The Jewish Review of Books recently published its Fall issue, which features several excellent articles, including a discussion of the recently published Chaim Grade novel. Below is a reprint of an article from their Summer issue, “Golden Ledgers” by Dan Rabinowitz, with a short postscript.
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Golden Ledgers
by: Dan Rabinowitz

To get to the Judaica Research Centre archives in the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, you have to navigate through a series of passageways, across dark, empty rooms, and step over high thresholds. As your eyes adjust to the light, you are welcomed by rows of metal shelves filled with stacks of thousands of documents and dozens of bankers boxes overflowing with papers.

I was there again last summer looking for new material about Vilna’s Strashun Bibliotek, the first Jewish public library. I wrote a book about the Strashun Library a few years ago, but I was sure that there was more to learn. Lara Lempertiene, the director of Judaica, had set aside some correspondence related to the library for me, along with four large volumes. There didn’t seem to be much in the letters, so I turned to the books. They were ledgers, really, two of which bore some kind of Russian governmental red wax seal on the title page. The other two were water stained, and the cover of one was severely warped. My hands quickly blackened with dust and dirt accumulated over decades as I turned the books’ pages. They appeared to record a partial listing of the Strashun Library’s holdings, which had begun with a bequest from an erudite, idiosyncratic Torah scholar named Mattityahu Strashun. At first glance, these lists were interesting in the variety of books listed but didn’t seem to yield anything new.

 By then, it was almost time for my lunch date with Andrius Romanovskis at the Neringa Hotel, a recently restored midcentury modern building from the Soviet era (and a one-time favorite of the KGB). Andrius runs a lobbying firm, and his glamorous wife, Irina Rybakova, works in the fashion industry. Between the two of them, they seem to know everyone who is anyone in the city. Whenever we sit down for coffee, the acquaintances stop by our table—Lithuania’s former interim president; a TV broadcaster; a hipster couple; a photographer; the curator of MO, Vilnius’s museum of modern art; a government studies student; and a leading professor of modern propaganda. But Andrius, who comes from a Turkish Karaite family (the community has been in Lithuania since the fourteenth century), is deeply interested in Lithuania’s Jews, and after lunch we decided to walk back to the center.

I introduced Andrius to Lara, but, of course, they were already acquainted. We opened one of the large black books with the dramatic wax seals. On the title page was a handwritten Cyrillic inscription, which Andrius quickly translated as “A Ledger to Record All Printed Works, Without Exception, Issued for Reading from the Library of the Reading Room Located in the Building of the Vilna Main Synagogue.” When he did so, we suddenly realized what we actually had before us. These ledgers did not record the books on the shelves. Their thousands of pages were a daily record of every patron at the Strashun Library and the books they had requested for the day. What we had discovered was not a catalog of books; it was a lost catalog of Jewish intellectual culture in action.

In 1895, Russian government censors began monitoring library reading rooms throughout the empire for subversive literature. When the Strashun Library opened to the public in 1902, it was no exception. The wax seals I had seen on the title page of the volumes were from the censor’s office. Librarians were required to maintain a ledger documenting every patron and the books they read in the library’s reading room; it wasn’t a lending library—all books had to be read at one of two long tables, with chairs available on a democratic first-come-first-served basis. Even after the fall of the Russian Empire, the librarians maintained the ledger system.

The library opened its doors on November 14, 1902. According to the ledger, the first book requested was Otzar Lashon Hakodesh by Julius Fürst, a German Jewish Hebraist who had studied with Hegel and Gesenius. A patron named Aaron Spiro requested the book, which was from Strashun’s original collection and probably could not have been found anywhere else in the city, certainly not in any Vilna yeshiva or beit midrash. The fifty-six other books requested that day included kabbalistic works by Chaim Vital, Heinrich Graetz’s History of the Jews, and the Hebrew writer Abraham Mapu’s second novel.

In 1902, only a few women came to the library, but their numbers steadily grew. By January 17, 1934, the third ledger records forty-five women among the 150 patrons. A woman named Shayna checked out Jabotinsky’s historical novel Samson, Zipporah studied Dubnow’s History of the Jews in Yiddish, and Shoshana read Max Nordau’s play about intermarriage. Two women, Gita and Rivkah, took out Yiddish translations of novels by the Norwegian Nobel Prize winner Knut Hamsun.

In September 1939, following the Nazis’ invasion of Poland from the west and the Soviet Union’s invasion from the east, the Soviets briefly occupied Vilna. However, a few months later, they withdrew, and Vilna became the capital of an independent Lithuania. Tens of thousands of Jews from Poland, Lithuania, and Russia fled there, hoping to eventually escape the continent entirely. Briefly, improbably, Jewish life flourished.

Yitzhak Ze’ev Soloveitchik, known as Reb Velvel or the Brisker Rov, was one of those refugees and one of many new scholars in the library. His father, Chaim, had revolutionized Talmud study with his method of conceptual analysis, brilliantly exemplified in his commentary on Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah, and Reb Velvel had followed in his analytical path. On the afternoon of October 1, 1940, Reb Velvel came to the Strashun Library with his teenage son Raphael. Raphael checked out Iggeret Ha-Shemad, Maimonides’s impassioned defense of his fellow Spanish Jews who had been forced to convert to Islam. This is the kind of book one might expect Reb Chaim Brisker’s grandson to borrow at that particularly fraught time—a deeply relevant Maimonidean work that one couldn’t find on the shelves of a beit midrash. His father’s reading for the day was more surprising: I. L. Peretz’s short stories about Hasidim, perhaps the most famous of which was Oyb nisht nokh hekher (If Not Higher), which depicts a skeptical Litvak who comes to appreciate a Hasidic rebbe but also mocks Hasidic miracles. From the yeshivish hagiographies that were later written about Reb Velvel, one would never guess that the Litvak rosh yeshiva would read fiction by a radical secularist about the virtues of Hasidim. But the history of actual human lives is always more interesting than hagiography.

The Brisker Rov sat at the reading room table with his Peretz stories alongside the mixed multitude of Jewish readers that day. Two of them were a couple, Hayim and Hanna, who were reading Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina in Yiddish. Another was Dovid, who was studying the Minhat Hinukh, a commentary on a classic exposition of the commandments. A fourth reader had Graetz’s History. A few months later, Reb Velvel and his son succeeded in escaping Europe for Palestine. He founded the Brisk Yeshivah in Jerusalem and was never seen again in the company of such a diverse group.

The final book ledger concludes on October 31, 1940, with 128 books requested, including Shakespeare’s Complete Dramatic Works in English, several dozen rabbinic books—among them Chaim Soloveitchik’s Chidushei Rav Chaim ha-Levi, a Yiddish translation of Tolstoy’s Resurrection, Yosef Klausner’s Hebrew biography of Jesus, and a handful of Hebrew newspapers.

The last book—the 35,844th, borrowed in 1940—was a Yiddish biography of Joseph Stalin. It was borrowed by Zalman Raynus (Reinus). All of Raynus’s numerous previous requests were for traditional rabbinic works. Did he choose to read about Stalin to understand what was coming? Whatever the reason behind Raynus’s reading of Stalin’s biography, the dictator’s policies led to the shuttering of the Strashun Library. I know of no other historical trace of Zalman Raynus. He does not appear in any state archival or genealogical records, nor is he listed among the murdered Jews.

When the Nazis entered Vilna the following summer of 1941, they murdered most of Vilna’s Jews in the Ponary massacre and pillaged the library. But even as Nazis tore through the library and the community, courageous Jews hid thousands of books in secret spots, basements, and makeshift bunkers throughout the Vilna Ghetto. Among these were the ledgers that, improbably, now sat before us.

A ledger that did not survive the Gestapo’s brutal purge of the library was a VIP guest log called the Golden Book (Sefer ha-zahav). Among those who had signed it over the years were the writers Chaim Nachman Bialik, Chaim Grade, and Abraham Sutzkever (who was among the heroes who saved and recovered some of the Strashun’s holdings); artist Marc Chagall; the “Chofetz Chaim” Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan; Berl Katznelson, the founder of the Labor movement; and many, many others. But these ledgers, records of the reading habits of ordinary Jews across a broad cross section of Ashkenazi society, are even more valuable. They preserve actual data from an otherwise lost history of Jewish culture and raise a host of fascinating questions, which are now being investigated by a working group, the Strashun Library Ledger Project, which includes scholars and librarians from the National Library of Lithuania, Yale University, Haifa University’s e-Lijah Lab for Digital Humanities, and elsewhere. Most of the ledgers are still missing, although a small ledger from 1920 was recently found. It seems unlikely that we’ll discover the rest, but who knows what treasures may be hidden in bankers boxes and yellowing stacks of paper.

