).
[20] See Saul Lieberman, Tosefta ki-Feshutah, Beitzah, p. 947.
[21] See Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Shevitat Yom Tov, ch. 6.
[22] See my Studies in Maimonides and His Interpreters (Scranton, 2008), p. 59.
[23] See Beitzah 4b-5a.
[24] Halakhot Pesukot (Versailles, 1886), p. 8. Since I am sure some will be skeptical that a sefer was ever printed in Versailles, here is the title page.

[25] Halakhot Gedolot, Makhon Yerushalayim ed. (Jerusalem, 1992), Hilkhot Yom Tov, p. 215.
[26] See Yitzhak Yeranen, p. 263.
[27] She’elot u-Teshuvot ha-Rivash, no. 254. See also ibid., no. 16.


R. Flensberg, Donkeys, Antelopes and Frogs

R. Flensberg , Donkeys, Antelopes and Frogs

Recently, a book, Aggadata de-Ve Rav, Machon Limud Aggadah, Ashdod, 2010, pp. 50, 176, 56, collecting various works attempting to explain the difficult and, on their face, rather odd stories (aggadot) that appear in Baba Batra (73a-74) many of which involve odd animals do odd things.  In addition to these passages, there is another odd passage in Bechorot (7b) which also involves an animal, a donkey also engaging in odd behavior. This passage was too was also the subject of many works attempting to explain it. This new book reprints four of the many works attempting to decipher the stories in Baba Batra, R. Elyakim Getz, Redfunei be-Tapuchim, R. Zev Wolfe Boskowitz, Le-Binyamin Amar, R. Eliyahu Guttmacher, Tzafnat Panach, and the fourth is Aggadot Soferim, which a collection of materials on the topic from Ritva, Gra, and R. Efrayim Lunschutz (author of Kli Yakar, among other works).  While three editions of Redfunei be-Tapuchim are available on Hebrewbooks (here, here and here)  Le-Binyamin Amar and Tzafnat Panach are not. The book also provides biographical details about these authors (56 pp.).  Additionally, a list of others books devoted to the Baba Batra stories which are not reprinted herein are included.  The list provides over 25 such works devoted to the stories in Baba Batra.  Regarding the donkey of Bechorot there are almost as many books on that topic.  We have found 23 such works.  One of those discussing the donkey of Berchorot is an important, little-known and recently reprinted book on that topic.  Specifically, R. Hayyim Yirmiyahu Flensberg’s Nezer ha-Nitzhon, Vilna, 1883 (reprinted Machon Mishnas Rabbi Aaron, Israel, 2001).*  Amongst the many who praised Flensberg’s book, was his teacher, the Netziv.  And, it was not only the Netziv, but Flensberg received a request from his alma mater, Volozhin, that his book was so popular could he please send ten additional copies. Thus, in light of this book discussing, what is arguable similar aggadot, we provide background on this little-known Lithuanian rabbi, his works and children.


Flensberg was born in 1842.  And, as many great rabbis, there are both miraculous stories told of his conception and birth as well as how bright he was.  Indeed, it is said that he knew 300 pages of Talmud, with Tosefot, at his bar-mitzvah.  While those stories are not unusual, what is unusual was the bar-mitzvah gift he received from his rebbi, R. Ya’akov Tuvia Goldberg, a copy of Avraham Mapu‘s Ahavat Tzion, perhaps the first Hebrew novel.  As his rebbi saw that Flensberg expressed an interest in studying Hebrew, his rebbi decided this book would be appropriate.  Apparently, this gift was so important, that in the biography of Flensberg, written by his son Yitzhak Yeshayahu Flensberg, some seventy years later, records this.  It is worth noting that, although this biography appears at the beginning of the second volume of Flensberg’s Torah commentary which was reprinted in 2000 by the Lakewood publisher, Machon Mishnas Rabbi Aaron, this fact remains in this edition.

It should also be noted that, while on its face, it is questionable how much one can read into a single bar-mitzvah gift, Shaul Stampfer views this gift as highly significant.  Stampfer writes, that although the policy of the Volozhin rabbinic administration was to prohibit haskalah literature, Flensberg is used as an example to prove that “not all the students viewed reading haskalah literature as conflicting with torah study.”  Shaul Stampfer, The Lithuanian Yeshiva, Jerusalem, 2005, 171.  Stampfer cites the story of the bar-mitzvah gift and notes that although Flensberg received this gift “he still went to study in Volozhin.”  Id. at 172.  Indeed, it is even more questionable to use the bar-mitzvah gift to understand the Volozhin students’ views on haskalah literature when one considers the timing.  Flensberg didn’t go to Volozhin immediately after his bar-mitzvah, rather it would be over a year and a half before he went to Volozhin. [1] During that time, Flensberg stopped studying with R. Goldberg, the bar-mitzvah gift, giver and began studying with R. Leib Charif (eventual Chief-Rabbi of Tytvenai and Rietavas Lithuania).  (Also relevant for our purposes is that R. Leib  authored a book on the donkey Gemara in

Bechorot called Eizot Yehoshua.) Thus, there are two significant factors that may sever any ties between Flensberg’s bar-mitzvah gift and his ultimate decision to go to Volozhin.  


In all events, Flensberg thrived at Volozhin.  He studied in the Netziv’s group and was close to the Netziv.  Additionally, he was selected for the highly prestigious position at the Volozhin Yeshiva as the Purim Rav of Volozhin.  His appointment to this position took place sometime before he left Volozhin in 1859, making this the earliest, and perhaps one of the only, recorded mention of this custom from Volozhin.[2] In fact, there are those who doubt the existence of the custom of Purim Rav at Volozhin.[3] This appears to undermine that position.  Additionally, the description of the Purim Rav position is of interest.  According to Flensberg, the position was fairly innocuous.  For the two days of Purim, the Netziv would cede his position to the best student. The student would wear the Netziv’s hat and use the Netziv’s walking stick.  All the students would give the Purim Rav great deference.  They would also pepper him with questions both about Purim and more comical questions.  The Purim Rav would answer in the Purim spirit.  Nowhere is there any mention of lack of respect or, seemingly anything that is objectionable. 

After leaving Volozhin, he married Itta, whose father was R. Mendel Katz, who would eventually become a rabbi in Radin.  After his marriage he went to study in a bet midrash in Kovno.  Although some refer to this place as “the Kovno Kollel,” it cannot be referring to the famous Kovno Kollel as that did not begin until 1877 long after R. Flensberg left Kovno and entered the rabbinate.  During his time in Kovno Flensberg became friendly with R. Yitzhak Elchonon Spektor. After leaving Kovno in 1869 to his first rabbinic position, and, in 1889, after a few other employment changes, Flensberg ended up in Shaki as the chief rabbi. 

Flensberg found the rabbinate a good fit and focused on derash and philosophy.  But, before publishing any of his books, he penned a number of important articles in various newspapers including Ha-Levonon, Ha-Melitz, and Ha-Maggid.  In general, he took a rather novel views towards newspapers.  At the time, many viewed newspapers as a threat to Orthodox Judaism as it exposed people to different views that they otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to.  Thus, many took the position that reading a newspaper was prohibited.  Flensberg, however, recognized that merely ignoring the problem is ineffective.  Instead, he proposed that the Orthodox start their own newspaper so that their views will be available to all. This view echos that of R. Yaakov Ettlinger, who started the Orthodox journal Shomer Tzion ha-Ne’eman. (And, it appears, the same debate is happening, again, today with regard to the internet and related technologies.) In addition, Flensberg also penned a series titled Moreh Neukei ha-Zeman he-Hadash, which some view an indirect attack against Nachman Krochmal‘s similarly titled work. Flensberg wrote this essay during a time that he was suffering from headache and prohibited from Torah study.  Thus, turned his focused to producing essays for newspapers.  


After his wife died in 1882, he published his first work, Nezer ha-Nitzhon.  As mentioned above, this book contains a lengthy explanation of the talmudic story regarding the famous donkey.  Additionally, he includes two derashot at the end.  In the introduction, he credits his wife for the publication and explains that this book is in her memory. In 1897, he published his next books, She’alot Hayyim, Divrei Yirmiyahu in Vilna.  The first titled portion is comprised of responsa and the second titled portion is comprised of dershot.  The second part also contains a lengthy introduction regarding Flensberg’s view on derush, and a eulogy for R. Yitzhak Elchonon Spektor and the Godol of Minsk.  

