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Quiz Runoff

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Quiz Runoff
by Marc B. Shapiro

Written on 4 Shevat, 5773, the yahrzeit of R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg

1. In the last post, as the quiz question, I asked for the name of the first Hebrew book published by a living author. The answer is Nofet Tzufim by R. Judah Messer Leon. As the Wikipedia entry for Messer Leon states, this work “was printed by Abraham Conat of Mantua in 1475-6, the only work by a living author printed in Hebrew in the fifteenth century.”
A number of people got the right answer, and as a few of them told me, and I confirmed for myself, it was not that difficult to find the answer using Google. There is nothing wrong with using Google or any other search tool, and it is my fault for not realizing that the answer could be found so easily.
Some of the material in the Wikipedia entry for Messer Leon comes from the Jewish Encyclopedia, but not the sentence I quoted above. The second part of the sentence is in fact incorrect, as there is at least one other work by a living author printed in Hebrew in the fifteenth century. I refer to the Agur, by R. Jacob ben Judah Landau (died 1493). This work appeared sometime between 1487 and 1492, so Wikipedia tells us, and in this instance Wikipedia’s information comes from the Jewish Encyclopedia. These sources also tell us that “The ‘Agur’ was the first Jewish work to contain a rabbinical approbation, besides being the second Hebrew book printed during the author’s lifetime.”
Why then did a number of those who contacted me think that the Agur was the first book to appear in the author’s lifetime, rather than the second? Perhaps because in the Encyclopaedia Judaica entry “Haskamah”, which is reprinted here, we find the following incorrect statement: “The first haskamah appeared in the 15th century, in the Agur by Jacob Landau (Naples, c. 1490), the first Hebrew book printed during its author’s lifetime.”
Starting now, I will try to make my quiz questions a bit harder (i.e., not so easy to find the answers via Google). Here are the names of those who answered correctly on the last quiz: Shalom Leaf, Alex Heppenheimer, Leor Jacobi, Eric Lawee, Moshe Lapin, Shimon S., Ari Kinsberg, Yonason Rosman, Peretz Mochkin, Yehudah Hausman, Dovid Solomon
Since I can’t reward all of them, there will be a runoff. The following questions are to be answered only by them and only by emailing me the answer. If you can only answer one of the questions please do so.
A. What is the first volume of responsa published in the lifetime of its author?
B. There is a verse in the book of Exodus (hint: we haven’t yet reached it this year) which has a very strange vocalization of a word, found nowhere else in Tanach. (The word itself is also spelled in an unusual fashion, found only one other time in Tanach). The purpose of this vocalization is apparently in order to make a rhyme.[1] What am I referring to?
I had thought to ask: What is the first Hebrew work to use modern punctuation including question marks, but via Google I found the answer in a few seconds. So hopefully the answers to what I have asked are not so easily found.
2. I have a good deal more to say on themes discussed in the last post, which I will get to in future posts. But I have one piece of information that I think is quite significant (a real “chiddush”) and I don’t want to delay passing it on. It turns out that R. Schachter was too quick to add the correction in Nefesh ha-Rav. Here is an email I received by someone who prefers to remain anonymous.
I am not into writing reactions (Israelis call them “talkbacks”) on blogs, since I have not become accustomed to the 21st Century. But I want to give you a bit of information that is relevant to your discussion of Metzitza. I attended Rav Aharon Lichtenstein’s shiurim at Gruss for a number of years, and I clearly remember what he said on the subject during what the guys called “a press conference.” He said very clearly that the Rav was against any Metzitza at all, and he expressed this view explicitly at the brit of one of Rav Aharon’s sons. To me such a view makes lots of sense, if one understands that it is required in the gemara only because it was then thought that the lack of Metzitza was dangerous.(כי לא עביד סכנה הוא (שבת קלג,
3. Many people have mentioned to me the problems with the commenting feature (at least for those using Chrome). When you click on it, you often don’t see the most recent comments. One way to fix this is after you click to see the comments, where it says “Discussion” check “Newest” or “Oldest”, and everything will come up. We will try to come up with a fix for this.