In her memoir of her visit to Vilna in 1938, the historian Lucy Dawidowicz described the Strashun Library:

On any day you could see, seated at the two long tables in the reading room, venerable long-bearded men, wearing hats, studying Talmudic texts, elbow to elbow with bareheaded young men and even young women, bare-armed sometimes on warm days, studying their texts.

Each of the thousands of pages of the library’s ledgers is a data-rich snapshot of such a scene—and one in which the actual reading choices of those venerable rabbis, bareheaded young men, and bare-armed young women may well surprise us.

Postscript:

One account of the Brisker Rav’s time in Vilna alludes to his time at the Strashun Library. As yeshiva leaders debated whether to flee to the United States or to Palestine, supporters of the former emphasized how far removed they were from the Hitlerian threat, compared to Palestine, where Rommel was rapidly approaching. The Brisker Rav, however, argued in favor of Palestine as a place better suited for the full practice of Judaism. He based his view on Maimonides’ Ma’amar Kiddush Hashem (included with Iggeret ha-SheMad), the same work Raphael had requested from the library. The report notes that he “relied upon the Rambam that he held in his hands (she’amad ne’ged eynav).” See R Shimon Yosef Miller, Uvdot ve-Hanhagot le-Bet Brisk (Jerusalem, 1999), vol. 1, 27. Although the ledgers only record that he read Peretz, it is reasonable to assume he also consulted Raphael’s selection. (For additional information regarding the exodus to Vilna and the debate about a final destination, see Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky, The Golden Age of the Lithuanian Yeshivas (Bloomington, 2022), 265-289.) 

When refugees from Yeshivas arrived in Vilna in late 1939 and 1940, they were cared for by the Va’ad HaYeshivos. Many of the lists of those students and families are preserved in the same archive as the Strashun Ledgers at the Lithuanian National Library. Below are two documents from that archive. The first is a document that lists some of the most important rabbis, including the Brisker Rav, and their addresses in Vilna. The second document is a page from the list of students from Keltsk.

KEDUSHAH, KEDOSHAH, OR B’K’DUSHAH in KEDUSHAH D’YESHIVAH?

Wayne Allen

In his classic study of the content and evolution of Jewish prayer, Abraham Millgram (Jewish Worship, p. 134) asserts that “the most significant addition to the liturgy after its redaction at Yavneh was that of the Kedushah, a prayer in which the community of Israel together with the heavenly host proclaim God’s holiness.” Yavneh was the town in which rabbinic Judaism retrenched after the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 C.E. Millgram further contends that the Kedushah prayer “is obviously mystic in nature” and Babylonian in origin (ibid.). It was during the early Rabbinic period that Babylonian mystics “were engrossed in speculations regarding the nature, appearance, and functions of the…angelic sanctification of God” as described in Isaiah 6:3 and Ezekiel 3:12 which, along with Psalm 146:10 make up the central elements of the Kedushah prayer, surrounded by appropriate introductions and connecting phrases.

In his commentary on the Bible, Rabbi Meir Leib ben Yehiel Mikhel Malbim (1809 – 1897) explains that when, as described by the prophet Isaiah, the angels on high proclaim God’s holiness (kedushah, in Hebrew), they are, in essence, attesting that “God is separated from earth in that He is immaterial; He is separated from time in that He is everlasting or eternal; and He is also separated from the heavens in that He is insubstantial.” This threefold separation is what characterizes holiness. Rabbi Hayim Halevi Donin (To Pray as a Jew, p. 126–7) adds that “not only is God above and beyond man and his world, but the angels proclaim God to be above and beyond their world as well” leading to the inevitable question: “if the angels so proclaim, can mortal man say less?”

When the Babylonians introduced the inclusion of the Kedushah, it was fittingly placed immediately before the third blessing of the Amidah which concludes with an affirmation of God’s holiness. It quickly became the apotheosis of the public prayer service. After some initial resistance, the Kedushah gained currency among Palestinian Jews as well. Millgram (Jewish Worship, p. 136) surmises that Jews unable to attend synagogue services daily felt deprived of the privilege to recite Kedushah so the rabbis inserted an abbreviated form of Kedushah in the text leading up to the first blessing before the recital of the morning Shema as well as incorporating the key verses of the Kedushah in the paragraph near the end of the morning service, perhaps for late-comers. This form of the Kedushah did not require a quorum of worshippers, thus enabling all worshippers – whether or not in synagogue – to declare God’s holiness in the mystical words of the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel. To distinguish the standing, public recital of the Kedushah during the reader’s repetition of the Amidah, the early recital of the Kedushah was termed Kedushah D’ Yeshivah (the “sitting” Kedushah or Kedushah D’Yotzer, referring to the blessing it precedes, cf. Resp. Otzar HaGe’onim, Berakhot No. 46) and the later recital of the kedushah was called Kedushah D’Sidra (See Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 49a; Shabbat 116b; Resp. Otzar HaGe’onim No. 320).

It is the Kedushah D’Yotzer that is the subject of a wording dispute. Four Hebrew words describe the manner in which the angels proclaim God’s holiness. The dispute centers on whether these four words constitute two pairs of phrases with each phrase consisting of a noun and a modifying adjective, or one phrase consisting of a noun followed by two modifying adjectives and then a proper noun. The first view would read this phrase as בְּשָׂפָה בְרוּרָה, meaning “with clear speech,” followed by וּבִנְעִימָה קְדשָּׁה, meaning “and in sacred melody.” The readers would treat the four-word phrase as if there were a comma between the two pairs of words even if a comma did not appear in the text. According to the second view, the phrase should read בְּשָׂפָה בְרוּרָה וּבִנְעִימָה. קְדֻשָּׁה, meaning “in clear and melodious speech. [They proclaim] the Kedushah.” On the first view, the phrase is simply descriptive of the way the angels would proclaim God’s holiness, without indicating the nature of the proclamation. On the second view, the phrase describes the way the angels recite the Kedushah. A survey of various prayerbooks demonstrates how this dispute plays out.

Prior to the publication of the Artscroll prayerbook in 1984, the most popular siddurim used in Orthodox synagogues were the De Sola Pool prayerbook and the Birnbaum prayerbook. The Traditional Prayer Book for Sabbath and Festivals was edited by Rabbi David De Sola Pool who served Congregation Shearith Yisrael, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in New York City for more than forty years. His acknowledged erudition led to the official adoption by the Rabbinical Council of America of this prayerbook for all Orthodox congregations in the United States in 1961. Both the 1940 and 1960 edition (p. 53) translated the disputed phrase as:

Mutually accepting for themselves His heavenly rule, in unison they all give one another the word to hallow their Creator in serene, pure utterance of sacred harmony…

That De Sola Pool considered the first view as the correct one is confirmed by the punctuation in the Hebrew text which puts a period after the word Kedoshah which is vocalized with a holom, that is, a dotted vav, making it an “o” as in “so” sound, and rendering it as the modifier of “ne’imah.” Likewise, Ha-Siddur Ha-Shalem edited by Philip Birnbaum and mass distributed by Hebrew Publishing Company adopts the same view. The 1949 edition reads (p. 73):

In serene spirit, with pure speech and sacred melody, they all exclaim in unison and with reverence…

The Hebrew is vocalized the same way as De Sola Pool.

The series of prayer books published for or by the Conservative movement follows suit. The Prayer Book, edited by Rabbi Ben-Zion Bokser, long-serving rabbi of the Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens, New York, and published by Hebrew Publishing Company in 1961 reads (p. 47):

They sing a hymn of allegiance to the Divine power, each bidding the other go be first in acclaiming their Creator, With soft and clear tones, they chant in unison a sacred melody declaring…

Bokser took the editorial liberty of interpolating the action taken by the angels, i.e. chanting in unison, to make the word flow smoother but he obviously holds that the text is composed of two pairs of phrases with a noun (“tones” in the first phrase and “melody” in the second) and a modifier (“soft and clear” in the first phrase and “sacred” in the second).

The Sim Shalom prayerbook, based on the work of the eminent liturgist Rabbi Jules Harlow, was published by the Rabbinical AHssembly in 1998. Here, the disputed phrase is rendered (p. 97):

One to another they vow loyalty to God’s sovereignty; one with another they join to hallow their Creator with serenity, pure speech, and sacred song, in unison, chanting with reverence…

With his talent for a more poetic rendering of Hebrew, Harlow matches the phrase “one to another” to “one with another” in describing the angelic choir. Notably, Harlow also give his nod to the first view, supported again by the Hebrew text with a comma between the two phrases and the vocalization of K’doshah.

Interestingly, the Jewish Welfare Board, tasked with unenviable mission of producing a prayer book that would serve Jewish troops of all affiliations, translated the disputed phrase in its 1969 High Holiday Prayer Book for Jewish Personnel in the Armed Forces as follows (p. 101):

All of them act with harmonious accord, with purity of purpose and with united strength to perform reverently the will of their Creator. They all break forth into song of pure and holy praise, while they bless, glorify, and proclaim…

The “song of pure and holy praise” conforms with the first view of the disputed phrase. Also of note, the description of the angelic proclamation as a “song” conforms to the Talmudic text as will be noted below.