It appears that not everyone, including those who normally are very well-read, were familiar with R. Flensberg’s works.  Katzman explains that R. Zevin, in Ishim ve-Shetot (p. 71), confuses R. Hayyim Flensberg with another R. Hayyim – R. Hayyim Soloveitchik.  The statement R. Zevin attributes to a child R. Hayyim Soloveitchik, and which R. Zevin himself doubts it comports with what we know about R. Hayyim Soloveitchik’s manner of deciding law, actually appears in R. Hayyim Flensberg’s She’alot Hayyim, no. 14.[4] 

In 1905,[5] he published his commentary on Hasdai Cerscas’ Ohr Adonay.[6]  This is one of the very few commentaries on this very difficult work.  Flensberg prefaces the book with an in-depth introduction regarding the work and its author.  R. Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg wrote a glowing review of the book.  Weinberg expressed surprise that no one else, with one exception, had seen fit to review such a worthy book.  Weinberg notes that to write such a commentary requires not only “an ish ma’adai” but also one must be a “rav ve-goan talmudi.”[7] Flensberg includes a few pages of comments on Moreh Nevukim at the end of the book, and there are two letters one from Abraham Harkavey and the other from R. Dr. Abraham Berliner, at times, taking issue with some of Flensberg’s conclusions.  This was intended to be the first part of two of Flensberg’s commentary on Crescas.  According to Flensberg’s son, in 1909 the second portion was published but languished at the printer. And, after World War I broke out in 1914, the Flensberg’s were under the impression all the copies were lost.  In 1925, they learned that Ester Rubinstein, Flensberg’s daughter, had saved the plates as well as other manuscripts.  It is unclear if the second portion was ever actually reprinted.  The JNUL appears to only have a few leaves from the second volume.

In 1910, Flensberg published his commentary on Shir ha-Shirim, Merkevot Ami. And, that same year, he also published his first volume of commentary on the Torah, Divrei Yirmiyahu, covering Genesis. 

In 1914, Flensberg died, his full epitaph is included in his son’s biography which appeared in the second volume of Flensberg’s Torah commentary which was published posthumously in 1927. This version of the epitaph is the only complete one as the one on his headstone accidentally left out a line “for some [unnamed] reason.” 

He was survived by his son, Yitzhak Yishayahu, and his daughter, [Haaya] Ester Rubinstein.  Yitzhak Yishayhu lived in Pilwishki the town where R. Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg served as Rabbi.  When Weinberg describes the learned people in Pilwishki, one of the ones he singles out is Yitzhak Yishayahu.[8] Flensberg’s daughter, however, was more well-known than his son.  She married Yitzhak Rubinstein, who subsequently became Chief Rabbi of Vilna – the first in over 200 years – and she was heavily involved in Vilna community affairs and was an ardent Zionist.  This is in contrast to her father who compared Zionists to “the Berlin group . . . of maskilim.”[9] She was also very learned and R. Weinberg provides that when her father couldn’t remember a source, he would ask Ester who could always provide it.

Ester was also involved in woman’s issues.  She started a girls school in Vilna and wrote why woman’s suffrage is allowed under Jewish law.[10]

Ester died young, at age 43, in 1924.  A Sefer Zikhron was published in her honor and, among others, R. Weinberg wrote a beautiful article describing Ester in the most honorific terms. An English translation was published by Dr. Leiman. Additionally, a memorial service was held in the Great Synagogue of Vilna, according to Leiman, “this was the only woman ever accorded this honor.”

Yitzhak, after Ester died, was involved in a bitter fight for the Vilna rabbinate that pitted him against R. Hayyim Ozer Grodzenski, and the Mizrachi versus the Agudah.  In the end, Rubinstein was elected by a majority of the vote.  This was viewed as untenable, and the chief rabbi position was split between the halakhic and administrative, giving both Rubinstein and Grodzenski positions.[11] This controversy was memorialized by Chaim Grade in his Rabbis and Wives, where he “resurrects” the dead Ester and imagines her as the driving force in her husband’s push for the Rabbinate.  This part is untrue. However, Grade’s story of how Rubinstein was almost shouted down during his first speech (and his supporters forcibly ejected the shouters) after his election is true.

Two Broadsides Attacking Rubinstein and Urging Voters to Pick Number 18, R. Hayyim Ozer’s Number
These may have been penned by the Hazon Ish as he was heavily involved in the campaign to elect Grodzenski.

From a private collection.


Yitzhak would leave Europe to the United States to teach in Yeshiva University in 1941. On May 23, 1944, the day Belkin is inaugurated president of Yeshiva University, Rubinstein received an honorary doctorate of divinity from Yeshiva University. See also, N.Y. Times, May 23, 1944 p. 21.  Rubinstein died on Oct. 30, 1945 [23 Marchesvan 5706] and is buried in Mt. Carmel cemetery in Queens.
In conclusion, R. Flensberg’s books from the one, Nezer ha-Nizhon, on the odd donkey passage to his more run of the mill responsa to his philosophy and derush are all of interest. Additionally, his children were no slouches either.

Notes
[1] Katzman asserts that Flensberg didn’t go to Volozhin until he was 16 or 17, which makes any connection between a bar-mitzvah gift and Flensberg’s entrance into Volozhin even more tenuous.  See Eliezer Katzman, “A Biography of the Rav from Shaki – The Goan Rabbi Hayyim Yirmiyahu Flensberg ZT”L,” in Hayyim Yirmiayahu Flensberg, She’elot Haayim, Machon Mishnas Rabbi Aaron, Israel, 2001, 1.  Katzman, however, provides no citation in support of his dates.  We rely upon Flensberg’s son’s biography for our chronology.  See Yitzhak Flensberg, “In Place of an Introduction,” in Hayyim Yirmiyahu Flensberg, Divrei Yermiyahu al ha-Torah, Vilna, 1927, vol. 2, V-VI. 
[2] This has been noted by Katzman, “Biography” p. 2 n.2. It is odd that in Stampfer’s discussion of the Purim Rav in Volozhin, he fails to note Flensberg’s importance in establishing the existence of this custom even though the source is the same biography that contains the bar-mitzvah gift story.  Cf. The Lithuanian Yeshiva at 165-68.  Indeed, it is on the very next page after the bar-mitzvah gift.  See “In Place of an Introduction” at VI. 
[3] See this excellent article by Yehoshua Mondshein which demonstrates that the most well-known story regarding the institution of Purim Rav is likely more legend than fact.  Additionally, Mondshein collects those who doubt the existence of the Purim Rav custom. But see Stampfer, at 168 where he provides that the Purim Rav custom was abolished at Volozhin because of the Netziv’s second marriage after his first wife died.  At the time of the marriage the Netziv was in his sixties, and his new wife was in her twenties.
(The exact age difference is unclear, Stampfer’s source, Meir Berlin, Rabban shel Yisrael, pp. 124-31 states that the Netziv was 50 and that there was “only” a thirty year age difference and not forty.) She was a divorcee who had divorced her first husband because she felt he wasn’t a world class “lamdan.”  And, she was extremely protective of her husband’s honor. It appears that she or the Netziv or both became the butt of jokes and she insisted that the Purim Rav custom end. Based upon her insistence, the custom died. For additional sources regarding the Purim Rav, see Mondshein’s article cited above and Eliezer’s post in note 23. See also R. Nosson Kamenetsky, Making of a Godol, Jerusalem, 2002, vol. 2, p. 1062 regarding Netziv and Purim Rav.   
[4] See Katzman, “Biography” at 3 regarding Flensberg’s plea for an Orthodox newspaper and id. at 5 regarding R. Zevin. Regarding R. Ettlinger’s journal see Judith Bleich, Jacob Ettlinger his Life & Works, unpublished doctoral dissertation, NYU, 1974, 291-321.
[5] It should be noted that there is some confusion regarding the publication date.  According to the title page that appears on the soft outer cover, the book was published in Elul 5,667 [Sept./Oct. 1906], according to the two virtually similar title pages that follow the soft cover, the book was published in 5665 [1904/1905]. In Weinberg’s review, he first refers to a 1901 publishing date which appears to be a typographical error and then, later, mentions that he was writing his review over four years after Flensberg’s commentary was published.  Weinberg’s review was written in 1912 and if he was being exact, that would give it a publication date of 1908. We have used the 1905 date as it is the date given by Flensberg’s son in his biography.  It is clear, that whichever year it was published, Flensberg’s commentary was not composed that year as Flensberg had been working on this commentary for some twenty years.  See “In Place of an Introduction” at VII-VIII. 
[6] Regarding the propriety of using of god’s name in titles see R. Hezkiyah Medini, Be’ari ba-Sadeh in his Sedei Hemed. Medeni was forced to defend the title of his magnum opus, Sedei Hemed, even though he didn’t use god’s name, only a word, that in this context refers to god only if read incorrectly. See also Ya’akov Shmuel Spegiel, Amudim be-Toldot Sefer ha-Ivri: Ketivah ve-Hatakah, Bar Ilan Univ. Ramat Gan, 2007, pp. 608-10; R. Moshe Hagiz, Halachot Ketanot, Jerusalem, 1981, no. 314 (sedi). 
[7] The review originally appeared in Ha-Ivri, Jan. 26, 1912, p. 47 and is reprinted in Collected Writings of Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg, Marc B. Shapiro, ed., vol. II, Scranton, 2003, 115-18.
[8] See Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg, “Introduction,” in R. Abraham Abba Resnick, Keli She’aret, Netanya, 1957 reprinted in Shapiro, Collected Writings, vol. II, pp. 388-402. For an overview of Weinberg’s time in Pilwishki see Marc B. Shapiro, Between the Yeshiva World & Modern Orthodoxy, Littman Library, 1999, 18-50.
[9] Kaztman, “Biography” at 3. 
[10] See Leiman, n. 4.
[11] See Gershon Bacon, “Rubinstein vs. Grodzinski: The Dispute Over the Vilnius Rabbinate and the Religious Realignment of Vilnius Jewry. 1928-1932,” in The Goan of Vilnius and the Annals of Jewish Culture, Izraelis Lempertas, ed., Vilnius Univ., 1998, 295-304; see also the end of Menachem’s very comprehensive post, for additional sources regarding the election. 