[1] I am referring to the level of peshat, as I realize that all sorts of explanations based on derush, remez, and kabbalah can be offered. 


Hakirah, Metzitzah, and More

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Hakirah, Metzitzah, and More
Marc B. Shapiro

Hakirah has performed a valuable service in dealing forthrightly with the matter of homosexuality. Issue no. 13 (2012) contains R. Chaim Rapoport’s “Judaism and Homosexuality: An Alternative Rabbinic View,” which I think is an outstanding presentation of the alternative to what has seemingly become the “official” haredi position in this matter. This “official” position is, in my opinion, so misguided that I would like to say a few words on the topic, since R. Rapoport did not go far enough in his criticism.
To remind readers, Hakirah no. 12 had a discussion on homosexuality with R. Shmuel Kamenetsky. This was followed by the publication of a document signed by many rabbis which follows R. Kamenetsky’s approach. It is available here. (The document is also signed by an assortment of mental health professionals,  rebbitzens and “community organizers”.)
There are so many problems with the approach found in this document (called a “Torah Declaration”), some already noted by R. Rapoport in his response to R. Kamenetsky, that it would take a lengthy piece to go through them all. Let me just call attention to a few points that I don’t think have been made yet. To begin with, while many rabbis have signed this document, including a number that I know personally, I have yet to speak to someone who actually believes what the document says, and this includes the people who have signed it! Many will regard what I have just said as pretty shocking, in that I have declared that people who signed the document do not believe what it says. Yet I know this to be true, at least with regard to some of the signatories (those that I know personally), and I suspect that other than R. Kamenetsky, it might be that no one who signed the document really believes what it says (and it wouldn’t be the first time that people sign declarations that they really don’t believe in).
Let me explain what I mean. According to the document,
Same-Sex Attractions Can Be Modified And Healed. From a Torah perspective, the question whether homosexual inclinations and behaviors are changeable is extremely relevant. . . . We emphatically reject the notion that a homosexually inclined person cannot overcome his or her inclination and desire. . . . The only viable course of action that is consistent with the Torah is therapy and teshuvah. The therapy consists of reinforcing the natural gender-identity of the individual by helping him or her understand and repair the emotional wounds that led to its disorientation and weakening, thus enabling the resumption and completion of the individual’s emotional development.
The ideas just quoted are the very foundation of the Torah Declaration, and as we see in his Hakirah interview, R. Kamenetsky has been convinced by the dubious proposition that homosexuals can change their sexual orientation. He goes so far as to say that “no one is born gay with an inability to change” (p. 34 [emphasis added]. Not long after the appearance of the interview and the Torah Declaration, the man most prominently identified with the notion that gays can change publicly rejected his earlier viewpoint.)
Whether people can change their sexual orientation is a scientific or psychological issue, no more and no less. The first objectionable point of R. Kamenetsky’s approach is turning this into a matter of theology. Indeed, R. Kamenetsky has created a new dogma in Orthodoxy. According to him, believing that a homosexual can change his orientation is a basic Torah value. The reason for this is stated in the document: “The Torah does not forbid something which is impossible to avoid. Abandoning people to lifelong loneliness and despair by denying all hope of overcoming and healing their same-sex attraction is heartlessly cruel. Such an attitude also violates the biblical prohibition in Vayikra (Leviticus) 19:14 “and you shall not place a stumbling block before the blind.”[1]
There you have it. Human beings are deciding what God can and cannot do and declaring that it is impossible for someone to be created with an inalterable homosexual nature. That this is completely incorrect is acknowledged by none other than the most extreme advocates of reparative therapy. They themselves acknowledge that there is a significant percentage of people who cannot change their orientation. They have never claimed that everyone can change. What the document gives us, therefore, is a theological statement that is rejected by all scientists and psychologists, including the ones who provide the very basis for reparative therapy. That itself should be reason enough to reject it. (On Nov. 29, 2012 the RCA acknowledged “the lack of scientifically rigorous studies that support the effectiveness of therapies to change sexual orientation.” See here.)
