ArtScroll and More

ArtScroll and More
Marc B. Shapiro
In an earlier post here I discussed ArtScroll’s use of a censored talmudic text.[1] This happens quite a bit and it is not always clear if the translators were aware that they were working with an inauthentic text. However, for many passages there is no question that they realize that what they are translating is not authentic but was added because of fear of non-Jewish reaction. Here is a chart someone drew up showing how the various new Talmud editions deal with the matter of censorship.

It is significant that even in the Hebrew ArtScroll the text that is used is censored. ArtScroll has never publicly explained why they have adopted this approach, but I think it is obvious that unlike other publishers, ArtScroll is still worried about creating anti-Semitism and thus continues to print a censored Talmud. While I think everyone agrees that the ArtScroll Talmud translation is a masterpiece, opinions will obviously differ as to whether ArtScroll made a mistake in not restoring the Talmud to its pre-censorship state.[2]
ArtScroll’s approach is different than that of other publishers who are very happy that they can now include the complete uncensored words of the Talmud. Ezra Chwat’s words express the feeling of every publisher other than ArtScroll.[3]
אין צורך להדגיש את החשיבות של הנגשת הסוגיה המקורית לעשרות אלפי הלומדים את הגמרא כפי שיצא מפיהם הקדושים של האמוראים, ושלא יסתפקו ב”גירסא” שאושרה על ידי הכנסייה.
Yet R. Leopold Greenwald had the exact opposite approach, and he was upset when he heard that a new Talmud was being printed that reinserted the censored texts. His words reflect the approach later adopted by ArtScroll [4]:
ומה מאד דאבה נפשנו בראותנו, כי מכריזים גם עכשיו על “המציאה הגדולה”, כי בירושלים מדפיסים כעת תלמוד עם כל ההשמטות שהשמיטו הצנזורים במשך מאות שנים. ועל זה אנו קוראים: שקול טובתך! בני ישראל לא ישבעו עונג מהטובה הזאת, לא ספרותנו ולא חכמתנו יתעשרו מהשמטות הללו, לא בזמננו ולא בהדורות שאחרינו. כבר שבענו צרות ומכאובות. ולהיות בפי כל מחבל בודאי אסון הוא. איפוא הם חכמי ירושלים? האם אינם רואים כי מזה לא תושע יהודה וכי צוררי ישראל ישיגו חומר מסוכן חדש?
For those who are unaware of the details, let me just mention that I am not referring to a word here or there that was censored and has not been restored by ArtScroll. Sanhedrin 43a has a number of lines dealing with the execution of Jesus and his disciples. While the entire section is found in Soncino (in translation), Steinsaltz, Wagshal and Oz ve-Hadar, it is not to be found in ArtScroll. Both the English and Hebrew editions of ArtScroll tell the reader that a section has been deleted from the Vilna Shas. However, in Sanhedrin 67a, where another section has been deleted and is found in the other editions just mentioned, ArtScroll does not inform the reader of the deletion.
An allusion to the Sanhedrin 67a text is found in Va-Avo ha-Yom el ha-Ayin, attributed to R. Jonathan Eybeschuetz. This explosive text, which remained in manuscript for almost three hundred years, has just appeared in print, edited by Pawel Maciejko.[5] Va-Avo ha-Yom el ha-Ayin is very important to understanding the controversy over R. Eybeschuetz. (I hope that the manuscript Gahalei Esh, a treasure trove of documents dealing with eighteenth-century Sabbatianism, will also soon appear in a scholarly edition.) Quite apart from the radical theological notions found in Va-Avo ha-Yom el ha-Ayin, Maciejko describes the work as follows: “[I]t is blatantly pornographic (in fact, it is possibly the only truly pornographic text ever written in the rabbinic idiom.)”[6]
Speaking of pornography let me add the following. Not long ago I was visiting a certain synagogue for Shabbat. When it came time for Torah reading I took out the chumash that was near me. It happened to be the one published by R. Aryeh Kaplan. I actually am not a fan of this chumash for use in synagogue as its focus is entirely philological, and doesn’t deal with any of the issues that a typical person would want explained in reviewing the Torah portion. But this was what I had so I used it. In Exodus 35:22 an unusual word appears: כומז. It means some sort of golden bodily ornament. The word also appears in Numbers 31:50. According to the Exodus passage, this was one of the items the Israelites in the desert donated at the time of the building of the Tabernacle. The passage is Numbers refers to booty taken from the Midianites. Among the different interpretations Kaplan offers for כומז is “a pornographic sculpture.” This is quoted in the name of R. Aaron Alrabi (fifteenth century). I was quite shocked when I saw this and later saw that this interpretation is also quoted by R. Kasher in Torah Shelemah, which must have been where Kaplan saw it.
Alrabi wrote a commentary on Rashi which was published in Constantinople in 1525. In this work, on Exodus 35:22, Alrabi writes:
יראה לי שהוא תכשיט מצוייר צורת רחם האשה כדי שישתוקק רואהו לפועל המשגל והצנועות היו מביאות אותו עליהן בחדריהם לתת תשוקה לבעליהן העין רואה והלב חומד בו, והיה זה לכונה טובה לכן הותרו לשרת בקדש
What this means is that the item in question had a picture of a woman’s private parts. The Israelite women would have their husbands look at it in order to sexually excite them before they had marital relations. Since this pornographic viewing was for a good purpose, it was permitted for these items to be donated for use in building the Tabernacle. Here is the original text.
Those who want to see the book in its entirety can view it here.
I find this explanation quite strange. I don’t know what led Alrabi to his original understanding and why he did not find any of the prior explanations compelling.
Incidentally, one of the other explanations cited by Kaplan is that כומז means a chastity belt. R. Ephraim ben Shimshon (12th-13th centuries) writes[7]:
הכומז היה כלי כמנעול שקושרת האשה פתחה שלא יודעו להם שם אדם, כי אם בעלה לבד, והוא גודר הערוה.
This is how he understands Shabbat 64a which states that כומז means דפוס של בית הרחם. Soncino translates this as “cast of the womb” and ArtScroll translates it the exact same way. Koren translates “a mold [in the shape] of the womb.” In general I would say that disagreeing with these three translations is not a smart thing to do, yet in this case I must do just that. The translations I have cited are incorrect as they do not reflect what the Talmud is saying. בית הרחם in Shabbat 64a does not mean “womb” but rather something else. In order not to cause problems for those with internet filters I won’t spell it out completely, but I think the reader already understands.[8]
Rashi, Exodus 35:22, in summarizing the Talmud leaves no doubt in this matter:
כלי זהב הוא נתון כנגד אותו מקום לאשה
The very text in Shabbat 64a also lets us know that this matter has nothing to do with a “womb”, as immediately following the explanation of דפוס של בית הרחם the Talmud explains that the wordכומז  is an acronym of כאן מקום זימה “here is the place of lewdness”, and there is no issue of lewdness with the womb. ArtScroll itself, in its note on this latter passage, explains the matter well: “The place encased by this ornament is the part of the body which is the focus of lewdness.” In other words, in its commentary ArtScroll tells us that we are not dealing with the womb at all, but with another part of a woman’s anatomy. As such, it was a mistake for ArtScroll in its translation to adopt Soncino’s rendering of כומז as “cast of the womb”.
In his commentary to Berakhot 24a s.v. תכשיטין שבפנים, Rashi explains that a כומז is a chastity belt. From the context of this talmudic passage we see that it also had ornamental significance:
כומז דפוס של בית הרחם שהיו עושין לבנותיהן ונוקבין כותלי בית הרחם כדרך שנוקבין את האזנים ותוחבין אותו כדי שלא יזדקקו להן זכרים
In its commentary, ibid., ArtScroll summarizes Rashi as follows: “The kumaz was an ornament that covered a woman’s private parts.”
Let me return to Shabbat 64a where כומז is explained as being an acronym for כאן מקום זימה. The Maharal, Gur Aryeh, Ex. 35:11, writes:
מפני שהוקשה להם לרז”ל שאין דרך לשון הקודש לקרא שם מיוחד לדברים שהם ערוה . . . כל דבר ערוה אין הכתוב נותן לו שם מיוחד . . . וכאן למה קרא כומז שם מיוחד אל הכלי הזה שהוא דפוס בית רחם, ולכך דרשו רז”ל שהוא כאן מקום זימה והשתא אין שם מיוחד לכלי זה רק כאילו נקרא כאן זימה.
I don’t understand the Maharal’s point. Just because there are no words in leshon ha-kodesh for sexual organs, why should we assume that there is no name for an item designed to cover a sexual organ?
Returning to the matter of “pornographic viewing” as described by Alrabi, I wonder if this could also have halakhic significance. I mention this only because of the controversy some years ago by an answer given by R. Shlomo Aviner that in a she’at ha-dehak (i.e., there are serious marital sexual issues) it would be permitted for a husband and wife to together view explicit pictures in a book. See here.
The entire conversation with R. Aviner was a set-up, and the anti-Aviner website used it to attack R. Aviner, and portray him as permitting viewing of pornography. Yet it is obvious that he was referring to sexual self-help books (which would have explicit pictures) since he refers to books found in Steimatzky. R. Moses Feinstein had earlier permitted a soon-to-be-married man to read sexual self-help books.[9] There is no indication in R. Feinstein’s responsum that he is also including the viewing of pictures in such books, but I do not know if he would regard this as a problem if the pictures are not of real people but are drawings.
Let us return to the subject of chastity belts. In the Wikipedia entry for “Chastity Belt” one finds the following:
Gregory the Great, Alcuin of York, Bernard of Clairvaux and Nicholas Gorranus all made passing references to ‘chastity belts’ within their exhortatory and public discourses, but meant this in a figurative or metaphorical sense within their historical context.
The first detailed actual mention of what could be interpreted as “chastity belts” in the West is in Konrad Kyeser von Eichstätt’s Bellifortis (1405), which describes the military technology of the era.
As we have seen, Rashi and R. Ephraim are not referring to chastity belts in a metaphorical sense. Thus, their mention of the item is of general historical significance, and Rashi (1040-1105) might be the earliest recorded example of someone referring to a chastity belt. Eric John Dingwall wrote an entire book on the subject of chastity belts entitled The Girdle of Chastity (Scranton, 1959). On p. 14 he writes: “There can be little doubt that the idea of such a device, at least in a somewhat modified form, was current at least as early as the second half of the twelfth century.” He then cites the late twelfth-century Guigemar Epic, written by Marie de France, as a source of this. Yet Rashi’s mention of the chastity belt predates this source by around a century.
See also here where as part of a museum exhibition on chastity belts it states:
Until the 12th century, there are no textual memories related to chastity belts at all (not even any allusions without actually using the term) where the reference is not in a theological or mythological context.
This sentence is incorrect, for as we have seen Rashi referred to chastity belts many decades before Marie de France, who is also cited in the museum exhibition as the first one to refer to the item. What we have here is a good example where scholars make judgments based exclusively on their knowledge of medieval Latin, Romance and Germanic literature. Exposure to what appears in medieval Hebrew texts would have caused them to alter these judgments.
Returning to ArtScroll, here is an example where I believe that ArtScroll has printed something that they know is incorrect, but did so in the interest of good Jewish-Gentile relations. I think it is a noteworthy example as it has nothing to do with a censored text, but focuses on the explanation of the Talmud. Avodah Zarah 6a states that according to R. Yishmael it is forbidden to do business with idolaters because of Sunday. Rashi explains that this means that one can never do business with idolaters since one cannot do business with them three days before and three days after their holiday, and this includes the entire seven-day week.
It doesn’t take much imagination to realize what the Talmud is referring to by “Sunday”, and in the uncensored text it actually has  נוצרי, נוצרים or  יום הנוצרי instead of “Sunday”. Yet ArtScroll in its translation states that the Talmud is referring to “Babylonian pagans who observe a sun-worshiping festival every Sunday.” It is true that Meiri states as much.[10] Meiri also claims that when the Talmud uses the word נוצרים it does not mean followers of ישו הנוצרי, but refers to the use of the term in Jeremiah 4:16, which Meiri claims is derived from the word נבוכדנצר.[11] While it is true that R. David Kimhi also sees the word in Jeremiah 4:16 as related to נבוכדנצר, it is Meiri alone who claims that this is also intended when the Talmud refers to נוצרים.
It is certainly appropriate that ArtScroll cited Meiri’s explanation in a note, but how is it that this is the only explanation cited, when other than Meiri everyone else has assumed, with good reason, that נוצרים refers to Christians? This can only be an example of ArtScroll shading the truth for apologetic reasons. People can debate the appropriateness of this, but there can be no doubt that ArtScroll is not being frank in its presentation here.
In the ArtScroll Hebrew edition it also quotes Meiri and states the that Talmud is not referring to Christians. Yet unlike in the English edition, in the Hebrew ArtScroll there is a note which states: “See Rambam, Hilkhot Avodat Kokhavim 9:4”. If you open up the Mishneh Torah what you find is that the Rambam states:
הנוצרים עובדי עבודה זרה הן ויום ראשון יום אידם הוא
In other words, by referring to the Mishneh Torah after mentioning Meiri, ArtScroll is alerting readers to the fact that the Rambam does not agree with Meiri and believes that the passage in Avodah Zarah 6a indeed refers to Christians. Yet this is never spelled out in ArtScroll, and you need to take their suggestion to consult the Mishneh Torah in order to learn that not everyone agrees that when the Talmud mentions those who make Sunday their holiday that it is referring to Babylonian pagans. (In fact, as already mentioned, only Meiri advocates this position.) Does the average person who learns daf yomi realize this?
In case anyone has any doubts as to what I am saying, please note the following. After referring to Maimonides, the note in the Hebrew ArtScroll calls attention to the Venice edition of the Talmud with Rashi, and to Dikdukei Soferim. Again, only one who examines these sources will learn that they offer an interpretation at odds with Meiri. If you look at the Venice Talmud or Dikdukei Soferim (or even Steinsaltz) you will find that in Avodah Zarah 6a Rashi explains:
נוצרי, ההולך בטעותו של אותו איש שצוה להם לעשות להם יום איד בא’ בשבת
In other words, Rashi tells us, just like Maimonides, that when the Talmud refers to those who celebrate נוצרי יום it means the Christians who follow Jesus.I find it significant that even in the Hebrew edition ArtScroll feels the need to only allude to the explanation of Rashi and Maimonides, while presenting Meiri’s explanation as the standard understanding of the text. ArtScroll certainly knows that this is not the standard understanding, and ArtScroll itself cannot believe that Meiri’s understanding is what the Talmud really means. After all, every other medieval commentator agrees with Rashi and Maimonides. In this case, the only explanation is that ArtScroll is following a long apologetic tradition, which was based on fear of what the non-Jews would say if they knew the true meaning of certain talmudic passages.

Another example of this tendency was called to my attention by R. Moshe Maimon. Ketubot 15a discusses the case of A killing B, when A actually intended to kill another person. In its discussion the Talmud refers to “Canaanites”, which in the current context simply means non-Jews. In fact, in all manuscripts and early printings what appears is not “Canaanites” but “goyim”.[12] “Canaanites” is simply a “correction” of the censor. Yet ArtScroll has a note explaining that “The Canaanites were the pagan people who lived in Eretz Yisrael before the Israelites entered the land.” The implication of this comment is that the halakhah stated in the Talmud was only applicable with the ancient Canaanites but not with regard to other non-Jews. This is false and ArtScroll knows it is false, but it is no different than the “note to reader” found in many seforim that all the halakhot about non-Jews only refer to the pagans in faraway places. In the latter case everyone knew (and knows) that these words are not to be taken seriously, but I would assume that the typical user of the ArtScroll English Talmud does not realize this. It is noteworthy that the ArtScroll Hebrew Talmud does not include the note about the Canaanites.[13]
In 1728, an era in which Jewish-Gentile relations were not the best, R. Jonathan Eybeschuetz printed Tractate Berakhot with many deletions, as this was the only way he was given permission to publish the volume. Here is the title page.
The volume can be found at hebrewbooks.org here. True to form, R. Jacob Emden accused R. Eybeschuetz of being in league with the bishop of Prague and intent only on making money from his new printing.[14] There was also a lot of controversy about this edition, not only because of the many deletions but even more so because of the instances where the talmudic text was rewritten. While non-Jewish censorship has a long history, this latter practice, of Jews agreeing to rewrite sections of the talmudic text, was a new and more dangerous phenomenon. Other tractates were later printed, but R. Eybeschuetz had nothing to do with them, and in any event the controversy focused on Berakhot as the other tractates simply printed the censored text from the earlier Basel edition, but did not add anything new.[15]
In his recent outstanding study of this episode, which makes use of manuscript sources, Pawel Maciejko writes:
In both academic scholarship and Jewish collective memory, the best-known controversies concerning Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz (1690-1764) are those about his kabbalistic tract Va-avo ha-yom el ha-‘ayin . . . and about the allegedly Sabbatean amulets that he distributed to the members of the communities of Metz and Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbeck in the 1750s. However, during his early years, the most important controversy concerning Eibeschütz was not the dispute surrounding his suspected Sabbateanism and the heterodox writings attributed to him but rather the outrage engendered by his friendly relations with the local Catholic clergy and his alleged involvement in the publication of heavily censored editions of the Pentateuch, the Talmud, and the prayer book. In the eyes of many contemporaries, the damage caused by the appearance of these latter publications vastly overshadowed any harm stemming from the heretical views expressed in Eibeschütz’s kabbalistic works and amulets.[16]
Maciejko notes that R. Moses Hagiz was so outraged by R. Eybeschuetz’s Talmud that he asked other rabbis to issue a ruling that it be burnt!
Shortly after the publication of R. Eybeschuetz’s Talmud someone wrote a defense of it, explaining why it was necessary to print a censored Talmud.[17] Raphael Kirchheim, who published this document, cites another who states that its author was none other than R. Eybeschuetz, since the author refers to R. Abraham Broda as his teacher.[18] R. Broda had served as rosh yeshiva in Prague, and later rav of Metz and Frankfurt.
While Maciejko also accepts this view,[19] the reference to R. Broda as the author’s teacher, מורי ורבי, would appear to show that R. Eybeschuetz could not have written the letter, since he was not a student of R. Broda.
We have good information about R. Eybeschuetz’s life, but there still is a lot we don’t know. Even though R. Eybeschuetz is not recorded as R. Broda’s student in the standard biographies, one could claim that it is possible that he studied for a short time under him, and for some reason this fact was not known to the biographers.[20] Yet in this case we can indeed make the definitive statement that R. Eybeschuetz did not study with R. Broda since R. Eybeschuetz tells us this himself. Some thirty years after R. Broda’s death in 1717 his Eshel Avraham was published (Frankfurt, 1747). Here is the title page.
Among those who provided an approbation was R. Eybeschuetz, who at that time was in Metz. His respect for R. Broda is great, but he leaves no doubt that he never studied with him:
ממש רובי חכמי ישראל בדור הזה השלימי’ המה שותי מימיו ואף אני אם לא זכיתי לאורו לחזות לרבי מקמא כי בבואי לפראג שנת תע”ל כבר חמק דודי ופנה הודו לכאן ק”ק מיץ היא העיר אשר כעת אני יושב בה בתוך עמי, מ”מ נפתולי נפתלתי עם גדולי תלמידיו הרבני’ וחכמי’ מובהקים ושלימים במדע אשר נשארו שם ושמעתי’ תמיד בבי מדרשי’ בדיבוק חברי’
Returning to the document published by Kirchheim, it describes the history of the banning of the Talmud in the years before R. Eybeschuetz printed his volume. Interestingly, it tells about the confiscation of Jewish books from the Jews of Prague, which were then handed over to the Jesuits to be examined for anything against Christianity. From other sources we know that the Jesuits burnt the copies of the Talmud they confiscated, and “[i]n the 10 years from 1715 to 1725, very few copies (according to some sources, none) of the Talmud existed in Bohemia.”[21]
This need for copies of the Talmud explains why R. Eybeschuetz had to take the step he did. The document also tells of the punishment of a man from Nikolsburg who was caught smuggling Talmuds into the Prague ghetto. He was forced, in chains, to clean the streets for a year. The smuggled Talmuds were supposed to be burnt, but this was somehow prevented (probably with a good bribe).
The only way to print a Talmud in Prague was to remove everything the Jesuits viewed as offensive to Christianity. They also viewed certain aggadot as objectionable, such as the description of God wearing tefillin in Berakhot 6a, and these too had to be removed.[22] The document tells us that having the Church agree to publication of the Talmud, even with these restrictions, was regarded as a great achievement. It also tells us that all the important rabbis in Prague permitted the publication of the bowdlerized Talmud.[23]
וכאשר הגיעו לידינו רשימה אספנו להגאון מורנו ורבנו האב”ד ור”י נר”ו בצירוף כל חכמי רבינו [!] עירנו אשר ת”ל המה גדולים בחכמה ובמנין וטבעם יצא בכל ארץ לעיון במילין אם כשר ונאות לעשות כן אם לא ואחר הלנת דין פעמים ושלש ומשא ומתן עלתה הסכמה להדפיס מס’ ברכות הנודע הגהתן וסדר זרעים אשר לא יחסר בו דבר, אך ממסכת שבת והלאה לא עבר הסכמתן כי לא נודע עדיין טיב הגהות נוצרים בו אם מעט אם רב
The document then quotes a statement issued by the scholars of Prague defending their decision, a statement that was only intended to be viewed by other learned Jews. In justifying their decision to publish a censored Talmud – since this was all they were permitted and it was a censored Talmud or nothing – we find the following very interesting passage:[24]
ודאי שנכון הדבר לעשות לבלי כושל ועיכוב כלל כי ודאי שניתן הש”ס להצילו באחד מאיבריו ולא יהיה הש”ס חמור מג”ע וש”ד אשר ק”ל יהרג ואל יעבר קימו לן אם מיחדים על אחד ימסר להם ואל יהרגו וכ”ש הדבר בש”ס שבזמן שמיחדים לומר השמיטו דא מאתכם שיהא הנשאר לפליטה שישמיטו זאת ולא יצאו כולם לבית השריפה מבלי שריד באהלינו אהל תורה ובפרט כי חז”ל שיסדו התלמוד לא על זה יסדו להיותו בדפוס גלוי לכל עמים כי אם כתבוהו בכתיבה תמה ומסרו זאת לזרע אמונים להנחיל לבניהם אחריהם לחלקם ביעקב ולהפיץ בישראל.
The last sentence is making the point that there are certain things in the Talmud that should not be published for all to see, as these are the sorts of things that could create great problems with non-Jews. The Prague scholars then state that it is actually a good thing to cut out certain passages from the Talmud. In other words, they are acknowledging that even without Christian demands, it would be best in internally censor certain passages so as to prevent problems from arising. This is exactly what ArtScroll is doing today. No one is forcing them to self-censor, but they see matters as the sages of Prague who wrote (emphasis added)[25]:
וזה לערך ר’ שנה שהחל להתפשט ספרינו בדפוס לתקנות אחינו למען יהיו להם הספרים בנקל ומצוי, אמנם בדברים כאלו תקנתם קלקלתם שגורמים סכנה לכל ספריהם ומטילים איבת הנוצרים עלינו ודאי ראוים שדברים אלו יהיו חוזרים לאיתנם הראשון מבלי לחוקקם בעט ברזל ועופרת.
They are not saying that the censored matters should be forgotten about. Rather, they should be only be passed on in a non-published form (“Torah she-Ba’al Peh”) to advanced students who study the Talmud; they should not be put down in print for all to see and thus create a Christian backlash. The sages of Prague make the same point about strange Aggadot that are not to be taken literally and can only be understood by a few, and which have become subject to Christian mockery. These too should be omitted[26] להציל דברי חז”ל. When possible, the Prague sages state, one should not delete an entire passage but simply change certain words. In this way the sense of the passage is not changed for any learned person, but problematic words are removed thus helping to blunt anti-Semitic attacks:[27]
ומכ”ש לשנות הלשון במילות ושמות נרדפים באופן שלא ישתנה הענין פשיטא שמותר
The Prague sages then state that if necessary it is even permitted to alter (i.e., falsify) halakhic rulings that appear in the Talmud in order to prevent anti-Semitism (which obviously could lead to real danger). They note that R. Solomon Luria disagrees but that the accepted practice is not in accord with what he wrote, a point that was later made by R. Moses Feinstein:[28]
דעת מהרש”ל להחמיר אף במקום סכנה. אמנם מעשים בכל יום שמהפכין הדין ומשנין מדרכי השלום בהפקעת הלואה וכדומה ולא שמענו פוצה פה לעולם וכן נראה היפוכו בדברי מהר”ם רבק”ש בש”ע ח”מ סי תכ”ה ודברים המה מועתקים בספרים רבים.
It is interesting that the Prague sages quoted the famous words of R. Moses Rivkes in his commentary to Shulhan Arukh, Hoshen Mishpat 425:5, who responds to a particular anti-Gentile law as follows:
The Rabbis said this in relation to the pagans of their own times only, who worshipped stars and the constellations and did not believe in the Exodus or in creatio ex nihilo. But the people in whose shade we, the people of Israel, are exiled and amongst whom we are dispersed do in fact believe in creatio ex nihilo and in the Exodus and in the main principles of religion, and their whole aim and intent is to the Maker of heaven and earth, as the codifiers have written. .  . . So far, then from our not being forbidden to save them, we are on the contrary obliged to pray for their welfare.[29]
Some, such as Jacob Katz,[30] have seen R. Rivkes’ words as reflecting a new tolerant approach. However, the sages of Prague, who were closer to the time R. Rivkes lived, saw his words as merely designed for non-Jewish eyes and not to be taken seriously by Jews. R. Rivkes’ comment would therefore be no different than the declarations found at the beginning of many seforim that all negative statements about non-Jews are only directed towards pagans but have nothing to do with the Christians of Europe who worship God and allow the Jews to dwell among them.
Unlike what has been described by the Prague sages, Maciejko does not view the “corrections” in R. Eybeschuetz’s Talmud as simply defensive. He writes:
Eibeschütz believed that there was no final, fixed, and canonized text of the Talmud. . . . Eibeschütz put himself in the shoes of the ancient sages and saw himself not as expurgating but rather as creating the text of the Talmud.[31]
Maciejko further writes:
Eibeschütz seems to have been the only early modern Jewish author who believed that the talmudic sages needed to be edited for style. For themselves, such changes were only possible thanks to the editorial freedom Eibeschütz granted himself in his “Apology and Answer of the Rabbis Prague”: Eibeschütz considered the talmudic text open and unfinished and therefore felt free to “correct” it even in instances in which he experienced no external pressure from the church or from any other powerbrokers. As for the character of these changes, one thing can be said with certainty: most of them aimed to create a neater and simpler text of the Talmud, one that avoids intricate grammatical constructions or potentially misleading expressions.[32]
It is hard for me to accept that R. Eybeschuetz could have viewed himself as “updating” the Talmud. Yet Maciejko is correct that we are confronted with the fact that R. Eybeschuetz’s Talmud contains linguistic and stylistic changes that were not required by the censor. Unlike Maciejko, I would explain matters in the following way: Since the Talmud was already being published in a censored fashion, with numerous passages deleted or rewritten, R. Eybeschuetz saw no reason not to make other changes that would create a more user-friendly text. However, this has nothing to do with the talmudic text being “open and unfinished” as Maciejko puts it. It wasn’t that he was improving on the original Talmud or seeking to replace it, but since the Talmud he was publishing was already “damaged”, as it were, he did not see a problem making other changes if these changes could be of assistance to the reader. Furthermore, everyone who bought this Talmud knew that it was a she’at ha-dehak publication and that it was only to be used if one had no access to an uncensored text. I have no doubt that R. Eybeschuetz felt the exact same way, and thus I would need more evidence before accepting Maciejko’s theory.
Maciejko makes a further claim that R. Eybeschuetz’s “editing” of the Talmud hints to his secret universalist religious views that are also found in Va-Avo ha-Yom el ha-Ayin. This is a much more provocative claim than what I discussed in the previous paragraph, and I am curious as to what other scholars will have to say about it.
In addition to being given permission to print an expurgated Talmud, the non-Jewish authorities also permitted “strange” aggadic passages to remain if a good explanation could be provided for them. In R. Eybeschuetz’s edition of Berakhot such explanations are found at the back of the volume, and the reader is alerted to them by a note on the talmudic page.[33]
Until Hebrewbooks.org put the Prague edition of Berakhot online, it was a very rare book, and Maciejko knows of only three copies in existence.[34] In 1981 Professor Shnayer Leiman republished R. Eybeschuetz’s explanations to Berakhot.[35]
To be continued