*
In 2001, Machon Mishnas Rabbi Aaron republished all of R. Flensberg’s works with the exception of R. Flensberg’s commentary on Crescas.


Who Wrote the Mekore Minhagim?

As I have previously discussed, there is a well known work on the sources and rationale for various customs titled Mekore Minhagim. Indeed, there are two works with that very same title – by two different authors – that cover the same material. The question is which author stole from the other? I hope that I can clear this up as there still appears to be a misconception about who is the plagiarizer.

First, a brief history about prior attempts to decipher who is the real author of Mekore Minhagim is in order. As I noted in my original post, the first edition of the sefer to come out was published in Berlin in 1846 with the author listed as R. Avrohom Lewysohn (1805-1861). That edition contained 100 questions and explanation about various customs. Then, in 1851, R. Yosef Finkelstein published under the same title a work with the very same information, but that contained only 41 of the 100 questions and explanations from the work published in 1846. Almost immediately, it was claimed that Finkelstein had plagiarized his work from Lewysohn. And if one had to guess – absent any additional information –it would appear that this is the case simply because Lewysohn’s work came out first; that is, unless Lewysohn could have read Finkelstein’s mind, the latter must be the plagiarizer.

But, this is not a simple case. Instead, the appearance of the plagiarism claims in a German periodical did not settle the issue. Thus, R. Lewysohn’s brother, Yehudah Leib Lewysohn, a Rabbi in Stockholm, after seeing Finkelstein’s name mentioned in a different capacity in the journal ha-Maggid, again pointed out that Finkelstein had plagiarized Mekore Minhagim from Lewysohn. R. Y.L. Lewysohn gave a run down of the controversy and included the fact that, eventually, the dispute was taken to court, which ultimately concluded that Finkelstein had plagiarized from Lewysohn. But, it seems that Finkelstein had someone swear on his behalf that he was indeed the author.

After R. Y.L. Lewysohn published that account, including the court case coverage, Finkelstein himself answered the charge in a later issue of ha-Maggid. Finkelstein claimed that he was indeed the author and Lewysohn had stolen from him. But, how to account for the fact his sefer came out later? Finkelstein claimed that as he was traveling through Germany, he stayed with Lewysohn and eventually showed him his (Finkelstein’s) manuscript of Mekore Minhagim. Lewysohn was extremely taken by this book. According to Finkelstein, Lewysohn must have copied his version and published it before Finkelstein was able to.

R. Y.L. Lewysohn responded – with a point by point rebuttal – that Finkelstein’s account was all untrue and challenged Finkelstein to go in front of a court again – but this never happened.

That is more or less a summary of the written record with respect to the controversy. So it seems there remains the possibility that Lewysohn did copy Finkelstein’s manuscript when they met in Berlin. And, in fact, many have come to Finkelstein’s defense. For instance, R. Tzvi Efraim Babad in Der Yid has an article where he uses the ha-Maggid article to show that Finkelstein was indeed the author. In particular, it seems that R. Babad didn’t like Lewysohn, as he was a German Rabbi and university educated, while Finkelstein was from a distinguished rabbinic Hungarian family. There is also an article in the latest Or Yisrael about this incident of plagiarism.

I think, however, that I can prove who the real author is. I can do so by using Finkelstein’s own defense from ha-Maggid to demonstrate that he, in fact, is the plagiarizer. As is many times the case, he created the noose by which to hang himself.

Finkelstein, in his defense, states as follows:

When I was in Prague I wrote the work “Rivid ha-Zahav” which discusses the laws of ritual slaughter and checking for imperfection of the lungs. Many great Rabbis praised this work amongst them the famous Gaon R. [Shlomo] Yehuda Leib Rapoport and, because so many people liked it, the book sold out and I had to publish it again. After this I published another book “Tzafnas Panach” on blemishes in the lungs [of an animal].

He then continues and discusses the “Mekore Minhagim” and how Lewysohn got it:

When I traveled to Germany to sell my book I stayed with [R. Lewysohn] . . . when he saw my work the ‘Mekore Minhagim,’ which I wrote in 1839, he asked to look at it.

From there Finkelstein posits that Lewysohn eventually copied it and printed it as his own.

So, now, in order to see who is actually right, we need to see if R. Finkelstein’s story works. The way to do this is to check the books that Finkelstein actually was selling. First, it is important to know that Finkelstein published three books aside from Mekore Minhagim. As mentioned above, he wrote Rivid ha-Zahav and Tzofnas Panach. In addition he published a book his father- in–law, R. Meir Avraham Csaba, wrote – Pri Tzadik. Pri Tzadik was published in 1839, Finkelstein’s first published work. Now, according to Finkelstein, in his response in ha-Maggid, he published Tzofnas Panach after he published Rivid ha-Zahav for the second time. So, that would make Tzofnas Panach the last book published. Also, according to Finkelstein there were two editions of Rivid ha-Zahav (these are the only editions of Rivid ha-Zahav) but when was Rivid ha-Zahav published? According to the title pages, one was published in Prague (1846) and the other in Ofen (1845). But, according to Finkelstein’s own testimony, these dates must be wrong — or at least one. The reason being, if you recall, is that Finkelstein said Rivid ha-Zahav was written in Prague and was praised by R. Rapoport -which you can see as there is an approbation from R. Rapoport. In particular, the first edition of Rivid ha-Zahav has this approbation according to Finkelstein’s own words. But, the only edition which has this approbation is the one with 1846 on the title page and the approbation itself is even dated the 6th of Av 5606 (1846). That means that, although the other edition of Rivid ha-Zahav states was published in 1845, in fact, it was published after the 6th of Av 5606. Which also means that Tzofnas Panach was also published sometime after the second edition of Rivid ha-Zahav was published.[1]

Now, for Finkelstein’s story to be true, he states that he was selling “his books” -“ספרי” that means his personal books. That means we can rule out Pri Tzadik as that was his father-in-law’s book and Finkelstein wouldn’t have called it “his.” So when did he travel to Germany to sell his books and to which books did he refer? Well, let’s take the earliest of his books – which according to what we have figured out – is the first edition of his Rivid ha-Zahav. That edition of the Rivid ha-Zahav had to have been published sometime after the 6th of Av, the time of the approbation. That doesn’t leave that much time in the year 5606, being that Av is the second to last month in the Jewish calendar. But, let’s say he had Rivid ha-Zahav published really fast and during the month of Av he was able to publish it and was already in Germany meeting up with Lewysohn. Well, and here comes the funny part, Lewysohn’s introduction to Mekore Minhagim (which is copied in Finkelstein’s as well) is dated 16th of Kislev 5606, which would be around December 1845. This, of course, means that if our calculations are correct and we take all of Finkelstein’s story as true, Lewysohn wrote the introduction at least ten months before Finkelstein ever came to town to sell his then, unpublished, Rivid ha-Zahav. Which means Finkelstein is a liar.