This relates to my point above that no one really believes what they signed. To those who doubt what I say, do the following experiment and report back if your results differ. Ask someone who signed the document if he really believes that every homosexual can change his sexual orientation. The answer you will get will be “Of course not everyone. You can never speak about everyone. But many (or most) can change.” In other words, the signatories will acknowledge that they diverge from the document on a basic point. You will have to ask them why they signed a document if they don’t accept everything it says, and the response will probably be that there is much about the document that they do accept, and that is why they signed it. But I repeat my point that this is an unusual document in that I don’t think that there is any signatory, with the possible exception of R. Kamenetsky, who accepts the Torah Declaration on Homosexuality in its entirety.

Furthermore, it is not a “liberal” idea to say that people can’t change their sexual inclinations. By looking at another example we can see that it is indeed nonsense to say that everyone can change their sexual orientation and recreate themselves as typical heterosexuals. There are some men who have strong urges for pedophilia. No matter what they do, and how much therapy they get, they can’t get rid of these urges. (I am obviously not comparing homosexuals with pedophiles, or implying that there is any connection between the two. I am only using the example of pedophiles to make a point.[2]
) If we adopt the theology of the Torah Declaration, it means that even hardened pedophiles, who have abused lots of children, can change, because God wouldn’t create someone without a possibility for a healthy sex life. Yet we know that this isn’t the case, and some people simply can’t change. They might be able to control their urges, but as they have told us again and again, the urges don’t go away. It is hardwired into them. (Is it perhaps the false theological notion expressed in the Torah Declaration that explains why yeshivot continued to allow known pedophiles to work? That is, did the rabbis assume that just because someone sexually abused children last week, there is no reason to think he can’t repent and cease to be a danger this week?)
And what about the people who are created with uncontrollable urges to kill? We know about these people, as they usually become murderers. And what about the people who are created with diseases that kill them before they are able to marry and have children, or the ones created without arms so they can’t wear arm tefillin[3]? In other words, sometimes people are created a certain way and they are not what we regard as normal. That is the world, and we simply can’t understand why things are the way they are. But one thing I would hope that we can agree on is if people can keep their faith in a good God even while knowing that some children are born with terrible illnesses that will cause their death, it certainly should not shake their faith to believe that some people are born with inalterable homosexual urges. A homosexual who can’t be changed hardly presents a challenge to theodicy the way a child with cancer does, so I can only wonder why the Torah Declaration feels that only the former is theologically untenable.
All traditional sources cited in support of the Torah Declaration’s assumption that people can change their orientation only refer to behavior. That is, it is an accepted belief that all people have the ability to control their behavior. Without this belief, the notion of a mitzvah doesn’t make sense. This distinction between orientation and behavior is so obvious that I don’t know how so many learned rabbis overlooked the document’s collapsing the two categories.
The more problematic element of the document, which I have already mentioned and which verges on the blasphemous, is that the Torah Declaration presumes to tell God what he can and cannot do. Based on the human intellects of the authors of the document, they establish as dogma that God would never create someone whose only sexual attraction is to his own gender. This is all very nice, but since when can humans dictate to God what he can and cannot do? If God “wants” to create a person who only has same-sex attraction, He can, and the proper response is silence, since we can’t understand why God would do that. Humans don’t have all the answers, and the Torah Declaration should stop pretending that we do. Whether homosexuality is nature or nurture is something the scientists and psychologists can discuss, but contrary to the document, all of the evidence is that there are plenty of people who cannot be “fixed.”
