כּעומד
לפֿני השכינה בשעת ער לערנט:

Rabbi
Aharon Lichtenstein on the Divide Between Traditional and Academic
Jewish Studies

By
Shaul Seidler-Feller

Shaul
Seidler-Feller strives to be a
posheter yid
and an oved
Hashem;
the rest
is commentary. This is his third contribution to the
Seforim blog;
for his previous articles, see here
and here.

This
post has been generously sponsored le-illui
nishmat Sima Belah bat
Aryeh Leib, z”l.

Rabbi
Aharon Lichtenstein enthusiasts might be surprised to learn that
there was a time when the rosh
yeshivah,
zts”l,
lectured publicly in Yiddish. I myself had no idea that this was the
case until my dear friend, Reb Menachem Butler, who fulfills
be-hiddur
the prophetic pronouncement asof
asifem
(Jer. 8:13) in its most positive sense, forwarded me a link
containing a snippet from a talk Rav Lichtenstein had given at the
Yidisher
visnshaftlekher institut-YIVO
on May 12, 1968, as part of the Institute’s forty-second annual
conference. Feeling a sense of responsibility to help bring Rav
Lichtenstein’s insights to a broader audience, I quickly translated
that brief excerpt into English, and, with the assistance of YIVO’s
Senior Researcher and Director of Exhibitions Dr. Eddy Portnoy, my
translation was posted
on the YIVO website in early December 2017. Realizing, however, that
the original lecture had been much longer, Menachem and I made some
inquiries to see if we could locate the rest of the recording, only
to come up empty-handed.

As
hashgahah
would
have it, on the Friday night following the publication of the
translation, I was privileged to share a meal with another dear
friend, Rabbi Noach Goldstein, whose great beki’ut
in Rav Lichtenstein’s (written and oral) oeuvre was already
well-known to me. In the course of our conversation, Noach mentioned
that there was another Yiddish-language shi‘ur
by Rav Lichtenstein available on the YUTorah website. I was stunned:
could this be the missing part of the YIVO lecture? After Shabbat, I
followed up with Noach, who duly sent me the relevant link
– and lo and behold, here was the (incomplete) first part of the
speech Rav Lichtenstein had given at YIVO![1] I told myself at the
time that I would translate this as well; unfortunately, though, work
and other obligations prevented me from doing so…

But
then, in another twist of fate, one
of the orekhei/arkhei
dayyanim
at The
Lehrhaus,
Rabbi (soon-to-be Dayyan Dr.) Shlomo Zuckier, reached out to me at
the end of December in connection with a syllabus he was compiling
for a class he is teaching this semester at the Isaac Breuer College
of Yeshiva University on “The Thought of Rabbi Aharon
Lichtenstein.” I mentioned to him at the time that Noach had
recently referred me to the YUTorah recording and that I had hoped to
translate it. With his encouragement, the permission of YUTorah
(thank you, Rabbi Robert Shur!), and the magnanimous support of an
anonymous sponsor (Menachem Butler functioning as shaddekhan),
I present below a preliminary annotated English version of the
lecture, whose relevance to the current
debate
about Rav Lichtenstein’s attitude toward academic Jewish studies
should be clear. It is my hope to post my original Yiddish
transcription (which awaits proper vocalization), as well as any
refinements to the English, shortly after Pesah;
please check back then for an update.

[UPDATE
(June 15, 2018): My vocalized Yiddish transcription of both
recordings is now available as a PDF here. The text of the
translation below has also been improved accordingly.]

Note:
As was the case with my translation of the shorter recording
published previously, Romanization of Yiddish and loshn-koydesh
(Hebrew/Aramaic) terms attempts to follow the standards adopted by
YIVO,[2] and all bracketed (and footnoted) references were added by
me. It should also be borne in mind that the material that follows
was originally delivered as a lecture, and while the translation
tries to preserve the oral flavor of the presentation, certain
liberties have been taken with the elision of repetitions in order to
allow the text to flow more smoothly.

[A
Century of Traditional Jewish Higher Learning in America]

[Introduction]

I
beg your pardon for the slight delay. It was not on my own account;
rather, my wife is not able to attend, and I promised I would see to
it to set up a recording for her. In truth, I must not only ask your
indulgence; it may be that this behavior touches upon a halakhic
matter as well. After all, the gemore
says that “we do not roll Torah scrolls in public in order not to
burden the community” [see Yume
70a with Rambam, Hilkhes
tfile 12:23]. It is
for that reason that we sometimes take out two or three Torah
scrolls: so that those assembled need not wait as we roll from one
section to another. The gemore
did not speak of tape recorders, but presumably the same principle
obtains, and so I beg your pardon especially.

When
they originally asked me to speak on the topic of “A Century of
Traditional Higher Jewish Learning in America,” they presented it
to me as a counterbalance, so to speak, to a second talk, which, as I
understand it, had been assigned to Professor Rudavsky.[3] They told
me that since we are now marking the centennial of the founding of
Maimonides College, which, as Professor Rudavsky capably informed us,
was the first institution of higher Jewish scholarship in America,
perhaps it would be worthwhile to hear from an opposing view, so to
speak, from the yeshive
world, regarding another type, another model, of Jewish scholarship.
This was certainly entirely appropriate on their part – and perhaps
it was not only appropriate, but, in a certain sense, there was an
element of khesed
in their invitation to me to serve as such a counterbalance.