Thus, it would appear that we can now conclude who is the plagiarizer – Finkelstein. And, the fact is that Lewysohn is the real author of Mekore Minhagim.

Note:
[1] There is another reason the Tzafnas Panach must be the final book published although again according to the title page there is an earlier date. According to the title page it was printed in 1845, but now that we know the 1845 edition of Rivid ha-Zahav was in fact published after 1846 the Tzafnas Panach must also be published after that. This is so, because in the Rivid ha-Zahav with the title page which claims 1845 it also says the approbations for this will be published in my future work Tzafnas Panach (which in fact Tzafnas Panach includes). Thus, Tzafnas Panach must be after this second edition and thus must be after 1846 even though it claims an earlier date.

Sources: ha-Maggid No. 24 June 17, 1863 p. 192; No. 27, July 8, 1863, pp. 211-12; No. 36, September 9, 1863 pp. 283-84; No. 40, October 14, 1863, p. 316 (which are all available online here); R. Tzvi Ephraim Babad, “Printers, Copiers, Shasin, and Censor,” Der Yid 25 (Friday, September 22, 2000), section 2.



The Vilna Gaon, Part 1: How Modern Was He?

The Vilna Gaon, Part 1 How Modern Was He?
by Marc B. Shapiro
Eliyahu Stern, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism (New Haven, 2013)
Eliyahu Stern has set for himself a daunting task and argues his case with conviction. He intends to correct a widespread assumption shared not only by the general public, but by the scholarly community as well. According to this narrative, the Vilna Gaon (hereafter the Gaon) should not be seen as a traditionalist defender of the past, but actually a modern Jew and one who helped usher in the modern era in Jewish history. In Stern’s words, “I [have] come to believe that [Jacob] Katz’s and [Michael K.] Silber’s notion of tradition and traditionalism fails to explain the experience of the overwhelming majority of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century eastern European Jews who did not spend their days either combating the Western European secular pursuit of science, philosophy and mathematics or holding onto the same political and social structures of their sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ancestors. Katz and Silber might have been right about [R. Moses] Sofer. . . . But figures such as the Gaon of Vilna or Hayyim of Volozhin (the Gaon’s student and Sofer’s contemporary), who did not express hostility toward modernity, elude their grasp” (p. 7).
This is quite a claim, and it would be a major revision of the historical picture if Stern could prove the point. Stern also argues that the Gaon’s notes to the sixteenth-century legal code Shulhan Arukh were influential in Jews moving away from a “code-based learning culture supported by the kehilah” (p. 11).[1]

By focusing on Talmud study for its own sake rather than for the sake of determining the halakhah, a paradigm shift occurred in which commentary replaced code. This occurred at the very time that the yeshiva took the place of the kehilah, as seen in the establishment of the Volozhin yeshiva by the Gaon’s disciple, R. Hayyim. Thus, the hierarchy of religious authority was restructured, which leads to what Stern refers to as “religious privatization” (p. 11). As he sees it, “The Volozhin yeshiva was founded not in opposition to the cultural and intellectual upheavals of the nineteenth century. It was itself built on the most modern of assumptions, the separation of public and private spheres” (p. 141). Stern even makes the bold claim that in certain respects the Gaon was more modern than Mendelssohn, arguing that “it was the Gaon’s hermeneutic idealism that called into question the canons of rabbinic authority, while Mendelssohn tirelessly defended the historical legitimacy of the rabbinic tradition to German-speaking audiences” (p. 64). In seeking to turn the Gaon into a more modern Jew, one who is not, as standard scholarship assumes, an opponent of philosophy, Stern even argues that the Gaon did not believe in “demons, magic, [and] charms” (p. 129).[2]
After mentioning that the Gaon is embodied in the Jewish residents of Tel Aviv and New York, who live as though they are majorities, Stern concludes his book with this striking assertion: “From the birth of the State of Israel, to the Jews’ involvement in radical anti-statist modern political movements, to the creation of a robust vibrant Jewish life in the United States, Jewish modernity derives much of its intellectual dynamism, social confidence, and political assertiveness from an astonishing source: the brilliant writings and untamed personality of Elijah ben Solomon” (p. 171).
As with all revisionist theses there is bound to be reluctance to accept a new paradigm. The successful revisionist thesis is the one able to withstand the initial skepticism. Does Stern’s thesis fall into this category? Despite his enthusiastic and tempting arguments, I am not convinced. Reading the book, I could not help wonder if, for example, drawing contrasts with the thought of Leibniz offers any real insight into the thought of the Gaon. We know that the Gaon was fearless in emending rabbinic texts, but for Stern, “Elijah’s emendation project addresses the charge that Leibnizian idealism leaves no room for the possibility of progress, redemption, and critique. . . .  Elijah embroidered the theological concept of evil around the idea of textual error” (p. 61). Isn’t this reading too much into what the Gaon had in mind? Why does the approach of the Gaon have to be given such theological weight that Stern can conclude that “emendation is the path toward redemption and a restored original harmony” (p. 62)?[3]

In another example of his revisionist approach, Stern argues that the Gaon did not oppose philosophy. Rather, “Elijah’s problem with Maimonides revolves around issues of linguistics, interpretation, and hermeneutics and not whether it is permissible to read secular philosophy” (p. 130). As noted already, Stern also assumes that the Gaon did not really believe in “demons, magic, charms and other irrational objects” (p. 129). There is no question in my mind that Stern is in error here. Because the Gaon was a traditional Jew, whose approach to the classical rabbinic texts was not influenced by rationalist philosophy, this is precisely why he believed in demons, magic, and charms. The only reason to reject these things, as did Maimonides, is because one is influenced by rationalist thought.
I see no evidence that the Gaon was influenced in any substantial way by such knowledge, and his occasional use of Aristotelian terminology does not by itself indicate real influence. Furthermore, everything in his writings leads one to believe that when it came to the occult his mental universe was no different than the great rabbis of his time and subsequent to him, for whom demons did indeed exist. In his famous attack on Maimonides, found in his comment to Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh Deah 179:13, he specifically mentioned the efficacy of magic, and contrary to Stern this is to be taken literally.[4]

In fact, a few notes later, 179:26-28, which are not mentioned by Stern, the Gaon again wrote about demons, mentioned that one is permitted to consult with them if it is not the Sabbath, and cited talmudic and midrashic texts that show humans interacting with demons.[5] The Gaon’s position in this matter does not need to be explained. Pretty much every traditional Jew in his day believed in demons, and he did as well. It is Maimonides’ opinion that is not traditional.
Stern leaves it as an open question whether the Vilna Gaon called philosophy “accursed” (p. 245). This is obviously an important issue, since if Stern is correct that the Gaon was not really opposed to philosophy, one would not expect him to use the word “accursed.” Yet there is no doubt that the Gaon did indeed use this word. It appears in the first printing of the Gaon’s commentary to the Shulhan Arukh, and its authenticity was attested to by R. Samuel Luria who examined that actual manuscript. Only later was the word removed by the publisher. Contrary to what Stern states, Samuel Joseph Fuenn, Matisyahu Strashun, and Hillel-Noah Maggid Steinschneider do not claim that later editors put in this phrase. The one to make this assertion was R. Zvi Hirsch Katzenellenbogen, and he was hardly a neutral observer.[6]

Several other issues emerge in the book. Stern quotes Aliyot Eliyahu as stating that before the age of thirteen the Gaon was “studying books on engineering for half an hour a day” (p. 38). I am not sure why Stern mentions anything about “thirteen,” as the text is explicit that he was around eight years old. Furthermore, the text says nothing about “engineering.” Rather, it states that the Gaon studied astronomy (tekhunah).