2. In my last post I mentioned that Agudat Israel has transformed itself into a lobbying organization. One of the areas they have been involved with is metzitzah ba-peh, so let me say a few things about this. It is really incredible how for many the debate around metzitzah ba-peh has become one in which the Modern Orthodox are one side, and the traditionalists on the other. I say this because the truth is that the virtually all of the rabbinic greats of Lithuania approved of metzitzah without oral contact. Alexander Tertis’ Dam Berit is a valuable resource that all interested in this matter must consult. Here is the title page.
On p. 33, R. Shlomo Cohen, the famed dayan of Vilna, says the following about metzitzah, which is very relevant to what we ourselves have seen (namely, the rejection of the firm opinions of countless doctors and scientists on the matter, all in the name of tradition).
דבר הזה אינו שייך לרבנים רק לרופאים המומחים ולכן אין לי מה להשיב על שאלתו
According to R. Shlomo, the question of how to perform metzitzah is entirely a medical issue, and the rabbis therefore have nothing to say on this matter, much like in all other halakhot dealing with medical issues the opinions of the doctors are determinative. (It hardly needs to be said that in matters of pikuah nefesh the opinions of thousands of experts, including the world’s most outstanding authorities, cannot be overruled by one idiosyncratic figure who appears to be motivated by non-scientific concerns.) 
Also of interest is that in 1906 R. Hayyim Ozer Grodzinski reported that in Vilna virtually all of the mohalim did metzitzah with a sponge. He wasn’t happy with this, but this was the reality.[4]
An interesting tidbit regarding metzitzah ba-peh is found in the Taz, Orah Hayyim 584:2. Here he mentions that he heard that R. Feivish of Cracow, when he circumcised on Rosh ha-Shanah, would not clean the blood out of his mouth. Rather, he would blow the shofar with the blood in his mouth so that the mitzvot of milah and shofar were joined.
Finally, for those who want to understand why it was only in the nineteenth century that metzitzah came to be regarded as central to the mitzvah of milah, Jacob Katz’s article “Polmos ha-Metzitzah” in his Ha-Halakhah ba-Metzar is crucial. In short, the centrality of metzitzah, and its description as a basic part of milah, is a product of the Orthodox defense of metzitzah in the face of Reform attacks. I think we are seeing something similar today. The digging in of haredi heels in defense of metzitzah ba-peh, complete with over-the-top rhetoric, is understandable (to a certain extent) and due precisely to the fact that it is an outside force that is threatening the practice. Had their own poskim suggested what the government is now insisting on, we would not have seen the same reaction. Yet it is still difficult for outsiders to grasp why some rabbinic leaders of these communities seem entirely oblivious to any medical dangers associated with the practice,  וסלחת לעונם כי רבנים המה
Let me say a few more things about metzitzah ba-peh. 

1. I saw on one of the blogs (I can’t locate it at present) that someone stated as self-evident that metzitzah ba-peh is only done with babies, not adults. The truth is that while the accepted opinion is indeed that metzitzah ba-peh is only done on babies (and maybe also on older child converts – I haven’t been able to find an answer to that), there are indeed opinions that even adult converts have to have metzitzah ba-peh performed on them. R. Moshe Klein (the son of R. Menasheh), Mishnat ha-Ger, p. 71, states without qualification that a convert has to have metzitzah, and if the mohel is afraid of catching a disease he should inquire of a posek if it can be done without the mouth. However, R. Yitzhak Yosef, Yalkut Yosef, Hilkhot Milah 6:1, rejects this viewpoint and states that there is no metzitzah, ba-peh or otherwise, with an adult convert.

2. According to R. Marcus Horovitz, Mateh Levi, vol. 2, Yoreh Deah no. 60, R. Samson Raphael Hirsch was prepared to accept the government’s abolishment of metzitzah without objection. It is difficult to square this assertion with Hirsch’s writings on the topic that show him as a strong defender of the practice.[5] Is it possible that Horovitz’s comment, meant as a criticism of Hirsch, reflects the difficult relationship these two men had?