In contrast, since 1984 and in line with siddurim published in Israel, the second view has ascended in prominence. The Complete Artscroll Siddur (1992 edition, p. 87), translated by Rabbi Nosson Scherman, is paradigmatic:

Then they all accept upon themselves the yoke of heavenly sovereignty from one another and grant permission from one another to sanctify the One Who formed them, with tranquility, with clear articulation, and with sweetness. All of them as one proclaim His holiness and say with awe…

While the identification of the name of the angelic proclamation as the Kedushah is not explicit, this translation accepts the notion that “clear articulation and sweetness” go together in describing it, clearly evident in the Hebrew and its punctuation with a period after the word u-v’ne’imah. This is a pattern followed by Siddur Rinat Yisrael, the mainstream Israeli prayerbook and the popular Koren Siddur under the guidance of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

The question of which view is correct or which version is the more authentic is not easily resolved. One of the earliest Jewish prayerbooks, the ninth century Seder Rav Amram (Goldschmidt ed., p. 13), is ambiguous. Lacking any punctuation or explication, the four-word Hebrew phrase in question can be read either way. The same is true with Mahzor Vitry, an enhanced prayerbook produced by the twelfth century school of Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaqi of Troyes (Horowitz ed., Part I, p. 65). However, the Frumkin edition of Seder Rav Amram published in 1912 notes (p. 188) that a British Museum manuscript vocalized the text to read “k’doshah” in reference to the angelic melody, supporting the first view, while RaShI’s commentary on Isaiah 6:3 (“Holy, holy, holy! God of Hosts—Whose presence fills all the earth!”) includes the observation: “This is the basis for the prayer in Yotzer Ohr, Kedushah: all together proclaim,” that supports the second view. It seems like the Tosafists agree (Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 13b, s.v. mi-zei-atan).

Fourteenth century Spanish Rabbi David Abudraham, aware of the dispute, seeks to resolve it in his authoritative compendium on Jewish prayer. In the 1963 edition of Sefer Abudraham (p. 73), he explains the parallelism in the text. “Because the author called the language of the angels ‘clear,’ by extension, he also called the melody ‘sacred.’” In other words, the phrase in question consists of two pairs of words, each pair with a noun and a modifying adjective, implying that the text ought to be read as safah berurah and ne’imah kedoshah. He goes on to acknowledge that “some read ‘Kedushah,’ but the first version is correct.” In his multi-volume study of Jewish prayer, Netiv Binah (Vol. I, p. 235, n. 8), Rabbi Y. Jacobson cites Abudraham’s opinion as decisive. He also includes as support the Yemenite prayerbook that reads u-v’ne’imah t’horah, that is, “and with pure melody.” Even though the wording differs from the Ashkenazi prayerbook (t’horah instead of k’doshah), Yemeni Jews agree that the word that follows after “ne’imah” is an adjective. Hence, “Kedushah” would be incorrect.

But all is not settled. Complicating matters, thirteenth century authority on Jewish law, Rabbi Tzedekiah ben Abraham Anaw (Shibbolei Ha-Leket, Sec 13) reports that he had found a text ascribed to eighth century Rabbi Natronai Gaon that reads: “with clear speech, melodiously, and devoutly.” On this version, the phrase in question uses three terms to describe the manner in which the angels proclaim God’s holiness: clearly, melodiously, and devoutly. It certainly does not comport well with the second view that specifies that the angels recite Kedushah, but neither does it support the first. Likewise, the prayerbook of Italian Jews, Mahzor Italiani (Luzatto, ed., Vol. I, p. 14) reads: b’safah berurah, b’ne’imah, u’vik’dushah, best translated as “with clear speech, melodiously, and with sacred devotion.”

To sum up, there are actually three views on the proper reading of the phrase in question. The first view would stipulate reading: b’safah berurah, u-v’ne’imah k’doshah. This view is supported by Natronai Gaon, the British Museum manuscript of Seder Rav Amram, the Yemenite Siddur, and Abudraham. The second view would stipulate reading: b’safah berurah u-v’ne’imah, Kedushah. This view is supported by RaShI and the Tosafists. And the third view would stipulate reading: b’safah berurah, b’ne’imah, u’vik’dushah. This view is supported by the opinion of Natronai Gaon and the Mahzor Italiani. Jewish worshippers, then, are left with a conundrum. Each view has its defenders.

However, three further considerations make a better case for the first view. First, the preponderance of authorities favors this view. Late thirteenth century Spanish Rabbi Yom Tov Ishbili (Hiddushei Ha-RITVA, Meg. 23b, s.v. u-midivrei rabbotai) mentions the tradition of his teachers reciting b’safa berurah u-v’ne’imah kedoshah kulam k’ehad onim b’eimah v’omrim b’yir’ah Kedushah, meaning with clear speech and in sacred melody, together as one, the angels say the Kedushah with trepidation. The RITVA acknowledges that the angels recite the Kedushah. But they do so with clear speech and sacred melody (ne’imah k’doshah) which is the reading of the first view. In fact, reading k’doshah as Kedushah would make no sense since Kedushah here would be redundant, being mentioned at the end. Fifteenth century Spanish Rabbi Abraham Saba (Tzror Ha-Mor, Bereshit, s.v. v’od) identifies two kinds of speech: what comes from the mouth and what comes from the heart. The latter is the superior and is endemic to the angels. He implies that the distinction is embedded in the phrase in question: safah berurah and ne’imah k’doshah. Sixteenth century Turkish Rabbi Moses Alshikh (Commentary on Exodus 28, s.v. v’hayya) also seems to follow b’safah berurah, u-v’ne’imah k’doshah.

Further, Rabbi Joseph Karo (Bet Yosef on Tur, Orah Hayyim 59, s.v. katuv) cites the Orhot Hayyim who accepts the first view and adds “I heard that the leading authorities of the generation follow this version.” Likewise, Rabbi Moses Isserles, agrees (Darkhei Moshe HaKatzar, Orah Hayyim 59:2) and, in Tur, Orah Hayyim 59, n. 2 states that “this is how it is arranged in our prayerbooks.” Eighteenth century Rabbi Jacob Emden (Siddur Bet Ya’akov, Warsaw ed. 1910, p. 120) acknowledges that while some versions have the word “Kedushah” vocalized with the shuruk (vowel sound “oo”) treating it as a noun, the preferred version is to read the phrase in question as b’safah berurah u-v’nei’mah k’doshah with a pause after “berurah,” and a holom after the letter “daled,” because the word “k’doshah” is an adjective modifying “ne’imah.” And Siddur Ha–Ya’avetz, Amudei Shamayim (ed. Deutsch [2016] p. 86) has Emden punctuating the phrase in question with a comma after the word “berurah”(indicating in his notes a need for a pause) and vocalizing the noun in the ensuing phrase as “k’doshah.” Tellingly, the standard reference work for the Ashkenazi nusah, Seder Avodat Yisrael, arranged and annotated by Isaac Seligman Baer (see Robert Scheinberg, “Seligmann Baer’s Seder Avodat Yisrael (1868): Liturgy, Ideology, and the Standardization of Nusah Ashkenaz”), adopts the first view. Moreover, in his notes (ed. Rödelheim [1868], p. 78), Baer relies on Abudraham as authoritative and claims that ne’imah k’doshah was Abarbanel’s version as well. He also claims that he had a manuscript reading of RaShI on Isaiah 6:3 which does not include “Kedushah.” The Siddur Rav Shabbetai Sofer of Przemysl (or Premslow), an authoritative compendium of prayers for Polish Jewry, includes both views, with ne’imah kedushah followed by ne’imah k‘doshah in parentheses, identified as “another version.” In his notes, Sofer indicates that the parenthesized version is that of Abudraham. And, like nineteenth century Rabbi Yehiel Mikhel Epstein (Arukh HaShulhan, Orah Hayyim 59:10), former Chief Rabbi of Israel Ovadiah Yosef (Resp. Yabi’a Omer, Pt. 8, Orah Hayyim, No. 11, Sec. 15) acknowledges that there is support for both the first and second view, it seems that the latter gives greater credence to the first view.

Second, the Babylonian Talmud refers to the angelic proclamation as a “shirah” (song) and not Kedushah, as assumed by the second view. Rav Hananel cites the opinion of third century Rav (Hullin 91b) who said:

Three groups of ministering angels recite a song (shirah) every day from the verse “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord”; one says: “Holy,” and another one says: “Holy,” and another one says: “Holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.”

There is no mention of this “song” as the Kedushah prayer. Avot D’Rabbi Natan (Version A, Chapter 12) explicitly refers to this proclamation as “shirah” as well.