Stern writes that the Gaon “rejected outright” the Shulhan Arukh (p. 60). This is a strange statement being that the Gaon wrote a commentary on the Shulhan Arukh. Furthermore, this commentary was designed to show the earlier rabbinic sources upon which the Shulhan Arukh‘s laws were based. It is true that there are many times when the Gaon disagreed with the Shulhan Arukh. However, what is significant with the Gaon is precisely that he accepted the Shulhan Arukh. He had the stature to reject it had he chosen, and to write his own code, yet he did the exact opposite. By attaching his notes to the Shulhan Arukh he was affirming the work. He personally did not need the Shulhan Arukh and would decide halakhah from the Talmud and rishonim. But when the Shulhan Arukh decided the halakhah correctly, he was content to show the sources for the law, meaning that the work had value and that is why he affirmed it.[7]

Contrary to Stern (pp. 77-78), there is no evidence that the Gaon was influenced by Elijah Levita and the Gaon never mentioned him. When the Gaon wrote that the Masorah disagreed with the Talmud, he was referring to how to spell certain words, and this formulation comes from the Tosafists. He was not in any way identifying with Levita’s notion that the Hebrew vowels originated in post-talmudic times, and was certainly not addressing “the veracity of the cantillations of the Bible” (p. 78). When the Gaon’s son cited Levita, he was also not referring to his view of the vowels, only of the spelling of words.
I do not know what Stern means by “following Nachmanides, the Gaon argues that the book of Deuteronomy was written later than the other four books of the Bible” (p. 80). Quite apart from Nahmanides, this position is found in Gittin 60a, where one view is that the Torah was given “scroll by scroll.” Also on p. 80, Stern states that “the Gaon, in contrast, builds on the historical position laid down by Ibn Ezra that the last verses, though inspired by Moses, were actually ‘arranged’ by Joshua.” This has nothing to do with Ibn Ezra as the Talmud already contains the view that the last verses were written by Joshua (saying nothing about being “inspired” by Moses. [Ibn Ezra also says nothing about the last verses being “inspired” by Moses])
On page 133, Stern quotes a passage from the introduction to R. Judah Epstein’s Minhat Yehudah (Warsaw, 1877) where he writes of “thousands who came to study and the miracle it would take for one to emerge with any teaching ability.” In the Hebrew the final words are “yatza le-hora’ah.” This has nothing to do with teaching but refers to the ability to decide halakhic questions. The expression originates in Kohelet Rabbah 7:49.
Finally, he writes that “when the Volozhin yeshiva opened its doors in 1802, it was the first time that young men from all economic and social backgrounds were afforded the opportunity to study” (p. 150, see also p. 162). I know of no evidence to support this assertion. Both before the Volozhin yeshiva’s opening and after, opportunities for study were limited to those who could afford to support a child away from home, and give up the income he would bring in for the family.
Even though I am not convinced by Stern’s thesis, there is no doubt that this book is filled with learning and insight and has understandably created a good deal of excitement. To appreciate Stern’s efforts and ingenuity, one must read very carefully, and this reading will be rewarded in many ways.
******
The review you have just read (with the exception of notes 1-5, 7, and one sentence in brackets) appeared on the H-Judaic listserv on July 19, 2013. In the review I was limited in terms of space and I also could not use Hebrew. So let me now add some additional points and corrections that could not be included in the original. Before doing so I want to stress that I enjoyed Stern’s book a great deal, and I also learnt much from it. The Gaon’s scholarship is so wide-ranging that anyone who attempts such a daunting task as to write on him must be commended.[8]

Stern should also feel gratified that so many people have chosen to use their precious time to write about his book, even if they disagree with him.
Stern’s first chapter, which puts the Gaon and Vilna in historical perspective, was particularly interesting to me. How many people, for instance, are aware of the following (p. 70): “The roughly 5,500 Jews in and around Vilna (Wojewoda) made up nearly 30 percent of the population, and the 3,500 to 4,000 Jews living within Vilna proper formed an overwhelming majority of the local population.”
I strongly recommend that people read the book, if only to see how the talented author attempts to create a completely new perspective on the Gaon. Almost every page of Stern’s book raises issues that I can comment on, and I could easily have written a hundred page post. I agree with much in the book, and can cite sources in support of a number of points Stern makes. Yet this does not change the fact that I was not convinced by his major arguments. Rather than cite all the things I agree with, let me offer some more comments correcting errors, or offering different interpretations, as well as some tangential observations.
P. 14. Stern tells us that the Gaon’s mother was from Slutzk, and on p. 181 he cites a source that supposedly claims that the Gaon was also born in Slutzk. Yet this is incorrect. The town referred to is not Slutzk but סעלץ. This is the shtetl Selets (or Selcz) around 150 kilometers south-east of Brisk.[9]

This information is also found in the Encyclopaedia Judaica entry on the Gaon. There is another Selets in Belorussia, some eight hundred kilometers away,[10] but this is not the town associated with the Gaon. There is no actual proof that the Gaon was born in Selets, but that was the tradition of the town.[11]
P. 15. Stern records how the Gaon wanted to study medicine but was discouraged by his father who wanted his son to devote himself to Torah study. I don’t know if this has any relationship to the Gaon’s unusual (but not unique) view in opposition to using doctors as opposed to turning to God. According to one report, the Gaon only had this view when it came to internal medical problems, but not external ones (e.g., a burn).[12]
P. 17. Stern mentions the report by R. Samuel Luria that the Gaon travelled throughout Europe to find rabbinic manuscripts. Among the legends of these travels is one recorded in the name of R. Joseph Hayyim Sonnenfeld, quoting R. Joshua Leib Diskin, that when the Gaon visited the Munich library and saw the famous manuscript of the Talmud, he said that he would give all the money in the world in order to put it in genizah, because this Talmud was only R. Ashi’s first version (and thus of no authority). This story appears in Menahem Mendel Gerlitz’s Mara de-Ar’a Yisrael (Jerusalem, 1969), vol. 1, p. 57 n. 49. I can’t say whether or not R. Sonnenfeld ever made this comment (and Gerlitz’s book in general is quite unreliable). What I can say is that the story never happened as described for the simple reason that the manuscript only arrived in Munich in 1806, as noted by R. Raphael Rabbinovicz in the introduction to Dikdukei Soferim, vol. 1, p. 35.[13]
P. 44. “He [the Gaon] and his students reinterpreted a strand of kabbalah developed by Abraham Abulafia. . . . Elijah’s circle borrowed heavily from his ideas regarding the mathematical underpinnings of the world.” Unfortunately, this influence is never sufficiently explained and there is confusion about an important text. Thus, Stern writes:
As Menachem Mendel of Shklov wrote, “The word cheshbon [calculus] comes from the word machshava [thought] and this [calculus] is the first form that emerges from the essence of thought.”[14]
To begin with, I don’t know why cheshbon should be translated as “calculus.” I assume it means mathematics.[15]  But that is a minor point, as the general meaning of the passage is clear and R. Menahem Mendel of Shklov tells us that this approach was shared by the Gaon. The more important point, however, is that the sentence quoted as having been stated by R. Menahem Mendel was not stated by him at all. R. Menahem Mendel tells us explicitly that the sentence comes from an early book, one that predates R. Isaac Luria. What we learn from Moshe Idel is that this is actually a quotation from Abulafia.[16] Yet this information does not appear in Stern’s book, even though it would have strengthened his case.
Stern also states: “Elijah’s son Avraham approvingly cites the much-maligned Abulafia, and bestows the honorific “z”l” (the Hebrew acronym for “may his memory be blessed”) on the controversial medieval thinker.”
Here is the page in R. Avraham’s Rav Pealim.

Unfortunately, Stern must have read too quickly and instead of וז”ל [= וזה לשונו] he read the abbreviation as ז”ל, or perhaps he mistakenly connected the ז”ל on the previous line to ר’ אברהם הרואה
Pp. 44ff. Stern argues that according to the Gaon, matter existed eternally and the world was created from this eternal matter. If this was the case, it would be quite significant. Yet I believe that Stern misunderstands what the Gaon is saying. Stern himself quotes the Gaon as explaining that creation means “created from that which exists above.” As I see it, what this means is that matter “found” in the Divine was brought into the world, e.g., through emanation. But this is not the same as speaking of eternal matter, even eternal matter that is lacking form, as these exist apart from God.
With regard to the Gaon and creation, see also R. David Luria’s commentary to Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, ch. 51 n. 17, where he cites a manuscript comment of the Gaon that the world is eternally created. This same viewpoint is shared by R. Hayyim of Volozhin, Nefesh ha-Hayyim ch. 13. I don’t see how this can be reconciled with the Gaon’s comment at the beginning of Aderet Eliyahu that time itself is a creation, and he further speaks of an actual moment of the world’s creation:
בראשית: ב’ הוא ב’ הזמניי. כמו ביום. מפני שהזמן עצמו נברא והב’ מורה על עת הבריאה שהיה בחלק הראשון מהזמן הנברא
If matter is eternal, as Stern claims, or even eternally created, then time is also eternal. But this is clearly not what the Gaon says in the text just quoted.
P. 80. Stern notes that the Gaon’s interpretation of the Mishnah was not bound to how the Talmud explained matters. This is correct, and many people have written on the matter. I mention this only to call attention to the comments of the great genius, R. Meshulam Roth, in his Kol Mevasser, vol. 2, pp. 120-121, 128-129, who felt constrained to argue against this notion. I think it will be obvious to readers that R. Roth’s interpretations of the Gaon are based on his own dogmatic assumption, which he states explicitly, that it is unacceptable to interpret the Mishnah in a way that diverges from the talmudic interpretation.