I
wish to say at the outset that what I plan to present here is not
meant to play devil’s advocate, contradicting what we heard
earlier; rather, just the opposite, I hope, in a certain sense, to
fill out the picture. However, as proper as the intention was, my
assignment has presented me with something of a problem. Plainly put:
my subject, as I understand it, does not exist. We simply do not have
a hundred years of so-called “traditional higher Jewish learning in
America” – at least, not in public. Privately, presumably there
were “one from a town and two from a clan” [Jer. 3:14], a Torah
scholar who sat and clenched the bench[4] here and there. But in
public, in the form of institutions, yeshives,
a hundred years have not yet passed, and for that centennial, I am
afraid, we must wait perhaps another ten to twenty years. At that
point – may we all, with God’s help, be strong and healthy –
they will have to invite a professor as a counterbalance to the
yeshive
world.

The
first yeshive,
which was a predecessor, in a certain sense, to our yeshive,
the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, a yeshive
known as Yeshiva University, was the Etz Chaim Yeshiva, founded in
1886. As a result, I find myself facing something of a dilemma here,
bound in – as it is known in the non-Jewish world – a Procrustean
bed, that same bed familiar to everyone from the gemore
in Sanhedrin.
The gemore
describes that when a guest arrived in Sodom, they had a
one-size-fits-all bed, and it seems that in Sodom they were not
particularly attentive to individual preferences. So they took each
guest and measured him against the bed: if he turned out too short,
they stationed one fellow at his head, another at his feet, and they
stretched him in both directions until he covered the bed; if he
turned out too tall, they would cut him down to size, sometimes at
his feet, sometimes at his head, so that, in any event, he would fit
[Sanhedrin
109b].

Here
I face the same problem, and I have one of two ways to extricate
myself from my present impasse. On the one hand, I could, perhaps,
make a bit of a stretch and broaden the definition of “traditional
higher Jewish scholarship and learning,” so that my title, my
subject, would be accurate and so that I might, after all, be able to
identify a hundred years during which people sat and learned. But, on
the other hand, perhaps I should rather stay firm and close to the
title, maintaining the pure, unadulterated conception of what
constitutes “learning,” “Jewish learning,” “traditional
learning,” even if doing so would come at the expense of completely
fulfilling the task assigned to me: to speak not about a brief span
of years, but a full hundred. You yourselves understand very well
that, given these two options, it is certainly better to choose the
latter – perhaps abbreviating a bit chronologically – in order to
grasp, at least partially, the inner essence of traditional learning
as I understand it.

In
taking up the work of presenting an approach to traditional Jewish
learning here in America, I believe that, in truth, I have two tasks.
The first is to define, to a certain degree, how I conceive of
“traditional Jewish learning,” or, let us say, more or less,
yeshive
learning – what constitutes the idea in its purest manifestation? –
though I fear this might take us to an epoch, a period, that does not
fit the title as it stands, in its literal form.

Second,
having somewhat limited the definition, I wish to briefly introduce
the principal players and give a short report simply on the
historical development of this form of study in the course of the
last hundred, or, let us say, a bit less than a hundred, years.[5]

When
we speak of “traditional higher Jewish learning,” we must analyze
four different terms. And, in truth, one could – and perhaps should
– give a lengthy accounting of each of the four. However, I
mentioned earlier the concept of not burdening the community, so I
will not dwell at all on the latter two. Rather, I will speak about
the first two, “traditional” and “higher,”[6] and it will be
self-understood that my words relate to “Jewish learning.” I
especially wish to focus on the first term, “traditional.”

[Three
Definitions of “Traditional”]

What
does it mean? When we speak here of “traditional” learning – or
when we speak in general about some occurrence or phenomenon and wish
to describe it as “traditional” – I believe we could be
referring to three different definitions:

First,
learning can be “traditional” in the sense that it involves the
study of traditional texts – khumesh
or gemore
– in the same way that one could say about a given prayer, ballad,
or poem that it is “traditional,” and sometimes we speak of a
custom or even of a food as “traditional.” Here, the adjective
refers, simply, to a text that goes back hundreds or thousands of
years, that is rooted in the life of the nation, and that takes up
residence there – at least, so to speak, in a word.

Second,
we can speak of “traditional” learning and refer thereby to
learning that operates, methodologically, using concepts, tools, and
methods that are old. There were once yeshives…
– but this issue does not concern yeshives
only: whatever the discipline, the learning is “traditional” if
one is using methods that are not new, that do not seek to shake up
or revolutionize the field, that have already been trod by many in
the past, with which all are familiar, and that have been employed
for study by a long “golden chain of generations.”