 

[1] See also Jeremy Brown’s post here and regarding Brown’s post see David Zilberberg’s earlier post here.
[2] Only in the last year or so have I started to examine the ArtScroll Talmud on a regular basis and I am continuously impressed. This has to be one of the most significant Torah publications of the twentieth century. Since that is the case, I don’t see why such effort is being put into producing the new Koren Talmud. While it sometimes has points that do not appear in ArtScroll, I don’t know why anyone would prefer it over ArtScroll. I have had a chance to use both ArtScroll and Koren in reviewing some sugyot in Berakhot with my son, and in my mind ArtScroll always comes out on top. I even found one place where Soncino is to be preferred to Koren (although generally this is not the case). In Berakhot 29a it states: “Corresponding to what were these twenty-four blessings of the Amida prayer of the fast days instituted?” Unlike Soncino, Koren provides no note to this sentence and most people who read it will have no clue what it is talking about since when they look in the siddur they will not find twenty-four blessings in the Amidah on fast days (as they will assume that the fast days referred to are Yom Kippur, Tisha be-Av, etc.). ArtScroll helpfully explains as follows: “On certain public fast days decreed in times of drought, an additional six blessings, enumerated in the Mishnah in Taanis 15a, are added to the eighteen regular blessings of the Shemoneh Esrei, for a total of twenty-four blessings.” I would only add that the proper transliteration of עשרה is esreh, not esrei.
[3] See here where Chwat also posts a page of R. Hananel from the censored Sanhedrin 43a.
[4] See his letter in Moshe Chaim Ephraim Bloch, Heikhal le-Divrei Hazal u-Fitgameihem (New York, 1948), p. 8. For more opposition to publishing the censored talmudic texts, see Eliezer Zvi Zweifel, Saneigor (Warsaw, 1885), pp. 265-266
[5] (Los Angeles, 2014). Regarding the Sanhedrin 67a text, see Maciejko’s English introduction, pp. xlviii-xlix.
[6] P. xix.
[7] Perush ha-Torah (Johannesburg, 1950), p. 69.
[8] David Brodsky also discusses בית הרחם as a synonym for “va–na”. See A Bride Without a Blessing (Tübingen, 2006), pp. 55, 65, 84. In Alcalay’s English-Hebrew dictionary, s.v. va–na, it gives three Hebrew definitions, one of which is .בית הרחם
[9] Iggerot Moshe, Even ha-Ezer 1, no. 102. This appears in the second to last paragraph of the responsum. The last paragraph is where R. Moshe presents his famous view that living in the Land of Israel is not an obligatory mitzvah, a mitzvah hiyuvit, but rather a mitzvah kiyumit.Here is a good time to cite an email I received from a Lakewood scholar which I think is quite insightful, and relates to the “immodest” title pages I discuss in my recent book. This scholar writes:

There is one comment that I want to make right now regarding the pictures of the topless women that appeared and then disappeared in seforim. In addition to a point that I already once made that perhaps in earlier times the breasts were associated more with breastfeeding than with romance (it certainly was associated with that as well as can be seen from the Song of Songs, but not exclusively as today; perhaps it was more like a woman’s hair which can be seen in pictures), I would like to add a stronger point regarding these pictures.

It would seem to me that before photography when it wasn’t possible to produce real live looking pictures, people would be inclined to consider drawing an ערוה. But after the advent of real photographs, one gets the feeling that he is looking at a real image of a woman. It is for this reason, perhaps, that pictures of topless women became taboo. Once photographs began to be associated with ערוה, paintings and drawings followed since they are so similar to photographs. In other words, they became guilty by association.

If there is any merit to this argument (or speculation) then one can go a step further and say that the advent of color motion pictures which is more alive caused further stringency in this area. A picture of a woman is not that “problematic”, but to watch her video is already more like “mingling without a mechitza”. Once the women are struck from the videos, it is natural that they should be expunged from the magazines as well. It is worth noting that both the laws outlawing pornography and the invention of photography coincided with one another. It would seem that it wasn’t outlawed as long as it was only in the form of a drawing, painting, or sculpture.

While it is true that earlier sources do speak of the sexual nature of breasts (see my post here note 19), I think that my correspondent has put his finger on a very important point. It would appear that breasts were more commonly associated with breastfeeding which meant that it was not problematic to show them in pictures. We even find such a portrayal on two tombstones in the old Sephardic cemetery in Altona. Here are the pictures as they appear in Michael Studemund-Halevy and Gaby Zuern, Zerstoert die Erinnerung Nicht. Der Juedische Friedhof Koenigstrasse in Hamburg (Munich, 2002), p. 109.

There are also a whole series of paintings and sculptures showing the Virgin Mary breastfeeding, obviously showing that this was not regarded as immodest in Christian circles.

The non-sexual nature of breasts also explains Shabbat 13a:

 עולא כי הוי אתי מבי רב הוה מנשק להו לאחוותיה אבי חדייהו
(Perhaps because he found this text so strange, the Hatam Sofer interpreted it allegorically: היה מנשק החכמה. See Hiddushei Hatam Sofer, ad loc.)In response to the email from the Lakewood scholar, S. commented as follows

Another point which I think needs to be brought up about nude art is just how ubiquitous it was in Europe, statues, frescoes, and title pages in books, etc., very much influenced by Classical culture, which was of utmost importance in European learning and culture. If you’re in Venice or Prague or any major city in Europe you can’t avoid seeing it. The style of title pages may have changed, as styles do, so it is not surprising that Jewish printing culture changed as well. And eventually these seforim became one, two, and three centuries old and were only seen by individuals. Nudity in art was not ubiquitous in Eretz Yisrael and America, and it is not surprising that we woke up in the 20th century in American and EY and found these things surprising. My point is that it doesn’t necessarily have to do with them seeing breasts as sexual or not (what about thighs and bare midriffs? And seforim even depicted nude women bathing in the mikveh.) It is also important to note that in the writing of many great people they refer to specific editions they used, and it is clear that they saw it and neither defaced or said anything about it. So attitudes might be a European city vs. non-European city thing as well.

In an earlier post here I dealt with this picture which appears in the Venice 1574 edition of the Mishneh Torah.

Jacob D. called my attention to Shlomo Zalman Havlin’s comment in Yeshurun 29 (2013), p. 791 n. 7. Here Havlin states that when he attended the Chevron yeshiva its library had the Venice 1574 Mishneh Torah, but the yeshiva attempted to keep this edition from students due to the “immodest” picture reproduced above. Havlin also notes that some great rabbis were involved in the publication of this edition of the Mishneh Torah, including R. Menahem Azariah of Fano and R. Moses Provencal.

[10] Meiri to Avodah Zarah p. 4.

[11] Meiri to Avodah Zarah p. 4, Ta’anit 27b (p. 97). Regarding Meiri’s claim, see Lawrence Zalcman, “Christians, Noserim, and Nebuchadnezzar’s Daughter,” JQR 81 (1991), pp. 411-426. Zalcman argues that Meiri did not just make up his interpretation for apologetic reasons, but was aware of Mandaeans who were known as natzurai and were linked to Nebuchadnezzar.
[12] See Dikdukei Soferim ha-Shalem, ad loc.
[13] The Talmud pages used by ArtScroll in its most recent printings are taken from Oz ve-Hadar’s edition (minus certain notes that appear only in the Oz ve-Hadar Talmuds). This means that ArtScroll omits the Shitah Mekubetzet, citing Meiri’s and R. Jonathan of Lunel’s tolerant comments, which appears in the standard Vilna edition, Bava Kamma 38a and 113a.
[14] Hit’avkut, p. 2a.
[15] See R. Raphael Rabbinovics, Ma’amar al Hadpasat ha-Talmud, ed. Haberman (Jerusalem, 1952), pp.112ff.; David Leib Zuenz, Gedulat Yehonatan (Petrokov, 1930), vol. 1, pp. 12ff.
[16] “The Rabbi and the Jesuit” On Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz and Father Franciscus Haselbauer Editing the Talmud,” Jewish Social Studies 10 (Winter 2014), pp. 147-148.
[17] The defense was published in installments in Ha-Magid, May 9, 16, 23, 30, 1877. Sections of the document appear in  Zweifel, Saneigor, pp. 264-265, and in Saul Pinchas Rabinowitz’s edition of H. Graetz, Divrei Yemei Yisrael, vol. 8, p. 464 in the note. The complete document was published in Zuenz, Gedulat Yehonatan, pp. 135ff., but he does not identify its source, leading the reader to assume that he is quoting from a manuscript.
[18] See Ha-Magid, May 9, 1877, pp. 170-171. (The reference to R. Broda as his teacher appears on p. 171.) As we shall see, R. Eybeschuetz had a great deal of respect for R. Broda. Yet R. Jacob Emden’s father, the Hakham Zvi, had a different perspective. See Yehezkel Duckesz, Ivah le-Moshav (Cracow, 1903), p. 14.
[19] “The Rabbi and the Jesuit,” p. 166.
[20] S. points out an interesting source which gives an unknown, but presumably true, biographical detail of R. Eybeschuetz’s life in the spiritual autobiography of an apostate Jew named Salomon Duitsch, A Short Account of the Wonderful Conversion to Christianity of Solomon Duitsch … Extracted from the Original Published in the Dutch Language (London 1771).S. wrote to me as follows:

Prone to mystical visions and ascetic practices like fasting, he was regarded locally as a tzadik, but he eventually became convinced of Christianity. When this became known was forced to divorce his wife. After a period of wandering he ended up in Altona. He still looked Jewish and his issues were unknown there. He writes of meeting and staying the night at R. Eybeschuetz, who was very delighted to host him on account that R. Eybeschuetz was educated and taken care of as an orphan in the house of his great-grandfather in Nikolsburg. This information about a Nikolsburg period in R. Eybeschuetz’s life, and who this great-grandfather might be, is not mentioned in the biographies, and is a reminder that much information about people’s lives is not necessarily in books.

[21] Maciejko, p. 150.
[22] For details see ibid., pp. 169ff.
[23] Ha-Magid, May 16, 1874, p. 180.
[24] Ibid., May 23, p. 188.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid., May 30, 1877, p. 199.
[27] Ibid. In my post here I discussed how R. Jehiel Michel Epstein engaged in self-censorship in the Arukh ha-Shulhan in order not to have problems with the non-Jewish authorities. Rabbi Shalom Baum called my attention to Arukh ha Shulhan, Orah Hayyim 480:1, for another example of this. I have underlined the words which any educated reader would understand were not to be taken seriously (since how could contemporary Jews ask God to pour out his wrath on the Babylonians who departed the historical stage over two thousand years ago?):
ואחר ששתו הכוס השלישי נוהגין לומר שפוך חמתך וגו’ ולפתוח הדלת כדי לזכור שהוא ליל שמורים ובזכות אמונה זו יבא משיח וישפוך חמתו על הבבליים שחרבו בהמ“ק
[28] Ha-Magid, May 30, 1877, p. 199. Regarding the views of R. Luria and R. Feinstein, see my Changing the Immutable, p. 42.
[29] I have used the translation in Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance (Oxford, 1961), p. 165.
[30] Ibid., pp. 164ff.
[31] “The Rabbi and the Jesuit,” p. 167.
[32] Ibid., pp. 173-174.
[33] I don’t know why this procedure was not required for the other tractates published in Prague.
[34] “The Rabbi and the Jesuit,” p. 179
[35] Or ha-Mizrah 29 (1981), pp. 418-428. Leiman’s publication remains valuable because of his introduction and notes.


A Mild Case of Plagiarism: R. Abraham Kalmankes’ Ma’ayan Ha-Hokhmah

A Mild Case of Plagiarism:  R. Abraham Kalmankes’ Ma’ayan Ha-Hokhmah
by Shnayer Leiman
1.  The Accusation.

Rabbi Joseph Samuel ben R. Zvi (d. 1703) – more popularly known as ר’ שמואל ר’ חיים ר’ ישעיה’ס – served as a member of the rabbinic court in Cracow for some 26 years, after which he was appointed Chief Rabbi of Frankfurt in 1689.1 An avid collector of books and manuscripts, he made good use of them in listing in the margins of his copy of the Talmud variant readings, emendations, and annotations to the text of, and commentaries on, the Babylonian Talmud. These were published posthumously in the Amsterdam and Frankfurt editions of the Talmud, 1714-21. Today, they are incorporated in every edition of the Vilna Talmud, and every student of the Talmud benefits from the efforts of this great rabbinic scholar.2
One of the many tasks of the leading rabbis in the 17th and 18th centuries was to write letters of approbation on behalf of mostly young rabbinic scholars seeking to publish their manuscripts. R. Joseph Samuel wrote some 40 such letters of recommendation during his lifetime, not an insignificant number in those days.3 This, despite the fact that he looked askance at the recommendations that many of his colleagues were writing, and was less than impressed by the quantity and quality of books being published. Indeed, at one point he called for – and apparently instituted – a moratorium on the publication of rabbinic works in Germany, claiming that many of them were superfluous and some were even harmful.4
On January 2, 1701, R. Joseph Samuel wrote a letter of approbation for a kabbalistic work by R. Mordechai Ashkenazi, an otherwise unknown author (then) who was a protégé of the distinguished Italian rabbi and kabbalist, R. Abraham Rovigo (d. 1713).5 The book, entitled אשל אברהם, and the letter of approbation, were published later in 1701 in Fürth. After a lengthy critique of the proliferation of works on Kabbalah in the late 17th century, the letter reads, in part:6
They [the new authors of kabbalistic works] are guilty of two evils. First, they neither know nor understand the deeds of God. Second, they cause the common folk to slight the rabbis expert in the exoteric Torah. The common folk assume that rabbis not expert in Kabbalah are not true scholars. So they cast away their expert rabbis, listening instead to the enchanters, whose wisdom is borrowed from others. I can testify that this is true [i.e., that the enchanters’ wisdom is borrowed from others], for I was involved in such a case. I recall vividly how some fifty years ago I owned a copy of a delightful kabbalistic work entitled התחלת חכמה. Some upstart student, a novice with no knowledge based on accumulated learning, printed the book under his own name. He simply plagiarized the entire book.

2.  The Identity of the Plagiarized Book.
No book entitled התחלת חכמה has ever appeared in print. It therefore could not have been plagiarized by anyone. Moreover, R. Joseph Samuel did not reveal the name of the plagiarist and the title of the book in its plagiarized form. This literary riddle was first raised in print early in 1976 by the noted bibliophile, Abraham Schischa of London.7 The solution was not long in coming. That same year, R. Shmuel Ashkenazi, also a noted bibliophile, solved the riddle.8 He correctly identified התחלת חכמה as the title of a kabbalistic book in manuscript form, still available in a variety of contemporary libraries.9 In book form, it was entitled מעין החכמה and it first appeared in print in Amsterdam in 1652.10 The plagiarist who published מעין החכמה under his own name was R. Abraham Kalmankes of Lublin. Ashkenazi provided other useful information as well, but all that is important for our purposes is that he clearly identified R. Abraham Kalmankes as a plagiarist. As such, he agreed fully with R. Joseph Samuel’s characterization (in his letter of approbation) of the novice upstart student. The  late Professor Gershom Scholem also identified R. Abraham Kalmankes as a plagiarist. He would write:11
והוא [ר’ אברהם קלמנקס] הדפיס ס’ התחלת חכמה הגניבה [כך כתוב] על שמו,
וכבר יש רמז לדבר בהסכמת הרב מפרנקפורט לס’ אשל אברהם.

“He [R. Abraham Kalmankes] published the pirated book entitled Hathalat Hokhmah under his own name. The matter is alluded to in the letter of approbation by the rabbi of Frankfurt to the book entitled  Eshel Avraham.”