P. 97. Stern writes:

Contrast Elijah’s vision with the picture of intimacy expressed by Rabbi Pinchas of Korzec (1726-1791): “Prayer is like intercourse with the Divine Presence. At the beginning of intercourse there are motions. Similarly, there is a need for motion in prayer. One should move when beginning to pray. Later on, one can stand without moving, attached to the Divine Presence with a powerful bond. As a result of the motions alone one can attain dvekut.”
In the note the source for this quotation is given as Likutim Yekarim, 18, and the bibliography tells us that the edition used is Lemberg, 1792 (the first edition). Yet there is some confusion here. R. Pinchas of Koretz indeed wrote a book entitled Likutim Yekarim, but the book where the passage cited comes from is another Likutim Yekarim, one that records the teachings of other early Hasidic teachers. Here is the title page.

Furthermore, the reader looking at page 18 in the first edition of (the correct) Likutim Yekarim will not find anything, as the text is on page 1a. In the 1974 edition the text is found in section 18, but as far as I can tell, these sections were only added in this edition.[17]
Here is the relevant page from the first edition, and the comment referred to is in the last paragraph. The last sentence of the translation quoted above (“As a result . . .”) is not an accurate rendering of the Hebrew sentence that begins מכח מה שמנענע

P. 102: “While it is doubtful that Elijah endorsed or defended Eibeschuetz’s or Luzzatto’s Sabbatian tendencies, he never publicly condemned their works.” Instead of the word “doubtful,” which leaves some room for question, the sentence should say that “it is certain that Elijah never endorsed or defended . . .” I leave aside for now the question of why Stern is so certain that Luzzatto had Sabbatian tendencies, and simply note that the Gaon would have rejected such an assumption in the strongest terms. The Eibeschuetz case is more complicated,[18] but I don’t understand how “Eibeschuetz’s Sabbatian proclivities were revealed when his son Wolff was unmasked as a closet Sabbatian” (p. 99). Since when do the actions of a son determine the stance of a father?
Let us now return to the issue of the Gaon’s view of philosophy, which was mentioned earlier in this post, and when I refer to philosophy I have in mind rationalism. Stern, p. 129, argues that the Gaon was not opposed to philosophy and as evidence for this proposition notes that the Gaon uses Aristotelian terms, cites the Guide once in his Aderet Eliyahu, and procured a copy of Aristotle’s Ethics. He then writes, “This evidence has led some to suggest that Elijah objected to a materialistic or epicurean lifestyle often associated with philosophy, but not to philosophy’s heuristic value.”
While I think that Stern is indeed correct that the Gaon saw heuristic value in philosophy, I was still quite surprised when I read this sentence, since I had never heard of anyone who argued that the Gaon’s only concern with philosophy was the materialistic lifestyle associated with it. When I looked in Stern’s note (p. 246 n. 55) it didn’t help. This is what appears in the note:
See Moshe Philip, ed., Sefer Mishlei im Biur ha-Gra (Petach Tikvah: 2001), 441 and Eliyahu Stern, “Philosophy and Dissimulation in Elijah of Vilna’s Writings and Legacy,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie (forthcoming). On Elijah reading Aristotle, see his letter to Rabbi Shaul of Amsterdam recorded in Tzvi ha-Levi Horowitz, Kitvei ha-Geonim (Warsaw: 1938 [should be 1928]), 3-10.
I don’t know what is intended by the first reference, as there is a typo since the volume does not contain 441 pages. Stern’s forthcoming article can only be discussed when it appears in print, but the book under review does not give any reference to others who argued that the Gaon had no substantive opposition to philosophy. Also, contrary to what Stern states here, the Gaon did not write to R. Saul of Amsterdam asking him to send him the Ethics. The letter Stern refers to was actually written by the Gaon’s brother, R. Yissakhar Ber.[19]

See Kitvei ha-Geonim, p. 4a. On p. 44, Stern states that the letter was written by both the Gaon and his brother. This, I think, is closer to the truth. I say this because the Gaon’s brother requested לקנות בשבילנו ולשלוח לנו, although this could also just be the writing style he used. However, there are lots of reasons why people read books, and this alone does not mean that one is positively inclined to a subject. The greatest of all Jewish philosophers, Maimonides, tells us that he read all the works of Sabian idolatry that he could get his hands on (Guide 3:29). It would also be more significant if instead of the Ethics, the book requested of R. Saul of Amsterdam was Aristotle’s Metaphysics. But I don’t want to make too much of this, since I am convinced by Stern that the Gaon saw some value with philosophy. But contrary to Stern, I would add that the Gaon also saw great dangers in philosophy.
In the note directly following the one just referred to, Stern concludes based upon the introduction of R. Menahem Mendel of Shklov to the Gaon’s commentary to Avot and R. Israel of Shklov’s introduction to his Peat ha-Shulhan that “Elijah was secretly positively inclined to the study of philosophy.” He again refers to his forthcoming article where he develops this point. As mentioned already, discussion of this article must wait until it appears in print. In the meantime, however, it is difficult to accept this point without a clear articulation of what exactly Stern means by “study of philosophy”, since in R. Israel of Shklov’s introduction to Peat ha-Shulhan he writes as follows:
ועל חכמת הפילוסופי’ אמר [הגר”א] שלמד אותה לתכליתה ולא הוציא ממנה רק ב’ דברים טובים . . . והשאר צריך להשליכה החוצה.
R. Israel of Shklov also notes that the Gaon knew חכמת הכישוף which contradicts Stern’s statement that according to the Gaon “references to demons, magic, charms, and other irrational objects and ideas cannot be ignored—though not per se because he thinks they actually exist.” (p. 129).
See also Ma’aseh Rav (Jerusalem, 1906), Siah Eliyahu, p. 21b (no. 61(, which states that the Gaon would not study R. Bahya Ibn Paquda’s philosophically based Sha’ar ha-Yihud (in the Hovot ha-Levavot):
והי’ מחבב הגר”א ז”ל ס’ מנורת המאור וס’ חובת הלבבות זולת שער היחוד ובמקום שער היחוד הי’ אומר שילמדו בס’ הכוזרי הראשון שהוא קדוש וטהור ועיקרי אמונת ישראל ותורה תלוין בו.
There is another passage that is relevant, but as far as I know has not been cited in any of the scholarly discussions about the Gaon and philosophy. R. Hillel Rivlin, Kol ha-Tor (Bnei Brak, 1969), ch. 5:2, quotes the Gaon as saying the following about philosophy, and you can’t get any clearer than this:
את חכמת הפילוסיפיה למדה לתכליתה ולא מצא בה כי אם דברים אחדים שמקורם לוקח מחז”ל ועל השאר אמר, שאין בה לא הגיון ולא צדק ומיוסדת על אפיקורסות אווילית.

As mentioned, you can’t get any clearer than this, but I realize that this is not the Gaon speaking but rather a student, so it is possible to argue that he, and also R. Israel of Shklov, didn’t properly portray their teacher.
The passage that creates so many problems for Stern’s thesis is found in the Gaon’s commentary to Yoreh Deah 179:13. In this text, the Gaon famously attacks Maimonides for being led astray by “accursed philosophy.”