Third,
though, and perhaps especially, when we describe learning as
“traditional,” we refer to a methodology that is not only old,
but that is rooted in – and, to a certain extent, implants within
the student – a particular relationship to the past, or to certain
facets thereof; in other words, an approach to learning through which
the student absorbs a certain attitude to the Jewish past.

Among
these three points, the first – studying traditional texts – is
the least important in establishing and defining what I mean, at
least, when I say that I will speak about “traditional” Jewish
learning. At the end of the day, one can take a gemore
or a khumesh,
study it in a way that is consistent with the spirit of the Jewish
past, and thereby strengthen one’s commitment to Judaism; or,
Heaven forbid, one can do the opposite, studying the same text in
such a way that it undermines that commitment. Khazal
say of Torah learning itself that it can sometimes be a medicine and
at other times, Heaven forbid, a poison [Shabes
88b]. Of course, if one is not dealing with “traditional” texts,
one cannot be engaged in “traditional Jewish learning;” but this
is nothing more than a prerequisite, so to speak, not a determining
factor in establishing what constitutes “traditional Jewish
learning.”

The
second sense – in which one follows a path one knows others have
trod in the past – is much more directly relevant. First of all, it
gives a person a sense of continuity: that he is not the first, that
he is not blazing a trail, that he is not entirely alone, and that
before him came a long chain, generation after generation of Torah
giants, or – excuse the comparison – in the case of another
discipline, of professors, thinkers, or philosophers, who established
a certain intellectual tradition to which he can feel a kind of
connection. This feeling is obviously important not only in relation
to an intellectual tradition; it is significant in general and is
relevant to a person’s approach to social questions writ large –
but perhaps especially to intellectual questions. Second, aside from
not feeling isolated and alone, the benefit is straightforwardly
intellectual: when working in a traditional manner, a person has at
his disposal certain tools that other specialists developed before
him. He also has a common language with others who are engaged in
study, so that it is simply easier for him to express himself,
understand what his fellow says, and communicate with others. For in
the ability to communicate, of course, lies much strength.

However,
I am especially interested in discussing and defining the third
sense: a “traditional” methodology which is not only inherited
from our ancestors, a kind of memento from the house of our
grandfathers and great-grandfathers, but which seeks to implant
within us, on the one hand, and is rooted in, on the other, a
particular relationship to those great-grandfathers. And here I wish
– and I hope you do not misunderstand me – especially to
distinguish and define the wall – and it is a wall – separating
what we conceive of as a yeshive
style of learning from what is considered a more or less academic
approach: that same Wissenschaft
des Judentums which
Professor Rudavsky mentioned earlier, which was identified with those
pioneers of the previous century – [Leopold] Zunz, [Abraham]
Geiger, and their associates – and which, of course, has many
exponents to this very day.

[Two
Differences Between Traditional and Academic Learning]

Where,
then, is the point of distinction dividing a yeshive
approach from a more academic one? I believe that there are two
points in particular upon which it would be worthwhile to focus
briefly.

[Historical
vs. Analytical Orientations in Studying the Text]

First,
the academic approach is more historically oriented. It is more
interested in collecting facts from the past; taking a particular
author or text – it makes no difference: it could be a popular
painter or poet, rishoynim,
Khazal,
even the Bible itself – placing it within the context of a
particular epoch; seeing to it to study, as much as possible, all the
minutiae of that period; and thereby attaining a clear understanding
of the nature, the essence, of the text, work, artist, or author. On
the other hand, the yeshive
or “traditional” approach – “traditional” at least in
yeshives,
and not only in yeshives
but in the study of halokhe
in general – is more analytical in its character. It does not seek
to expand upon a particular work in order to construct an entire
edifice, a whole framework of facts, that would help us understand
the circumstances under which it was written, or what sort of
intellectual or social currents acted upon a person, driving him to
work, paint, or portray one way and not the other. Rather, it is more
interested in exploring and delving deeply into the work itself.
Whatever was happening in the world outside the gemore
has a certain significance, but the main emphasis is not there. The
main emphasis is instead on understanding what the gemore
itself says, what kind of ideas are expressed therein, what sort of
concepts are defined therein, and what type of notions can be
extracted therefrom. In other words, the focus is not so much on
facts as it is on ideas; the approach is more philosophical than
historical; one is concerned more with the text than with the
context.

And
this point – the difference between a yeshive
or traditional approach, on the one hand, and a more academically
oriented one, on the other – is not limited to the walls of the
besmedresh;
it is not our concern alone. Those familiar with the various
approaches to and methods of treating and critiquing literature in
general know that the same argument rages in that field as well –
though perhaps not as sharply. For example, in 1950, during a session
of the Modern Language Association conference, two of the most
esteemed critics in the world of English literature spoke for a group
dealing specifically with [John] Milton. One of them, A.S.P. [Arthur
Sutherland Pigott] Woodhouse, then a professor at the University of
Toronto and a man with a truly incisive approach to literature, gave
a paper whose title – it was given in English – was “The
Historical Criticism of Milton.”[7] From the other side, Cleanth
Brooks, a professor at Yale and one of the “renewers,” so to
speak – or perhaps not a “renewer” but, at the very least, one
of the propagandists arguing on behalf of the so-called “New
Criticism” – gave a different paper entitled “Milton and
Critical Re-Estimates.”[8]