It is our contention that R. Abraham Kalmankes has received less than a fair hearing in the court of modern scholarship. If we reopen the investigation, it is because much of the evidence has either been misconstrued or overlooked. The reader will have to decide for himself whether or not Kalmankes was, in fact, a  plagiarist, and whether or not he should be better remembered for his seminal contribution to Jewish teaching and literature.
3. מעין החכמה.
            a) Claims of the Author/Editor
מעין החכמה, the first book to appear under R. Abraham Kalmankes’ name, is a short introduction to Lurianic Kabbalah. Indeed, it was among the earliest such works to appear in print. The title page of the quarto sized volume is followed by a one-and-a-half page introduction (pages 2-3). The introduction is followed by the text (pp. 4-22), which consists of 78 tightly-knit chapters (פרקים), perhaps more properly labeled today as paragraphs. Thus, several of the “chapters” consist of no more than15 lines of print (and, sometimes, even less). Scattered throughout the book are occasional comments in parentheses. These may reflect an educational tool used by the original author to clarify a difficult term by means of a gloss, creating — in effect — what we would call today a footnote. Or, as appears likely, these may reflect a second hand, i.e., material added to the base text by someone other than the author, e.g., a later editor of the original manuscript. Our immediate concern, however, will not be with the book’s content or structure, but rather with its authorship. What are the claims of the title page and the introduction? What do they tell us about the authorship of
מעין החכמה?
The title page basically announces the content of the book.12 It is a kabbalistic manual, we are informed, the likes of which has yet to appear in print. It provides the kabbalistic underpinning upon which all of R. Isaac Luria’s teachings rest. The title page then indicates that the book’s secret teachings are being  brought to press [ Hebrew:תעלומים  הוציא לאור] by “the exceedingly wise and young divine kabbalist, R. Abraham, son of the Gaon, Chief Rabbi and Head of the Yeshiva, R. Aryeh Leib, scion of the Kalmankes family of Lublin.” Note that the phrase “being brought to press by” is ambiguous. It is unclear from the title page whether R. Abraham Kalmankes is being presented as the author, editor, or publisher of מעין החכמה.
We perforce turn to the introduction, which – if read carefully – resolves much of the ambiguity of the title page.13The introduction, written and signed by R. Abraham Kalmankes, begins with a justification for the book’s publication. Briefly, Kalmankes, himself a victim and survivor of the Chmielnitzki massacres, informs the reader that he was puzzled by the seemingly endless exile of the Jews, with redemption nowhere in sight. After much reflection – and deeply influenced by kabbalistic teaching – Kalmankes concluded that it was faulty prayer that was prolonging the exile of the Jewish people. Jewish prayer was not piercing the heavens and reaching God on high. He compared the state of the Jewish people to a ship adrift at sea, with no one on board who knows how to steer the ship to safety. Nothing will change, argued Kalmankes, until kabbalistic teaching spreads throughout the Jewish communities. The seeds of redemption were planted by R. Isaac Luria, the master of proper kabbalistic prayer. Alas, he died before redemption set in, but he left a successor, R. Hayyim Vital, who in turn left “a basket full of manuscripts,” i.e. he reduced to writing the kabbalistic teachings of R. Isaac Luria, especially those relating to prayer. Once these teachings were mastered by Jews the world over, redemption would be at hand.
Unfortunately, “the basket full of manuscripts” was not being made available to the Jewish community at large. Kalmankes explains that those who horde the manuscripts refuse to publish them. This, for two reasons. First, for reasons of vanity. By retaining the manuscripts for themselves, they became the masters of esoteric teaching and the power brokers to whom all had to turn for guidance. Second, for reasons of profit. The owners of the manuscripts charged a hefty price for those who wished to view and copy them. Kalmankes decided to put an end to this scandalous state of affairs by acquiring and publishing one of the manuscripts that preserved some of the key esoteric teachings of R. Isaac Luria. Moreover, he “added a few comments of his own, in order to benefit the many readers,” almost certainly a reference to the comments in parentheses mention above. He gave the manuscript a new title, מעין החכמה [Wellspring  of Knowledge], for “just as a wellspring begins with a narrow opening that ultimately widens as it fills with water, so too this book begins with nuggets of wisdom that broaden and deepen as one grows in wisdom.” Kalmankes concludes the introduction with the following signature: “These are the words of the youngest
member of the group, Abraham, son of my father and teacher Rabbi Aryeh, son of the Gaon, our teacher and rabbi, the honorable R. Joseph Kalmankes Yaffe of Lublin.”
            b) Editions
Some of the confusion surrounding מעין החכמה relates to the multiplicity of published kabbalistic works with the title מעין החכמה, some of which have been mistakenly ascribed to Kalmankes in library catalogues throughout the world.
Confusion surrounding Kalmankes’ alleged plagiarism is also due, in part, to variant readings that appear in the later printed editions of מעין החכמה, for which Kalmankes can hardly be held responsible. After brief mention of some unrelated kabbalistic works with the title מעין החכמה, we will list and describe each of the printed editions of Kalmankes’ מעין החכמה.
An anonymous kabbalistic treatise entitledמעין חכמה  (ascribed in part to Moses) is included in the collection entitled ארזי לבנון (Venice, 1601).14 It is unrelated to Kalmankes’ מעין החכמה. The Ashkenazic printing house of the partners Judah Leib b. Mordecai Gimpel and Samuel b. Moses Ha-Levi published yet another anonymous kabbalistic treatise entitled מעין החכמה (Amsterdam, 1651).15 Frequently reprinted, it too is unrelated to Kalmankes’ מעין החכמה.
Four different editions of Kalmankes’ מעין החכמה have appeared in print. They are:
1. מעין החכמה, Amsterdam, 1652. Printed by the Immanuel Beneviste publishing house during the lifetime of its author/editor Abraham Kalmankes, it is the only reliable edition of Kalmankes’ מעין החכמה. As such, we will claim that Kalmankes can be judged only on the basis of this, and no other, edition of מעין החכמה. For a detailed description of the book, its title page, and introduction, see above.16
2. מעין חכמה, Koretz, 1784. This edition was printed by the Johann Anton Krieger publishing house which, in Koretz, was devoted to the publishing of kabbalistic and hasidic works.17 Although Kalmankes’ title of the book is retained, the title page ascribes the book to R. Isaac Luria and makes no mention of Abraham Kalmankes. More importantly, this edition omits Kalmankes’ introduction to the book. The text is a slightly revised and updated version of the Kalmankes edition. It incorporates most of Kalmankes’ parenthetical notes, with slight revision.18 The text was edited in its present form sometime between 1698 and 1784, i.e. well after Kalmankes’ death.19
3. מעיין חכמה, Polonnoye, 1791. Printed by the Samuel b. Yissokhor Baer Segal publishing house, this edition of מעין החכמה  appears at the end of a collection of kabbalistic works whose title page reads: ספר הר אדני.  מעיין חכמה is accorded no title page of its own. It begins with a skewed version of Kalmankes’ introduction, entitled: הקדמת המחבר ספר מעיין חכמה. No such title is applied to Kalmankes’ introduction in the first edition. We have already indicated (see above) that the introduction is omitted entirely from the second edition, so no such title appears there. The introduction to this, the third edition, closes with the name of the author:  אברהם בן מהו’ ארי’ בן הגאון מה’ משה יוסף קלמן מלובלין. In the first edition, however, Kalmankes’ grandfather’s name is given as: הגאון מורנו ורבנא כמוהר”ר יוסף קלמנקס ייפה מלובלין, with no mention of either משה or קלמן. The text that follows is entitled: התחלת החכמה האלהות כפי דרך האר”י אשכנזי ז”ל הנקרא ספר מעיין החכמה. It differs considerably from the text published in the first two editions. It  mostly lacks Kalmankes’ parenthetical comments strewn throughout the first two editions. It regularly omits readings that appear in the first two editions, and often adds material that is lacking in the first two editions. Indeed, it is a different manuscript version of the Lurianic digest that was first published by Kalmankes in 1652.20
4. מעין החכמה, Lvov, 1875. No publisher’s name is given. This is a hybrid version drawn from two earlier printed editions. Kalmankes’ introduction is drawn from the skewed version that accompanies the Polonnoye, 1791 edition. The text is drawn from the Koretz, 1784 edition.21 As such, this edition has no independent value and requires no further discussion.
            c) Relationship of the Published Editions to the Extant Manuscripts
No one has written more intelligently about the history of Lurianic kabbalistic manuscripts than Yosef Avivi.22 What follows is essentially a brief account of the relationship between the published editions of Kalmankes’מעין החכמה and the extant manuscripts, based largely (but not entirely) upon the results of Avivi’s investigations.
Numerous manuscripts copies of the kabbalistic treatise entitled התחלת החכמה, most of them dating to the 17th and 18th centuries, are extant in libraries throughout Europe, Israel, and the U.S. While they vary slightly from each other, they clearly reflect a single recension of an early 17th century kabbalistic treatise. The anonymous treatise, whose original title is unknown, was written by a disciple of Luria in Damsascus and then sent to Italy. There, the manuscript was copied and circulated under a variety of names such as קונטרס ההיכלות, כללי חכמת שיעור קומה, התחלת החכמה, and התחלת חכמה. It was precisely because a manuscript copy of התחלת חכמה came into the possession of R. Joseph Samuel b. R. Zvi of Cracow sometime prior to 1652, that he was so startled when he saw Kalmankes’ printed edition of מעין החכמה. Even after the printed edition made its debut in 1652, new manuscript copies of the kabbalistic treatise were written and circulated under a variety of titles, now including the title מעין החכמה.
Avivi has shown that the  התחלת החכמה manuscripts formed the first part of a larger Lurianic treatise that originally included a second part as well. Whereas the first part focused entirely on עולם האצילות, the second part focused  on עולם הבריאה — and is extant in manuscript form only. The two parts were separated from each other, and largely due to Kalmankes’ publication, the first part became an independent work entitled מעין החכמה. In sum, Kalmankes’ מעין החכמה is an accurate copy (with the addition of occasional glosses by Kalmankes) of an anonymous early 17th century Lurianic treatise that circulated widely under a variety of titles, including the title התחלת החכמה.
4. R. Abraham Kalmankes.
            a) Family History
The accusation of plagiarism leveled against R. Abraham Kalmankes by R. Joseph Samuel b. R. Zvi, and seconded by both R. Shmuel Ashkenazi and  Gershom Scholem, was not accompanied by any discussion of R. Abraham Kalmankes himself. When and where did he live? How did he make a living? What other books did he author? Was he an inveterate plagiarizer?23 Had such an investigation been conducted, we suspect that the accusation of plagiarism would not have been leveled at all.
In a brief biographical account of Kalmankes published in 1992, the author of the account bemoans the fact that so little is known about Kalmankes’ life history.24 Nonetheless, much more is known about him – and his family — than the meager snippets of information recorded in the 1992 biographical account or in the standard discussions of מעין החכמה. We will take as our point of departure the clear reference in Kalmankes’ introduction to מעין החכמה to his distinguished grandfather, “the Gaon, our Teacher and our Rabbi, R. Joseph Kalmankes Yaffe of Lublin.” For our purposes, what is most important about the grandfather is that after an illustrious rabbinic career in Lublin, he spent his last years in Prague, where he died, and remains buried to this day.25 The elaborate epitaph on his tombstone informs us that he died at the age of 56 on Sunday,13 Tishre, in the year 5397 (= October 12, 1636).26 The significance of this information will become apparent shortly, but first we need to turn elsewhere.
In 1678, at the family owned printing press in Lublin, R. Abraham Kalmankes published the only other work he would publish in his lifetime. Entitled ספר האשל, it is a masterful (and typical seventeenth century) rabbinic commentary on the book of Genesis.27It was the first installment of a planned commentary on the entire Torah, but apparently the rest of the commentary either never materialized or was never published.  The commentary is essentially a midrashic-halakhic work, replete with citations from the Midrash, Talmud, Codes (especially R. Joseph Karo’s שלחן ערוך), and kabbalistic literature. The volume itself is accompanied by a series of letters of recommendations by rabbis from Kremenitz, Lublin, Brisk, Pinsk, Grodno, Vilna,28 and more, all attesting to Kalmankes’ rabbinic scholarship. Once again, Kalmankes prefaced his work with an informative introduction. Kalmankes alludes to the many trials and tribulations that accompanied him through life, including hazardous trips to Egypt and the land of Israel. He was near death on several occasions during his travels, but managed to make his way back safely to Lublin.29 Upon his return, he undertook to publish two works in his lifetime. This, in order to fulfill the talmudic dictum: “Happy is he who arrives here [i.e., on High] with his talmudic teaching in hand.”30 Since according to biblical teaching, a matter is established by “two witnesses,” Kalmankes was determined to author two books and publish them, so that he would have them “in hand” when necessary. The first book, ספר האשל, intended for a more or less popular audience, took the form of a commentary on the book of Genesis. The second book, entitled ברכת אברהם, was intended for talmudic scholars only. Kalmankes informs us that the manuscript copy of ברכת אברהם was completed and that he looked forward to its publication. Sadly, it was never published. What  needs to be noted immediately is that Kalmankes never imagined that his earlier publication of מעין החכמה could count as one of his “two witnesses”! (And this was in 1687, long before R. Joseph Samuel b. R. Zvi leveled his accusation of plagiarism in 1701.) Indeed, מעין החכמה is not mentioned at all in Kalmankes’ introduction to ספר האשל. Clearly, he did not consider it a book that he had authored.
Elsewhere in the introduction, Kalmankes notes that he will make a special effort to cite דברי תורה from his grandfather, R. Joseph Kalmankes, who he describes as: “א”א זקני מ”ו הגאון מוהר”ר יוסף קלמנקס, זצ”ל, אשר מנוחתו כבוד בק”ק פראג.”  Kalmankes adds that upon his grandfather’s death in Prague, all of his writings were lost, and that he – Kalmankes – will therefore record his grandfather’s teachings as he heard them from his disciples. “For,” explains Kalmankes, “I merited to sit at his feet only until the age of ten. Thus, I was a child, and have no real knowledge of his novellae.” We, of course, cannot be certain whether Kalmankes sat at his grandfather’s feet in Lublin or Prague (or both). If only in Prague, and if Kalmankes was ten years old when his grandfather died, we have the latest possible date of birth for Kalmankes, namely 1626, for we have already established that Kalmankes’ grandfather died in 1636. Kalmankes, of course, could have been born earlier than 1626, and we have reason to believe that this was the case.
At the other end of the spectrum, it seems likely that R. Abraham Kalmankes died somewhere between 1678 and 1701. That he was still alive in 1678 is attested by the publication of ספר האשל in that year, and by several of the letters of recommendation dated 1678, all of which describe Kalmankes as alive and well. Since Kalmankes never responded to the devastating accusation of plagiarism made against him in 1701 by a leading rabbinic contemporary, it is probably safe to assume that he died before the accusation appeared in print. Though we cannot pinpoint the year of his death with precision, the most likely candidates are either 1692 or 1693. Kalmankes died in Lvov, where he served on its rabbinic court as דיין.31 The text of the epitaph on his tombstone was copied and published in 1863 and reads:32
שנת תתן אמת ליעקב
                          ביום טוב נהפך כי טוב פעמים ואבל ומספד ונהי בכפלים
ט”ו בחודש ניסן נגנז צנצנת המן המאיר באספקלריא המאירה
כבוד מורינו ורבנו ומאורנו נתבקש בישיבה של מעלה
הגאון האלוף עין הגולה מו”ה אשר יעקב אברהם בן הרב מוהר”ר אריה קלמנקש
צלל במים אדירים של תורה וחיבר ס’ אשל אברהם על שמו נקרא
ובשביל שזיכה את הרבים יבוא שלום וינוח על משכבו בשלום
תנצב”ה
Thus, Kalmankes died on 15 Nisan on a Tuesday.33 But in which year? The text states unequivocally that it was in the year whose numerical value was embedded in the biblical phrase תתן אמת ליעקב.34 But the copyist (in 1863) informed his readers that, due to an erasure, he could no longer determine which letters from the phrase were enlarged or highlighted on the original tombstone. This makes it difficult, but not impossible – as we shall see – to calculate Kalmankes’ approximate year of death. Since Kalmankes died on the first day of Passover which fell on a Tuesday, seven candidates (between the years 1678 and 1701) present themselves: 1679, 1686, 1689, 1692, 1693, 1696, and 1699. The Hebrew equivalents for these years are: [5]439, [5]446, [5]449, [5]452, [5]453, [5]456, and [5]459. Now the numerical value of a combination of letters from the phrase תתן אמת ליעקב must add up exactly to one or more of the above Hebrew dates. Only two solutions are possible: [5]45235 and [5]453.36 These are 1692 and 1693, respectively.37 In sum, if we had to give mostly approximate dates for the three generations of the Kalmankes family mentioned by R. Abraham Kalmankes in both of his publications, they would be:
R. Joseph Kalmankes:    1580-1636
R. Aryeh Kalmankes:      1600-167038
R. Abraham Kalmankes: 1620-169339
b) Citation from מעין החכמה in ספר האשל
Critical for our discussion is the fact that R. Abraham Kalmankes cites מעין החכמה in his ספר האשל!40 It is the only reference to מעין החכמה in ספר האשל.The passage reads:41
       או יאמר מאמר הר”י ז”ל באשר נקדים מאמר מהאר”י לור”י[א] הנזכר בספר מעיין החכמה
אשר הביאותיו לבית הדפוס בפ’ י”ד שבשעת הבריאה…
Or we can explain this by citing a passage from R. Isaac of blessed  memory, i.e., by first introducing a passage by R. Isaac Luria Ashkenazi — which is mentioned in chapter 14 of the book מעיין החכמה, which I brought to press [literally: to the publishing house] — which states that during the period of creation…
If one examines chapter 14 of מעין החכמה, the passage cited by Kalmankes in ספר האשל appears exactly as referenced, but Luria’s name appears nowhere in the text of chapter 14! This is precisely because מעין החכמה was a repository of Lurianic teaching which he – Kalmankes – brought to press. Kalmankes never claimed authorship of the book, and he tells us so in his own words in 1678, long before any accusation was leveled against him.
5. Conclusions.
Ultimately, whether or not Kalmankes is viewed as a plagiarist will depend largely on one’s definition of plagiarism.42 In terms of literary (as distinct from oral) plagiarism, a reasonable definition would seem to be:
Plagiarism is the act of appropriating in print another person’s ideas,          writings, or words, and passing them off as one’s own by not providing proper attribution to their original source.
Even aside from the definition itself, the moral opprobrium attached to any specific act of plagiarism will depend on a variety of factors. Thus, it seems to me, that the more literal and lengthy the borrowing, the more heinous the offense. Motive too will surely play a role in determining the severity of the offense. We turn to the specifics of the Kalmankes case.One can certainly sympathize with R. Joesph Samuel’s outrage when, in the 1650’s, he chanced upon a copy of the recently published מעין החכמה. He leafed through its pages and realized instantaneously that it was virtually word for word a printed copy of a manuscript he owned under the title התחלת חכמה. Worse yet, prominently displayed on the title page of the pirated book was the name of the “divine kabbalist,” R. Abraham Kalmankes, a name otherwise unknown to R.Joseph Samuel. He could only conclude that this was a blatant case of plagiarism that called for condemnation. Indeed, he was still upset about the matter some fifty years later!
But, as we have seen, the title page of מעין החכמה is somewhat ambiguous about Kalmankes’ role in its authorship and publication. It simply states that Kalmankes הוציא לאור the תעלומים, i.e., he published the secret or hidden digest of Lurianic teaching. One suspects that R. Joseph Samuel never examined Kalmankes’ introduction to מעין החכמה. Had he done so, he surely would have noticed that Kalmankes admits openly that he is publishing a manuscript that contains a digest of Lurianic teaching, authored by a disciple of Luria – and not by him. Kalmankes’ states unequivocally that his contribution to the volume is limited to the few comments he added (almost always in parentheses) and to the new title, מעין החכמה, he provided for it. It is only in the third edition of מעין החכמה, published in Polonnoye, 1791 – long after Kalmankes’ death – that a skewed version of Kalmankes’ introduction is labeled: הקדמת המחבר ספר מעיין חכמה, in effect suggesting that Kalmankes was the author of מעין החכמה. Anyone who reads this skewed version of Kalmankes’ introduction, and compares it to the original, will realize at once that it is was created in 1791 in order to harmonize its content with that of a different manuscript version of the Lurianic digest (one that lacked Kalmankes’ comments) that was being attached to it.43
 We have also the clear evidence from Kalmankes’ introduction to ספר האשל, published by him in 1678, that he sought to author and publish two books in his lifetime, so as not to be embarrassed when he was called “on High.” He provides the titles of both books, yet makes no mention of the fact that he had authored and published a book called מעין החכמה. He knew full well that this was a book written by others, which he had brought to press. Indeed, as we have seen, he cited מעין החכמה in his ספר האשל. When doing so, he stated openly that it was a Lurianic work that he had brought to press.
            There doesn’t seem to be much evidence here for plagiarism, as defined above. Kalmankes’ מעין החכמה was based upon a Lurianic manuscript that was anonymous and was circulating under a variety of titles. Kalmankes never claimed authorship of the manuscript, and indicated clearly that all he did was to provide the manuscript with a new title and some brief annotation. This he did for the best of motives, namely to bring about the ultimate redemption of the Jewish people. He did not pass off the work as his own (other than the title and the annotations, which were legitimately his own creation); he withheld no proper attribution.
On the other hand, three distinguished scholars, R. Joseph Samuel of the seventeenth century, and R. Shmuel Ashkenazi and the late Professor Gershom Scholem of the twentieth century, were persuaded that Kalmankes was a plagiarist. Perhaps they felt that the appearance of Kalmankes‘ name on the title page of מעין החכמה,  preceded by the words “אב בחכמה ורך בשנים המקובל האלוהי כמוהר”ר,” with no mention of any manuscript or attribution to others, was sufficiently misleading – and, perhaps, even deliberately intended – to create the impression that Kalmankes was the author of the book. If so, they would argue, he deserves to be listed among the plagiarizers. I am not persuaded that this is the case, but in deference to the three distinguished scholars mentioned above, I have allowed the title of this essay to read as it does. At best (or: worst), it is a mild case of plagiarism, if even that.44
NOTES
1 For biographical studies of R. Joseph Samuel b. R. Zvi, see H.N. Dembitzer,
כלילת יופי (Cracow, 1893), vol. 2, pp. 144b-152b; M. Horovitz, Frankfurter Rabbinen (Jerusalem, 1969), ed. J. Unna, pp. 94-97 and 296-297; and idem,
רבני פרנקפורט (Jerusalem, 1972), ed. J. Unna, pp. 67-69 and 212. For the epitaph on his tombstone, see idem, אבני זכרון (Frankfurt, 1901), p. 151. For legendary accounts of R. Joseph Samuel, see E. Sternhell, “,תולדות יצחק” p. 2b, in Y.I. Billitzer, באר יצחק (Paks, 1898); and Y.L. Maimon, שרי המאה (Jerusalem, 1955), vol. 1, pp. 231-233.
2 For an assessment of R. Joseph Samuel’s contribution to the printed text of the Talmud, see Y. S. Spiegel, עמודים בתולדות הספר העברי: הגהות ומגיהים (Ramat-Gan, 2005), second edition, pp. 404-407.
3 See L. Loewenstein, מפתח ההסכמות (Lakewood, 2008), ed. S. Eidelberg, pp. 99-100.
4 H.N. Dembitzer, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 150a.
5 See G. Scholem, חלומותיו של השבתאי ר’ מרדכי אשכנזי (Jerusalem, 1938); and Y. Tishby, נתיבי אמונה ומינות (Jerusalem, 1964), pp. 81-107. Cf. the historical vignette in Rabbi P. Katzenellinbogen, יש מנחילין (Jerusalem, 1986), ed. Y.D. Feld, pp. 74-75.
6 The original reads:
ושתים רעות עושים כי לא ידעו ולא יבינו אל פעולות השם,  גם גורמים להשניא  בעיני המון את חכמי תורה שבנגלה, כסבורים העם דמאן דלא ידע האי לאו גברא רבה הוא, ומשליכים אחרי גיום חכמים חרשים ושומעים לקול מלחשים, אשר בטליתות שאינן שלהם מלבשים, כאשר בקושטא קא אמינא בדידי הוה עובדא, נהירנא זה חמישים שנה שבידי ספר נחמד כתוב על חכמת הקבלה נקרא תחלת חכמה, והנה קם מאן דהו תלמיד חדש שישן אין בו והדפיסו על שמו, והנה גנוב הוא אתו.
7 A. Schischa, “שלושה ספרים נעלמים,” עלי ספר 2(1976), pp. 237-240.
8 S. Ashkenazi, “שתי הערות,” עלי ספר 3(1976), pp. 171-173. For an expanded version of Ashkenazi’s comments in עלי ספר, see his אסופה: ארבעה מאמרים מאוצרות הר”ש אשכנזי שליט”א (Jerusalem, 2014), pp. 49-53. Cf. S.Z. Havlin, “הערת העורך,” עלי ספר 11(1984), p. 134.
9 These include the National Library in Jerusalem, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and a host of other libraries in Europe and the United States. For an early description of two such manuscripts in the National Library in Jerusalem, see G. Scholem, כתבי יד בקבלה (Jerusalem, 1930), p. 63, manuscript 2512, and p, 117, manuscript 47. The Bodleian Library lists some 10 manuscript copies of התחלת חכמה in its collection. See A. Neubauer, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and in the College Libraries of Oxford (Oxford, 1886), column 1001. Cf. the corrections to these listings in M. Beit-Arie and R.A. May, eds., Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscript in the Bodleian Library: Supplement of Addenda and Corrigenda (Oxford, 1994), passim. A manuscript copy of התחלת חכמה was in the private library of R. Joseph Solomon Delmedigo in 1631. See his נובלות חכמה (Basel, 1631), p. 195a. The precise title of the book varies in the manuscripts, with the most common titles being התחלת חכמה  and
התחלת החכמה.
10 See L. Fuks and R.G. Fuks-Mansfeld, Hebrew Typography in the Northern Netherlands 1585-1815 (Leiden, 1984), vol. 1, pp. 176-177, entry 233.
11 See the undated loose page, in Scholem’s hand, appended to Scholem’s copy of מעין חכמה at the National Library in Jerusalem. Cf. ספריית גרשם שלום בתורת הסוד היהודית: קטלוג (Jerusalem, 1999), vol. 1, p. 312, entry 4188.