Stern argues that the Gaon does not oppose the study of (even rationalist) philosophy per se. Rather, his opposition is directed at how “a philosophical approach may ignore linguistic nuance” (p. 129). I think this is very unlikely, and it appears to me that Stern is trying to force his interpretation into the words of the Gaon when the more likely, and natural, interpretation is that the Gaon indeed opposes the study of (rationalist) philosophy.[20] (On p. 130 Stern claims that the Gaon was not opposed to the study of “secular philosophy” which is an even more far-reaching claim.) Beyond what the Gaon writes in his comment on the Shulhan Arukh, there is the way he writes it, which unfortunately is not reflected in Stern’s translation. Here is how Stern renders the first part of the text:

All those who came after Maimonides differed [because they did not use his rational allegorical interpretive technique]. For many times we find magical incantations mentioned in the Talmud. Maimonides and philosophers claimed that such magical writings and incantations, and devils, are all false. However, he [Maimonides] was already reprimanded for such an interpretation. For we have found many accounts in the Talmud about magical incantations and writings. . . . Philosophy is mistaken in a majority of cases when it interprets the Talmud in a superficial manner and destroys the sensus literalis of the text. But one should not think that I in any way, Heaven forbid, actually believe in them or in what they stand for.
In this comment the Gaon writes:

והוא נמשך אחר הפלוסופיא הארורה         .
This means that Maimonides “followed after the accursed philosophy.” However, Stern mistakenly translates these words: “Maimonides and philosophers claimed.”
Later in his comment the Gaon writes:

והפלסופיא הטתו ברוב לקחה לפרש הגמרא הכל בדרך הלציי
Stern translates this as “Philosophy is mistaken in a majority of cases when it interprets the Talmud in a superficial manner.” This too is a incorrect translation. What the Gaon is saying is that philosophy misled Maimonides to falsely explain the Talmud. So again, we see the great dangers of philosophy, and how it was able to lead astray even Maimonides. (There is nothing in the Gaon’s comment about “a majority of cases”). The final words quoted from the Gaon, בדרך הלציי, do not mean “superficial manner.” They mean “in a figurative sense.”
What can we say about the Gaon and Maimonides’ Guide? Although I hadn’t investigated the matter properly, for awhile I thought that the Gaon didn’t study the Guide in a serious manner. Anyone who reads Stern will see that this is incorrect. In fact, the Guide was even studied in Vilna during the Gaon’s time. The following passage from Aliyot Eliyahu (Vilna, 1892), p. 13a, should have been cited in the text by Stern as exhibit no. 1, as it is a strong piece of evidence in support of his position. For some reason, it is only summarized in a note (p. 246 n. 58):
וסיפר לי הרב כו’ הישיש מ’ ישראל גארדאן רב בווילנא (אשר היה מכיר היטב את הגאון נ”ע ודירתו היה בחומת אביו וקודם פטירתו היה דר הגאון בחצר בהכנ”ס) אשר היה נכנס ויוצא כפעם בפעם בבית הגאון נ”ע ושמע פ”א אשר בא הרב ר’ טרייטיל ז”ל לפני הגאון והרעיש על אשר ראו עיניו שאנשים קבעו למודם בבהמ”ד בספר מורה נבוכים וביקש שהגאון ימחה בידם והגאון השיבו בחרי אף ואמר ומי יעיז לדבר נגד כבוד הרמב”ם וספרו אשר מי יתנני ואהיה עמו במחיצתו בגן עדן.
There is no question that this report complicates the picture and shows that the Gaon’s view of the Guide was more complex than often portrayed. We see from it that unlike others, the Gaon, despite his strong criticism of Maimonides and general opposition to rationalist philosophy, nevertheless believed that the Guide had value and qualified scholars should not be prevented from studying it. 
After quoting this passage in Aliyot Eliyahu, R. Shlomo Korah adds, “There is a story about someone who asked his rebbe if it is permitted to study the Guide. He replied, ‘The Rambam permits it —הרמב”ם מתיר ”.[21]
Alan Brill has also made the case that the Gaon saw value in philosophy and calls attention to the fact that in a text attributed to the Gaon, there is a summary of a section of the Guide. See his “Auxiliary to Hokhmah: The Writings of the Vilna Gaon and Philosophical Terminology, in Moshe Hallamish, et al., eds., Ha-Gra u-Veit Midrasho (Ramat Gan, 2003), p. 10. This shows that philosophy has value, as I too acknowledge, but this has nothing to do with rationalism, which the Gaon strongly opposed.

It is also worth noting that R. Shneur Zalman of Lyady, in responding to the reported theological objections that the Gaon expressed about early hasidut, wrote as follows[22]:

ומי יתן ידעתיו ואנחהו ואערכה לפניו משפטינו להסיר מעלינו כל תלונותיו וטענותיו הפילוסיפיות אשר הלך בעקבותיהם, לפי דברי תלמידיו הנ”ל, לחקור אלקות בשכל אנושי
In other words, and this is really ironic, R. Shneur Zalman assumes that Gaon was led astray by philosophy and that explains his objections![23]

The reason I had my mistaken assumption that the Gaon didn’t study the Guide in any significant way was because the Gaon didn’t refer to it in his commentary to the Shulhan Arukh, even when he had the opportunity, such as in his note to Yoreh Deah 179:13. Another place where he could have referred to the Guide is in the very first halakhah in Orah Hayyim. R. Moses Isserles is quoting from Maimonides’ Guide, and rather than refer the reader to this, the Gaon offers sources for the Rama’s formulation from rabbinic literature. Yet even before reading Stern’s book I should have seen that the Rama in Darkhei Moshe tells us that he is quoting the Guide, and one should assume that the Gaon saw this text.
This is how R. Isserles begins the Darkhei Moshe (and he begins the Shulhan Arukh similarly):
כתב הרמב”ם בספר מורה הנבוכים חלק ג’ פרק נב שמיד שאדם ניעור משנתו בבוקר מיד יחשוב בלבו לפני מי הוא שוכב וידע שהמלך מלכי המלכים הקב”ה יתעלה חופף עליו שנאמר (ישעיה ו, ג) ) מלא כל הארץ כבודו.
R. Isserles quotes Maimonides as saying that as soon as you wake up in the morning you should think about God. Yet if you look at Guide 3:52 that he is quoting you find something interesting. Here is the passage in Ibn Tibbon’s translation (which is what the Rama used).
מי שיבחר בשלמות האנושי ושיהיה איש הא-להים באמת יעור משינתו וידע שהמלך הגדול המחופף עליו והדבק עמו תמיד הוא גדול מכל מלך בשר ודם ואילו היה דוד ושלמה, והמלך ההוא הדבק המחופף הוא השכל השופע עלינו שהוא הדבוק אשר בינינו ובין הש”י . . . וכבר ידעת הזהירם מלכת בקומה זקופה, משום מלא כל הארץ כבודו.
Where does the Rama get his formulation that as soon as one awakes – מיד שאדם ניעור משנתו – he should think of God? It comes from Maimonides’ words we just read: יעור משינתו. As pointed out by Raphael Speyer,[24] it seems that the Rama simply misunderstood what Maimonides (in Ibn Tibbon’s translation) was saying. The words יעיר משינתו have nothing to do with awakening from sleep in any literal sense. Rather, the expression simply refers to people who are figuratively awakening from their slumber and can now recognize God’s presence. Therefore, there was no need for the Rama in seeking to make his point to include anything about getting up in the morning.
In the Datche’s editor’s response to Speyer, he pointed out another problem with the Rama’s formulation. While the Rama writes of  מלך מלכי המלכים הקב”ה יתעלה חופף עליו, this is not what Maimonides says. According to Maimonides, “this king who cleaves to him and accompanies him is the intellect that overflows toward us and is the bond between us and Him, may He be exalted.” In other words, Maimonides is speaking about the Active Intellect yet the Rama turns this into God Himself. It is because of things like this that Yeshayahu Leibowitz was led to declare that the Rama “didn’t understand philosophy and didn’t understand the Guide of the Perplexed.” He also referred to the Rama’s Torat ha-Olah as a work of “pseudo-philosophy.”[25]

This might seem like an unfair statement, and I am sure that Yonah Ben Sasson would reject it,[26] but consider the following. No one could be regarded as a rabbinic scholar if all he studied was the Mishneh Torah, without examining the talmudic passages upon which the Mishneh Torah is based. In fact, I think all would agree that one can’t really understand the Mishneh Torah without knowing the talmudic sources. By the same token, one can’t really understand the Guide without knowing the Aristotelian sources upon which so much of Maimonides’ words are based. Yet the Rama tells us, in his famous letter to R. Solomon Luria,[27] that he never actually studied Aristotle and his only knowledge of him comes from Maimonides’ Guide and other Jewish sources.
כי אף שהבאתי מקצת דברי אריסטו מעידני עלי שמים וארץ שכל ימי לא עסקתי בשום ספר מספריו רק מה שעסקתי בספר המורה שיגעתי בו ומצאתי ת”ל [תהלה לא-ל] ושאר ספרי הטבע כשער השמים וכדומיהין, שחברו חז”ל ומהם כתבתי מה שכתבתי מדברי אריסטו.
Interestingly, I found one place, Torat ha-Olah 3:47, where the Rama speaks very disrespectfully of Maimonides’ philosophical knowledge, referring to it as foolishness.