Third, Hebrew grammar makes the second view problematic. If the phrase in question was intended to convey the idea that the angels above recite Kedushah clearly and melodiously, then the grammatically correct way to express that idea would be: b’safah berurah u-v’ne’imah, kulam k’ehad, onim v’omrim Kedushah b’yir’ah. Thus, the translation would be: “with clear speech and melodiously, all the angels together would respond and say the Kedushah in trepidation.” The extant word order does not support this reading. In simpler terms, Kedushah is the object of the sentence and must follow after subject and verb. Saying “Kedushah: all together they respond and say,” as the proponents of the second view would have readers do, is both awkward and ungrammatical. Indeed, this is precisely what Baer (op. cit.) states, describing it as “dohak ha-lashon,” difficult language.

Solomonically, Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef (op. cit.) concludes that either way, the first view or the second view, is acceptable. But which is “correct?” Ideally, worshippers should adopt the first view and follow the text as was printed in the Birnbaum and De Sola Pool prayerbooks as well as those published by or for the Conservative movement. (Why the Rabbinical Council of America pivoted away from the original De Sola Pool prayerbook is a mystery.) However, it is entirely proper to follow the text of the synagogue where one is worshipping. Maimonides (Resp. RaMBaM, No. 181) rules that congregational unity is more important than loyalty to the established text. The view of Rabbi Moses Schreiber is also apropos. Asked which mode of prayer is preferred, Ashkenazic or Sephardic, he answers that the Sephardic is preferred but “what we pray according to the formulations of Ashkenazi prayer is heard [by God] as well” (Resp. Hatam Sofer, Orah Hayyim, No. 15). Here, too, we may have the assurance that whichever way the disputed phrase is articulated, God will accept it in the spirit it is offered.

Cemeteries and Response to Criticism

Marc B. Shapiro

In my last post here I said that when it is safe, I will go to Baghdad to visit the grave of the Ben Ish Hai. I cannot find a picture of the Ben Ish Hai’s grave online, but you can see it in R. Yaakov Moshe Hillel’s beautifully produced recent book, Ben Ish Hai, p. 337. However, this is from the old cemetery in Baghdad, and because of a government order the remains in this cemetery were moved in the early 1960s. So it remains to be seen if the grave can now be located.[1] R. Hillel, p. 336 n. 480, claims that the precise location cannot be identified.

כיום, לא ניתן לזהות את קבריהם, בשל תנאי אקלים קשים השוררים בבבל אשר גרמו להתפוררות המצבות, ומחוסר רישום מדוייק של חלקות הקבורה.

Yet until we can go in and actually examine the spot, we cannot be certain if this is the case. There have been other examples of graves thought to have been lost, which have then been found. The best-known example is the grave of R. Israel Salanter, which was only located twenty years ago.[2]

While there is no doubt that the Ben Ish Hai was buried in Baghdad, there is also a tombstone for him on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

According to a famous story, which is also told on the tombstone, the Ben Ish Hai’s body was not only magically transferred to Jerusalem on the day he died, but the grave-digger testified to burying him on the Mount of Olives and wanted payment for his labor.[3] I guess we can say that the Ben Ish Hai was buried three times: twice in Baghdad and once in Jerusalem.

It is hard to know whether the entire story of the burial in Jerusalem is a legend, or if there actually was a grave digger who figured out a way to make some money and invented the story to get paid for digging the grave. Assuming the latter is the case, the grave digger must have known his crowd, that not only would they be inclined to believe such a story, but that they would also not think of actually confirming the story by digging up the grave. Truth be told, it would have to be a very fearless grave digger to leave the grave empty, because one never knows if it will be opened, so it is possible that some unknown person is actually found beneath the tombstone. It is also possible that the grave digger did not have any bad intent, but just had a very vivid imagination. In any case, it is fascinating that such a tombstone exists in the most special Jewish cemetery, and even more incredible that there are people who actually believe that the Ben Ish Hai is buried there.

Supposedly, the Ben Ish Hai’s tombstone on the Mount of Olives is the only one that is standing upright, as all others are horizontal. (Maybe someone in Jerusalem can confirm this.) It is worth noting that R. Yitzhak Kaduri paid the grave in Jerusalem no mind, and even joked about it.[4] R. Shmuel Eliyahu has stated that while the Ben Ish Hai is buried in Baghdad, his spirit came to Jerusalem.[5]

Similar to the story with the Ben Ish Hai’s burial place, R. Abraham Joshua of Apt is buried in Medzhybizh, near the Baal Shem Tov’s grave, but there is a legend that angels carried his body to Tiberias, and there is a stone marking his grave there as well.[6]

This last summer I was in Marrakech, Morocco. In the local Jewish cemetery, R. Jacob Timsut is buried. Yet, “one month after the deceased rabbi was buried in Marrakech, a letter arrived from Jerusalem announcing the marvelous appearance of a tombstone with the name of Rabbi Ya’aqov Timsut in the well-known cemetery on the Mount of Olives.”[7] So once again, you can visit the tzaddik’s grave in its original spot or in Jerusalem.

Regarding tombstones even though the deceased is not buried there, I must call attention to the fascinating comments of R. Hayyim Nathan Dembitzer (1820-1892). R. Dembitzer was a dayan in Cracow and author of the responsa volume Torat Hen. Yet his claim to fame is his historical writings. As a real historian, he was prepared to accept the truth from where it came, and it is significant that in his work Mikhtevei Bikoret (Cracow, 1892), he included correspondence with Heinrich Graetz. Here is the title page and the first two pages of this book.

Look at how respectfully he refers to Graetz, which is the sort of thing that would have driven R. Samson Raphael Hirsch and R. Esriel Hildesheimer crazy.

Dembitzer’s respectful scholarly interactions with Graetz, in which he did not let religious differences interfere, is parallel to how certain important rabbinic figures related respectfully to Louis Ginzberg. I dealt with this matter in Saul Lieberman and the Orthodox, and it has also recently been discussed by R. Moshe Maimon.[8] Interestingly, in Mikhtevei Bikoret R. Dembitzer also includes correspondence with Nachum Sokolow.

Dembitzer’s two-volume Kelilat Yofi is focused on the rabbis of Lvov as well as other Polish rabbis, and is essential for anyone doing research on the Polish rabbinate. In this work, vol. 1 p. 41a, he mentions that Elyakim Carmoly had written that in earlier years in Lvov they would place tombstones in the cemetery for the deceased scholars of the city even if they had died and were buried elsewhere.

Dembitzer does not give an exact reference for Carmoly, only mentioning that his comment is in Ha-Karmel. Fortunately, I was able to find Carmoly’s article and it appears in Ha-Karmel, April 17, 1867, p. 302. Carmoly’s has two proofs for his contention. The first proof is that in R. Gavriel ben Naftali Hertz’s Matzevat Kodesh (Lemberg 1864), vol. 2, in the second half of the book (there is no pagination here), we find the following tombstone for R. Elijah Kalmankash, who served as rav of Lvov.

The tombstone explicitly states:

.וישכב עם אבותיו ויקבר במקום קבר אביו ולא ידע איש את קבורתו עד היום הזה

This is a clear proof that at least for this rabbi, a tombstone was placed in the ground even though he was not buried there.

Carmoly also notes, as his second proof, that in Matzevat Kodesh, vol. 2, p. 22a, it records, from the Lvov cemetery the text of the tombstone of R. Petahiah, son of R. David Lida who was rav of Amsterdam. His date of death is given as 1721. Here is the text of the tombstone as recorded in Matzevat Kodesh.

(Following R. Petahiah’s tombstone, Matzevat Kodesh records the tombstones of another son and son-in-law of R. Lida.) However, Carmoly tells us that we know that R. Petahiah died and was buried in Frankfurt. R. Markus Horowitz in his Avnei Zikaron (Frankfurt, 1901), p. 290 (no. 2712), published many years after Carmoly’s article, records the text of his tombstone as follows.

As you can see, the date of death is 1751, thirty years later than the date given on the tombstone in Lvov. In other similar cases, I would say that we are dealing with two different people, but the specificity of the tombstone texts makes it hard to deny that they are both for the same person (and Petahiah was hardly a common name).[9] Carmoly’s conclusion is that the community of Lvov put up a tombstone for R. Petahiah to memorialize him, even though he was buried in Frankfurt. Neither Carmoly nor R. Dembitzer offer an explanation as to why the Lvov tombstone places his death thirty years too soon, but they would probably view this as just a simple error.