12 See the scan of the title page.

 

13 See the scan of the introduction.
14 The title is so listed on the pages of the treatise itself in ארזי הלבנון, pp. 46b-47a. On the title page of ארזי הלבנון, it is listed as מעיין החכמה. The frequent and easy interchange between the spellings מעין and מעיין and the spellings חכמה and החכמה characterizes virtually all the printed editions of the various books bearing these titles.
15 L. Fuks and R.G. Fuks-Mansfeld, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 195, entry 270,
16 Only a handful of copies are extant world wide. To the best of my knowledge, the first edition of Kalmankes’ מעין החכמה has not been photo-mechanically reproduced, and it is not available online (as of the date this note was recorded). Nor is it available on any of the standard electronic collections of rabbinic literature, such as HebrewBooks, אוצר החכמה, or אוצרות התורה. I am indebted to the National Library in Jerusalem and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York for making their copies available to me. The scans of the title page and the introduction are reproduced here courtesy of the Bibliotheca Rosenthalia, now in the Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam (online catalogue: http://permalink.opc.uva.nl/item/001748453).
17 H. D. Friedberg, תולדות הדפוס העברי בפולניא (Antwerp, 1932), p. 61.
18 One key revision appears on p. 1, chapter 2, where ספר ויקהל משה is referenced. The book is not mentioned in the first edition of Kalmankes’ מעין החכמה, nor could it have been, since ספר ויקהל משה was not published until 1698. The reference is to R. Moshe Graf, ויקהל משה (Dessau, 1698). It does not appear likely that Kalmankes saw Graf’s work in manuscript form, since מעין החכמה was published in 1652 and Graf was born in 1650.
19 For the date of Kalmankes’ death, see below. The Koretz, 1784 edition was photo-mechanically reproduced in Jerusalem, 1970.
20 The Polonnoye, 1791 edition of מעיין חכמה was photo-mechanically reproduced in Jerusalem, n.d. (circa 1998), in a thin, dark blue, hardbound volume whose spine and outer cover read צדיק יסוד עולם, and whose title page reads הר אדני. (In other words, when seeking a copy in a bookshop of the reprint of the Polonnoye, 1791 edition of מעיין חכמה, whatever else you do, don’t ask for a copy of מעיין חכמה.)
21 As noted by S. Ashkenazi (see above, note 8), the title page of the Lvov edition indicates that its text is based upon the Koretz edition, and reproduces the very biblical phrase used by the Koretz edition for indicating its original date of publication in 1784. But by highlighting a different set of letters within the same biblical phrase, the Lvov edition announces to the reader that its date of publication is 1875.
22 Y. Avivi, קבלת האר”י (Jerusalem, 2008), 3 volumes, passim. See especially vol. 1, pp. 204-208, 443; and vol. 2, pp. 565-568, 840-841. See also, idem, “כתבי האר”י באיטליה עד שנת ש”פ”,” עלי ספר 11(1984), pp. 91-134; and “הערה,” עלי ספר 12(1986), p. 133.
23 “Plagiarism is something people may do for a variety of reasons but almost always something they do more than once.” So T. Mallon, Stolen Words: Forays into the Origins and Ravages of Plagiarism (New York, 1989), preface, p. xiii.
24 Rabbi M.Y.S. Goldenberg, “פתח דבר,” to the reissue of R. Abraham Kalmankes’ ספר האשל (Brooklyn, 1992).
25 On R. Joseph Kalmankes Yaffe of Lublin, see J. Kohen-Zedek, שבת אחים ( St. Petersburg, 1898), pp. 59-76; S. B. Nissenbaum,  לקורות היהודים בלובלין, (Lublin, 1920), second edition. pp. 36-37; S. Buber, אנשי שם (Cracow, 1895), p. 89, entry 217;  and S. Englard, “צפונות יוחסין (א), “ ישורון 3(1997), p. 680, note 6 and p. 694, note 36a.
26 See K. Lieben, גל עד (Prague, 1856), German section, p. 46; Hebrew section, pp. 34-35.
27 R. Abraham Kalmankes, ספר האשל (Lublin, 1678). Few copies have survived. For the copy at the Bodleian Library, see M. Steinschneider, Catalogus Librorum Hebraeorum in Bibliotheca Bodleiana (Berlin, 1860), vol. 1, column 752, entry 4458:1; and A.E. Cowley, A Concise Catalogue of the Hebrew Printed Books in the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1929), p. 45. For the copy at the British Library, see J. Zedner, Catalogue of the Hebrew Books in the British Museum (London, 1867), p. 14. For the copy at Yeshiva University’s Mendel Gottesman Library, see B. Strauss, אהל ברוך (London, 1959), p. 31, entry 534. To the best of my knowledge, the first edition of Kalmankes’ ספר האשל has not been photo-mechanically reproduced, and is it not available online (as of the date this note was recorded). Nor is it available on any of the standard electronic collections of rabbinic literature, such as HebrewBooks, אוצר החכמה, or אוצרות התורה. A new edition of this exceedingly rare volume was made available by Rabbi M.Y.S. Goldenberg (Brooklyn, 1992) and we are indebted to him. Nonetheless, one needs to use this new edition with caution; the text has been “improved” for the modern reader. A comparison of the texts of the title page, as they appeared in 1678 and 1992, serves as an indicator of the occasional liberties taken with the text. A seemingly enigmatic woodcut (opposite the opening page of the commentary on Genesis) depicting a Jew (Kalmankes?) drawing water from a well (מעין החכמה?) – and framed in an elaborate frame marked by two angelic beings holding up a crown inscribed with the words כתר תורה – was not reproduced in the 1992 edition. See the attached scans:
 
28 The letter of recommendation from Vilna, dated 1673, was written by its Chief Rabbi, R. Moses b. David Kramer (d. 1687), the paternal great-great-grandfather of the Vilna Gaon.
29 These vicissitudes of life may account for the additional first names of Kalmankes, who in ספר האשל is identified as אשר יעקב אברהם קלמנקס. For the practice of changing names and/or adding additional first names when confronted by difficult circumstances, see R. Judah He-Hasid, ספר חסידים (Jerusalem, 1957), ed. R. Margulies, p. 214, paragraph 245 and notes. Cf. A. Teherani, כתר שם טוב (Jerusalem, 2000), vol. 1, pp. 293-315.
30 B. Pesahim 50a and parallels.
31 S. Buber, op. cit., p. 45, entry 101.
32 G. Suchestow, מצבת קודש (Lemberg, 1863), second edition, vol. 1, no pagination, entry 32.
33 The opening line ביום טוב נהפך כי טוב פעמים signals that Kalmankes died on a holiday that fell on the day when כי טוב was said twice. The next line identifies the holiday as 15 Nisan, i.e., the first day of Passover. The day כי טוב was said twice refers, of course, to the third day of creation, i.e. Tuesday. See Gen. 1:10 and 12.
34 Buber, loc. cit., writes with confidence that the highlighted letters are אמ”ת, which would indicate that Kalmankes died in [5]441 or 1681. But in 1681, the first day of Passover fell on a Thursday, not on a Tuesday. Suchestow was more circumspect, indicating it was no longer possible to determine which of the engraved letters were enlarged or highlighted. He left the problem unresolved. The usual practice for highlighting was the placement of a protruding dot over the engraved letters that were to be used for reckoning the year of death. The problem cannot be resolved by emending the second line to read ט”ז בחודש ניסן instead of ט”ו בחודש ניסן, since the second day of Passover can never fall on a Tuesday. See שלחן ערוך, אורח חיים, סימן תכח: א.
35 By highlighting the letters תתן אמ’ת’ לי’עקב’.
36 By highlighting the letters תתן א’מ’ת’  לי’עקב’.
37 These dates are based upon the assumption that the text of Kalmankes’ epitaph, as copied and published by Suchestow in 1863, is an accurate copy of the original. But this may not be the case. Suchestow’s מצבת קודש is marred by egregious errors. He sometimes copied and published as many as four different versions of the same epitaph! In another instance, he divided an epitaph into two parts, creating two dead persons when only one was called for. See the critiques of Suchestow in S. Buber, op. cit. (above, note 25), pp. vi-viii and in R. Margulies, “”,לתולדות אנשי שם  סיני 26(1949-50), p. 113 ( and throughout the later installments to this essay published in סיני between 1950 and 1952). Given that Kalmankes’ tombstone was close to 200 years old when it was copied in 1863, it is likely that the epitaph could be read only with great difficulty. While any attempt at emending the received text is speculative, a slight emendation of the first lines of the epitaph yields the following text:
שנת תתן אמ”ת ליעקב
ביום טוב נהפך טוב פעמים ואבל ומספד ונהי בכפלים
ט”ו בחודש ניסן נגנז צנצנת המן המאיר באספקלריא המאירה
The sense would be that Kalmankes died on 15 Nisan, on יום טוב, on a day when טוב was twice overturned. It was overturned first, because every day of the week of creation was described as  טוב(with the exception of the second and seventh days); and second, because it was יום טוב, a holiday. This would allow for 15 Nisan to fall on a Thursday, and indeed in 1681 (the numerical equivalent of אמ”ת), the first day of Passover fell on a Thursday. If so, Kalmankes may well have died in 1681.
38 These dates are an approximation. We know only that R. Aryeh Kalmankes died in 1671 or earlier, as his name appears with ברכת המתים in several letters of approbation dated 1671 and appended to ספר האשל.
39 These dates, as well, are an approximation. For possible evidence that R. Abraham Kalmankes died in 1681, see above, note 37. If Kalmankes was born in 1620, he would have been 32 years old when מעין החכמה was published in 1652. This fits well with his description on its title page as a רך בשנים. It also fits well with R. Joseph Samuel’s characterization of him (at the time) as an “upstart student.” It would also mean that he was nearing 60 years of age in 1678, when he published ספר האשל. This fits well with his bemoaning the fact – in the introduction to the volume – that the hair on his head and beard had turned gray and that old age was overtaking him.
40   It is astonishing that the author of the most comprehensive study of the Kalmankes family, J. Kohen-Zedek, שבת אחים (see above, note 25), concluded on pp. 67-68, that the authors of מעין החכמה and ספר האשל were two different people named Kalmankes (cousins, of course)! Among his proofs is the alleged fact that the author of ספר האשל was unaware of the existence of מעין החכמה. Alas, Kohen-Zedek overlooked the passage cited here. So too Gershom Scholem, who wrote: “המחבר [של ספר מעין החכמה] לא הזכיר את הספר בספריו הוא, כגון ספר האשל.” See the loose page in Scholem’s hand and the Scholem Library Catalogue, referred to above, note 11. Scholem, however, did not conclude with Kohen-Zedek that the authors of מעין החכמה and ספר האשל were two different people. Even more astonishing is the fact that the late bibliophile, R. Reuven Margulies, cited Kohen-Zedek’s conclusion approvingly. See R. Margulies, “לתולדות אנשי שם בלבוב,” סיני 26(1949-50), p. 219. It appears likely that Scholem (in part) and Margulies were misled by Kohen-Zedek.
41 ספר האשל (Lublin, 1678), p. 8b. We have printed the text as it appears
  in the first edition. In the 1992 edition, it appears on p. 29 as follows:
או יאמר באשר נקדים מאמר הר”י לוריא הנזכר בספר מעיין החכמה אשר הביאותיו לבית הדפוס בפ’ י”ד, שבשעת הבריאה…
 42 In general, see A. Lindey, Plagiarism and Originality (New York, 1952); T. Mallon, op. cit. (above, note 23); and J. Anderson, Plagiarism, Copyright Violation and Other Thefts of Intellectual Property: An Annotated Bibliography with a Lengthy Introduction (Jefferson, North Carolina, 1998).
43 Thus, in the introduction to the first edition of מעין החכמה, Kalmankes states:
וגם מעט מזער מדעתי הוספתי אך לזכות הרבים היא כוונתי (I added but a few comments of my own; my only intention is to benefit the many). In the Polonnoye, 1791 edition this was radically changed to: וגם מעט מזער מדעתי לא הוספתי אך לזכות הרבים היא כוונתי (I added not even the fewest of comments of my own; my only intention is to benefit the many). This change was made necessary because the kabbalistic manuscript now appended to Kalmankes’ introduction, and being published together with it for the first time, did not contain Kalmankes’ additional comments.   
44 I am deeply grateful to Rabbi Menachem Silber for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this essay. The errors that remain are entirely mine.


The Agunah Problem, part 2; Wearing a Kippah; More Censorship by ArtScroll

The Agunah Problem, part 2; Wearing a Kippah; More Censorship by ArtScroll
Marc B. Shapiro
1. Continued from here.
There is even an opinion, which as far as I know is accepted by many, that if a man apostatizes the beit din can still not force him to issue a divorce. This is first mentioned by R. Meir of Rothenburg and his reason is quite surprising. He says that a woman would rather be married to an apostate than not married at all.[1]
כתב מורי רבינו עובר על דת או אפילו משומד אין כופין אותו להוציא ותדע מדלא מנה רשע עם שכופין אותן להוציא וטעמא דטב למיתב טן דו מלמיתב ארמלו אם לא שעבר על דת שקיבל עליו חרם שהוא כלפי דידה כגון שלא להכותה או שלא להקניטה.
This position, and the opposing one that we do force a meshumad to give a get: משומד כופין אותו על ידי גוים, is mentioned by R. Moses Isserles, Even ha-Ezer 154:1.
Today, there is no way in the world that a religious woman would wish remain married to an apostate, so how could the hazakah טב למיתב טן דו מלמיתב ארמלו be applicable in such a case? I therefore don’t see how any beit din could tell a woman whose husband apostatized that they are not able to compel him to divorce her. Incidentally, R. Solomon Luria couldn’t believe that R. Meir of Rothenburg really meant what he said. According to R. Luria, the word משומד here does not mean “apostate” but a משומד לכל התורה, that is, a complete sinner who is still in the Jewish community and can be brought back to Torah observance, perhaps even by his wife.[2]
כל זמן שלא נטמע ביניהם אפי’ הוא משומד לכל התורה כולה אין כופין אותו מאחר שיכול לקיים שאירה כסותה ועונתה כראוי וגם אולי על ידה יתחרט ויחזור למוטב ובזה יתיישבו דברי מהר”ם שכתב שאין כופין כלל אפילו משומד.
This is not the standard position as pretty much everyone assumes that R. Meir of Rothenburg was talking about an actual meshumad. Yet it must be noted that as with R. Luria, R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg also found R. Meir of Rothenburg’s language strange, since how can you say טב למיתב טן דו מלמיתב ארמלו about a woman living with an apostate? R. Weinberg therefore suggested that perhaps R. Meir just meant a sinner.[3] Elsewhere, R. Weinberg sees it as obvious that a Jewish woman would not want to marry an apostate, even one who has repented from his apostasy.[4]
והנה זה דבר ברור שהמומר מאוס בעיני כל אחד מישראל, ואפילו אם חזר בתשובה שלמה הוא מאוס כשזוכרים שהמיר את דתו, וק”ו ב”ב של ק”ו אם לא עשה תשובה שלמה אלא הרהר תשובה בלבו ואח”כ חזר לסורו שהוא מאוס ואין שום בת ישראל מתפייסת עם אדם כזה.

הכל יודעים ששום בת ישראל לא תנשא לאיש שהמיר דתו אפילו אם עשה אח”כ תשובה בלבו ואפילו אם ימיר את דתו החדשה בדת ישראל.

Just as with the case of a real meshumad, it is hard to imagine that today a woman who wants to divorce her husband because he has become completely non-observant, and the husband refuses to give the get, that this woman would not be regarded as an agunah. I am speaking about the more modern communities. What about in the haredi world? I was shocked to read the following in a recent work by R. Judah Itah explaining why it is that even today a woman would rather be married to an apostate than be alone, something that is obviously factually incorrect and is a terrible indictment of Jewish women.[5]
והנה בדין זה אם כופין המומר לכאורה איירי דבאה האשה ומבקשת מהבי”ד שיעזרו לה לצאת מרשות המומר כי לא טוב לה להיות בחברת המומר. א”כ היאך אתה דוחה את רצונה בנימוק דטוב לה כיון דטב למיתב תן [!] דו וכו’ הרי היא זועקת דאין זה טובה בשבילה. וצ”ל דקים לחז”ל דכל אשה רוצה להיות בחברת איש מלהיות בודדה, ומה שאומרת שרצונה לצאת מהמומר לא זה סיבה בגלל המומר אלא אפשר מפני שעיניה נתנה באחר ולכן אין כופין המומר, דלא מאמינים למה שאו’ שכל רצונה לא להיות בחברת המומר.
Can R. Itah really believe that a Bais Yaakov girl could live with an apostate and the only reason she would scream to get out of the marriage is because she has her eye on someone else? If there was a haredi woman who chose to remain with an apostate rather than demand a divorce, wouldn’t the haredi world regard her as a traitor?
In the previous post I discussed R. Weinberg’s responsum dealing with a man accused of sexual abuse. In that case, R. Weinberg refused to force him to give a get. This responsum is mentioned in a 2013 decision by the Jerusalem Beit Din available here. In a 2-1 decision the beit din refused to order a convicted sexual abuser to give his wife a get. The majority recommended that the husband give a get, but as far as compelling the husband, or even telling him that he was obligated to give a get, the beit din felt that its hands were tied.
We are taught that the ways of Torah are pleasant. Can it really be that a woman who wants to be divorced from a sexual abuser has no recourse? Must it be the case that the beit din’s hands are tied and the husband can keep his wife a prisoner? 
This brings me to a suggestion which can perhaps solve some of the problems at least in the State of Israel. I am not naive enough to think that it will ever be implemented, but I do think that it is a good approach. As I just mentioned, the Jerusalem Beit Din case of the convicted sexual abuser was decided by a 2-1 majority. One of the dayanim thought that the husband could be compelled to give the divorce, but unfortunately for the wife he was in the minority. If you examine the decisions of the various batei din you find that some dayanim are more liberal than others when it comes to ordering the husband to issue a divorce. This doesn’t mean that the other dayanim are “bad guys”, as some feminists like to portray them. They just feel bound by certain halakhic restrictions. The more liberal dayanim, however, follow a halakhic tradition that assumes that if the husband and wife have been separated for a long time, or if there are good reasons for the woman to want a divorce, even if these reasons are not mentioned in the Talmud, then the husband can be forced to issue the get.
Since I think we all agree that freeing women from dead marriages is a positive goal, would it violate any halakhic procedure for certain communities to have batei din composed exclusively of those rabbis who accept the halakhic position that a husband can be obligated to divorce his wife even in cases not specified in the Talmud? This would not be an example of deciding the halakhah before the case was heard, but only of creating a beit din of dayanim who are at least open to a more liberal understanding of when divorce is to be required.
This would no different than the conversion courts set up in Israel recently under the direction of R. Nachum Rabinovitch. Only dayanim who have a liberal perspective on conversion are on this court. This doesn’t mean they will always agree on all points, but they will agree on certain baseline positions. This might be a solution to the sort of case that appeared before the Jerusalem Beit Din, discussed above. Had the make-up of the beit din been different, rather than a 2-1 decision leaving the wife in a miserable marriage perhaps for the rest of her life, the decision could have been 2-1 or 3-0 in her favor.
I don’t think anyone would object if a community said, for example, that they will only hire a rabbi who supports, or opposes, the heter mekhirah. That is the community’s prerogative. So why should it be problematic to say that for certain communities only dayanim who have a liberal perspective on when a husband is obligated to give a get should be seated on batei din dealing with these issues? I think that some dayanim will be fine with this. While their interpretation of halakhah does not generally permit them to obligate a husband to give a get, they recognize that others have a different perspective. It is not uncommon for a posek to tell a questioner that he should inquire of another posek who will probably give him a more lenient answer. For example, both R. Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and R. Ovadiah Yosef, when confronted with questions about abortion, rather then reply that it was forbidden they advised the questioners to ask R. Eliezer Waldenberg, as he had a more lenient opinion in this matter.[6] Many more such examples could be cited dealing with a whole host of issues.[7]
Here is what appears in R. Eliyahu Sheetrit’s Rabbenu, p. 137. 

It describes how R. Ovadiah Yosef did exactly what I am suggesting. He purposely arranged to have a dayan join the beit din on a certain day, knowing how this dayan held in a halakhic matter. In other words, R. Ovadiah was “stacking the deck” to get a decision he believed to be correct. If R. Ovadiah felt comfortable in doing this, then I don’t think there is a problem with picking dayanim who are known to accept the view that men can be required to issue a get in a wide range of cases.
Another way to solve the problems I have written about in the last two posts would be if the batei din accepted the view of R. Moshe Feinstein that when the husband and wife are living separately, and there is no chance of reconciliation, then halakhah requires the husband to give a get. I realize that R. Moshe’s position is not in line with the sources I have previously referred to, but since so much is at stake, perhaps the dayanim could agree that R. Moshe’s position is sufficient to rely on. This is what he states in Iggerot Moshe, Yoreh Deah 4, no. 15:2 (emphasis added):
ובדבר איש ואשה שזה הרבה שנים שליכא שלום בית, וכבר שנה וחצי דרים במקומות מופרדים, וכבר ישבו ב”ד חשוב ולא עלה בידם לעשות שלום ביניהם. וראינו גילוי דעת חתום מהב”ד שלא הועיל כל השתדלותם לעשות שום. וכנראה מזה שהב”ד סובר שא”א לעשות שלום ביניהם. אז מדין התורה באופן כזה מוכרחין להתגרש ואין רשות לשום צד לעגן, לא הבעל את אשתו ולא האשה את הבעל, בשום עיכוב מצד תביעת ממון. אלא צריכים לילך לפני ב”ד לסדר התביעות בענייני ממון ולסדר נתינת וקבלת הגט.
R. Moshe’s approach was anticipated by R. Hayyim Palache in the 19th century. Therefore, if some poskim feel that R. Moshe’s authority isn’t enough to rely on, R. Palache words might be sufficient for them (and indeed, in recent years some dayanim have relied on R. Palache).[8] R. Palache actually sounds like he is describing the contemporary scene when he says that if either husband or wife refuses to allow the divorce to go through in order to take revenge on a spouse, that the heavenly punishment for such an action is very great. He then says that if it has been eighteen months and the couple still can’t get along, then the husband is forced to give a divorce.[9]
וידעו נאמנה כי כל הבא לעכב מלתת גט בענין זה כדי להנקם זה מזה מחמת קינאה ושינאה ותחרות כאשר יהיה האופן פעמים שהאיש רוצה לגרש והאשה אינה רוצה וכדי להנקם מהאיש מעכבים הדבר שלא לש”ש עתידין ליתן את הדין . . . וכמו כן להפך כשהאשה רוצה להתגרש והאיש איו רוצה וכדי להנקם מהאשה מעכבים מלתת גט שלא לש”ש כם בזה לא בחר ה’ ויש עונש מן השמים . . . והנני נותן קצבה וזמן לדבר הזה דאם יארע איזה מחלוקת בין איש לאשתו וכבר נלאו לתווך השלום ואין להם תקנה ימתינו עד זמן ח”י חדשים ואם בינם לשמים נראה לב”ד שלא יש תקנה לשום שלום ביניהם, יפרידו הזווג ולכופם לתת גט עד שיאמרו רוצה אני.                     
As I mentioned, some dayanim will be very content not to sit on cases where their stringent approach will lead to a situation where the husband is not obligated to give his wife a get. They will recognize the problems women are sometimes placed in because of their approach and be happy that other dayanim have a different perspective, even though they themselves cannot agree. What then to do about the dayanim with a stringent perspective who will not agree to recuse themselves? I don’t see any reason why communities cannot declare that they do not wish to accept a situation where women are locked in dead marriages if there are valid halakhic options. As such, they will only hire dayanim who adopt a liberal perspective as to when a husband can be obligated to issue a divorce. This does not mean that these communities would be deciding cases in place of the dayanim, and every case is obviously different. However, there is nothing wrong with inquiring of a dayan what his halakhic philosophy is before seating him on the bench. This has nothing to do with deciding specific cases, as anyone who has ever watched a Supreme Court nominee hearing understands.[10] You are permitted to ask a question of a posek whom you assume will offer a lenient decision, as long as you are prepared to follow the decision even if in the end it is not what you expected. By the same token, one can appoint as a rav or a dayan someone whose halakhic philosophy is in line with the values of the community he will serve. That is all that I am suggesting. 
As mentioned in the last post, R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg states that if there is a dispute among halakhic authorities, we must reject the view that will bring the Torah into disrepute in people’s eyes (Kitvei ha-Gaon Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, vol. 1, p. 60):
ואגלה להדר”ג [הגרא”י אונטרמן] מה שבלבי: שמקום שיש מחלוקת הראשונים צריכים הרבנים להכריע נגד אותה הדעה, שהיא רחוקה מדעת הבריות וגורמת לזלזול וללעג נגד תוה”ק.