3. In Iggerot Moshe, Yoreh Deah I, no. 223, R. Moshe Feinstein, in writing to a hasidic rebbe, expresses the standard viewpoint that metzitzah is only a medical procedure and has nothing to do with the mitzvah of milah. There is nothing surprising here. However, his correspondent had written otherwise, that metzitzah was an essential part of the mitzvah. In response to this, R. Moshe writes: חושב אני שהוא רק פליטת הקולמוס. The language R. Moshe uses implies that he did not know that among the hasidim metzitzah isindeed viewed as part of the mitzvah. Is it possible that R. Moshe was unaware of this? I don’t think so. It would appear, therefore, that the words I just quoted are a polite way of R. Moshe telling his correspondent that “what you wrote is without any substance.”
4. In 1994 R. Schachter’s Nefesh ha-Rav appeared. On p. 243 he states that R. Soloveitchik thought that today there is no need for metzitzah at all, not just metzitzah ba-peh. I remember how shocked I was when I read this, and was certain that it had to be wrong. As far as I know, no Orthodox authority has ever agreed to abandon metzitzah entirely, and I therefore couldn’t believe this report. My doubts were strengthened by the fact that R. Schachter quotes the Tiferet Yisrael as agreeing that metzitzah could be abandoned, when the truth is that the Tiferet Yisrael, Shabbat 19:2, says the exact opposite, that metzitzah must be continued no matter what the doctors say.
As part of this post I wanted to include this page of Nefesh ha-Rav, so I went to Otzar ha-Hokhmah to download a PDF. Here it is.

Lo and behold, the copy on Otzar ha-Hokhmah is the third edition published in 1999, and there is a note on this page in which R. Schachter states that he has been told that what he wrote was incorrect, and that R. Soloveitchik only opposed metzitzah ba-peh. This makes much more sense and is what I assumed all along, so I was happy to see that my suspicions were confirmed.

R. Schachter recently spoke publicly about metzitzah ba-peh, and he is entirely opposed to it.[6] You can listen to his talk here.
Some might be surprised to hear R. Schachter say, after explaining that the Sages followed the most advanced medicine of their times, “When we look back at Chazal, look at medical statements in the Gemara, we laugh. . . . So you look back in the Gemara, it’s ridiculous, but the Gemara, in the days of the Tannaim, they were following the latest information of the doctors of their generation, of the scientists of their generation.”
I have to say, however, that R. Schachter is mistaken in his description of how the Hasidim understand metzitzah ba-peh. He incorrectly assumes that no one really regards it as a basic part of the mitzvah, i.e., halakhah le-Moshe mi-Sinai. “You know and I know and we all know that it is not halakhah le-Moshe mi-Sinai.” He claims that all those who do say it is halakhah le-Moshe mi-Sinai are exaggerating for rhetorical purposes, much like the expression yehareg ve-al yaavor is used for all sorts of things but is not meant to be taken literally. (R. Schachter himself created a good deal of controversy a couple years ago when he said that the refusal to ordain women was a matter of yehareg ve-al yaavor.)
Finally, I would like to make a general statement about how many in the Modern Orthodox world have been relating to metzitzah ba-peh. There is no question that for those in this segment of Orthodoxy, metzitzah ba-peh should not be done, both for medical reasons and also, I have learnt, for aesthetic reasons. With regard to the latter point, there is a sense among many in the Modern Orthodox world, and I myself have heard this and seen it in writing, that metzitzah ba-peh is “disgusting”. I understand that this is how people feel, but it is an improper feeling. Until the nineteenth century, metzitzah ba-peh was universal at every circumcision. How can observant Jews regard a practice that was basic in every Jewish community of the world as “disgusting”? I understand that it doesn’t fit in with today’s aesthetic sense, and that itself is perhaps reason enough for people not to do metzitzah ba-peh. However, everyone should be careful to avoid any denigration of metzitzah ba-peh that does not originate in medical concerns.