Dembitzer not only agrees with Carmoly in the case of R. Petahiah, but offers another example of this phenomenon. R. Zvi Hirsch ben Zekhariah Mendel had served as rav in Lvov, but later he was rav in Lublin and died there around 1700. However, there was a tombstone for him in Lvov which gave his date of death at 1655. R. Dembitzer does not explain the discrepancy of the dates of death, and presumably he would say that when the tombstone was put up in Lvov to honor the deceased former rav of the city (who was not buried there), they simply got the date of death wrong. Interestingly, Shlomo Tal accepted the statements of Carmoly and R. Dembitzer, and in summarizing their position speaks of “many fictitious tombstones.”[10]

Dembitzer also makes the astounding assertion that there are graves in the Lvov cemetery for rabbis who never existed! His proof is that there is a tombstone for a Rabbi Eliezer ben Moshe ha-Kohen Proops (פרופס), who is said to have been av beit din in Amsterdam before he came to Lvov. Yet R. Dembitzer states that no such person was av beit din in Amsterdam, and we thus see that the people who made the tombstones did so for rabbis who never existed![11]

כי גם זאת לפנים בלבוב, להקים ג”כ מצבות אבנים ולחקוק עליהם שמות חכמי ישראל אשר לא מתו ולא נקברו לא בלבוב, וגם לא במקומות אחרים, יען כי לא היו ולא נבראו ולא באו עוד לעולם . . . ומי לידינו יתקע אם לא עשו זכרונות במצבות אבנים כאלה גם לשאר גאונים אשר בדו מלבם וקראו בשמותם עלי אדמה, וקבעו גם כן זמן לפטירתם

This is a very strange assertion, and even if it is correct, it refers to one case only, while R. Dembitzer uses it to make a generalization. The only one I know who took note of R. Dembitzer’s assertions was R. Hayyim Eleazar Shapira in a letter to R. Leopold Greenwald.[12] R. Shapira rejects R. Dembitzer’s claim in a very sharp tone.

ולא יאומן כי יסופר כי מרב גדול בתורה יצאו דברי הבל כאלו אשר כל השומע ויודע יצחק להם, ליתן מצבות ומקום בעד אותן שאינם נקברים שם ולכתוב שקר גמור “פ”נ” על להד”ם ולהשחית הקרקע שלא נקברו שם אין כדאי להטפל בדברי ריק כאלו. ואם בשביל קושיות שמצאו כמו ב’ מצבות כמו שני יוסף בן שמעון בשתי עיירות כלומר בתי קברות הנה שערי תירוצים לא ננעלו ונמצאו באמת שנים ששמותיהן שוות או לא העתיקו המצבות במקום אחד כראוי

Shapira makes the obvious point that two people with the same name can be buried in different cemeteries without them being the same person. However, this does not explain how there can be two tombstones for R. Petahiah, the son of R. David Lida, or how there can be a tombstone for another rabbi in the Lvov cemetery when we know that he was buried elsewhere.

Regarding what we have discussed, I would only add that in the new Jewish cemetery in Vienna (the same one that R. Israel Friedman, the Chortkover Rebbe, is buried in), there is a tombstone for three members of the Chevra Kadisha who perished in the Holocaust. While it looks like a normal grave, none of the three men mentioned on the tombstone are actually buried there.[13] Here is the tombstone.

I owe this information and the picture to Dr. Tim Corbett, whose book on the Jewish cemeteries of Vienna will hopefully soon be published.

Since I just mentioned R. Hayyim Eleazar Shapira, let me mention something else he says that is fascinating. In the past two posts I discussed apostate rabbis. It is bad enough when an average person apostatizes, but for a rabbi to do so could have had terrible consequences on the community in that it could lead to many weak of heart to follow. Can anyone imagine, however, someone apostatizing as an act of teshuvah? It sounds crazy, but R. Shapira reported that he had it by tradition that such an incident happened in medieval times.[14]

The story he tells is that there was a popular preacher who in his public talks inserted all sorts of heretical ideas. After he was rebuked by one of the rabbis for preaching his heresies, the man confessed his sins and asked what he should do to repent. The rabbi told him that his repentance would not help, as for years he has gone from place to place spreading his heresy. How could he possibly repent for this? The rabbi said that what he must do is convert to Christianity. The Jewish world would then hear about this and this would remove the legitimacy from any of his sermons, as people would assume that even before his apostasy he was a heretic. Only by doing this could he destroy the impact he made with his earlier sermons.

Let me mention one final responsum for now. In the eighteenth century, R. Elijah Israel of Rhodes dealt with the case of someone who converted to Islam in Izmir, and then wished to come to Rhodes in order to return to Judaism.[15] Practicing Judaism after converting to Islam was illegal, and could endanger everyone in the community. The man was therefore warned not to come to Rhodes, where Muslim merchants might recognize him, but he ignored this warning. Making matters worse, the man had already once before converted to Islam and reverted to Judaism, meaning that there was no way that the Jewish community could have any dealings with him.

Israel permitted letting the authorities know about this man, as he was regarded as a danger to the community. The punishment for his “crime” of leaving Islam would have been severe and could even have included the death penalty, but R. Israel allowed informing the authorities as the man had the status of a rodef. He writes:

מי שמסכן רבים כגון שעוסק בזיופים במקום שהמלכיות מקפידות דינו כרודף ומותר למוסרו למלכות ע”כ וכ”ש וק”ו במי שהמיר דת ורוצה לחזור לדתו שההקפדה היא גדולה שהוא בזוי גדול לדעתם פן תצא כאש חמתם ח”ו ובערם ואין מכבה שמותר למוסרו כדי להציל את ישראל

* * * * * *

In the most recent issue of Dialogue 8 (2019), pp. 35-83, Rabbi Herschel Grossman published a lengthy review of my Limits of Orthodox Theology.[16] Normally I, like any author, would be very happy that so many years after a book’s appearance people are still interested in examining it and engaging with its arguments. Unfortunately, that is not the case with the present review which, it must be said, is nothing less than slanderous. Had the author taken issue with my interpretation of texts and shown why I am mistaken, this would have been a fine way to approach the book. It could be that I would even acknowledge that in some cases his understanding is preferable to mine. As readers of this blog know, I am perfectly willing to acknowledge when I have erred and am happy to credit those who called my attention to these errors. This is how scholarship is supposed to work, and anyone who writes, especially someone who writes a great deal using lots of different sources, will sometimes make a mistake. I myself have called attention to my own errors, without anyone prompting me, as I think it is important for all of us to be as exacting as we can.

However, this is not what the review is about, or, I should say, not what it is mainly about. In future posts I will come to the issue about how to interpret specific texts (and I will defend my readings), but first I must explain why I said that the review is slanderous. It is because Grossman accuses me of saying things that I never said, and throughout he misunderstands the purpose of the book, and of academic Jewish studies as a whole. In general, it is obvious from the review that although Grossman has never met me or even spoken to me, and I have never done him any wrong, he sees me as an enemy that he has to destroy.[17] With such a preconceived notion, it is no wonder that he comes to such incorrect conclusions as to what I am trying to say, and can write a review that is so mean-spirited and dripping with contempt. Based on e-mail correspondence with readers, I do not believe that anyone who has read the book will be taken in by the review’s distortions. However, those who haven’t read the book will probably come away with a false understanding, so it is important to clear this matter up before getting to any arguments over how to interpret particular sources.

Before going through the article itself, let’s look at the end where Grossman says that the book “falls short of its promise to prove that the Rambam was wrong in presenting his Principles as central to Judaism” (p. 83). I think everyone who has read the book knows that of all the things I try to do, one thing I do not do, and indeed it would have been incomprehensible to even imagine such a task, is attempt to prove that the Rambam was wrong. Even if I were a theologian, which I am not, I could not imagine myself ever trying to prove the Rambam (or R. Bahya, R. Saadiah, Ibn Ezra, etc. etc.) wrong. This is simply not how I operate.

The notion that I attempted to prove the Rambam wrong is so far from what I was trying to do in the book, that as mentioned, I don’t believe that anyone who actually read the book, or any of the other reviews, would have concluded as such. What they would have seen is that I try to show that the Rambam’s principles were disputed by others, and thus did not receive complete acceptance. I try to prove this point, but this is very different than trying to “prove that the Rambam was wrong.”

I don’t even know how one would be able to prove the Rambam, or any other Jewish thinker, “right or wrong” on theological matters. Is it possible to “prove” that creation was ex nihilo or from pre-existent matter, or can we ever “prove” that prayers should not be addressed to angels? Today, unlike in medieval times, most of us assume that by their very nature, theological discussions are not subject to “proof”. The most one can do is try to show which position makes more logical sense and is in line with biblical and rabbinic teachings.[18]

In his conclusion, Grossman also writes, in opposition to my supposed error, “that the Rambam’s Principles of Judaism remain the correct affirmation of Jewish belief.” Again, this sentence has nothing to do with my book, as it assumes that I claimed that the Rambam’s principles are incorrect. Had he understood what the book is about, and he wished to dispute with me, he would instead have written “that the Rambam’s Principles of Judaism are the generally accepted [or: halakhically binding, or: rabbinically sanctioned, etc.] affirmation of Jewish belief.”