This formulation of R. Weinberg can provide justification for the approach I am suggesting. Interested readers should also examine R. Eliezer Waldenberg, Tzitz Eliezer, vol. 5, no. 26, where he writes to R. Elyashiv and justifies his liberal perspective. He sums up his position with these important words

ואחרי זאת בקחתנו גם בחשבון חומר השעה המיוחד שאנו חיים בה בתקופתנו אשר רבו שוטני התורה וכן בראותינו פירצת הדור הצעיר המנוער מתורה ויראת שמים וכשלא מוצא אוזן קשבת לדבריו עושה במחשך מעשיו, וכמה פעמים הרי אזנינו שומעות ולא זר מהמכשולים הגדולים שהנשים נכשלות ומכשילות את הרבים באיסור א”א ואנו עומדים רפה אונים באין בידינו להעמיד הדת על תלה, נדמה לי ששפיר ישנו במה שכתבתי בספרי שם כר נרחב לתת מקום לדון בכובד ראש בהערכת כל מקרה ומקרה שלטענת מאוס עלי ולהשתמש לפי הצורך בכפיה . . . ולכן לפענ”ד נאמנים המה דבריו של המהר”א טוואה בחוט המשולש שכותב שאפי’ לדעת הסוברים שלא לכוף אם יש צורך שעה בכפייה יכופו דאין לדיין אלא מה שעיניו רואות, ובלבד שתהא כוונת הדיין לש”ש ויחקור על הדבר כראוי.

I quoted R. Waldenberg at length as there are some people who thought that my previous post sounded “reformist”, because I argued that divorce halakhah should not be decided in a vacuum but should take into account the contemporary reality. As you can see, this is exactly what R. Waldenberg says.

R. Waldenberg concludes that the final decision on this matter should come from all the rabbinic courts in Israel. He does not want to have a situation like we have today, where different courts have entirely different approaches when it comes to how to deal with divorce law. 

There is another point that is important to make. I have heard people say that the problem of the agunah that we have today, where a man refuses to give his wife a get, is a new phenomenon. This is completely incorrect, as this phenomenon is already seen in the medieval responsa. However, you won’t generally find it discussed among the responsa that deal with agunah. The matter is discussed when dealing with whether one can be forced to give a divorce. From medieval times until the present, women in unhappy marriages have demanded divorces. As we have seen, in situations that many people today would consider cases of agunah, in prior generations the rabbis ruled that the woman was not entitled to a get. 

Even in earlier years, however, we do find examples of agunot where the husband refused to give a get, even after being told to so by a beit din, and the community tried to help. The 19th century Hebrew newspapers have a number of such cases. Here is one example that appeared in Ha-Magid, Feb. 13, 1861, pp. 27-28.
It is interesting that when they caught up with the man they imprisoned him in the rabbi’s house. They also took his money and used it as leverage.
Let me make one final point. In matters of divorce my feeling is that when either husband or wife wants a get, and it is obvious that there is no future in the marriage, then neither party should prevent the divorce from taking place. There shouldn’t be any reason to go to a beit din to force a divorce. Adults should be able to see that the marriage isn’t working out and come to a conclusion that it is time to end it. Any husband who chooses to withhold a get when he knows that the marriage is over is acting in a very cruel way, and the full weight of halakhically acceptable communal pressure should be brought on him. Nothing should scandalize us more than a so-called religious person keeping his wife captive as a means of revenge. I would even suggest reading the names of some agunot during the Shabbat prayers, in order to sensitize people to the issue.
I know that many people will regard what I have just written as obvious. What I will now say might anger some, but I think that it too should be obvious. I have often heard it said that a get should never be withheld, and that the get should be given immediately. For example, on ORA’s website it states: “[I]t is never acceptable to refuse to issue a get once the marriage is irreconcilable.” On JOFA’s website it states: “As soon as it becomes clear that there will be no reconciliation, the Get should be written and delivered to the woman so that it cannot be used as a bargaining tool in financial or custody negotiations.” 

While in general both these statements are correct, it is not correct that this is always the case. For instance, let’s say the wife runs away to Europe with the kids. Does anyone seriously think that the husband is still obligated to give her a get? In such a circumstance it is entirely appropriate for the husband to insist that she come back to the United States and settle all custody issues before a get is issued. Or let’s say a husband and wife separated, and the wife refuses to let the husband see his children. It could be many months before the secular court rules on the matter of visitation. Why would anyone think that in the meantime the husband is obligated to give his wife a get if she refuses to allow him to see his children? I don’t think that there is any reputable beit din in the world that would side with the woman in these two cases. These are obviously extreme examples, and have nothing to do with the typical agunah case we hear about. Yet we should be aware that there are nuances that sometimes come into play, and every case must be investigated by a reputable beit din before judgments are made.

Finally, those who want to learn more about the matters we have been discussing should consult R. Shmuel Gartner’s detailed book, Kefiyah be-Get (Jerusalem, 1998). A 2000 page book with the title Mishpat ha-Get has just appeared. I have not yet seen it but it must have important material as well. There is also another book that is worth noting, R. Raphael Aaron Ben-Shimon’s Bat Na’avat ha-Mardut (Jerusalem, 1917). R. Ben-Shimon (died 1928) was a leading Egyptian rabbi and author of a number of significant works. What makes Bat Na’avat ha-Mardut of particular interest is that he has a number of formulations that if written today would lead certain people to claim that he was a feminist or an adherent of Open Orthodoxy. For example:

P. 4:

ואמנם בזמנינו זה הנה מתלאה, כי הוסב דין המורדת לאכזריות נוראה כי בתי דינין בזמנינו האחרונים, לסיבת כי לא מצאו כל הדין מפורש מה יעשה לה להמורדת בטענת מאיס עלי ואחרי אשר אין לנו עתה דין הכפיה לכוף את הבעל לגרש בשום אופן אחזו בשיטת החומרא עד דיוטא התחתונה, ושמו להם לקו כי המורדת היא כאשה מפרת באמונה וכל חמירא דאיכא ברשותייהו נתנו אותה על ראש המורדת האומללה, כאלו הוא דין דאיסור והיתר אשר המחמיר בה בטוח הוא ממכשול יותר מהמתיר, וע”כ העמידוה על גחליה ריקה. חופשה לא ניתן לה, הפסידה נדוניתה וכ”ש כתובתה, ואף אם חזרה בה לא יקבלו תשובתה
P. 8:
דהרמב”ם ז”ל נתמלא חמלה וחנינה על בנות ישראל
P. 154:
 ואמינא ולא מסתפינא שאם היה הרמב”ם ז”ל חי אתנו היום, היה מרעיש העולם, על אחרוני זמננו אשר דנין את המורדת דמאיס עלי במשפט מר וקשה ואכזרי כנ”ל, ואומר בקול רם הלא תבושו הלא תכלמו לתלות בי קלון אכזריות כזאת אשר לא דמיתי, ולא עלתה על לבי, הן אנכי חסתי על נפשות בנות ישראל, שיחיו חיי צער ויהיו כשפחות וכשבויות חרב להבעל לאיש שנוי [שנאוי] נפשם
2. In the previous post I referred to a couple of Supreme Rabbinic Court decisions. In these cases R. Elyashiv was a member of the court and the decisions were published in the Piskei Din shel Batei Din ha-Rabaniyim be-Yisrael. In both of the cases I cited the decision was unanimous and no individual dayan is recorded as having authored the published decision. Nevertheless, the rulings are reprinted in R. Elyashiv’s Kovetz Teshuvot, vol. 1, as if they were written by him alone (and maybe they were, but no evidence for this is provided). This volume was not published by R. Elyashiv but by one of his followers, and is a collection of previously published court rulings and responsa. There are 253 sections and the table of contents at the beginning of the volume provides the original sources of all the material.
When you look at the list of sources you find something unusual. While the names of the various books and journals are given one also finds some abbreviations. This is strange since these abbreviations are nowhere explained, and abbreviations are only used for a very small number of the many different sources. I was unable to figure out what all of the abbreviations mean but I did figure out the following:
פ”ד = פסקי דין של בתי הדין הרבניים בישראל
י”א = יביע אומר
ד”י = דרך ישרה
מ”ש = משפטי שאול

When reprinting rulings from R. Elyashiv that appeared in the Israeli government Beit Din publication, rather than telling the reader where they are taken from, all we get is פ”ד. Similarly, the typical reader will have no way of knowing that material has been taken from R. Ovadiah Yosef’s Yabia Omer, R. Yitzhak Yedidyah Frankel’s Derekh Yesharah, and R. Shaul Yisraeli’s Mishpetei Shaul. Obviously, for the individual who published the Kovetz Teshuvot, there is something problematic with all of these individuals, and with the government beit din, and he therefore wouldn’t even mention the name of their publications.
If you look at Yabia Omer, vol. 3, Orah Hayyim no. 33, and Mishpetei Shaul, no. 34 you can see the original letters from R. Elyashiv. Needless to say, in these letters he relates to R. Ovadiah and R. Yisraeli as valued rabbinic colleagues. However, in Kovetz Teshuvot the beginning of the letters has been deleted, and the reader therefore has no idea who R. Elyashiv was corresponding with. Elsewhere in Kovetz Teshuvot, when the recipient of a letter is “kosher” in the eyes of the publisher, the beginning of the letter is indeed included.[11] For some reason, in the list of sources the publisher does not abbreviate the titles of R. Isaac Herzog’s Heikhal Yitzhak and R. Yitzhak Nissim’s Yein ha-Tov. Yet he still deletes the beginning of R. Elyashiv’s letters taken from these books, so the reader does not see the very respectful way he refers to R. Herzog and R. Nissim. Here, for example, is how R. Elyashiv’s letter appears in Heikhal Yitzhak, vol. 2, no. 24.

As you can see from the titles R. Elyashiv gives to R. Herzog, he has the utmost reverence for him.

Here is how the page appears in Kovetz Teshuvot, where all this is deleted.

Also, notice how at the beginning of the letter in the original it says אני מודה לכ”ג מרן, yet the wordמרן  is deleted from Kovetz Teshuvot. In the second paragraph R. Elyashiv writes
ואנכי לא באתי בשורות אלה אלא להשיב על מה שהעיר מרן שליט”א

In Kovetz Teshuvot מרן has been removed, leaving us with להשיב על מה שהעיר שליט”א, which doesn’t make sense since שליט”א does not follow a verb.[12]
For those who have read my new book, this example will not be surprising and illustrates once again the lack of basic intellectual integrity that we find in some segments of the haredi world. From the response to my book, I can tell you that the ones most upset about this sort of thing are none other than haredim. They really believe in the haredi outlook and can’t understand why some members of their society, such as the publisher of Kovetz Teshuvot, feel that the haredi position is so weak that it can only survive by misleading people. How could a haredi not be upset when seeing how a publisher feels that he knows better than R. Elyashiv which rabbis are deserving of respect, and therefore takes upon himself to “correct” R. Elyashiv’s “mistakes”? If this is not a complete undermining of Daas Torah, then I don’t know what is.
3. In this post I referred to the German Orthodox practice of men not wearing a kippah. R. Yoel Catane informed me on the authority of his mother, a native of Frankfurt and a relative of the Breuer family, that even R. Joseph Breuer when he taught secular subjects at the Hirsch school in Frankfurt did so without a kippah. R. Catane also points out that many German Orthodox Jews continued the practice of going bareheaded even when they came to Israel. R. Catane gives as an example of this Yitzhak Ernst Nebenzahl, who served as State Comptroller in Israel and was punctilious in his Torah observance. His son is the famous Rabbi Avigdor Nebenzahl. Even in his old age in Jerusalem, the elder Nebenzahl continued his practice of going bareheaded, which when it came to the German Orthodox was not a reflection about their level of piety. Here is a picture of him without a kippah.
Dr. Aharon Barth, a grandson of R. Azriel Hildesheimer, was also a well-known German Orthodox Jew. He served as the director of Bank Leumi and was one of the two people whose signature was on the first currency of the State of Israel. He also wrote the Orthodox philosophical work Dorenu Mul She’elot Netzah, which has been reprinted a number of times and has also been translated into English, French, and German. You can read about Barth here. Here is his picture showing him bareheaded.

R. Catane mentioned the following anecdote. Once Barth was giving a lecture to bankers in Israel and he heard some thunder. He stopped the talk, took a kippah out of his pocket and put it on his head, made the blessing on the thunder, then put the kippah back into his pocket and continued with the lecture.
4. In Saul Lieberman and the Orthodox I wrote about how in its English translation of R. Zevin’s Ha-Moadim ba-Halakhah, ArtScroll censored references to Saul Lieberman, removing his rabbinic title. Leon Well pointed out to me that ArtScroll didn’t just remove the “R.”, but in one case removed Lieberman’s name entirely. In Ha-Moadim ba-Halakhah (Tel Aviv, 1955), p. 133, in the article on Shemini Atzeret, R. Zevin writes:

בנוגע לתוספתא משער ר”ש ליברמאן [!] ב”תוספת ראשונים” השערה חריפה

In the Festivals in Halachah, vol. 1, p. 346, the following “translation” appears: “As regards the passage from Tosefta on which Rashi’s interpretation is based, Tosefes Rishonim ventures a daring speculation.”

On the topic of Saul Lieberman’s name being censored, Professor Yaakov Spiegel called my attention to the following. Here is R. Dov Berish Zuckerman’s Beit Aharon: Beurei ha-Rambam al pi ha-Meiri (Jerusalem, 1984) p. 311.

This volume appeared posthumously, published by Machon Yerushalayim. If you look at the second column, 6 lines from the bottom, it says שוב הראני חכם אחד. Who is the anonymous scholar? What appears in this book had earlier been printed in Talpiot 4 (1949), p. 139. In the original we find הר”ש ליברמן שליט”א.[13]

David Farkas called my attention to another case of ArtScroll censorship, this time in its new Midrash Rabbah. Here is a page from Bereshit Rabbah, Miketz, Parashah 90.

In the Etz Yosef commentary there are three dots, showing that something is missing. This is the only time I am aware of that when ArtScroll engaged in censorship they let the reader know that something was removed, so I guess we have to be thankful for this.

What was so terrible in the Etz Yosef that ArtScroll had to delete it? Here is the uncensored version of the commentary, and as you can see, Etz Yosef cited Mendelssohn. That is why it had to be removed.

While on the topic of censorship, let me share another example of censorship of R. Kook. This time R. Kook’s name is removed from R. Meir Abovitz’s commentary on the Jerusalem Talmud.

5. I want to call readers’ attention to a new book recently sent to me by R. Yaakov Shapiro. Its title is Halachic Positions: What Judaism Really Says About Passion in the Marital Bed, available here. This is the most detailed book there is on halakhah and marital sexuality. In many ways it is designed to counter a lot of the stringencies that have arisen over time and which the author feels are non-halakhic and also psychologically unhealthy, thus making a happy, balanced marriage much more difficult. You can also watch the author here, here and here. I think readers will be surprised, and perhaps upset, when they learn that some of what they have been told is forbidden is actually permitted according to the standard halakhic authorities. See also what I wrote here in note 26.

I also should add that this book is not for the prudish, as it is very explicit in what it discusses. This in fact relates to one of the themes of the book, that halakhah itself is not prudish as sex is an important part of life and is discussed in halakhic works just like everything else. Having said that, I must note that there is a difference between being prudish and refraining from inappropriate slang when discussing halakhic matters. While the author is careful in this matter, he does refer to another recent book that makes this mistake. I am uncomfortable in even recording the title of this other new halakhic work by Rabbi S. Even-Shoshan, but readers can see it here.

I don’t think I am being overly fastidious if I say that in my opinion any halakhic work with a title like that should not be regarded as a legitimate text. My yardstick in this regard is if one would feel comfortable using a word when speaking with a great rabbi or when giving a lecture. Thus, while the term “oral sex” is fine (and I was even present when a well-known rav was asked a question using these words), for the life of me I can’t understand how a rabbi discussing a halakhic topic can use a slang word.[14] In fact, I don’t think that even an acceptable term like “oral sex” should be used in the title of a book, as it is needlessly provocative. This sort of provocative title is also found with another book published by Rabbi Even-Shoshan. One who wants to write about these matters should use a title like “Jewish Sexual Ethics” or “Marital Intimacy in Halakhah”, with all the details discussed in the book.[15]

6. In the last post I wrote about a dispute in understanding a text between Rabbis Israel Brodie and Shlomo Yosef Zevin on one side, and Profs. Shlomo Zalman Havlin and Israel Moshe Ta-Shma on the other. I was incorrect in this, as R. Zevin actually agrees with Havlin and Ta-Shma. Thanks to Rabbi Dovid Solomon for noting this.

[1] Hagahot Maimoniyot, Hilkhot Ishut 25:4.
[2] She’elot u-Teshuvot Maharshal, no. 41. Cf. Yam Shel Shelomo, Yevamot 4:22.
[3] Seridei Esh, vol. 3, p. 75.
[4] Kitvei ha-Gaon Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg, vol. 2, pp. 443, 447.
[5] Even Sapir (Jerusalem, 2013),  pp. 358-359.                     
[6] See R. Ovadiah Yosef, Ma’yan Omer, vol. 8, p. 173; R Nahum Stepansky, Ve-Alehu Lo Yibol, vol. 3, p. 296.
[7] Since I referred to Ve-Alehu Lo Yibol in the last note, see also in this book, vol. 3, p. 191, for another example, this time dealing with a kashrut issue. R. Auerbach thought that the matter was forbidden, but stated that if the questioner wished he could also ask R. Waldenberg for his opinion. See also ibid., p. 212, where the author asked a question of R. Waldenberg and he replied, “Do not ask me. I am stringent in this matter. Go to R. Ovadiah and ask him.”
[8] Hayyim ve-Shalom, vol. 2, no. 112. Another important source is R. Shlomo Moshe Amar, Shema Shelomo, vol. 3, Even ha-Ezer no. 19. In an email to me, Prof. Amichai Radzyner noted that in recent years many dayanim have been adopting a more liberal position regarding when a husband can be forced to give a get, and also when he is told that he is obligated to give a get even if the court cannot force him. Much important material in this regard is found in the many issues of the journal Ha-Din ve-ha-Dayan, found here. 
[9] R. Palache’s responsum is cited by many and is an important source for those who have argued for a more liberal approach to Jewish divorce law. I don’t think anyone will be surprised that R. Abraham Samuel Judah Gestetner, who in his Megilat Plaster [Monsey, 2014] makes the ridiculous argument that R. Jacob Emden’s Megilat Sefer is a Haskalah forgery, also says that this responsum of R. Palache was inserted into the volume by an unknown heretic. See ibid., p. 85.
[10] My own opinion is that no one should be appointed a dayan in the State of Israel unless he has served in the army. After all, how can a dayan understand the people appearing before him without having had such an experience? Yet I realize that this is a pipe dream.
[11] Strangely enough, he includes the beginning of the letter to R. Yitzhak Yedidyah Frankel even though, as I have mentioned, he doesn’t tell us where the letter comes from.
[12] The censorship in Kovetz Teshuvot was also noted by Avraham (Rami) Reiner in his fine article, “Kavim Rishoni’im le-Darko ha-Hikhatit shel ha-Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv,” Netuim 17 (2011), p. 78 n. 12.
[13] R. Zuckerman also mentions Lieberman’s point, and refers to him by name, in Kol Torah 12 (Adar 5718), p. 22.
[14] It is worth noting that there are some passages in rabbinic literature that if said by anyone today would be regarded as nibul peh (this is the correct transliteration, not “nivul”). See Changing the Immutable, ch. 6, for some examples. See also Megillah 25b: “R. Huna b. Manoah said in the name of R. Aha the son of R. Ika: It is permitted to an Israelite to say to a Cuthean, Take your idol and put it in your שי”ן תי”ו (buttocks).” Tanna de-Vei Eliyahu: Eliyahu Zuta, ch. 22 (end), is very explicit: ‘בני אותו מקום שאתה אוהב וכו
[15] An example of what I am talking about is Jennie Rosenfeld and David Ribner, The Newlywed Guide to Physical Intimacy. This book is explicit in its discussion, but the title is an appropriate one.


The Agunah Problem, Part 1; Incarceration and Free Speech

The Agunah Problem, Part 1; Incarceration and Free Speech
Marc B. Shapiro

1. There has been a lot of discussion recently about the International Beit Din and its rulings allowing certain marriages to be voided, thus freeing women from being agunot. As is to be expected, this beit din has been subject to strong attacks, even of a personal nature, despite the fact that the members of the beit din are recognized talmidei hakhamim. These dayanim are intent on keeping everything above board and have published the reasoning behind their rulings, thus giving opponents the opportunity to engage in halakhic argumentation.
From what I have read, the International Beit Din has three approaches to freeing agunot. One is annul the marriage based on mekah taut, i.e., there was some problem with the husband that would have prevented the wife from marrying him had she known of it. This is a perfectly valid mechanism that has been used by many poskim, such as R. Zvi Pesah Frank, R. Moshe Feinstein, and R. Avraham Shapiro. Although one can, of course, criticize the application of mekah taut to a particular case, the mechanism itself is part of standard halakhic operating procedure and the International Beit Din is well within its rights to use mekah taut when possible. 

The second approach is to find a problem in the marriage ceremony itself, meaning that the marriage never took place. For example, one can show that there were no proper witnesses to the marriage. Here again, one can disagree with particular rulings, but not with the basic approach.