Don’t get me wrong, as I don’t mean that every practice that we find in Jewish communities throughout history should get such a “pass”, but here we are talking about a universal practice over thousands of years. It can’t be denied that there were “repulsive” and “gruesome” practices in Jewish communities.[7] Here are two cited by Shlomo Sprecher in his article mentioned in note 6: 1. Barren women would swallow the foreskin of newly circumcised boys as a segulah so that they could become pregnant. 2. Epileptics drank a potion that contained a girl’s first menstrual blood as a segulah to cure them of their epilepsy.[8]
I recently found another bizarre segulah that also falls under the rubric of “repulsive”, and I think that it would probably also be regarded by law enforcement as a form of sexual abuse. It comes from R. Zvi Hirsch Kaidonover (1646-1712), Kav ha-Yashar, ch. 51. For obvious reasons I am not going to translate this into English.
ועוד סגולה נפלאה לתינוק הנולד שלא יקרה עליו חולי נכפה בר מינן, מיד כשנולד ישימו בפיו ברית קודש של תינוק ויהיה ניצול כל ימיו מחולי נכפה
3. Following one of my previous posts I had correspondence with a reader and the discussion turned to the issue of how much of rabbinic literature is inner directed, that is, from intellectuals to other intellectuals.[9] I assume that this was the mindset of the Sages, and this explains some texts that I don’t think would have been recorded had there been an expectation that the masses would ever see them. In particular, I have in mind the talmudic stories that do not reflect well on certain rabbis. If we understand these texts as scholars talking to other scholars, then it makes sense that they would criticize each other, and even make fun of one another.[10] People in a closed community (in this case, the rabbinic elite) converse with one another in a different way than when outsiders are allowed in.[11] The problem is when the masses are studying Talmud, as today, that they have a difficult time with these texts, and Artscroll needs to explain them in an appealing fashion.
Here is one example of the sort of story I am referring to, that I assume was designed for internal consumption only, as it doesn’t reflect well on one of the Sages who is portrayed as being quite rude and insensitive. Taanit 20a-20b:
Our Rabbis have taught: A man should always be gentle as the reed and never unyielding as the cedar. Once R. Eleazar son of R. Simeon was coming from Migdal Gedor, from the house of his teacher, and he was riding leisurely on his ass by the riverside and was feeling happy and elated because he had studied much Torah There chanced to meet him an exceedingly ugly man who greeted him, “Peace be upon you, Sir”. He, however, did not return his salutation but instead said to him, “Raca,1 how ugly you are. Are all your fellow citizens as ugly as you are?” The man replied: “I do not know, but go and tell the craftsman who made me, ‘How ugly is the vessel which you have made’.” When R. Eleazar realized that he had done wrong he dismounted from the ass and prostrated himself before the man and said to him, “I submit myself to you, forgive me”. The man replied: “I will not forgive you until you go to the craftsman who made me and say to him, ‘How ugly is the vessel which you have made’.” He [R. Eleazar] walked behind him until he reached his native city. When his fellow citizens came out to meet him greeting him with the words, “Peace be upon you O Teacher, O Master,” the man asked them, “Whom are you addressing thus”? They replied, “The man who is walking behind you.” Thereupon he exclaimed: “If this man is a teacher, may there not be any more like him in Israel”! The people then asked him: “Why”? He replied: “Such and such a thing has he done to me.” They said to him: “Nevertheless, forgive him, for he is a man greatly learned in the Torah.” The man replied: “For your sakes I will forgive him, but only on the condition that he does not act in the same manner in the future.” Soon after this R. Eleazar son of R. Simeon entered [the Beth Hamidrash] and expounded thus, A man should always be gentle as the reed and let him never be unyielding as the cedar. And for this reason the reed merited that of it should be made a pen for the writing of the Law, Phylacteries and Mezuzoth.[12]
It appears that we see a continuation of this internal conversation in post-talmudic times. For example, I don’t think the rishonim who so harshly criticize their colleagues — I am referring to the colleagues they respected — would speak this way in a derashah before the common man. However, in internal dialogue they exercised more freedom. I think this can also explain the strange way that R. Isaac of Corbeil, the author of Sefer Mitzvot Katan, is referred to. He is called בעל החוטם. According to tradition, he was called this לפי שהיו לו שערות על החוטם.[13] Here too, I think that this was a humorous nickname that his colleagues knew him as, but not something that the average person would be expected to use. (Those who went to BMT will probably recall how various rabbis would speak of “Whitey Horowitz”. I don’t recall students ever referring to R. Moshe Horowitz this way.)  