This
is nothing more than a single example – they were specifically
treating Milton in that case – of the aforementioned difference in
approach. On the one hand, Woodhouse argued consistently that in
order to understand Milton, one must delve deeply into the history of
the seventeenth century and of its various intellectual currents –
one of them was mentioned earlier by Professor Rudavsky: the great
interest in Hebrew studies that exerted its influence upon him –
and only once one has gathered together such information and is able,
as much as possible, to reconstitute the seventeenth century as it
was, can one properly understand Paradise
Lost or Samson
Agonistes. And Brooks,
who came from an entirely different school of thought – from I.A.
[Ivor Armstrong] Richards’ school and others’ – claimed that
certainly there is some value to that as well, but the main thing, at
the end of the day, is to understand the poem itself. To do so, one
needs to focus on addressing a different set of problems, problems of
form, and to grasp not so much the relationship of Milton to, let us
say, [Oliver] Cromwell, [Edmund] Spenser, or [John] Donne, but rather
the relationship of the first book of Paradise
Lost – or of
Paradise Regained
– to the second, and so on. And, of course, this difference in
approach, in the goal one wishes to accomplish, manifests as well at
the basic level of one’s work. According to one line of thinking,
one must busy oneself with many small minutiae; according to the
other, one can limit oneself and concentrate on the poem itself.

The
same question can be asked in regard to learning and understanding
Torah. And it is possible that this question presents itself more
sharply with respect to Torah learning than with respect to other
fields of study. In the editor’s introduction to Chaucer’s
poetry, F.N. [Fred Norris] Robinson, one of the most prominent
Chaucer scholars – forgive me, before I became a rosheshive
I studied English literature – mentions that a French professor had
once bemoaned the fact that we find ourselves now in, as he termed
it, l’âge des petits
papiers,[9] in a
period that busies itself with small scraps of paper. What he in fact
meant was that the aforementioned broadening required by the
historical approach – which was, of course, influenced by German
Wissenschaft,
especially in the last century – can at times simply overwhelm.
Rabbi Zevi Hirsch Berliner put it differently. Someone was once
speaking with him about Jewish Wissenschaft
and the like, so he said to him, “If you want to know what Rashi
looked like, what type of clothing he wore, and so on, go consult
Zunz.[10] But if you want to know who Rashi was, what he said, better
to study with me.”[11]

And
I wish to emphasize: when we speak here of a historical, academic
methodology, we refer not only to research. Those who adopt such an
approach certainly go much further, undertaking not only historical
research but also historical criticism. In other words, after having
studied all the minutiae through various investigations, one assesses
to what use they can be put and what light they can shine on some
dark corner of Jewish history. However, this form of criticism, which
is mainly rooted in a more historical approach, is different from the
yeshive
approach. The question turns mainly on what direction one is looking
in: from outside in, so to speak, or vice versa. Does one stand with
both feet in the gemore,
or does one stand outside and look in?

This
question is particularly important in regard to learning Torah. For,
at the end of the day, when we speak of “traditional learning,”
“yeshive
learning,” we are dealing not only with an intellectual activity
but a religious one as well. This means that learning is not only a
scholarly endeavor meant to inform a person of what once existed,
what Khazal
thought, what they transmitted to us, what the rishoynim
held, but is bound up in a personal encounter wherein the individual,
the student, is wholly attached and connected to what he learns and
feels that he is standing before the Divine Presence while he learns.
If one takes to learning in this way, one’s entire approach of
emphasizing the need to keep one’s head in the gemore
attains a special significance unto itself.

Lionel
Trilling once wrote about [William] Wordsworth and Khazal.[12]
There he tells us a bit about his youth – Trilling is, of course, a
Jew – going to synagogue with his father, perusing an English
translation of Pirkey
oves since he did not
know Hebrew, and years later realizing that the relationship of
Wordsworth to nature is the same as that of Khazal
to the Holy Scriptures and that of the rishoynim
to Khazal.
What they found therein he expresses by quoting the last line of
Wordsworth’s “Immortality Ode”: “Thoughts that do often lie
too deep for tears.”[13] Trilling recognized that for Khazal
or the rishoynim,
the Torah was not simply some sort of intellectual exercise. Rather,
it was something that penetrated into the depths of their souls. It
is to attain that feeling that every yeshive
student strives. Not all achieve it, but everyone does, and must,
aspire to it.

This
is one point distinguishing the method which emphasizes the text from
that which focuses on what surrounds it.

[Respect
vs. Reverence for the Text and the Jewish Past]

A
second difference between the yeshive
and academic approaches is their respective attitudes to the text. I
just mentioned this a moment ago: a benyeshive
approaches a gemore
and other traditional works with a certain reverence, each time with
a greater sense of “Remove your sandals from your feet” [Ex.
3:5], feeling that he is handling something holy, that he is standing
before a great, profound, and sacred text. And this goes hand-in-hand
with an approach not only to a specific text, but to the entire
Jewish past, a past which a benyeshive
not only respects – after all, academics respect it as well – but
toward which he displays a certain measure of submissiveness and
deference. He stands before it like a servant before his master
[Shabes
10a], like a student before his teacher.