ואין לך סכלות חכמתו גדולה מזה
Nevertheless, the Gaon placed the Rama together with Maimonides in his other sharp criticism of the latter[28]:

אבל לא ראו את הפרדס, לא הוא [הרמ”א] ולא הרמב”ם


To be continued
* * * *

Information about my summer trips to Spain, Central Europe, and Italy will be available soon. Anyone interested should check out the Torah in Motion website. Marc Glickman, one of the participants on last year’s tour to Central Europe, described it as follows: “It was great to meet Marc and he was a fantastic guide. The trip was like a living Seforim Blog post (I follow his posts religiously).” Thank you Marc!

Also for those interested, I will be speaking on R. Ovadiah Yosef at Ohab Zedek in NYC on December 17 at 8:15pm. 

[1] Regarding how influential the Gaon was on Lithuanian rabbinic scholarship, see Gil Perl, The Pillar of Volozhin: Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin and the World of Nineteenth-Century Lithuanian Torah Scholarship (Boston, 2012), pp. 127ff. Perl disputes with Immanuel Etkes and Shaul Stampfer who have argued that the Gaon’s influence has been exaggerated. In terms of the Gaon’s influence on Jewish practice, R. Yaakov Kamenetsky claimed that there were only two places in Lithuania that followed the Gaon’s minhagim, and one of these places was the Gaon’s beit midrash/synagogue (kloiz) in Vilna. See R. Yehoshua Geldzahler, Kodshei Yehoshua (Jerusalem, 1999), vol. 5, p. 1758 (Geldzahler forgot the second place mentioned by R. Kamenetsky.) See also Nathan Kamenetsky, Making of a Godol (Jerusalem, 2002), vol. 1, p. 655.
[2] “In Elijah’s view, references to demons, magic, charms, and other irrational objects and ideas cannot be ignored—though not per se because he thinks they actually exist. (Elijah’s admirer Menashe Illya [1767-1831] recalled ‘that according to his memory,’ Elijah actually ‘criticized those who interpreted Midrash according its [!] literal sense when the Midrash went against reason.’) Elijah’s criticism against Maimonides was based on the belief that one cannot simply deny or gloss over the anti-rational elements that consistently appear in rabbinic literature. Either they belong in the text or they do not; if they do belong, they must be explained. By not including or explaining them, Elijah contends, Maimonides and ‘philosophers’ fail to take seriously the very words and signs that make up the rabbinic tradition.”
[3] In R. Isaac Herzog’s letter about the authority of the Zohar, published by me in Milin Havivin 5 (2010-2011), he quotes R. Abba Werner as saying the following about the Gaon (p. 16):
שהגר”א בבאורו על הזוהר הוא המבקר היותר קשה על הטקסט של הזוהר
R. Mordechai Friedman called my attention to R. Hanokh Ehrentreu, Iyunim be-Divrei Hazal u-ve-Leshonam (Jerusalem, 1978), pp. 184ff., where Ehrentreu prefers a textual emendation of R. Wolf Heidenheim over the emendation suggested by the Gaon. Since I will be dealing with R. Chaim Kanievsky in the next installment, let me mention that he has a tradition that R. Hayyim of Volozhin stated that one of the Gaon’s emendations was mistaken: הגר”א טעה. See R. Hayyim Shalom Segal, Berurei Hayyim (Bnei Brak, 2004), vol. 3, p. 924.
[4] In Aderet Eliyahu to Nahum 3:4, the Gaon writes:
בשלשה דברים ישחית איש את רעהו  . . .  בכשפים: במיני קטורת ממשיכים כחות העליונות אשר מקושרים בלבות בני אדם
[5] See also Aderet Eliyahu to Numbers 23:22 and Hosea 2:20 for other discussions of demons. In Yahel Or (Vilna, 1882), p. 38b (second numbering), the Gaon writes:
 ואמרו כי אמן של שדים נעמי [צ”ל נעמה] הולידה אותן מהנפילים לכן חציין מצד אביהן דומה למלה”ש ומצד אמן לב”א

[6] See Samuel Joseph Fuenn, Kiryah Ne’emanah  (Vilna, 1860), p. 160. In Stern’s book the page number is mistakenly given as p. 169.
[7] Regarding the Gaon and the Shulhan Arukh, see R. Yaakov Hayyim Sofer, Menuhat Shalom (Jerusalem, 2003), vol. 11, pp. 51-52, who shows that because the Gaon did not have access to the early editions of the work, he mistakenly assumed that a word stated by R. Joseph Karo really belonged to R. Moses Isserles. Although there is no question that Sofer is correct, since we are dealing with the Gaon, here is how Sofer prefaces his correction (which also includes the claim that a reference offered by the Gaon is incorrect).
אמנם עם שאיני כדאי כלל וכלל, עפר יעקב, אומר אני אחר נטילת הרשות, שדברי קדשו של רבינו הגדול הגר”א ז”ל, שגבו ממני, ובאפיסותי לא זכיתי להבין דברות קדשו של הגר”א ז”ל.

[8] Regarding the Gaon, many interesting articles appear in Yeshurun 5 (1999) and 6 (1999). R. Dovid Yitzchaki’s contribution, “Havanat Divrei ha-Gra al Da’at Omram,” Yeshurun 5, pp. 502-537, is of particular value. Jacob Israel Dienstag’s bibliography of writings by and about the Gaon is still worth consulting. See Talpiot 4 (1949), pp. 269-356.
[9] See here.
[10] See here.
[11] See Ha-Levanon, Sep. 18, 1872, p. 26.
[12] See R. Moshe Zuriel, Otzrot ha-Gra (Bnei Brak, 2000),  pp. 242f.
[13] See R. Yaakov Wreschner, Seder Yaakov (Jerusalem, 2010), vol. 1, p. 35 (first pagination).
[14] Derekh ha-Kodesh (Jerusalem, 1999), p. 4.
[15] Stern himself translates it as “math” on p. 198 n. 19. Regarding mathematics, in the next post (or maybe the one after) I will defend Stern’s reading of a passage in opposition to the critique of Bezalel Naor here.
[16] See Idel, “Bein ha-Kabbalah ha-Nevuit le-Kabalat R. Menahem Mendel mi-Shklov,” in Moshe Halamish, et  al., eds., Ha-Gra u-Veit Midrasho (Ramat Gan, 2003), p. 174-175.
[17] The text were are discussing is also found in Tzava’at ha-Rivash (Brooklyn, 1998), p. 28 no. 68.
[18] See Sid Z. Leiman, “When a Rabbi is Accused of Heresy: The Stance of the Vilna Gaon in the Emden-Eibschuetz Controversy,” in Ezra Fleischer, et al., eds. Meah Shearim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky (Jerusalem, 2001), pp. 251-263.
[19] The Gaon had five brothers. See Chaim Freedman, Eliyahu’s Branches (Teaneck, 1997), p. 12.
[20] Let us not forget that the Gaon claimed to have had visions of Jacob and Elijah. This comes from a text written by the Gaon and recorded by R. Hayyim of Volozhin in his introduction to the Gaon’s commentary to Sifre de-Tzeniuta. R. Hayyim also reports that the Gaon said that before he was thirteen years old he started to make a golem, before he concluded that Heaven did not want him to continue. The Gaon further told R. Hayyim that he was visited by R. Shimon Ben Yohai and R. Isaac Luria. All of these things are not characteristic of one with a positive attitude towards philosophy.
[21] Sefat Melekh, vol. 1 (commentary to Mishneh Torah, Sefer ha-Mada [Bnei Brak, 1998], p. 53. R. Korah, Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Bnei Brak, is one of the few Yemenites (are there any others?) who studied under R. Aaron Kotler. See his recollections at the beginning of his Haggadah shel Pesah (2003).
[22] David Zvi Hillman, ed., Iggerot Ba’al ha-Tanya u-Venei Doro (Jerusalem, 1953), p. 97.
[23] See R. Matisyahu Strashun, Mivhar Ketavim (Jerusalem, 1969), p. 125 n. 1.
[24] Datche 55 (17 Av 5769), p. 6.
[25] See his Sihot al Pirkei Ta’amei ha-Mitzvot (Jerusalem, 2003), pp. 723-724.
[26] See his Mishnato ha-Iyunit shel Ha-Rama (Jerusalem, 1984).
[27] She’elot u-Teshuvot ha-Rama, ed. Siev (Jerusalem, 1971), no. 7.
[28] Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh Deah 246:18.