The third approach is that of get zikui, which in the current context means that the beit din issues a divorce to the woman on behalf of the man, even if the man has not approved of this and even if is against his will.[1] While there has been a good deal of discussion of this approach, I can’t find on the International Beit Din’s website that any marriage has actually been dissolved by using this mechanism. Unlike the other two approaches, there is little precedent for use of a get zikui, which means that its chances of being generally accepted are nil.
The use of a get zikui is actually suggested by R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, Seridei Esh, vol. 3, no. 25. In fact, R. Weinberg’s responsum is the most detailed discussion of get zikui but surprisingly it is not included on the International Beit Din’s website. It must be noted, however, that R. Weinberg is only prepared to suggest a get zikui if the husband would want the get to be given. However, in the contemporary agunah situation the problem is that the husbands do not want to give the wives a get, and concerning these cases R. Weinberg writes: נפל היסוד של כתיבת גט מטעם זכי’
Is there another possible approach? How about a heter meah rabbanim for a married woman if she can’t get a get? I know you are thinking that this is crazy, but look at the following page, which comes from the medieval work Etz Hayyim by R. Jacob Hazan.[2] 
As you can see from the very end of the page, it states that the rabbis required a man to give a get if he contracted a marriage באיסור, which in this case means he was already committed to marry someone else. Then it says that if this man disappeared the woman can be freed with a heter meah rabbanim (actually, it says ish, not rabbanim, but I don’t want to get into that now). This is a very radical position, that a woman can be freed by a heter meah rabbanim, and it is attested to nowhere else. Not surprisingly, R. Israel Brodie, the editor of Etz Hayyim,[3] calls attention to this unusual halakhic position. R. Shlomo Yosef Zevin also refers to this novel idea.[4]
But are Rabbis Brodie and Zevin correct? Israel Moshe Ta-Shma and Shlomo Zalman Havlin say no, and see this as a serious mistake. According to them, the last case discussed in Etz Hayyim has nothing to do with the man who married באיסור but refers back to a case mentioned earlier on the page of a man who was only committed to marry a woman. If this man then disappears, מתירין הבחורה במאה איש. In other words, the woman is released from any obligation to marry the missing man, but this has nothing to do with a woman already married. I will let the readers decide for themselves who is correct.[5]
As for the problem of women not being able to get a divorce because the man refuses, there are some important points that must be made which I don’t think everyone is aware of. Today, many people assume that a woman who wants out of a marriage, for whatever reason, has that right. After all, a woman is not a prisoner and a husband should not force her to be married to him if she doesn’t want to. However, this viewpoint is very much a modern approach.[6] If you look at the standard halakhic sources you will find that there is no obligation for a man to give his wife a divorce just because she wants it. Ever since R. Gershom, the same situation is also found in reverse, namely, a husband is not allowed to divorce his wife against her will just because he no longer wishes to be married to her. This approach to ending marriage is very much in line with how secular society use to operate before the introduction of no fault divorce.
Significantly, Maimonides does require the husband to give his wife a divorce if she says she no longer wishes to live with him.[7] R. Kafih elaborates on the wisdom of Maimonides’ position, and here are some of his important words[8]:
ברוך ה’ א-להי ישראל אשר הזריח לנו את המאור הגדול הזה אשר במבטו החודר פלש למעמקי הדורות וצפה גם את דורנו הפרוץ לבשתינו ולמגנת לבבנו, אוי לעינים שכך רואות ואוי לאזנים שכך שומעות, ואלו ראו שאר חכמי הדורות את דורנו היו חותמים על פסקו של רבנו בשתי ידים. כי המציאות הוכיחה צדקת רבנו, שכל התובעת ג”פ בימינו וטוענת מאיס עלאי, לא רק עיניה נתנה באחר אלא היא כבר בחיק האחר או האחרים וחביטא קמייהו כמברכתא, ולפיכך מצוה לכוף את הבעל המתעקש בכל כפיה אפשרית כדי להפריד בין הדבקים ויפה שעה אחת קודם.
However, it is the view in opposition to Maimonides that became the standard position, and it is this view that is recorded in the Shulhan Arukh[9] and followed by batei din. According to this approach, even if a woman says she can no longer live with her husband, he is not obligated to give her a get. What this can lead to is most vividly illustrated by the movie Gett, available here to watch for free for Amazon Prime members.
I have been told that the Beth Din of America operates on the principle that if one of the parties wants a divorce, for whatever reason, and there is no chance for reconciliation, then the Beit Din will instruct the other spouse to comply. But this is not how many other batei din operate. We have to be honest and acknowledge that the problem many women face is not because the dayanim are cruel or anti-women, but that it is Jewish law itself, or rather an interpretation of Jewish law, that is preventing them from receiving their divorces. 

I feel it is necessary to stress this since we can now better appreciate why certain rabbis have attempted to find solutions within Jewish law to the contemporary agunah problem. Many on the right don’t see why this is necessary and why batei din cannot just follow Jewish law as it has operated until now instead of looking for “solutions”. These people might not realize the difficult situation this puts women in, a situation that might have been tolerable years ago but for more and more Orthodox Jews that is no longer the case. On the other hand, many on the left think that it is a simple matter to solve the agunah problem, and that it is just cruel and insensitive rabbis preventing this. This too is a distortion as the rabbis’ hands are often tied by halakhah, and this remains the case no matter how much of a “rabbinic will” they have.

Let me illustrate what I am talking about. As an example of how sentiments have changed over the centuries, here is a passage from R. Hayyim Benveniste that I have cited in two previous posts. In Keneset ha-Gedolah, Even ha-Ezer 154, Hagahot Beit Yosef no. 59, in discussing when we can force a husband to give a divorce, R. Benveniste writes:
ובעל משפט צדק ח”א סי’ נ”ט כתב דאפי’ רודף אחריה בסכין להכותה אין כופין אותו לגרש ואפי’ לו’ לו שחייב להוציא
Can anyone imagine a posek, from even the most right-wing community, advocating such a viewpoint today? The logic behind this position, as can be seen by examining the original responsum in Mishpat Tzedek, is that even if the man is running after her with the knife, we don’t assume that he will actually kill her. He must be doing it just to scare her, and that is not enough of a reason to force him to divorce her, or even to tell him that he is obligated to do so. And if we are wrong, and he really does kill her? I guess the reply would be that this isn’t anything we could have anticipated even if we saw the knife in his hand. This example shows how some poskim from prior generations made it extremely difficult for women to receive a divorce.
Let me give a few examples from more recent years. In 1967 the Supreme Rabbinic Court, consisting of Rabbis Yitzhak Nissim, Betzalel Zolty, and Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, concluded as follows.[10]
כשם שאין כופין בעל לגרש את אשתו בגלל טענת מאיס עלי, כך אין מחייבין את הבעל לגרש עקב טענה זו
This approach, which repeats itself again and again, completely undermines the assumption so many have that a man is obligated to give his wife a get when she no longer wishes to be married to him.
Look again at the conclusion of Rabbis Nissim, Zolty and Elyashiv. It couldn’t be any clearer that this woman is not an agunah. Their conclusion also contradicts the definition of agunah provided by JOFA (see here p. 22).

AGUNAH (pl: AGUNOT) A married woman who may not remarry because the death of her husband has not been verified or because (for whatever reason) she is unable to obtain a get from her husband.

It is simply not true that a woman unable to obtain a get from her husband “for whatever reason” is an agunah. I wish it were different, and I wish Maimonides’ ruling carried the day. But that is not the case, which means that an agunah has to be defined as one whose husband refuses to issue a get after ordered to do so by a beit din.
R. Zvi Hirsch Grodzinski, perhaps the leading talmudist and halakhist in the United States in the early years of the twentieth century, discusses a case where a woman committed adultery (or only claimed to have done so; the matter is not clear, but for this post I am assuming she actually did commit adultery). She then wished to get divorced from her husband.[11] She must have had some connection to Judaism as she requested that her husband give her a get. I think most people would assume that in such a case, where the woman will no longer be living with her husband, that it is essential that the husband give her a get so that she is no longer committing adultery. With the get she can repent and move on with her life. Hopefully, she will be able to find another husband and live as pious Jew.
Yet just because most of us might intuitively feel this way, this does not mean all halakhists have to agree. R. Grodzinski concludes that the husband cannot be forced to give the get. To use today’s popular language, this meant that he was allowed to keep her as an agunah for the rest of her life. Of course, R. Grodzinski would deny that the woman was an agunah. Despite the woman’s adultery, I think most people will still be troubled reading the following words from R. Grodzinski, from which we see that he saw no problem in condemning her to live the rest of her life without receiving a get.
כ”ש בנ”ד שנאסרה עליו ע”י זנות דאין כופין אותו לגרשה בגט, כיון שהיא נתנה אצבע בין שיניה, וגרמה לעצמה במעשיה הרעים והוא לא עשה און, ולמה נכוף אותו ליתן לה גט, לא תבעל לו ותוצרר אלמנות חיות כל ימיה, הלא אינה מצווה על פו”ר, וכי בשביל שהיא הולכת אחרי שרירות לבה וזנתה תחתיו נכוף אותו לגרשה
I don’t think you need to be a member of JOFA or Open Orthodox to be upset by what R. Grodzinski writes, as it probably closed off any chance of repentance on the part of the woman. He also views the withholding of the get as a suitable form of punishment for the woman. Not being obligated in the commandment to procreate, she can be kept a “living widow”.[12]
For another noteworthy example, here is the conclusion of a 1953 Jerusalem Beit Din decision, by the dayanim R. Jacob Ades, R. Bezalel Zolty, and R. Yosef Shalom Elyashiv:[13]
החשש כי האשה תצא לתרבות רעה אם הבעל לא יתן לה גט, אינו משמש יסוד לחייב את הבעל לתת לה גט
This decision from the Jerusalem Beit Din has another passage that is very troubling to me. I find it hard to believe that any Modern Orthodox beit din could conclude in this fashion, and it is precisely attitudes such as this that convinced women that the rabbinic courts in Israel were stacked against them.[14]
הא דברועה זונות יש לחייבו לתת לה גט, היינו היכא שהאשה היתה רוצה לחיות אתו, אלמלא שהבעל הוא רועה זונות, במקרה זה יש מקום לחייבו לגרשה כשהיא דורשת גט, משום שרועה זונות יאבד הון וסופו לא יהיה בידו לפרנסה, וגם משום שעצם היותו רועה זונות נוגע לה שהוא גורע מעונתה, וגם יש חשש של סכנה לחיות אתו, אבל במקרה שהאשה מורדת בבעלה ולא רוצה לחיות אתו בגלל איזו סבה שהיא, ואחרי זה נהיה הבעל רועה זונות אף שיש עבירה בידו, מכל מקום אין לחייבו משום זה לתת לה גט, כיון שהיא מורדת בו הרי הוא פטור ממזונותיה ושוב אין החשש שרועה זונות יאבד הון ולא יהיה בידו לפרנסה, וגם אין הטעם שברועה זונות הדבר נוגע לה שהוא גורע מעונתה וגם יש חשש סכנה לחיות אתו, דהלא היא מורדת בו ולא רוצה בכלל לחיות אתו.
What is a woman supposed to do in a case like this? After learning that her husband frequented prostitutes she had even more reason not to want to return to him, and yet the beit din held that in such a case the husband did not have to give her a get since her initial reason for wanting to be divorced was something else. Again we see that a man can, if he chooses, prevent his wife from being free.
Also of interest are the three reasons the court suggests why a woman would not be happy if her husband was going to prostitutes: 1. He will be spending their money, 2. He will be using them as his sexual outlet and will not want to sleep with his wife, 3. He could pass on a disease to her.
While it is true that a wife’s anger will include reasons 1 and 3, these are not the main reasons she will be upset. For example, the husband could be as rich as a former New York governor and have used protection, yet the wife will still be devastated for the simple reason that his actions were a terrible breach of trust. More than anything else, modern marriages are based on trust. As for reason 2, it is hard to imagine that there is any modern woman who, if she discovered that her husband was going to prostitutes, would want to be divorced because of this reason.
Where did the dayanim get these three reasons, as surprisingly, they don’t tell us? I found reason 1 cited in the Beit Yosef, Even ha-Ezer 154 (towards the end, s.v. מצאתי כתוב בשם ספר אגודה). It originates in R. Alexander Susslein Ha-Kohen’s Sefer Agudah: Yevamot, no. 77.[15] Reasons 2 and 3 are found in the Arukh ha-Shulhan, Even ha-Ezer 154:16.[16]
These reasons undoubtedly reflect a different understanding of marriage, one which does not see the modern romantic notion of trust as the centerpiece of a marriage. Since people’s psychology has changed over the centuries, I don’t think that the reasons offered by medieval authorities operating in a completely different environment can determine what modern women will regard as “deal-breakers” when it comes to marriage. If a modern woman has different expectations of what marriage is than what people had years ago, I would think that this must be taken into account by a beit din in determining what situations require ordering the husband to give a get.
In fact, Sefer Agudah cites another reason why the court compels a husband visiting prostitutes to divorce his wife.
פעם אחת בא מעשה לידי לאה טוענת על ראובן שהיה רועה זונות והוא כופר. ופסקתי שאם תביא עדים שהוא כן יוציא ויתן כתובה. איבעית אימא קרא, איבעית אימא גמרא, איבעית אימא סברא . . . ואיבעית אימא סברא דגרע מכל הנהו דפרק המדיר.
In the final words just quoted (and underlined), Sefer Agudah is referring to this Mishnah in Ketubot 77a:

ואלו שכופין אותו להוציא מוכה שחין ובעל פוליפוס והמקמץ והמצרף נחושת והבורסי בין שהיו עד שלא נישאו ובין משנישאו נולדו ועל כולן אמר רבי מאיר אע”פ שהתנה עמה יכולה היא שתאמר סבורה הייתי שאני יכולה לקבל ועכשיו איני יכולה לקבל. 

The following are compelled to divorce [their wives]: A man who is afflicted with boils, or has a polypus, or gathers [objectionable matter] or is a coppersmith or a tanner, whether they were [in such conditions or positions] before they married or whether they arose after they had married and concerning all these R. Meir said: Although the man made a condition with her [that she acquiesces in his defects] she may nevertheless plead, “I thought I could endure him, but now I cannot endure him.”

This final reason given by Sefer Agudah is based on sevara and not on a rabbinic text.[17] I don’t know why it was not cited by the dayanim, but it supports the point I made that the beit din need not be bound by examples given in the Talmud or other rabbinic sources. Rather, it can evaluate the current psychology of women and how they regard marriage.

For another example of how different current understandings are from what they used to be, look at this responsum of R. Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi, Hakham Zvi, no. 133.
It deals with a man who committed adultery with a married woman, and his wife therefore wishes to divorce him. In such a case, contemporary Orthodox Jews of all persuasions would agree with the general view in society, that if the wife can forgive her husband and remain married, then it is no one else’s business what goes on in their lives. However, contemporary Orthodox Jews would also agree that if the betrayal is so devastating that the wife will never be able to trust her husband again, and she wants a divorce, then the husband should be required to give the divorce. To paraphrase what the Sefer Agudah said, this is certainly on the level of the things for which the Mishnah in Ketubot requires a husband to grant his wife if she requests if.
Yet the Hakham Zvi refuses to require the man to issue the divorce. One of the things he says is that even the Sefer Agudah would agree that in order to force a divorce the husband has to have been given prior warning not to visit prostitutes. In the case the Hakham Zvi was asked about, he says that there is another reason not to require the get, and that is that the man claims that he wishes to repent. So here we have a case where a man commits adultery, his wife cannot accept this and requests a divorce, and the man refuses and says he will repent. Today people would say that this woman is an agunah, as she is trapped in a marriage she doesn’t want to be in with a husband who cheated on her. Yet the Hakham Zvi rules in favor of the man that no divorce is required.
One can find numerous examples where poskim rule similarly. Here, for instance, is a decision of the Tel Aviv Beit Din.[18]
I think people will be shocked to learn that a woman who wants to divorce her husband because he went to a prostitute is being told by the beit din that she must stay with him if he promises not to do it again. But this only illustrates that the so-called agunah problem is inherent to the halakhic system, which according to the dominant interpretation does not recognize that a woman should be able to exit a marriage if she feels she can no longer live with her husband. There are literally hundreds of examples in the responsa literature and beit din proceedings where a woman is told that even though she wants to be divorced, there is no obligation on her husband to give her a get. Isn’t this where poskim must put their efforts to see if changes can be made? What a woman will tolerate today is not necessarily the same thing as what the Sages and earlier poskim assumed, and this is a point that was already made by halakhic authorities in prior generations.[19]
To further illustrate my point, R. Joseph Karo states that even if a husband is beating his wife he can’t be forced to divorce her.[20] She will obviously live apart from him, but R. Karo does not accept the view of some earlier authorities that the husband can be forced to issue her a divorce. This means that the woman is what we would today call an agunah, but the problem we are facing is not just about an evil man but arises from the halakhah itself. As we have just seen, according to R. Karo it is the halakhah that prevents us from forcing a husband to divorce his wife, even if he beats her.
In this case, R. Moses Isserles strongly rejects R. Karo’s opinion and states that we can force a man beating his wife to divorce her.[21] The passage I have underlined is of particular significance regarding the point I made previously.[22]
ואיני רואה בזב דבריו כלל דכדאי הם הגאונים לסמוך עליהם כל שכן שהרמב”ן ומהר”מ הסכימו בתשובותיהן בענין הכאת אשתו והביאו ראיות ברורות לדבריהם גם הסברא מסכמת עמהן ומה שלא הוזכרו בדברי הפוסקים אפשר לומר שהיה פשוט בעיניהם וקל וחומר הוא מהאומר איני זן וכו’
In deciding which opinion to follow, that of R. Karo or R. Isserles, I think that a point made by R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg is relevant. He states that if there is a dispute among earlier halakhic authorities, we should reject the view that will bring the Torah into disrepute in people’s eyes.[23]
ואגלה להדר”ג [הגרא”י אונטרמן] מה שבלבי: שמקום שיש מחלוקת הראשונים צריכים הרבנים להכריע נגד אותה הדעה, שהיא רחוקה מדעת הבריות וגורמת לזלזול וללעג נגד תוה”ק

Can anyone deny that in the dispute between R. Karo and R. Isserles, the sort of consideration R. Weinberg was referring to would force dayanim, even Sephardic dayanim, to decide in accord with R. Isserles? In today’s day and age, it would be simply incomprehensible to people that a man who regularly beats his wife cannot be forced to give her a get.
There is another noteworthy decision given by the Supreme Rabbinic Court, again consisting of Rabbis Yitzhak Nissim, Bezalel Zolty, and Yosef Shalom Elyashiv.[24] The case was that a married man left his first wife and married another wife. The problem was that he never divorced the first wife, making him a bigamist. Furthermore, he refused to give his first wife a get. The woman therefore turned to the Beit Din asking them to force him to do so. The conclusion of the Beit Din was that while in this case, as opposed to the ones we saw earlier, the man was indeed obligated to divorce his wife, nevertheless the Beit Din could not force him to do so. Since the Beit Din ruled that he was obligated to give the get, his not doing so would make the woman an agunah in the eyes of the court. But since the Beit Din felt that it was unable to force the man to issue the get, who knows how long (maybe her entire life) the woman was forced to remain an agunah. Unfortunately for the woman, R. Shaul Yisraeli, also a member of the Supreme Rabbinic Court, was not one of the dayanim in this case, since he wrote to R. Elyashiv arguing that the court should indeed force the husband to give the get.[25]
Since I mentioned R. Weinberg earlier in this post, take a look at this responsum from Seridei Esh, vol. 3, no. 29.
R. Weinberg was asked about a man who was sent to jail for sexual abuse of young girls. Understandably, his wife wanted a divorce. The rabbi didn’t know what to do and therefore wrote to R. Weinberg. He mentions that he never had to deal with a case of sexual abuse and doesn’t know how to relate to it from a Jewish law perspective. He also assumes that there was no actual sexual relations but only fondling.
R. Weinberg, relying on the Hakham Zvi, states that the husband cannot be forced to divorce his wife, since he was never warned and there was no testimony in a beit din. He also says that one cannot rely on testimony given in a secular court, and makes the valid point that during that time, the Nazi era, there was a great deal of anti-Semitism and pleasure in making the Jews look bad.
None of this could have been of much comfort to the woman. We have no idea about her relationship with her husband. She might have already suspected him of being a pervert, or when he was arrested it might have clarified certain things that she wondered about. She might have confronted him after the arrest and seeing his reaction to her questions she knew he was guilty. Whatever the case, she no longer wished to remain married to someone she believed to be a sexual abuser. R. Weinberg was as open-minded a posek as one could imagine, yet even he was of the opinion that the husband could not be compelled to divorce his wife.
Today, if someone accused of sexual abuse refused to issue his wife a get, rabbis in the United States would call for protests in front of his house. Yet R. Weinberg does not see this as warranted. I think one of the most difficult things for people to grasp in his responsum, and in that of the Hakham Zvi, is the need for the husband to be warned. We are not talking about sentencing him in a beit din, where warning is a technical requirement, but whether or not the woman wants to live with him any more. In the two cases we have just seen, the issues of concern to the wives are one man’s visits to a prostitute and the other’s sexual abuse of children. Neither wife cared if her husband was “warned” in beit din since the offense is the same to her either before or after the “warning”.
Nevertheless, the notion that the husband has to be warned is found elsewhere as well. For example, regarding a husband who beats his wife, R. Moses Isserles, Shulhan Arukh, Even ha-Ezer 154:3, states that according to some such a man can be forced to give his wife a get. The Vilna Gaon explains, in words that lead to a liberal understanding of when a man can be forced to divorce his wife:
יש אומרים שכופין כו’: שאפילו על שאר דברים שאין לה צער כל כך כגון המדיר שלא תלך לבית אביה או לבית האבל כו’ [כתובות עא ע”ב] או שלא תשאל נפה וכברה כו’ [שם, עב ע”א], כל שכן במצערה בגופה. תשובת הרמב”ן סימן ק”ב.
Yet after stating that some say that a man who beats his wife can be forced to divorce her (an opinion he himself held, as we saw earlier in the quotation from Darkhei Moshe [26]), R. Isserles adds that a prior warning is required: ובלבד שמתרין בו תחילה פעם אחת או שתים.

Now that we have seen some of the real halakhic difficulties that stand at the center of the so-called agunah problem, in the next post I will offer a simple suggestion that I think can solve at least some of the cases.