Let us now start at the beginning. Grossman begins his review—and I will be going through it page by page responding to his attacks—by stating that “the academic approach to matters of Torah learning is radically different from that of the talmid chochom” (p. 36). This is an incorrect statement, as many followers of the academic approach are themselves talmidei hakhamim. What Grossman should have written is that the academic approach is different than the traditional approach. With regard to academic works, Grossman states: “Many of the conclusions of these works are at variance with accepted Torah teachings” (p. 35). No doubt that this is a true statement, but of course, the issue we will have to get into is what is the definition of “accepted Torah teachings.” As all readers of this blog are aware, R. Natan Slifkin’s books were banned because they were seen to be at variance with “accepted Torah teachings,” so the fundamental issue will be which teachings are supposedly accepted.

Grossman writes as follows in explaining the difference between a traditional Torah scholar and an academic scholar:

[For] the talmid chochom, a difficulty in the words of the authority creates a challenge for him to discover the true meaning of the authority. For many academics, a difficulty is proof that the authority is wrong (p. 36).

Grossman identifies me as one of the academics who try to show that an authority is wrong, so let us see whether this is indeed the case. He begins by stating about my book: “Its thrust is that the Rambam erred in codifying these Principles.” We have already seen this unbelievable distortion in his conclusion, as if one of my goals was to show that the Rambam was mistaken.

Grossman further states that “while some earlier scholars have disputed whether some of the Principles deserve to be listed as basic to Judaism . . . all have conceded that the tenets expressed by the Principles are correct” (p. 36). This statement is grossly inaccurate, as virtually every page of my book demonstrates (and in various blog posts I have also cited numerous authorities who disagree with certain of Maimonides’ principles).[19] Even if all of Grossman’s criticisms of particular points of mine are correct (and I will come back to this), it still leaves loads of sources at odds with the Rambam. The sentence is nothing less than shocking, since rather than acknowledging that other authorities disagreed with certain Principles of the Rambam, but claiming that these authorities’ views are to be rejected for one reason for another, Grossman states that “all have conceded” that the Rambam’s views are correct. It is hard to know how to reply to such a statement that completely disregards the truth that everyone can see with their own eyes.

In Limits, p. 26, I quoted the following from R. Bezalel Naor, who was repeating what he heard from R. Shlomo Fisher: “The truth, known to Torah scholars, is that Maimonides’ formulation of the tenets of Jewish belief is far from universally accepted.” R. Naor informed me that R. Fisher made this statement in explaining R. Judah he-Hasid’s view about post-Mosaic additions to the Torah. In other words, R. Judah he-Hasid’s view is not in line with Maimonides’ Principles, but this is not the only such example of Torah sages diverging from the Principles.

Grossman continues by stating that I conclude “that the Rambam’s formulation of the underlying beliefs of Judaism was his own innovation” (pp. 36-37). What does this sentence mean? Apparently, he wants the reader to think that I said that the Rambam just invented his Principles out of thin air, which is of course incorrect as I never said this. If the meaning is that the very notion of a list of doctrines formulated as Principles of Faith, with all that this entails, was the Rambam’s innovation, there is nothing controversial about this at all, and I discuss whether the Rambam was the first to do this and what led him to do so.

Grossman continues: “Even such basic tenets as the belief in God’s unity, or in God’s non-corporeality, says Shapiro, are the Rambam’s own assertions and subject to dispute, with no firm basis in the Torah or in Chazal” (p. 37). I never say that these tenets are the Rambam’s own assertion without any prior basis (as if the Rambam invented these ideas). When it comes to the belief in God’s unity, I state explicitly that no Jewish teacher has ever disputed this (although how they understood God’s “unity” was subject to dispute). As for God’s incorporeality, I will come back to this in greater detail in a later post, where I will also deal with R. Isaiah ben Elijah of Trani’s claim that divine incorporeality is not a principle of faith, as well as Maimonides’ view that in its simple meaning (but only in its simple meaning), the Torah itself teaches God’s corporeality (for the benefit of those people who at the beginning of their studies are not able to understand the profound concept of a deity without form). Since I will then analyze this matter in great detail, I do not want to get into it here. For now, I will simply say that in the book I discussed whether divine incorporeality was accepted by all Jews at all times, and if corporeal views of God can be found in the Talmud (as was stated by R. Isaiah ben Elijah of Trani).

On p. 37 Grossman writes:

Shapiro, who mocks the opinions of Rabbeynu Nissim, R. Moshe Feinstein, Chazon Ish, Arizal, and R. Ya’akov Emden, among others, goes one step beyond Kellner in his belief that he, Shapiro, is better able than Rambam to interpret explicit verses of the Torah (as we shall see below).

This is nothing less than slander since I never, not even once, mock the opinions of any of these great rabbis or anyone else. When I read this sentence, I had no clue what he was talking about, as this is not how I operate, and was shocked when I went to the sources he refers to. Let us look at what Grossman regards as “mocking”.

For my mocking of R. Nissim, he refers the reader to p. 84 in my book where I write that R. Nissim “puts forth the strange and original position that there is one particular angel before whom prostration is permitted.” This is mocking?[20]

For my “mocking” of R. Moshe Feinstein’s opinions he provides three sources.

On p. 101 n. 73, I discuss R. Moshe’s rejection of the authenticity of a passage in Avot de-Rabbi Nathan. I write that R. Moshe’s “rejection of the authenticity of this passage should be viewed as part of his pattern of discarding sources that do not fit in with his understanding. He does so even when the sources are neither contradicted by other writings of the authors involved nor by other versions of the text in question.” Where is the mocking?

On p. 157, I write: “Although R. Moses Feinstein was the greatest posek of his time, he seems to have had no knowledge of Maimonidean philosophy. He was therefore able to state that Maimonides believed in the protective power of holy names and the names of angels, as used in amulets.” Where is the mocking?[21]

The last source where I am said to be mocking R. Moshe’s opinion is p. 159 of my book. Here is the page.

All I do here is cite R. Moshe’s comment about those who oppose kollels by citing the Rambam. I have also seen R. Moshe quoted as saying that it is noteworthy that those who oppose kollels based on the Rambam only adopt this one “humra” of the Rambam. The Rambam has lots of other humrot, yet people don’t adopt these stringencies. They only want to be “mahmir” in accordance with the Rambam so as not to support kollels. To say that I am mocking R. Moshe’s opinion is not only slander, it is completely incomprehensible.

Regarding the Hazon Ish, Grossman refers to p. 17. On this page I mention the views of many who held that the Thirteen Principles are the fundamentals of Judaism, and I include a passage from the Hazon Ish. I don’t see any mocking.[22] He also refers to p. 65 n. 124, where I mention a number of sages, including the Hazon Ish, who say that the Rambam’s view that belief in divine corporeality is heresy (Hilkhot Teshuvah 3:7) does not refer to someone who does not know any better, and thus the Rambam is not in dispute with Rabad who criticizes the Rambam on precisely this point. In response to those authorities who made this argument, I wrote: “They obviously never saw Guide I, 36, cited above, p. 48.” In this source, Maimonides specifically rejects the notion argued by the Hazon Ish and others that Maimonides is not speaking of the person who does not know any better. In fact, R. Kafih goes so far as to say, in his commentary to Hilkhot Teshuvah 3:7, that Maimonides saw Rabad’s comment and Guide 1:36 was written specifically in response to it, in order that people not assume that Rabad’s position can be regarded as theologically sound.

Regarding R. Isaac Luria, Grossman points to p. 90, where I write:

Finally, I must mention R. Isaac Luria’s view that Moses’ understanding of divine matters was inferior to that of certain kabbalists (including himself!). This notion is elaborated upon by R. Shneur Zalman of Lyady (1745-1813), who asks, “’How did Rabbi Isaac Luria, of blessed memory, apprehend more than he, and expound many themes dealing with the highest and most profound levels [penimiyut], even of many Sefirot.”

Again, I don’t know where there is any mocking. Incidentally, a reader has made a very good case that I am incorrect, and R. Isaac Luria and R. Shneur Zalman should not be cited as opposing Maimonides’ principle. In a future post, I will present this argument, which R. Chaim Rapoport told me he agrees with.

Regarding R. Emden, Grossman refers the reader to p. 16 n. 63. Nowhere in this note do I mock an opinion of R. Emden. What I do say is that his sexuality was complex. In retrospect, I regret including this comment, since it is not really relevant to the matter at hand. Yet there is no question that when it comes to sexual matters, there is something very much out of the ordinary, especially for rabbinic greats, in how R. Emden writes about these things. This is something that I believe is acknowledged by everyone who has studied R. Emden’s writings, including the most haredi among us, even if they won’t put such statements in writing. Mortimer Cohen, in his book on R. Emden, famously pointed to sexuality to explain how R. Emden could have attacked R. Eybeschütz the way he did, with such outrageous accusations. Still, I believe that Jacob J. Schacter is correct when he states: “[W]hile it is clear that Emden had a complex and contentious personality, all this emphasis on his sexuality is really irrelevant to his attack on Eybeschütz.”[23] I for one am not comfortable with psychological interpretations, even if in this case such an interpretation can be used as a limud zekhut for some of the shocking things R. Emden says, and if I was writing the book now I would leave out the passage mentioned above. Yet where is the mocking? The only mocking I see is how Grossman continuously mocks me.