I came across another example of what appears to be “internal conversation” from modern times that I think readers will find interesting. Both are found in R. Pinchas Miller’s Olamo shel Abba. Miller’s father, R. Asher Anshel Yehudah Miller, was a posek and author of seforim. I can’t imagine that the following comment, cited in the name of R. Shmelke of Nikolsburg, was something Miller, or R. Shmelke, wanted the masses to hear. Rather, I assume that it was an insider’s joke, designed to be shared among colleagues.
Shabbat 118b states that if Israel observes two Sabbaths properly they will immediately be redeemed. R. Shmelke explained that this refers to Shabbat ha-Gadol and Shabbat Shuvah. It is traditional that on these Sabbaths the rabbis give derashot before the community. R. Shmelke added that the rabbis act as if what they are saying is original to themselves, even though they have taken it from others. The Sages say that if you repeat something in the name of one who said it, you bring redemption to the world (Avot 6:6). Based on this text in Avot, R. Shmelke explained the above talmudic passage as follows: “If Israel observes two Sabbaths properly”, that is, if the rabbis who give the derashot on Shabbat ha-Gadol and Shabbat Shuvah (“two Sabbaths”) actually acknowledge where they get their ideas from (“repeat something in the name of one who said it”), “immediately Israel will be redeemed” (p. 501). This is such a provocative text because not only does it accuse the rabbis of plagiarism, but it states that the redemption itself is being delayed because of their behavior. If it was repeated by the masses it would be regarded as terribly degrading of the rabbis, but seen as a somewhat playful “derashah” to be shared among rabbinic colleagues, it loses much of its sharpness.[14]
There is another interesting passage on p. 326, which despite being humorous, I would have also assumed could only be said among colleagues. Yet Miller’s son tells us that his father used to repeat the following in his derashah at weddings: We know that it is a mitzvah to help the bride and groom to rejoice, but the rabbis come to weddings and instead of doing this, they deliver a long derashah and speak words of mussar to the young couple and thus disturb their joy.[15] That is why at the sheva berakhot we state שמח תשמח רעים האהובים כשמחך יצירך בגן עדן מקדם. In other words, we wish the bride and groom that their joy should be complete like the joy Adam felt when Eve was created for him, because in their time, in the Garden of Eden, there were no rabbis around who were able to disturb their joy!
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4. I want to call attention to a book that has just appeared. Its English title is Jewish Thought and Jewish Belief and it is edited by Daniel J. Lasker. You can read more about it here. It is available for purchase at Bigeleisen.
This is just the latest in a series of valuable books published by Ben Gurion University Press as part of the Goldstein-Goren Library of Jewish Thought. The articles that I think readers of this blog will find particularly interesting are David Stern, “Rabbinics and Jewish Identity: An American Perspective;” David Shatz, “Nothing but the Tuth? Modern Orthodoxy and the Polemical Uses of History,” Baruch J. Schwartz, “Biblical Scholarship’s Contribution to the Concept of Mattan Torah Past and Present;” Menachem Kellner, “Between the Torah of Moses and the Torah of R. Elhanan;” Tovah Ganzel, “‘He who Restrains his Lips is Wise’ (Proverbs 10:19) – Is that Really True?” and the symposium on Jewish thought in Israeli education, with contributions from R Moshe Lichtenstein and Adina Bar Shalom (R. Ovadia Yosef’s daughter).