2. Someone who read my earlier posts that discussed various punishments ordered by Jewish courts asked me about a quotation from R. Shlomo Yaffe, dean of the Institute of American and Talmudic Law, which offers a different perspective. See here. Before even getting to the particular quotation, let me say that I have real problems with some of what was said (or at least reported to have been said) at the recent conference on Jewish law reported on the link just given. For example, Rabbi Yaffe was asked, “If there were no First Amendment would we still have the freedom of speech?” The only correct answer has to be that without the First Amendment our freedom of speech will be endangered, and it could even become illegal to speak publicly about certain laws in the Torah (e.g., homosexuality), as this could be categorized as “hate speech”. But instead, Rabbi Yaffe replied: “Absolutely . . . We know that God had freedom of speech. He spoke and the world came into being. . . . We have free will and the ability to express ourselves.” How does this bit of darshanut answer a serious question about the importance of the First Amendment?
Professor Jeremy Waldron stated at the conference, “People have a right to be protected from vicious defamations upon them on account of their religion. So if somebody says, ‘All Muslims are terrorists,’ we believe [Muslims] have a right to be protected against that defamation.”[27] This is exactly why we need a First Amendment and why free speech must be protected. If it became illegal for some idiot to say, “All Muslims are terrorists,” then the next thing would be punishing people for saying that “Muslims are more likely to support terrorism than adherents of other religions,” and bans on the drawing of Muhammad’s picture and insulting the Prophet would not be far behind because after all, these are viewed by Muslims as defamations of their religion. (Muslims in Europe have already demanded that those insulting Muhammad not be protected by free speech laws.)
In other words, giving an inch in this matter would open up the floodgates and would be the end of free speech in America. As I already mentioned, this would also be a big problem for the traditional Jewish community, since it is only the constitutional guarantee of free speech that prevents “progressive” groups from legislating against “hate speech” found in religious communities. Based on the quote from Waldron, I would assume that he is a supporter of the “speech codes” that at one time were so popular at universities, until people began to realize the stifling effect they actually had on free speech. For those who are having trouble remembering what they learnt so many years ago: The First Amendment was created precisely in order to protect unpopular speech.
The particular quote from Rabbi Yaffe that I was asked about is the following: “In general, Jewish law and tradition are extremely opposed to incarceration as fundamentally immoral unless it is to protect someone from inflicting real harm on another human being.” What this means is that incarceration is only designed to protect the innocent, but Jewish law and tradition does not recognize incarceration as a means of punishment. This statement is simply false. Let us remember that incarceration must be seen as an improvement over the physical punishments I have detailed in earlier posts. Given the choice between lashing people and mutilating them, certainly incarceration is preferable. (See also what I wrote here.) As for incarceration itself, the Rambam states as follows in Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Sanhedrin 24:9:
יש לכפות ידיים ורגליים ולאסור בבית האסורין
What this means is that a judge may bind a prisoner’s hands and feet and may imprison him. Punishment is one of the reasons that this is done, as Maimonides explains ibid. 24:10. Although there is nothing in the Torah about imprisonment, it was used as a punishment throughout Jewish history.[28] Simhah Assaf, who writes a good deal about Jewish prisons in Ha-Onshin Aharei Hatimat ha-Talmud, pp. 25ff, informs us that such prisons were found in Babylonia, Spain, Italy, Moravia, Poland, and Lithuania. One can also add Hungary and Bohemia to this list. According to Assaf, it is only in France and Germany that we don’t find Jewish prisons.[29] In addition to actual prisons, we also find something else: 

A symbolic imprisonment, which served as a means for expiation as well as one of humiliation and embarrassment, consisted of shackling a suspected murderer, for example, during a service. He was to have his hands as well as his body chained. This was apparently a tradition received from R. Judah the Pious.[30]

[1] See R. J. David Bleich’s discussion of get zikui in Tradition 35:4 (2001), available here. See also the responsum of R. Solomon David Kahane in Sefer ha-Yovel Karnot Tzaddik (Kefar Habad, 1992), pp. 253ff. For the Safed beit din’s decision to issue a get to a woman whose husband was in a vegetative state, see here, and see the beit din’s defense of its decision here. An entire book was published in opposition to this decision; see here.
[2] Vol. 2, p. 236.
[3] Vol. 3, p. xi.
[4] See Sinai 60 (1967), p. 319.
[5] See Havlin in Ha-Ma’yan (Tevet 5728), pp. 33-34 n. 14.
[6] In previous posts I have cited numerous examples that show that the notion that men and women are equal is also a modern idea. The standard traditional view was that a woman is secondary to her husband and under his authority. I mention this here only because I recently found a very interesting formulation that is relevant to what we will be discussing. In R. Hayyim Aryeh Leib ben Joseph Hayyim, Sha’ar Bat Rabim (Warsaw, 1900), parashat Tazria, p. 24a-b, he explains why a woman, who is “enslaved to her husband as a slave,” does not choose to run away like other slaves do.
והוא ימשול בך: לעבוד עבודתו. ואעפ”י שהיא משועבדת לבעל כעבד ודרך העבד לברוח מאדונו כדי שלא להשתעבד מ”מ גזר ה’ עלי’ שתחפוץ להשתעבד לבעלה כשפחה מדה כנגד מדה כי חוה נתנה גם לבעלה ויאכל במצותה לכן נענשה שלא תהיה היא עוד מצוה עליו אלא הוא יצוה עלי’ כל רצונו כן כתב רמב”ן.

[7] Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Ishut 14:8.
[8] Sefer Nashim, vol. 1, pp. 306-307.
[9] See Shulhan Arukh, Even ha-Ezer 77:2.
[10] Piskei Din shel Batei Din ha-Rabaniyim be-Yisrael, vol.  7, p. 3 (emphasis in original).
[11] Ha-Measef 9 (5664), nos. 1, 24.
[12] Ha-Measef 9 (5664), p. 1b. Many of his words are taken from She’elot u-Teshuvot ha-Rosh 43:8.
[13] Piskei Din shel Batei Din ha-Rabaniyim be-Yisrael, vol. 1, p. 139. R. Eliezer Waldenberg had a different approach. See Tzitz Eliezer, vol. 4, p. 109:
מכל האמור יש כר נרחב לדון בדבר כפיה לגרש במקום שישנו בטענת המאיס עלי אמתלא מבוררת, ובית הדין רואה צורך השעה לכוף את הבעל לגרש כדי שלא תצא האשה לתרבות רעה.
[14] Piskei Din shel Batei Din ha-Rabaniyim be-Yisrael, vol. 1, p. 141. A decision directly opposed to this was given in 1979 by the Supreme Rabbinical Court. The dayanim were R. Mordechai Eliyahu, R. Joseph Kafih, and R. Shaul Yisraeli. See Piskei Din shel Batei Din ha-Rabaniyim be-Yisrael, vol. 12, p. 25:
אפילו אם נעשה “רועה זונות” לאחר שאשתו עזבה אותו אין לחייבה לחזור ולחיות אמו.

[15] The Sefer Agudah’s ruling is cited in R. Moses Isserles, Shulhan Arukh, Even ha-Ezer 154:1. However, R. Isserles does not provide the Sefer Agudah’s reason, only his conclusion that a man who visits prostitutes can be forced to divorce his wife.
[16] It appears that the Arukh ha-Shulhan derived reason 2 from a formulation in the Sefer Agudah. However, R. Yosef Goldberg argues that the Arukh ha-Shulhan is mistaken and that the Sefer Agudah cannot be seen as a source for this reason. See Goldberg, “Teviat Ishah le-Hayev et Ba’alah be-Get,” Zekhor le-Avraham  (2000), vol. 2, pp. 669ff.
[17] See also R. Simeon ben Zemah Durah, She’elot u-Teshuvot Tashbetz, vol. 2, no. 8:
ואפילו לכוף אותו להוציא יש לדון מקל וחומר דבעל פוליפוס, דהשתא מפני ריח הפה כופין, מפני צער תדיר שהוא מר ממות לא כל שכן.

[18] Piskei Din shel Batei ha-Din ha-Rabaniyim be-Yisrael, vol. 8, p. 254.
[19] For a detailed discussion of the matter, see R. Avishai Teherani, Amudei Mishpat, vol. 1, Even ha-Ezer, no. 12. R. Teherani’s own conclusion is as follows:
המכה את אשתו, ואין סכנת נפשות לאשה, אין כופין אותו להוציא, שיש לחוש שלא נכשל בגט מעושה, אכן אם יש לאשה סכנת נפשות אמיתית, כופין אותו לגרשה בטרם יהרגנה, ויש לדיין ליתן עיניו בזה הרבה, כי כבר היו מעשים מעולם [!] ברצח האשה
(emphasis added). This is hardly a position that will find a sympathetic ear among most contemporary Orthodox Jews. R. Hanan Aflalo, Asher Hanan, vols. 3-4, no. 77, adopts an entirely different tone. With regard to the matter of a woman who wants a divorce because her husband visited prostitutes, unlike the decisions already mentioned, R Aflalo shows a real understanding of how a modern woman relates to this sort of thing. He writes as follows (p. 421):  
מאסה בו על עצם המחשבה שגופו היה דבק בגופן של נשים אחרות במעשה הניאוף והטינוף שבו, ובכך נגעלת מעצם המחשבה לכך לחזור עמו לחיי אישות ולשלום בית. ובאמת שמילים וטענות אלו יש בהם ממש.
R. Uriel Lavi, av beit din of the Safed beit din that issued the controversial get to a woman whose husband was in a vegetative state (see note 1), and who has been villified in the haredi world and through their pressure kept off the Supreme Rabbinic Court (see here), has the same sympathetic approach as R. Aflalo. See his Ateret Devorah, vol. 2, p. 644:
חיוב הבעל בגט הוא מפני המאיסות שבמעשיו. אמנם בעלמא באומרת מאיס עלי אין כופין גירושין, אך כשמאיסות זו היא כה חמורה ונובעת ממעשיו הנלוזים של הבעל, ואין זו בעיה חריגה של האשה, אלא מאיסות המוכרת והמקובלת בנסיבות אלו אצל כל הנשים, יש לכפות את הבעל.
It is precisely rabbis with this type of modern understanding that can provide a solution to the problem we have been discussing, as we will see in the next post.
[20] Beit Yosef, Even ha-Ezer 154 end, s.v.מצאתי בתשובת רבינו שמחה 
[21] Darkhei Moshe, Even ha-Ezer 154:21 (The text is from the Machon Yerushalayim edition which has added material from Darkhei Moshe ha-Arokh).
[22] R. Isserles also adds the following which is relevant to recent events in which a number of people were sentenced to prison for kidnapping and torturing men who refused to give a get.
נראה דטוב שלא לכופו ליתן גט אלא בדרך זה להחרימו או לתופסו בידי גוים או בשוטים שלא להכותה או שיוציא ויתן גט ובדרך זה לא מיקרי כפייה על הגט רק לקיים מה שמחוייב לעשות.
[23] Kitvei ha-Gaon Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, vol. 1, p. 60.
[24] Piskei Din shel Batei ha-Din ha-Rabaniyim be-Yisrael, vol. 7, p. 65.
[25] Mishpetei Shaul, no. 34
[26] For a detailed discussion regarding whether the beit din can force a wife beater to divorce his wife, see R. Isaac ben Walid, Va-Yomer Yitzhak, vol. 1, no. 135.
[27] If someone said, “All NRA members are terrorists,” would Waldron think that NRA members also have a right to be protected against that defamation? And if not, why not? What possible legal distinction is there between belonging to a religion and belonging to an organization?
[28] See R. Yehoshua Inbal, Torah she-Ba’al Peh (Jerusalem, 2015), p. 215.
[29] Assaf, Ha-Onshin, p. 25.
[30] Eric Zimmer, Harmony and Discord (New York, 1970), p. 93.


New Writings from R. Kook and Assorted Comments, part 3

New Writings from R. Kook and Assorted Comments, part 3

Marc B. Shapiro

Continued from here.
As I have dealt in this post with Maimonides and the Genesis story, it is as good a time as any to mention what I believe it to be an error that is repeated very often. I saw it most recently in Nathan Aviezer’s article “When Torah and Science Collide” (Tradition, Fall 2009). He writes as follows:

Did God create the universe? Seemingly a simple question, with the answer given in the very first verse of the Torah. Not so, writes Rambam (Guide 2:25), asserting that Torah hashkafa does not require one to believe that God created the universe. But what about the first chapter of Bereshit, which clearly states that God did create the universe? Rambam writes that one may interpret this chapter metaphorically, as an allegory that never happened, because “the paths of interpretation are not closed to us.”

What Maimonides actually says in Guide 2:25 is that it is a religious requirement to believe that God created the universe. He goes so far as to say that if it could somehow be proven that God did not create the universe, this would give the lie to miracles and Torah itself. In Maimonides’ words: “If the philosophers would succeed in demonstrating eternity as Aristotle understands it, the Law as a whole would become void.” In other words, Torah Judaism stands or falls on this issue, for acceptance of Aristotle’s view means the end of miracles, prophecy, and Torah. Fortunately for Rambam, he believes that eternity of the universe cannot be proven, because if it could be proven, that would be the end of Torah Judaism.[1]

What else does Maimonides say in this chapter? He says two things. 1. If Plato’s view, that the world was created from eternal matter,[2] were to be proven, then this would not destroy the Torah, and in fact the Torah could be interpreted in accordance with this.[3] 2. Even Aristotelian eternity of the world could be reinterpreted in accordance with the biblical verses, just as the verses that speak of God’s corporeality are reinterpreted. This is the context in which Maimonides says that “the paths of interpretation are not closed to us.” Maimonides then explains that because of this, we do not reject eternity of the world because of the simple meaning of the biblical verses (which could be reinterpreted). Rather, we reject it because 1. It has not been proven (and indeed Maimonides does not think that it can be proven). 2. Eternity of the world destroys the foundation of the Torah.

In truth, Aviezer’s understanding is not unique to him but is shared by many. They all assume that if Aristotelian eternity was proven, Maimonides would then reinterpret the Torah in accordance with this, for he says that he is indeed able to do so. This viewpoint is held by some of the top Maimonides scholars alive today. From greats of previous years who hold this position, I can add R. Elijah Benamozegh:[4]

ומה מאד הפריז על המדה הרמב”ם שכתב במורה (ח”ב פרק כה) שאלו נתבאר הקדמות במופת הגיוני היינו מחויבים לפרש הכתובים באופן שלא יכחישו המופת
Centuries earlier, Ralbag advanced the same (what I believe to be incorrect) viewpoint.[5] See Milhamot ha-Shem 6:2:1:
גם כן אמר שאם היה מתבאר חיוב קדמות העולם מדרך העיון שכבר יוכרח לפרש מה שבא בתורה שיראה חולק עם זה הדעת באופן שיאות אל העיון.
As I mentioned, all Maimonides says is that if eternity is proven, the words of the Torah could be reinterpreted to accord with eternity. But according to Maimonides, there would be no reason for doing so. This is so for if eternity could somehow be proven, that would be the end of Judaism, as it would be the end of both miracles and divine providence and thus no possibility of a revelation of the Torah. Thankfully, Maimonides believes that eternity cannot be proven.

I don’t understand why so many scholars—whose knowledge of Maimonides is much greater than mine— interpret this chapter to mean that Maimonides would accept Aristotelian eternity when he says specifically that he wouldn’t. (Again, I am speaking of the exoteric meaning of Maimonides’ words, not about any esoteric interpretation of Maimonides.) When I challenged a number of these scholars on this point, they all acknowledged that Maimonides doesn’t actually say that he would accept eternity. However, in defense of what they wrote they stated that if eternity really was proven, what choice then would Maimonides have? He would have to reinterpret the Torah to agree with eternity since we can never imagine him rejecting the Torah. In this, I agree with them. Faced with the reality that eternity has been proven, and despite what he says in Guide 2:25, he would be forced to reinterpret the Torah. Of this, I have no doubt, simply because Maimonides was a very religious man and I can’t imagine him living without the Torah. Yet my point is that he does not say this in the Guide. In fact, he says the exact opposite, that the Torah cannot co-exist with eternity.[6]
Since I have mentioned Aviezer’s article, let me discuss some other things he says. Aviezer writes:

[Stephen J.] Gould was preceded in this approach by Galileo, who is credited with the famous aphorism: “The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, whereas science teaches us how the heavens go.” (I can’t believe that Galileo really said these words because, while snappy in English, they make no sense in Latin or Italian.)
I don’t know on what basis Aviezer insists that these words don’t make sense in Latin or Italian. If someone said them in Latin or Italian, why shouldn’t they make sense? In fact, the original text is Italian, and is found in Galileo’s “Letter to Grand Duchess Christina.” In it, Galileo writes:

I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree [Cardinal Baronius]: ‘That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.’”[7]

Here is the original Italian, and one can indeed see that the words are snappy:

“Io qui direi che quello che intesi da persona ecclesiastica, costituita in eminentissimo grado, ciò è l’intenzione delle Spirito Santo essere d’insegnarci come si vadia al cielo, e non come vadia il cielo.”

Even Pope John Paul II adapted this saying, in a passage that looks like it could have been written by R. Hirsch,[8] R. Kook, or R Natan Slifkin:

The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. The Sacred Book likewise wishes to tell men that the world was not created as the seat of the gods, as was taught by other cosmogonies and cosmologies, but was rather created for the service of man and the glory of God. Any other teaching about the origin and make-up of the universe is alien to the intentions of the Bible, which does not wish to teach how heaven was made but how one goes to heaven.[9]

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, whose prolific writing continues to astound, has recently said the same thing: “There is a difference between science and religion. Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. The Bible simply isn’t interested in how the universe came into being.”[10] R. Chaim Navon put the matter as follow[11]:

התורה אינה מתעניינת במידע מדעי, אלא בערכים רוחניים. לא כך כך אכפת לתורה מנוסחאות מדעיות; אכפת לה הרבה יותר מדרכי התנהגותו של האדם, מאורחות חייו ובעיקר מעבודתו של האדם את בוראו. משום כך, לא כל כך חשוב לדעת האם האדם היה שייך פעם לעולם החיות; מה שחשוב באמת הוא האם האדם הצליח להיחלץ משם.

In other words, the Torah has nothing to tell us when it comes to science. Therefore, there can be no such thing as a conflict between Torah and science.[12] With such an approach, all of the reconciliations between science and the Book of Genesis (e.g., a “day” is really an eon, the dinosaurs are from prior worlds, etc.), which for awhile were popular in Orthodoxy, are really missing the point. The old apologetics assumed that the Torah was in accord with science, and was even teaching scientific truths. It was just that we had to read the text differently than it had been read until now. Yet as with R. Kook, from Sacks’ and Navon’s perspective the creation story is a myth, namely, a tale designed to impart cosmic truths.[13] Although this position has been argued most forcefully by Slifkin, and has found a very receptive audience at synagogues (as I can attest, having tag-teamed with Slifkin as scholars-in-residence), are there any high schools that teach the Creation story in this fashion?

Returning to Aviezer, he writes:

But what about the geocentric theory of the solar system? Wasn’t that scientific theory universally believed for nearly 1500 years, until finally shown by Copernicus and Galileo to be wrong and then replaced by the very different heliocentric theory? The answer is “no!” The geocentric theory was not a scientific theory at all; it was pure theology, unsupported by any scientific evidence. The theory was universally accepted for over a millennium on religious grounds alone. The beliefs of the Church demanded that man’s place must be at the center of the universe.

This is completely incorrect. First of all, the Ptolemaic system of geocentrism was as much science as the Copernican system, and had nothing to do with theology.[14] Secondly, geocentrism long predates the second-century Ptolemy. Aristotle himself was a geocentrist, and in Aristotle’s view, the most important part of the world is not the center! “For the medieval mind, under the influence of Aristotle, the earth as the center of the world was not a position of honor. On the contrary, as Prof. Lovejoy put it, it was ‘the place farthest removed from the Empyrean, the bottom of creation, to which its dregs and baser elements sank. The actual center, indeed, was Hell; in the spatial sense, the medieval world was literally diabolocentric.’”[15]

Aviezer “blames” geocentrism on the Church, and yet Maimonides (and every other Jewish and Islamic thinker of his day) was a geocentrist. Maimonides also had a strong anti-anthropocentric view, as he did not regard man as the central purpose of the universe. This view of Maimonides was an important source for Norman Lamm in his famous article “The Religious Implications of Extraterrestrial Life.” [16] Only those who are convinced that they are the center of the universe would be troubled by the discovery of other inhabited worlds, and that is why Maimonides’ outlook came in so handy for Lamm.

Returning to Maimonides and creation, I want to call attention to a very interesting article by R Meir Triebitz. It appears in Reshimu, vol. 1 no. 2 (2008), the journal of the so-called Hashkafa Circle. See here.

As explained in the preface to the first volume, this “Circle” aims to fill a gap in haredi yeshiva education by focusing on the classics of medieval Jewish philosophy which are pretty much ignored in contemporary haredi society. We thus have a situation where great talmudists and halakhists ignore major themes of Jewish philosophy, which were dealt with at length by the medieval sages. When there are theological discussions in haredi literature, they invariably reflect a very conservative position, often at variance with the major rishonim. I already touched on this issue in my conclusion to The Limits of Orthodox Theology, and if Triebitz and his group are successful this situation could be reversed.

However, they won’t be successful for the simple reason that the outlook of the medieval Jewish philosophers is opposed in so many ways to haredi ideology that it will never become part of the haredi curriculum. In fact, I don’t think it is possible to be a serious student of medieval Jewish philosophy and at the same time identify with any of the regnant haredi worldviews. (You might dress the part and send your children to haredi schools, but that is not the same thing as identifying with a worldview.) This is so for many reasons, primary of which is that medieval Jewish philosophy is about the search for truth. The papal model of haredi society, where the quest for truth is subordinated to the dictates of the religious authority figure, is diametrically opposed to what our great medieval philosophers taught.

Furthermore, the haredi notion that contemporary gedolim can sit in judgment of the views of the Rambam and other greats, and determine that their views are no longer “acceptable”, will be rejected out of hand by all followers of the philosophic tradition. It is therefore not surprising that when Artscroll was presented with a plan to publish Maimonides’ Guide in English, the response was a resounding no, with the explanation given that the Guide should not be found in a haredi home.[17]

Until now, three issues of Reshimu have been published, all available on its website, and it is refreshing to see haredi writers grappling with important philosophical problems. While in many cases the writers are unaware of basic academic studies in these areas, and the journals could be edited in a better fashion (eliminating typos and stylistic problems), there is a great deal to learn from some of the essays. This is especially the case for Rabbi Triebitz, who because of his wide-ranging knowledge and keen insight deserves to be better known. I encourage all to read his articles and those who have time can also watch numerous videos of his shiurim here.

In his article referred to above, Triebitz offers a commentary on Guide 2:13, where Maimonides discusses the various views of creation. It is a very challenging essay which, unless I have overlooked an academic article, presents a new perspective, not an easy task in Maimonidean scholarship. In this essay Triebitz takes his place with the esoteric readers of Maimonides. He concludes that Maimonides does not really believe in creation ex nihilo, since for Maimonides this is a mental concept, not a scientific fact. From a scientific perspective, Maimonides adopts Aristotle’s view of the eternity of the world, but this is not something that could be communicated to the non-sophisticated reader. However, those who grasp what Maimonides is saying will realize that “Creation ex nihilo is not a contending theory of creation . . . but rather a product of man’s thought which introduces a dimension other than the objective physical world pictured by Aristotelian physics.” (p. 145)

Needless to say, this approach of Triebitz also turns Maimonides’ fourth principle, which insists on creation ex nihilo (including the creation of time), into a “necessary belief.” Here is another selection from the essay:

Rambam is therefore intimating that in order to posit God’s complete incorporeality it is necessary to extend the physical world ad infinitum. Since physical infinity is impossible, it is time which must be infinite. Monotheism demands eternity. Law and ethics, however, are based upon Divine free will and Divine free will in turn demands creation ex nihilo. Since creation ex nihilo, as Rambam has already pointed out, cannot have taken place at any time, it cannot be a theory of creation. The antinomy between eternity theories, particularly Aristotle’s, and the irreducible creation ex nihilo is in fact no other than the dichotomy between ontology and ethics (p. 161).

Triebitz returns to Maimonides and creation in Reshimu vol. 1 no. 3 (2009) and once again explains that in his opinion Maimonides doesn’t really believe in creation ex nihilo.

As a consequence, while Rambam’s discussion of creation begins by asserting that the opinion of Torat Moshe is that the world was created by God ex nihilo, by the time that discussion concludes eighteen chapters later (II. 30), he makes the subtle point, casually dropped as if merely incidental, that one of the terms referring to creation in the Torah (qinyan, qeil qoneh) itself “tends toward the road of the belief in . . . eternity” (71b/358). To the astute ear honed to his method of paradoxical exposition, the underlying thrust is clear: He begins with the assertion he believes to be obvious and most fundamental—namely, creatio ex nihilo—after which, following long diversions, he introduces the contrary premise—creatio continua aeterna—by which time the less aware, less initiated reader will likely not notice the subtle discrepancy and the controversial nuance therein entailed: that creation ex nihilo is not creation in time, chiddush nifla. (p. 82)[18]

I now want to return to the Creation story, and how some have argued that it should not be taken literally. I dealt with this in my previous posts and received some e-mails by people referring to other sources that say so, including R. Gedaliah Nadel. I am grateful for all the e-mails, but the reason I didn’t mention these sources, including R. Nadel, is because all of these sources are well known. Since I was not trying to write a comprehensive study of approaches to creation, I didn’t see any need to cite them. In general, my posts here are not like my articles or books, in that I am trying to call attention to interesting ideas and texts, rather than producing complete studies of any topic.