Grossman writes: “Shapiro does not refrain from adducing explicit Talmudic passages as contradictions to the Rambam, presuming that the Rambam overlooked or ignored them, something which innumerable Talmudic scholars in past centuries have considered inconceivable” (pp. 37-38). In the book I never say that the Rambam overlooked talmudic passages. I do say that he did not accept the outlook of every talmudic passage (which Grossman terms, “ignored them”). The Rambam famously held that not every passage in the non-halakhic sections of the Talmud is binding.

Grossman continues:

Shapiro is unimpressed by all these arguments; nor is he averse to dismissing Rambam’s opinion based on his, Shapiro’s, own reading of a Talmudic passage, even where there is no doubt that the Rambam had a different reading for it. An academic, he obviously feels, is privileged to interpret the Talmud better than the Rambam was [!], even where this presumption leads to bizarre conclusions (p. 38).

The only thing that is bizarre here is Grossman’s statement, for I can assure everyone that in the book I do not engage in talmudic debate with the Rambam, dismiss the Rambam’s opinion, and think that I am able to interpret the Talmud better than the Rambam. If someone offers, say, a new interpretation of a talmudic passage, does this mean he thinks he can interpret the Talmud better than Rashi or the Rambam?

Another false statement is found on p. 38 where Grossman states: “Although he is to be commended for the amount of research he has invested into his work—the citations he has amassed are voluminous—it seems that many of the references were culled from secondary sources without examining the originals.” I can state with absolute certainty—and other than Grossman, I don’t think anyone else has ever raised such an accusation of scholarly malpractice—that I have examined every original source cited in the book. Not only that, but I have examined every source in every book I have published and in every blog post. I have never cited a source that I have not examined “inside” unless I indicate so. This does not mean that I have never misinterpreted a source, and in subsequent posts I will examine some examples where Grossman offers a different reading. But for now, suffice it to say that it is nothing less than slander to state that I included sources in the book that I did not examine myself (and this, by the way, was before the existence of the various digital databases. Librarians at JTS and YU can remember me as I was constantly there during the time I was writing the book.)

The final point for now is Grossman’s conclusion of the first part of his review:

To analyze the errors in this book would require a book in itself, nor is this the purpose of this article. The purpose is to show the lack of basis for Shapiro’s assertions (1) that the Rambam’s Principles have no basis in Talmudic literature; (2) that he created these Principles either to advance his philosophic conclusions or for polemic purposes; and (3) that many authorities thought the Principles “were wrong, pure and simple” (p. 38).

Point 1 is incorrect. I never state that the Rambam’s Principles have no basis in talmudic literature. Every single one of the Principles can find support in the Talmud (even if others might disagree with how to interpret the talmudic passages), and I cite examples of this in the book. What I do say is that the concept of Principles of Faith put forth by Maimonides, that one can commit endless sins but if he believes in the Principles he is still a Jew in good standing (albeit a sinning Jew) with a share in the World to Come, and if he denies or doubts even one of the Principles, even if he did not know any better and even if he fulfilled all the mitzvot, he does not have a share in the World to Come, such a concept is not found in talmudic literature. I am hardly the first to say this. Many of the Rambam’s rabbinic critics made this point, and as far as I know, all of the academic scholars who have studied the Rambam have said likewise. Furthermore, even if there are talmudic sources for the substance of Rambam’s Principles, this does not mean that there is compelling talmudic sources to explain why the Rambam categorized these particular beliefs as Principles, denial of which is heresy. Often, we must look to his philosophical assumptions, which he regarded as part and parcel of Torah, to explain why he raised certain beliefs to the level of Principles while others did not. We must also look to his philosophical assumptions to understand why he read certain talmudic passages the way he did, and was thus led to formulate his Principles in a certain fashion.

I would also like readers to examine the following statement by the rabbinic scholar, R. Reuven Amar.[24] Based on what Grossman writes, I assume that he will regard this as equally blasphemous to anything I have written.

דאם כי ודאי אין חכמת הרמב”ם ז”ל כשאר בעלי החכמה ובעלי הדעה וגדולה חכמתו ושיעור קומתו ולבו רחב כאולם בכל חכמה ומדע מ”מ בעיקרי האמונה אין דבריו כמפי הגבורה אחר שלא קיבלם איש מפי איש עד משה רבינו ע”ה כי אם משיקול דעתו ובינתו וכפי שהודה וכתב בעצמו בהקדמת ח”ג מהמורה נבוכים, בענין מעשה המרכבה ומעשה בראשית ועיין בזה במגדל עוז פ”א מיסודי התורה ה”י וכן ראיתי בספר שומר אמונים (להרב ר’ יוסף אירגס זצ”ל) בויכוח ראשון סעיף ח’ ט’ שהתבסס על זה

Regarding point 2, Grossman sees it as problematic to say that the Rambam created the Principles to advance his philosophical conclusions. Yet this is a perfectly reasonable approach. After all, wouldn’t the Rambam want the Jewish people to hold philosophical truths, and what better way to achieve this than to put these truths in the form of Principles of Faith that everyone has to know? This approach is commonly held among scholars of the Rambam. As for the accusation that I say that the Rambam created the Principles for polemical purposes, I never say that with regard to the Principles as a whole. I do say this about aspects of two of the Principles, and I will return to this in a future post. The fact that I am being attacked on this matter is ironic, as my approach is actually more conservative than what is found in almost all works of modern scholarship on the Rambam.

As for point 3, I do not say that “many authorities thought the Principles” were wrong. What I do say is that many authorities thought that individual Principles were mistaken. By writing “the Principles,” Grossman leads readers to think that I said that many authorities rejected the Principles in their entirety, but all readers of my book know that this is not the case.[25]

I want to conclude with the following from R. Mordechai Willig, which has some relevance to my discussion and which I think readers will find of interest.[26] R. Willig’s entire shiur is worth listening to, but for the purpose of this post I only want to cite one small section.

As we know, not all the Ikrei Emunah were etched in stone without any dispute from the beginning of time. . . . Are in fact the Rambam’s Thirteen Principles accepted le-halakhah for the last X hundred of years and you can’t go against it, or perhaps not? There are those therefore who are trying to get around certain of his Ikrim. The Sefer of Albo himself who wrote the Sefer Ikrim didn’t accept all the Thirteen of the Rambam. One might argue that we don’t really find anywhere to my knowledge significant dispute about the other Ikrim of the Rambam, but perhaps not all Thirteen were accepted, but we’ll call [it] Twelve and a Half. The first part of Ikkar number 5 was accepted, and the second part which is so complex, perhaps it never really was accepted. So there are Thirteen Principles but one of them, number 5, we only accept part of the Principle, not the entirety of the Principle. . . . It’s against the Rambam, but this half of that Principle was never accepted. But the rest was accepted.

In the next post I will continue with my response (and it looks like it will take many posts before I am finished, unless I first tire of this endeavor).

[1] Sipurim me-ha-Hayyim: Kitzur Shivhei ha-Ben Ish Hai (Jerusalem, 2009), p. 47.
[2] See here.
[3] See e.g., here.
[4] See R. Kaduri, Divrei Yitzhak, pp. 173-174.
[5] See here.
[6] See here.
[7] Yorma Bilu, Saints’ Impresarios: Dreamers, Healers, and Holy Men in Israel’s Urban Periphery, trans. Haim Watzman (Brighton, MA, 2010), p. 65.
[8] “Perek be-Hithavut ha-‘Olam ha-Torah’ be-Artzot ha-Berit le-Ahar ha-Milhamah,” Hakirah 26 (2019), pp. 31-52.
[9] See, however, Solomon Buber, Anshei Shem (Crakow, 1895), pp. 28-29, who is skeptical.
[10] Peri Hayyim (Tel Aviv, 1983), p. 149.
[11] Kelilat Yofi, pp. 41a-b. See also Buber, Anshei Shem, p. 32.
[12] Greenwald, Otzar Nehmad, p. 117.
[13] There is also a section of this cemetery where hundreds of Christians are buried. The Nazis refused to allow these people to be buried elsewhere as under the Nuremberg Laws they were regarded as Jewish (and halakhically, some of these people would indeed have been Jewish).
[14] Shapira, Divrei Torah, vol. 5, no. 27.
[15] Ugat Eliyahu (Livorno, 1730), no. 22
[16] Limits appeared in 2004. I wonder if it is only very negative reviews that come out so long after a book’s appearance. Another example is Haym Soloveitchik’s review of Isadore Twersky’s revised edition of Rabad of Posquiéres. The book appeared in 1980 and the review appeared in 1991. See Soloveitchik, “History of Halakhah – Methodological Issues: A Review essay of I. Twersky’s Rabad of Posquiéres,” Jewish History 5 (Spring 1991), pp. 75-124.
[17] Grossman did correspond with me and ask me questions which I tried to the best of my ability to answer. He also challenged some of what I said in his emails to me. Yet I have to say that I am quite hurt that he was not honest with me in this correspondence. On July 16, 2018, he began his correspondence with me by telling me that he was writing an article on the Thirteen Principles. In this email he also said that my book was well-written. (Buttering me up, I guess.) On July 17 he wrote to me: “Thank you for your communication! You are helping me tremendously.” I guess I was helping him to bury me. Also on this day he wrote to me about his article: “maybe you can help me with the writing!” I am sorry to see now that this was all part of a grand deception on his part.