If
we seek a parallel to this point in the world at large, we should not
look to modern literary criticism; I do not know whether such an
approach exists among today’s literary disciplines. Rather, we
should go back, perhaps, to the seventeenth century – Professor
Rudavsky mentioned this as well – and the whole question, the great
debate that raged within various circles in Europe, regarding what
sort of approach one should take to the classical world: the
so-called “battle of the books.” You know well that [Jonathan]
Swift, the English author, once wrote a small work – more his
best-known than his best – about a library whose various volumes
suddenly began fighting with one another, this one saying, “I am
better,” and the other saying, “I am better.” What was the
whole argument about? The debate turned on the issue of which
literature should be more highly esteemed: the ancient, classical
literature, or the new, modern literature?[14]

Once
upon a time, people assumed this was just a parody, a type of jeu
d’esprit; Swift was,
after all, a satirical writer, so he wrote it as a joke. However,
almost fifty years ago, an American scholar, R.F. [Richard Foster]
Jones, wrote a whole book about it, The
[Background of the] Battle
of the Books,[15] in which
he demonstrated that this was not merely a parody in Swift’s time.
Rather, he was treating an issue that, for some, actually occupied
the height of importance: the so-called querelle
des Anciens et des Modernes,
“the battle of the Ancients and the Moderns,” which manifests
itself in many, many literary works, especially in critical works of
the seventeenth century. For example, in [John] Dryden’s essay Of
Dramatick Poesie,[16]
there is an entire dialogue between four different speakers, each of
whom deals with the question: how should one relate to the classical
world? And let us recall that during the Renaissance and Reformation,
people related to the classical world differently than even a
professor of classical literature does nowadays. For example,
[Desiderius] Erasmus, one of the greatest figures of the European
Renaissance, made it a practice to pray, Sancte
Socrates, ora pro nobis,
“Holy Socrates, pray for us.”[17] By contrast, today, even in the
classical universities, I do not believe that they pray to Socrates
for help.

By
the seventeenth century, the feeling that was, for Erasmus, so
intense had somewhat weakened, but, nevertheless, the question was
still looming. For an academic today, in his approach to traditional
Jewish texts, “the Ancients”
– the classics, Khazal,
rishoynim
– are, in the words of the English poet Ben Johnson, “Guides, not
Commanders.”[18] A bentoyre,
by contrast, recognizes to a much sharper and greater degree the
authority of Khazal,
rishoynim,
Torah, and halokhe.
For him, texts are not only eminent or valuable, but holy. And this
is a basic difference in attitude which, perhaps, distinguishes the
two approaches and leaves a chasm between them.

Edmund
Wilson, writing one time in The
New Yorker magazine –
he is, of course, a non-Jew, but one who is greatly interested in the
Land of Israel and Jewish matters – mentioned that he believes that
a non-Jew cannot possibly grasp what an observant Jew feels when he
holds a Torah scroll, and not only when he is holding one; how he
thinks about khumesh,
about Torah. To a certain extent, it is difficult to convey to a
modern man who has no parallel in his own experience; perhaps it is
complicated to describe how a bentoyre
or benyeshive
approaches a gemore.
Of course, it is not the same way one approaches khumesh,
for khumesh
is, from a halakhic perspective, a kheftse
of Torah. Of what does Torah consist? Text. However, the kheftse,
the object, of the Oral Torah is not the text alone – which was
itself, after all, originally transmitted orally – but the ideas
contained therein and, in a certain sense, the human being, the mind,
the soul that is suffused with those ideas by a great mentor. Still,
while it may be that the relationship of a benyeshive
to a gemore
is difficult to convey, it is certainly, at the very least, sharply
divergent from the approach of an academic.

And
so, we have, for the time being, two points that distinguish the
traditional form of learning, yeshive
learning, from a more academic approach. But these two points, it
seems to me, are not entirely separate from one another; rather, just
the opposite, one is bound up in the other. At the end of the day,
why does a benyeshive
devote himself so fully specifically to text alone, to the arguments
of Abaye and Rove, and why is he not terribly interested in knowing
Jewish history and the like? Firstly, because he considers the text
so important; if one holds that a text is holy, one wishes to study
it. Secondly, because he believes that the text is not only holy, but
deep – there is what to study there! It contains one level on top
of a second level on top of a third. The more one delves into Torah,
the more one bores into its inner essence, the more distinctly one
senses the radiance and illumination that Khazal
tell us inhere within the Torah [Eykhe
rabe, psikhte
2].

In
order to establish the various levels of interpretation and maintain
that one can examine a particular nuance with great precision, one
must actually believe that a text is both holy and important and that
it stems from an awe-inspiring source. For example, in the Middle
Ages, in – excuse the comparison – the Christian world, people
were involved in all sorts of analysis, each person seeing from his
own perspective…

Notes:

*
I wish at the outset to express my appreciation to my dear friends,
Rabbis Daniel Tabak and Shlomo Zuckier, for their editorial
corrections and comments to earlier drafts of this piece which, taken
together, improved it considerably.