Yet since people are obviously interested in this topic, and took the time to send me the sources, let me thank you by citing a source that has never been referred to in all of the discussions of creation and biblical literalism. It is R. Shlomo Zalman Shag’s Imrei Shlomo, published in Frankfurt in 1866. (I have transliterated his last name as “Shag”, since that is how the Harvard catalog has it.) Here is the title page, where you can see that he identifies himself as a student of R. Isaac of Volozhin.

Worthy of note is that among the subscribers one finds, right next to each other on the list, R. Marcus Lehmann, Abraham Geiger, and Ludwig Philipson.

On p. 5 Shag refers to the trees in the Garden of Eden and the snake and says that it is obvious that none of this can be taken literally:

ואם נקח הפרשה הזאת במאזני השכל, ונפלס את הדברים נראה בעליל שהוא רק דברי רמז וחידה, וכפשוטו לא יכנסו כלל בגדר השכל.

On page 10 he explains how the snake represents the evil inclination, an identification pretty standard among the medievals, and he beautifully explains the connection between the two:

והנחש הוא היצר הרע והתאוה . . . היצה”ר נמשל לנחש מה הנחש כשהולך להזיק אינו ברעש ובהלה רק זוחל על הארץ בלחש ומזיק כן הוא היצר הוא בא לאדם בעצה ותחבולה ומראה עצמו כאוהב עד שיפתה, ואח”כ רובץ על צווארי בני אדם כנחש הסובב על הדבר מכל צדדיו.

On p. 21 he even understands the Tower of Babel in non-literal fashion:

ונאמר לראות את העיר ואת המגדל. את העיר זו יושבי העיר כמו העיר ננוה, העיר שושן, הכונה הוא על יושביה, והמגדל הוא המעשים שעשו, נגד רצון השי”ת, כי הם היו מתגאים לעשות להם שם בארץ. והשי”ת שונא גאים ומשפיל אותם, לכן ויפץ ה’ אותם משם על פני כל הארץ.

There have been many understandings of the Tower of Babel, and I don’t want to go into that now, but let me at least mention one of the strangest interpretations out there. R. Menachem Tziyoni (fifteenth century), in his commentary on the episode, claims that the Tower was actually a flying object[19]:

והמגדל הוא הפורח באויר אשר ראו בשמים

At least this is how Tziyoni is usually understood. Yet it is possible that it is not to be taken literally, and I found a post that says precisely this. See here.

Pre-modern man had many stories of those who were able to rise above the ground, either by flying or being transported by God. We find this in Jewish literature as well. See, for example, Bereishit Rabbah 44:8 which focuses on the words in Gen. 15:5 ויוצא אותו החוצה. What does it mean that God brought Abraham outside? The Midrash first quotes R. Joshua in the name of R. Levi:”Did he then lead him forth outside of the world . . . It means, however, that He showed him the streets of heaven.” In response to this R. Judah b. R. Simeon said in the name of R. Johanan: “He lifted him up above the vault of heaven.” Seen in context, as a response to R. Joshua’s explanation, it seems to me that R. Judah b. R. Simeon’s statement must be understood literally. In other words, Abraham was literally transported into the Heavens. See Etz Yosef ad loc: ס”ל דהחוצה כמשמעו שהוא ממש חוץ לעולם

The most famous example of human flight in Jewish literature is that of Jesus. As described in Toledot Yeshu, Jesus was able to use God’s holy name in order to fly, and was brought down by Judas Iscariot who could also fly and defiled Jesus (which caused Jesus to lose his special powers). According to one tradition, he defiled Jesus by urinating on him, but another version has him engaging in homosexual sex while in the air, which in context certainly means rape.

וטנפו במשכב זכור . . . שטנפו במשכב זכור וכיון שטנפו ונפל הזרע על יש”ו הרשע נטמאו שניהם ונפלו לארץ שניהם כאחד

Incidentally, according to Toldot Yeshu this explains why Judas Iscariot is so hated in Christianity:

וכל חכמי הגוים יודעים סוד זה וכופרין אותו ומקללים ומחרימים יהודה אסקריוטו

See Samuel Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach Juedischen Quellen (Berlin, 1902), pp. 48, 74.

As Morris Goldstein has noted, the second century Acts of Peter describes how Simon Magus flew over Rome, astounding all the onlookers. But Peter, through his prayer to God, was able to force Simon down, a crash landing that caused him to break his leg.[20]

Samael (Satan) can also fly, at least so we are told in the Targum to Job 28:7: סמאל דפרח היך עופא

This should not surprising as according to Isaiah 6:2 the Seraphim fly (with wings), and Hagigah 16a tells us that both angels and demons fly (also with wings).

Midrashic texts speak of two Egyptian magicians who created wings for themselves that enabled them to fly.[21] Rabbinic sources also tell us that Balaam knew how to fly.[22]

With reference to Jesus, it is interesting to note that many Jews actually believed that he performed wonders. However, they attributed it to his knowledge of God’s holy name. Why didn’t they simply assume that all the stories about him were fiction, as modern Jews do? I think the answer is that since all of their neighbors believed the stories, and the miracles Jesus performed are said to have been done before crowds of people, many Jews therefore assumed that these tales must be historically accurate.

In general, it is a common pre-modern assumption that if a group of people, even a group from generations ago, claimed to have witnessed something, that this is a sign that it indeed took place. Today, however, we know how false this argument is. We can cite many examples of mass delusion, not to mention the fact that stories of what people in previous generations witnessed are not actually examples of many people testifying to something, but of one person, the writer, claiming as much.

The stories of Jesus that are found in Toldot Yeshu do not appear in the Talmud, but there are other stories of him found there. However, these stories place Jesus a good 150 years before he actually lived. I say this because the Talmud identifies Jesus as a student of R. Joshua ben Perahyah, who lived circa 120 BCE. In Nahmanides’ disputation, paragraphs 22, 57, he points out that the Christians are wrong on their dates. (R. Judah Halevi, Kuzari 3:65 mentions that Jesus was the student of R. Joshua ben Perahyah and says nothing about the chronological problem. The standard Hebrew edition of the Kuzari is censored [self-censored?], but the reference to Jesus can be seen in the original Arabic published in Kafih’s edition, and also in Hirschfeld’s English translation.)

Others, such as R. Jehiel of Paris in his debate, used the chronological discrepancy to argue not that the Christians are wrong on their dates, but that the Jesus of the Talmud is not Jesus of Nazareth. I used to think that no one actually believed this, but resorted to this argument because it was a good way to deflect the Christian attacks that the Talmud defamed Jesus. However, I recently saw that Tosafot ha-Rosh, Sotah 47a, in a completely non-apologetic comment, assumes that the Talmud refers to two different men named Jesus. See also Meiri, Seder ha-Kabbalah, ed. Havlin (Jerusalem-Cleveland, 1992), pp. 69-70, and especially Havlin’s lengthy note. This was also Rabbenu Tam’s opinion, although it has been censored out of our Talmud. Take a look at Shabbat 104b, Tosafot s.v. Ben Stada in the Bomberg Venice 1520 edition, and compare to the standard Vilna edition.



Why does the Babylonian Talmud identify Jesus as a student of R. Joshua ben Perahyah if Jesus lived more than a century later? I think the answer is obvious, namely, that the Talmud had very little knowledge of who Jesus was, and thus did not know when to date him.[23] In fact, the famous story of R. Joshua ben Perahyah pushing Jesus away (Sanhedrin 107b, found in the Soncino translation) is actually a later development of an earlier story that is found in the Jerusalem Talmud. The Jerusalem Talmud’s version does not mention Jesus.[24]

This raises the question of the Talmud as a source of history, which is too large to go into here. But I do want to call attention to what R. Hershel Schachter states in a recent shiur, which I am sure will be surprising to many. The shiur (“Jewish Heritage Tour of Italy, part 2) can be found here.

Beginning at minute 66 R. Schachter acknowledges that the Talmud can err in matters of history. In support of this viewpoint, he cites R. Zerahyah ha-Levi (the Baal ha-Maor) at the beginning of Rosh ha-Shanah and R. Solomon Luria to Sanhedrin 52b. Here is an excerpt:

Today you have people [who] are considered Orthodox and they say [that] the Gemara made a mistake in history. There are a lot of people like that. . . . This is an ongoing debate. Just seventy years ago, before the Second World War, some of the rabbanim in Europe wrote in their seforim [that] it’s a well known fact that the bayit sheni was much more than 420 years. There is 150 years missing there. . . . We are used to this already. When Rabbenu Azariah min ha-Edomim (De Rossi) came out with his sefer Meor Einayim . . . and he said that maybe the chachmei ha-Gemara were wrong in history . . . many rabbanim were so upset they wanted to make a herem against him. I think they did make a herem; I am not sure. . . . Today, everybody is used to this. We assume that the Gemara is not necessarily expert on history, The Gemara can make mistakes in history. Today it’s not assumed to be apikorsus to say [this]. . . . If Azariah De Rossi would have printed his sefer today, no one would have been so excited about it.

For a hasidic perspective on this matter, which is very much in line with modern approaches to Aggadah, see R. Shlomo of Radomsk, Niflaot ha-Tiferet Shlomo (Petrokov, 1923), nos. 73-74. R. Shlomo stresses that when the Talmud tells a story, it does not matter if the facts are contradicted by other talmudic stories, because what is important is not the story itself, which need not be historically accurate, but rather the lesson to be instilled.

ובזה יש ליישב פליאה גדולה אשר יש לשאול, מה זה שמצאנו בכל הש”ס ומדרשים מסופרים מעשיות ומופתים מתנאים ואמוראים בשינוי נוסחאות מאד, זה יאמר כן היה המעשה, וזה יאמר כן . . . דאין אנו דנין על החומר, רק על הצורה, ולפי הצורה המוכנת בענין הזה, באופן זה מספרים חז”ל את המעשה והסיפור, וממ”נ אם להלל ולשבח ולפאר את התנא, או בהיפוך לגנות הרשע, הלא הצורה מוכנת לכ”א . . . ואם להשיג מטרת ותכלית ענין הנרצה בהסיפור הזה לעורר רושם ורעיון להשומע להבין דברי תורה ולעורר אמונת השגחה וכחן וגבורתן של הצדיקים, ג”כ האיכא, ומאי איכפת לן אם החומר מונע, החומר בטל לגבי הצורה, לכן אין נ”מ בין אופן זה לנוסחא אחרת כי הכל תורת אמת.

Returning to the subject of Jesus and R. Joshua ben Perahyah, I think readers might find another text interesting. It is by the kabbalist R. Moses Valle, who was an older colleague of R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto in Padua. (Although Luzzatto was the leader of their circle, and Valle was thus subservient to him, I don’t know if it correct for the title page to describe Valle as a “student” of Ramhal. I grant that even Italian texts describe Valle as such. See R. Mordechai Samuel Ghirondi, Toledot Gedolei Yisrael [Trieste, 1853], p. 230.)

Without seeing the actual text, I don’t think people will believe me if I tell them what he writes, so here is the relevant page from Sefer ha-Likutim p. 242.

According to Valle, Jesus was meant to be Mashiach ben Joseph, but the needless hatred of the Jewish people prevented him from assuming this role. This is such a strange passage that I am impressed that the editor did not censor it prior to publication. For discussion of it, see here.

Interestingly, R. Abraham Abulafia appears to also have identified Jesus as Messiah ben Joseph. See Moshe Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah (Albany, 1988), p. 53.

To be continued.



[1] I have explained Rambam according to the exoteric meaning, which is the level that Aviezer is arguing on. Aviezer makes no reference to a possible esoteric teaching.
[2] In the recently published The Rav Thinking Aloud on the Parsha: Sefer Bereishis, p. 8, the Rav misspoke and referred to this conception as the Aristotelian theory.
[3] Thus, I believe that both Rabad in his hassagah to Hilkhot Teshuvah 3:7 and also Kafih in his commentary ad loc., are mistaken in thinking that Maimonides, in listing different types of heretics, is referring here to one who believes in creation from eternal matter. When Maimonides writes about one who does not believe that God is ראשון וצור לכל he is not referring to time but causation. In fact, this formulation of Maimonides is also in accord with Aristotle’s view (that is, how Aristotle was understood by the medievals) that the world is both eternal and ontologically dependant on God. Nowhere in the Mishneh Torah does Maimonides affirm creation, ex nihilo or otherwise. This was recognized by R. Jacob Emden who sees the Mishneh Torah as more radical in this regard than the Guide. See Mitpahat Sefarim (Lvov, 1870) pp. 64-65 (where he also accuses Ibn Ezra of believing in eternity). See also Emden, Otzar ha-Tov (in Birat Migdal Oz [Zhitomir, 1874], p. 22a, who writes, regarding Maimonides’ use in the Mishneh Torah of a proof that assumes the world’s eternity:

לו ידעו הרבנים התלמודיים בפלוסופיא לא היה [!] שותקים לו בכאן

The Maharal, Netivot Olam,p. 224, writes:

והנה בנה עיקר ראייתו על התנועה הנצחית וזהו הפך האמונה שאין אנו מודים בזאת ההנחה. וא”כ כבר נפל הבנין בכללו

That the Guide is actually a theologically more conservative work than the Mishneh Torah has recently been argued by Charles Manekin, “Possible Sources of Maimonides’ Theological Conservatism in His Later Writings,” in Jay M. Harris, Maimonides After 800 Years (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 207-230. One should not forget that the Maimonidean controversy was precipitated by the Mishneh Torah, in particular Sefer ha-Mada, not the Guide.

[4] See the passage quoted from him in Yitzhak Shouraqui, Masoret be-Idan ha-Moderni (Tel Aviv, 2009), p. 34. On p. 44, Benamozegh writes that Ralbag, R. Hasdai Crescas, and R. Nissim did not believe in creation. What he means is that Ralbag did not believe in creation ex nihilo. Crescas did not really believe in creation at all, seeing the universe as eternal, that is, eternally created by God. This means eternal ontological dependence of all existence on the Creator. However, Crescas does believe that our world, as opposed to the universe as a whole, was created at a certain instant. See Warren Zev Harvey, Physics and Metaphysics in Hasdai Crescas (Amsterdam, 1998), pp. 18-19. As I pointed out in Limits, both Ralbag and Crescas stand in opposition to Maimonides’ Fourth Principle. Yet I am unaware of R. Nissim expressing a radical view regarding creation. Does anyone know what he is referring to?
[5] R. Judah Alfakhar also seems to make this error. See Kovetz Teshuvot ha-Rambam ve-Iggerotav (Leipzig, 1859), vol. 3, p. 1b.
[6] I thank Lawrence Kaplan for discussing this matter with me, although this should not imply that he agrees with what I have written.
[7] See here.
[8] Here is what Hirsch writes in Collected Writings, vol. 7, p. 57 (cited by Slifkin, here):

Jewish scholarship has never regarded the Bible as a textbook for physical or even abstract doctrines. In its view the main emphasis of the Bible is always on the ethical and social structure and development of life on earth; that is, on the observance of laws through which the momentous events of our nation’s history are converted from abstract truths into concrete convictions. That is why Jewish scholarship regards the Bible as speaking consistently in “human language;” the Bible does not describe things in terms of objective truths known only to God, but in terms of human understanding, which is, after all, the basis for human language and expression
[9] See here.
[10] See here.
[11] See here.
[12] On this issue, I find mid-twentieth-century Orthodox reconciliations of Torah and science very interesting in that the authors do not seem to be looking over their shoulders, worried about the reaction of the more literalist segment of Orthodoxy. R. Joseph Hertz’s essays following the book of Genesis in his edition of the Pentateuch are a good example of this. Another is R. Samuel Rosenblatt, Our Heritage (New York, 1940), pp. 174-181, in essays entitled “How the World Came Into Being” and “The Garden of Eden, Fact or Fiction.” You can see the essays here, or below.


While reading Rosenblatt’s essays, ask yourself if they could be published in an Orthodox newspaper or shul bulletin today. Note in particular Rosenblatt’s assumption that the Torah makes use of “theories about the nature of the physical world and the details of its generation that were current at the time the Bible was written.” Also relevant to the general issue are his essays on Noah and the Flood, and the Tower of Babel.
[13] For more on “myth”, see my earlier post.

There I wrote:

While in the popular mind myth often is identical with fairy tale, this is not how scholars understand myths. For them, myths communicate cosmic truths in non-historical story form, and they are not synonymous with legends. My dictionary explains myth as “a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon.”

S. of On the Main Line called my attention to Shadal’s letter in Iggerot Shadal, p. 661, where he speaks about the religious value of “illusions,” that is, matters that are not factual, but nevertheless have great religious value. In this letter we see Shadal, the great opponent of Maimonides, nevertheless adopting his own version of “necessary truths.”

שאין הריליגיאון חביבה לא-ל בשביל אמתתה, רק בשביל תועלתה בתקון המדות, ועל כן אין צורך שיהיו כל דבריה אמתיים, ושאין לנו עכ”ז להרחיק א-להיותה, ושאין להרחיק מהא-ל הגדת דברים בלתי אמתיים כי להגיד כח מעשה בראשית לבשר ודם א”א, ולא יתכן קיום החברה והצלחת האדם בידיעת האמת, אלא באיללוזיון, כי כן הטבע (אשר הוא בלא ספק רצון הא-ל) מרמה אותנו בענינים הרבה.

[14] Rather than refer to any number of books on the history of astronomy, here is what the Wikipedia entry on “Geocentric Model” has to say:

Adherence to the geocentric model stemmed largely from several important observations. First of all, if the Earth did move, then one ought to be able to observe the shifting of the fixed stars due to stellar parallax. In short, if the earth was moving the shapes of the constellations should change considerably over the course of a year. If they did not appear to move, the stars are either much further away than the Sun and the planets than previously conceived, making their motion undetectable, or in reality they are not moving at all. Because the stars were actually much further away than Greek astronomers postulated (making movement extremely subtle), stellar parallax was not detected until the 19th century. Therefore, the Greeks chose the simpler of the two explanations. The lack of any observable parallax was considered a fatal flaw of any non-geocentric theory. Another observation used in favor of the geocentric model at the time was the apparent consistency of Venus’ luminosity, thus implying that it is usually about the same distance from Earth, which is more consistent with geocentrism than heliocentrism. In reality, that is because the loss of light caused by its phases compensates for the increase in apparent size caused by its varying distance from Earth. Once again, Aristotle’s objections of heliocentrism utilized his ideas concerning the natural tendency of earth-like objects. The natural state of heavy earth-like objects is to tend towards the center of the earth and to not move unless forced by an outside object. It was also believed by some that if the Earth rotated on its axis, the air and objects in it (such as birds or clouds) would be left behind.

[15] Norman Lamm, “The Religious Implications of Extraterrestrial Life,” Tradition 7 (Winter 1965) pp. 27-28.
[16] A more academic version of this article appeared in JQR 55 (Jan. 1965), and some points in it were subjected to strong criticism by Harry Wolfson, ibid., 56 (Jan. 1966). Lamm told me that he felt it was a great honor for a young scholar like himself to be criticized by Wolfson. Similar sentiments have been expressed by students who were criticized in class by the Rav and Saul Lieberman.
[17] See here and here (note how the mention of R. [David] Feinstein has been removed from the first source).
[18] One reader asked me if there are traditional sources that speak of God creating things in the world after the initial creation. As a matter of fact, Isaiah 65:17 reads: “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.” A midrash quoted in R. Kasher’s Torah Shelemah, vol. 1, p. 123, reads as follows:

באותה שעה [כשעברו את הים] ברא להם הקב”ה ארץ חדשה כמו בבריאת העולם בששת ימי בראשית.

These two sources are cited by R. Judah Leib Zlotnick, “Bereishit” bi-Melitzah ha-Ivrit (Jerusalem, 1938), p. 27.

[19] Interestingly, R. Jonathan Eybschuetz, Tiferet Yehonatan, parashat Noah (p. 11a in the standard edition), claims that the builders of the tower were trying to make it so high that they could then launch a spaceship from it that would reach the moon (or perhaps I should say “the sphere of the moon”). This would then become their new home!

וזה היה כונת דור הפלגה ג”כ שבקשו לקבוע מושבם בכדור ירחי ששם יהיו נצולים ממבול וחשבו לעשות ע”י ספינה הנ”ל אפס כיצד יגביהו אותו הספינה למעלה מאויר העכור ולזה חשבו לבנות מגדל גבוה כל כך עד למעלה האויר ההוא ומשם יוכלו להשתמש בספינה הנ”ל לשוט באויר עד כדור הירחי.

[20] See Goldstein, Jesus in the Jewish Tradition (New York, 1950), p. 302 n. 34.

[21] See Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 3, p. 28.
[22] See Targum Ps.-Jonathan, Numbers 31:8, Zohar, vol. 3, pp. 194a-194b, Ginzberg, Legends, vol. 6, p. 144.
[23] For more on R. Joshua and Jesus, see Markham Judah Geller, “Joshua B. Perahyah and Jesus of Nazareth: Two Rabbinic Magicians” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Brandeis University, 1974).
[24] See Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton, 2007), ch. 3. Some readers might also enjoy Herb Basser’s lecture, “How Reliable are the Talmudic Teachings on Jesus,” available here.

The original version of Sanhedrin, which mentions Jesus, is not found in the Artscroll edition. In other words, the Artscroll Talmud, including the Hebrew version, is still a censored, and thus defective, edition. I find this quite amazing. Is there a valid reason why Artscroll has not returned the Talmud to its pristine text? Speaking of internal censorship, here is another amazing example. Gittin 57a has a reference to Jesus, and this is preserved in the Munich manuscript and other uncensored mss. (and recorded in the Soncino translation). Here is a copy of the Munich manuscript. Look three lines above the large word אתרנגול

It states that Jesus was raised from the dead through incantations: אסקי’ לישו בנגיד’. In the standard text this has been altered to read, instead of Jesus, לפושעי ישראל. Now here is a copy of Meir S. Feldblum’s Dikdukei Soferim on Gittin. See how he wouldn’t even record what the Munich edition stated, and instead advises the reader to examine Hashmatot ha-Shas!


This book was published in 1966 and he was afraid to give us the reading in the Munich ms., yet Rabbinovicz in nineteenth-century Germany has no problem giving us the correct reading in the earlier mentioned story from Sanhedrin (as well as in the other talmudic passages where Jesus is mentioned). Does Feldblum’s action make any sense? I wonder if some future historian will be led to mistakenly conclude that anti-Semitism was more of a problem in 1966 America than nineteenth-century Germany. Fortunately, last year a new edition of Dikdukei Soferim on Gittin was published. Here is the relevant page where we are told what the Munich ms. really says.



Marc B. Shapiro – Forgery and the Halakhic Process

Forgery and the Halakhic Process
by Marc B. Shapiro


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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


אחד מול ארבעה – וההרגשה היא, שהנצחון לצדו של האחד

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

רבנו הכהן הגדול נר ישראל וקדושו גדול הדור ונזרו מרן

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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


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


Appendix


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[17] See ibid., p. 440.

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

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

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