In his email to me of October 11, 2018, Grossman wrote that he completed his article on the Thirteen Principles, “and have cited you in a few places.” Is this how an honest scholar operates, by deceiving the person he has been emailing with? I responded to his questions and explained how I view things, as I do with anyone who contacts me. I would have done the same thing had he been honest with me and told me that he was writing an article devoted to disputing my ideas. His friendly demeanor in his emails led me to assume that we were engaged in a form of scholarly collaboration in trying to understand important texts and ideas. So imagine my surprise to see that contrary to what he wrote to me that he cited me “in a few places,” the entire review is an attempt to tear me down. Furthermore, Grossman has been telling people that he wants his article to destroy my reputation as a scholar. What type of person treats his fellow Jew in this fashion?
[18] In a wide-ranging article which deals among other things with R. Kook’s view of heresy, the important scholar R Yoel Bin-Nun 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 theological matters are no longer regarded as subject to conclusive proofs, would not regard people who disagreed with his Principles as heretics. In R. Bin Nun’s words (emphasis added):

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 את עולם האמונה, אך אינו מאפשר לשפוט ולדון את הכופרים. רק ודאות שכלית מוחלטת מאפשרת לדון אדם כמזיד בשאלות של אמונה וידיעה

“Kahal Shogeg u-Mi she-Hezkato Shogeg o To’eh: Hiloniyim ve-Hiloniyut be-Halakhah,” Akdamot 10 (2000), p. 263.

In other words, according to R. Bin-Nun, based on the Rambam himself there is no justification today for calling people heretics because they reject one (or more) of the Thirteen Principles. (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 the Rambam is not my purpose at present (and I do not find his position compelling). I only wish to show that this outstanding scholar presents a very tolerant view, one that rejects the Thirteen Principles as determining who is a heretic. I wonder, though, how far he would take this. Lots of scientists and philosophers argue for atheism, and there is no absolute proof for God’s existence. Does this mean that now even atheists are not to be regarded as heretics?
[19] For one example, R. Pinhas Lintop, see here. I write as follows in this post:

Naor calls attention to R. Lintop’s view of Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles. Unfortunately, I did not know of this when I wrote my book on the subject. R. Lintop is no fan of Maimonides’ concept of dogma or of Maimonides’ intellectualism in general. He rejects the notion that otherwise pious Jews can be condemned as heretics merely because they don’t accept Maimonides’ principles. He even makes the incredible statement that of the great rabbis, virtually all of them have, at the very least, been in doubt about one fundamental principle.

הנה לא הניח בן לאברהם . . . כמעט אין אחד מראשי חכמינו, החכמים הצדיקים כו’ כו’, אשר לא יטעה או יסתפק באחד משרשי הדת

Are we to regard them all as heretics? Obviously not, which in R. Lintop’s mind shows the futility of Maimonides’ theological exercise, which not only turned Judaism into a religion of catechism, but also indoctrinated people to believe that one who does not affirm certain dogmas is to be persecuted. According to R. Lintop, this is a complete divergence from the talmudic perspective.

Lintop further states that there is no point in dealing with supposed principles of faith that are not explicit in the Talmud.

הגידה נא, אחי, בלא משוא פנים, היש לנו עוד פנים לדון על דבר עקרים ויסודות את אשר לא נזכרו לנו בהדיא במשנה וגמרא?

As for Maimonides’ view that one who is mistaken when it comes to principles of faith is worse than one who actually commits even the worst sins, R. Lintop declares that “this view is very foreign to the spirit of the sages of the Talmud, who did not know philosophy.” As is to be expected, he also cites Rabad’s comment that people greater than Maimonides were mistaken when it came to the matter of God’s incorporeality.

[20] In R. Meir Mazuz’s recent Bayit Ne’eman, no. 196 (13 Shevat 5780), p. 2, he writes about the Ralbag:

וזו הסיבה שרלב”ג פירש דברים מוזרים

Does this mean that R. Mazuz was mocking Ralbag? R. Joseph Zechariah Stern writes (Zekher Yehosef, Even ha-Ezer, no. 61, p. 237):

ועיקר דברי חוט השני הוא נגד סוגיא דעלמא . . . ואשר בכלל דבריו זרים

Was R. Stern mocking anyone?

Eliezer Waldenberg writes about R. Abraham Halevi, author of Ginat Veradim (Tzitz Eliezer, vol. 8, no. 15, p. 80):

כי בתוך דברי התשובה שם וכן בתוך דברי התשובה שלפניה יש שם ג”כ דבריו [!] מוזרים מאד שכמעט קשה לשומעם

Was R. Waldenberg mocking anyone? And what about when rabbis use even harsher language, saying things like אינו נכון כלל? Does this mean that they are mocking the view they are rejecting? Everyone who studies rabbinic literature knows that nothing could be further from the truth. Stating that a view is strange or unusual, and even rejecting a view in harsh terms, has nothing to do with mocking.
[21] That rabbinic scholars often do not study Maimonides’ philosophy is nothing new. R. Jacob Emden noted that if the rabbinic scholars knew philosophy, they would have protested Maimonides’ proof for God’s existence in Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 1:5, as it is based on the eternity of the world. See Birat Migdal Oz (Warsaw, 1912), p. 20a:

כי הנה המופת הראשון שעשה ע”ז הדרוש בח”ב מס’ [מספרו] הנ”ל מתנועה נצחית תדיר’ (והיא שמצאה חן בעיניו והציגה לבדה עמנו פה בס’ המדע) לקוחה מאריסטו מניח הקדמות, לא יודה בה בעל הדת שהיא בנויה על פנת החדוש. לו ידעו הרבנים התלמודיים בפילוסיפיא לא היו שותקים לו בכאן

[22] Perhaps the “mocking” he sees is the beginning of the paragraph where I write:

To return to the point already mentioned above, if there is one thing Orthodox Jews the world over acknowledge, it is that Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles are the fundamentals of Jewish faith. The common knee-jerk reaction is that there is room for debate in matters of faith, as long as one does not contradict any of these principles.

I then cite a number of great figures who speak of the centrality of the Thirteen Principles (including the Hazon Ish). I used the expression “knee-jerk” as synonymous with “instinctive,” but even stronger, in that the reaction to any divergence from the Principles is strong and immediate, coming from a place of feeling which is prior to any intellectual reaction. Needless to say, there is no mocking.

Regarding statements about the centrality of the Thirteen Principles, let me repeat what I have said elsewhere, and which I will return to in future posts, that the expression “the Thirteen Principles” is more of a shorthand statement about correct belief rather than an affirmation of the Principles themselves in all of their particulars. To give an example of what I mean, it is easy to find statements of rabbis stating that one should not engage with ideas or texts that diverge from the Thirteen Principles. This is a shorthand way of saying that you should not study heresy. However, when the rabbis say that you should not study matters that diverge from the Principles, do any of them mean that you should not study Rashi’s commentary to Deuteronomy 34:5, as it presents a talmudic view about the authorship of the final verses of the Torah that is in opposition to Maimonides’ Eighth Principle? Certainly not, which shows that what Torah scholars mean when they speak of the “Thirteen Principles” is not necessarily what the masses understand by this.
[23] “Rabbi Jacob Emden: Life and Major Works” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1988)), p. 409.
[24] Re’ah Besamim, p. 40, appendix to his edition of Besamim Rosh (Jerusalem, 1984). Among R. Amar’s other works, mention should be made of his five volume Minhagei ha-Hida.
[25] In Limits, p. 4, I refer to “those scholars who thought that Maimonides’ Principles were wrong.” While in the context of the book, everyone knew that I meant “certain of Maimonides’ Principles” (namely, the ones I discuss), now that I see how the sentence could be misused by being quoted out of context, I wish that I had been more exacting in my language.
[26] See his shiur, “Selichos: Halacha, Hashkafa and Teshuva,” available here, at minute 45:30.