[1]
The date assigned to the
shi‘ur
on the YUTorah website is erroneous; it should read: “May 12,
1968.”

Those
who listen to the original audio will note that it begins to cut in
and out at about 42:40, thus effectively eliminating the direct
connection between the present recording and the one posted on YIVO’s
website. However, it is clear from the short snatches of Rav
Lichtenstein’s voice that have been preserved after 42:40 that the
recordings do in fact belong to one and the same talk (and not two
separate Yiddish lectures on the same topic). Incidentally, if any of
the
Seforim
blog’s
readers knows where the intervening audio can be found, please
contact the editors so that it, too, can be translated for the
benefit of the public.

For
other Seforim
blog
studies related to Rav Lichtenstein, see Aviad Hacohen, “Rav
Aharon Lichtenstein’s Minchat
Aviv:
A Review,”
the
Seforim blog
(September 8, 2014), and Elyakim Krumbein, “Kedushat
Aviv: Rav Aharon Lichtenstein zt”l on the Sanctity of Time and
Place,” trans. David Strauss, the
Seforim blog
(December 5, 2017) (both accessed March 25, 2018).

[2]
See
the YIVO website
(accessed March 25, 2018) for a guide to Yiddish Romanization, as
well as Uriel Weinreich, ModernEnglish-Yiddish, Yiddish-English Dictionary
(New York: Schocken Books, 1977) for his transcriptions of terms
deriving from the loshn-koydesh
component of Yiddish.

[3]
David
Rudavsky, research associate professor of education in New York
University’s Department of Hebrew Culture and Education, presented
before Rav Lichtenstein on “A Century of Jewish Higher Learning in
America – on the Centenary of Maimonides College.” See the
conference program in Yedies:
News
of the Yivo.
See also David Rudavsky, Emancipation
and Adjustment: Contemporary Jewish Religious Movements and Their
History and Thought
(New York: Diplomatic Press, 1967), 318-320, for a brief discussion
of Maimonides College.

For
a history of Maimonides College, founded in Philadelphia in 1867 by
Isaac Leeser – not to be confused with the
post-secondary school of the same name located today in Hamilton,
Ontario – see Bertram Wallace Korn, “The
First American Jewish Theological Seminary: Maimonides College,
1867–1873,” in Eventful
Years and Experiences: Studies in Nineteenth Century American Jewish
History
(Cincinnati: The American Jewish Archives, 1954), 151-213. The
charter of Maimonides College was published in “A Hebrew College in
the United States,” The
Jewish Chronicle
(August 9, 1867): 7 (I thank Menachem Butler for this latter source).
See also Jonathan D. Sarna, American
Judaism: A History
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 80,
431.

[4]
Yiddish kvetshn
di bank/dos benkl is a
particularly evocative way of referring to someone putting in long
hours learning while sitting on a bench or chair in a besmedresh.

[5]
For this part of the
lecture, see my aforementioned, previous translation published on the
YIVO website.

[6]
It appears that the
section of the lecture relating to Rav Lichtenstein’s understanding
of “higher” learning has not been preserved in either of the two
parts of the recording available at present.

[7]
See A.S.P.
Woodhouse, “The HistoricalCriticism of Milton,” PMLA
66:6 (December 1951): 1033-1044.

[8]
See Cleanth
Brooks, “Milton and Critical
Re-Estimates,” PMLA
66:6 (December 1951): 1045-1054.

[9]
F.N.
Robinson, ed., The
Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer
(Boston; New York; Chicago: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1933), xv.

[10]
Leopold
Zunz, Toledot
morenu ge’on uzzenu rabbenu shelomoh yitshaki zts”l ha-mekhunneh
be-shem rashi,
trans. Samson Bloch ha-Levi (Lemberg: Löbl Balaban, 1840).

[11]
For a
survey and discussion of the various people to whom this critique of
Wissenschaft
has been attributed, see Shimon Steinmetz, “What
color was Rashi’s shirt? Who said it and why?” the
On the Main Line blog
(June 10, 2010) (accessed March 25, 2018). For a recent biography of
Zunz, see Ismar Schorsch, LeopoldZunz: Creativity in Adversity
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). It should be
noted that Zunz (1794–1886) had just turned six when Rabbi Berliner
(also known as Hirschel Levin or Hart Lyon; 1721–1800) passed away.

[12]
Lionel
Trilling, “Wordsworth
and the Rabbis: The Affinity Between His ‘Nature’ and Their
‘Law,’” Commentary
Magazine
20 (January 1955): 108-119, a revised version of his earlier
“Wordsworth and the Iron Time,”
The
Kenyon Review
12:3 (Summer 1950): 477-497. The essay, or a version thereof, also
appeared in a number of other forums.

[13]
William
Wordsworth, “Ode:
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,”
Wikisource,
l.
206 (accessed March 25, 2018). (The poem was first published under
the title “Ode” in Wordsworth’s Poems,
in Two Volumes,
vol. 2 [London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807], 147-158.) This
line does not actually appear in the aforementioned Trilling article.
The Ode itself was the subject of a different essay by Trilling
published under the title “The Immortality Ode” in Trilling’s
The
Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society
(New York: The Viking Press, 1950), 129-159.

[14]
See
Jonathan Swift, An
Account of a Battel between the Antient and Modern Books in St.
James’s
Library
(London: John Nutt, 1704).

[15]
Jones’
monograph, The
Background of the Battle
of the Books (St. Louis: Washington University Press, 1920), was
actually an offprint of an article by the same name that appeared in
Washington University Studies: Humanistic Series7:2
(April 1920): 99-162.

[16]
John
Dryden, Of
Dramatick Poeſie, an Essay
(London: Henry Herringman, 1668). See also the version reproduced
here
(accessed March 25, 2018).

[17]
Desiderius
Erasmus, The
Colloquies of Erasmus,
trans. N. Bailey, ed. E. Johnson, vol. 1 (London: Reeves &
Turner, 1878), 186.

[18]
Ben
Iohnson, Timber:
or, Discoveries…
(London, 1641), 89.

 

 

Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger and Warder Cresson

by Yirmiya Milevsky

Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger (1798 –1871) was a German rabbi and author, and one of the great leaders of Orthodox Judaism. He was born at Karlsruhe and died in Altona. He studied under Rabbi Abraham Bing in Würzburg, where he also attended the university. Because of his well-known greatness as a Torah scholar, questions were sent to him from across the globe. The following question relates to a story that occurred in Jerusalem.

    According to Jewish Law, there is a list of activities that are prohibited on the Jewish Sabbath. Although resting on the Sabbath is one of the most important commandments for a Jew, the Talmud tells us that a Gentile is actually forbidden from resting on the Sabbath, and must perform one of the “prohibited” actions to be considered a righteous gentile. The following is the question presented to Rabbi Ettlinger with regard to this issue. (Responsa Binyan Tzion 91)

שו”ת בנין ציון סימן צא

ב”ה אלטאנא, יום ו’ כ”ו אייר תר”ט לפ”ק. להרה”ג וכו’ מ”ה אשר לעמיל נ”י הגאב”ד דק”ק גאלין וכעת משכן כבודו בירושלם עיה”ק תוב”ב.

כתב מעכ”ת נ”י וז”ל – ילמדנו רבינו בעובדא דאתא לידן פעה”ק ירושלם ת”ו יום ג’ כ”ג לירח אדר שני שנת תר”ח העבר לפ”ק נימול א”י אחד שבא הנה ממדינת מאראקא לשם גירות בפנינו בד”צ דקהל אשכנזים הי”ו וקיבל עליו המצות כדין וכדתה”ק ובש”ק שלאחריו עדן /עדין/ לא היה נתרפא ממילתו ולא טבל עודנה הגידו לי לאמר מזריזתו במצות איך הוא נזהר בשביתת שבת הגם שהוא עודנה /עודנו/ בכלל חולה שאב”ס =שאין בו סכנה= אינו מניח לגוי להבעיר אש בביתו והשבתי להם לדעתי לא מבעי’ שמותר לו לעשות מלאכה בשבת אלא אפילו מחויב ומוזהר על יום ולילה לא ישבותו וחייב לעשות מלאכה בשבת כ”ז שלא טבל לשם גירות וכה עשו השומעים למשמעתי והלכו אצל הגר והגידו לו בשמי כן בש”ק לאחר תפלת המנחה וכן עשה כי כתב איזה אותיות ויהי ביום המחרת כאשר נשמע הדבר בעה”ק ת”ו פה צווחו עלי חכמי ספרד וחכמי אשכנזים הי”ו על דבר חדש הלזו אשר לא נשמע מעולם אחרי שכבר קבל עליו כל המצות בשעת מילה וכבר נימול ועומד ומצפה בכל יום לטבול לכשיתרפא שיהי’ מותר לו לחלל וכש”כ שיהי’ עליו חיובא ומצוה לחלל ש”ק והמה זוכרים כמה גרים שנימולו פעה”ק ת”ו ולא נשמע כזאת ומנין לי לחדש דבר אשר לא שערום הראשונים והשבתי להם אולי מקום הניחו לי להתגדר בו

    “Here in Jerusalem on Tuesday the twenty third day of the month of Adar Sheni of the year (5)608, a non Jew came from Morocco and was circumcised for the sake of conversion, and accepted all the mitzvoth. On the following Shabbat, he had not fully recovered from the circumcision and thus not entered the Mikvah (ritual bath to finalize the conversion). A rabbi was informed that the convert is very careful in his observance of the Sabbath. However another rabbi claimed that due to the fact that he did not yet enter the Mikvah he must not observe the Sabbath and must perform one of the prohibited acts. It was late in the day and the convert was told what he must do. Consequently he violated the Sabbath by writing a few letters. After the Sabbath when the Rabbis in town heard of the ruling they disagreed claiming that after circumcision he is considered a Jew and must not violate the Sabbath.”

    While reading about this out of the ordinary situation, that produce a vast amount of Halachic literature,[1]  a question may arise in our minds: What brought this Moroccan to Jerusalem and what prevented him from converting in his homeland where a very significant Jewish population and rabbinic court was present?

**********************

Some time ago I came across an article by Frank Fox, entitled  “Quaker, Shaker, Rabbi: Warder Cresson, the Story of a Philadelphia Mystic.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 95, no. 2 (April 1971): 147-194  Philadelphia.(Unless otherwise indicated all information and quotes are from the article.)

The narrative follows the unorthodox journey of Cresson. Born  in 1798 and grew up following the habits of the Quaker elders.

    Warder displayed a mind immersed in Scriptures. In 1829, Cresson wrote a condemnation on the “Babylon” of Pennsylvania, attacking wealth and social distinction. “It will certainly be admitted,” he began, “that all the misery and troubles that afflict the human family arise aspiring from …selfishness.” The lack of true religion, he wrote, a faith that ought to be expressed through self-denial and universal love, had brought about tyrannies and caused slavery and bloodshed.

    Cresson became familiar with a Jewish leader in Philadelphia, Rabbi Isaac Leeser, a pioneer of the Jewish pulpit in the United States. Leeser, the minister of Congregation Mikveh Israel since 1829, was using his pulpit to educate and to revive the deteriorating communal and religious organizations.

    Another contemporary, whose views affected Cresson, was Mordecai M. Noah, who addressed Christian and Jewish audiences in New York and Philadelphia in the early 1840s and urged a return to Zion as the only solution to the Jewish problem of persecution. In 1825, he attempted to establish “Ararat”, a city of refuge for the Jewish people on Grand Island in the Niagara River.

    In 1844, Cresson decided to go to Washington and to apply for the position of the first American Consul to Jerusalem. by May 17, was officially notified of his appointment. His appointment was rescinded within a short time. Nevertheless Cresson made his way to Jerusalem.

    After his arrival Cresson wrote critically of the high salaries paid to the missionaries who lived “in the very best houses, bought most splendid Arabian horses and dressed in the most luxurious and stylish manner.” As for their practical work, he wrote that, “To further their imposing and enterprising object they built a church which has cost them more than $150,000; then a hospital and Dispensary, sent physicians from England, set up an institution of Industry and also a college and schools, all to entrap and instruct the poor, dirty, oily, greasy, starving Jews and to tempt and provide them with good livings, fine English clothing, upon the only one condition that they will give their names and use all their influence to support and promote the interest of their Society for introducing and establishing Sawdust instead of Good Old Cheese, amongst the poor Jews in Jerusalem and Palestine.” According to Cresson, the missionaries failed to get a single Jew to apostatize.

   

    In 1847, Cresson began writing, “The Key of David the True Messiah”, in which he began his journey towards Judaism.    Finally, after denying the divinity of Jesus, Cresson was ready for the final step of his spiritual journey. He writes, “I remained in Jerusalem in my former faith until the 28th day of March, 1848,” he wrote, “when I became fully satisfied that I could never obtain Strength and Rest, but by doing as Ruth did, and saying to her Mother-in-Law, or Naomi ‘Entreat me not to leave thee for whither thou goest I will go’… In short, upon the 28th day of March, 1848, I was circumcised, entered the Holy Covenant and became a Jew.”

Cresson- or Michoel Boaz Yisroel ben Avraham- returned to the United States for a few years. Upon his return to Jerusalem in 1852 he married a Sephardic woman named Rachel Moledano. Cresson died in 1865 and was buried on Mount Olives.

Many aspects of his life are quite intriguing and fascinating. However one detail provides the answer for the mystery regarding the “Moroccan” convert in Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger’s response. Cresson identifies the date of his conversion, The 28th of March 1848 – the day Warder Cresson became Michael Boaz Yisrael – corresponds to the 23rd of Adar Sheini in the Jewish year (5)608. In other words, the conversions occurred on the same day! The response indicates that conversions in Jerusalem were pretty unusual,(והמה זוכרים כמה גרים שנימולו פעה”ק ת”ו- And they recall conversions from the past…) making it difficult to believe that there were two conversions on that specific day.  

Consequently, I believe that the non Jew in Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger’s response did not come from Morocco but rather from America. In Hebrew, the spelling of America can be easily mistaken for Morocco (“מאראקא”). Cresson indeed came to Jerusalem “for the sake of conversion”.

************************************

[1]  The question is addressed by several Halachak authorities; See

Divrei Yosef Rabbi Yosef Schwartz 24(First hand knowledge of the incident) : Rabbi Abraham Bornstein; Avnei Nezer, Yoreh Deah 351: Rabbi Yeshua Shimon Chaim Ovadyah; Yismach Levav, Yoreh Deah 33: Aryeh Leib Frumkin in his Toldot Chachmei Yerushalayim mentioned as well the Halachik dispute regarding the Ger from “Morocco.”

http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=36973&st=&pgnum=640