Here are a few selections from Shatz’s article:
To be clear, academics, I find, generally shun blogs that are aimed at a popular audience because the comments are often, if not generally, uninformed (and nasty). A few academics do read such blogs, but do not look at the comments. One result of academics largely staying out of blog discussions is that non-experts become viewed as experts. Even when academics join the discussion, the democratic atmosphere of the blog world allows non-experts to think of themselves as experts and therefore as equals of the academicians. Some laypersons, though, as I said earlier, are indeeed experts in certain areas of history.
(In this quotation, one could also substitute “rabbis” or perhaps better, “poskim”, for “academics”, and “areas of halakhah” for “areas of history.”) Shatz is specifically speaking about historians, and contrasting experts vs. non-experts in this area. Yet when it comes to the sort of things I often write about here, I can attest that it is usually non-academics who are the real experts. Time and again I am amazed at the vast knowledge of so many of the people who read this blog. As for the general phenomenon of blogs, there are many people who for whatever reason (usually lack of interest, ability, or patience) are not going to write lengthy articles. Yet they often have a great deal to contribute, much of which is very important to the world of scholarship (almost always in terms of uncovering unknown sources and correcting earlier errors, as opposed to offering new interpretations or original theories). Academics ignore this to their own loss.[16]
In my future book I refer to numerous blog posts, and posts from the Seforim Blog have already been mentioned in a number of scholarly publications. My own reason for writing posts is because most of the material I discuss is, I think, interesting and sometimes even important. While this material is often not of the sort that can be included in a typical article, the genre of the blog post suits them just perfectly. Speaking of the Seforim Blog in particular, its readership encompasses a very large percentage of English speaking traditionally learned Jews of all backgrounds, beliefs, and professions (from Reform rabbis to Roshei Yeshiva and poskim, and everything in between). Thanks again are due to Dan Rabinowitz for providing this unique and wonderful platform.
Here are two more quotes from Shatz:
Be the causes what they may, there is an intramural struggle among the Orthodox, a competition for the soul of Orthodox Judaism, and the primary weapon with which it is being waged is history. For Modern Orthodox Jews today, instead of history being a threat to belief, as in earlier periods, it has become a way of arguing for one version of Othodoxy over another. And it is used for polemical purposes far more than philosophy. There are today few Orthodox philosophers, but comparatively many Orthodox academically trained historians.
Can the Modern Orthodox explain why it is admissible for Hummash and the Sages (in aggadot) to write non-accurately and provide inspiration and memory, but inadmissible for those on the right to write in that genre?
My article in Jewish Thought and Jewish Belief is entitled “Is there a ‘Pesak’ for Jewish Thought.” Those who publish know that it is often the case that only after it is too late does one realize that one’s article or book omits something important. Here too that was the case. In the article I discuss Maimonides’ view in Guide 3:17 that there is no punishment without transgression. That is, he rejects the notion of yissurin shel ahavah. I note that Maimonides claims that this is the opinion “of the multitude of our scholars,” and he cites R. Ammi’s opinion in this regard from Shabbat 55a. What is significant is that later in the sugya the Talmud states that R. Ammi’s opinion was refuted. Maimonides ignores this rejection, and even states that R. Ammi’s opinion is the majority view. This illustrates how Maimonides felt free to reject a talmudic viewpoint in a non-halakhic matter, even when it seems that the opinion is deemed authoritative by the Talmud.
What I unfortunately neglected to mention is that in Guide 3:24 Maimonides also deals with yissurin shel ahavah. Here he acknowledges that there are talmudic sages who accept this notion, but he adds that his own opinion, i.e., the rejection of yissurin shel ahavah, “ought to be believed by every adherent of the Law who is endowed with intellect.” In our own language, we might say that this viewpoint should be obvious to anyone with “half a brain.” Yet this is quite a shocking statement when one considers that there were talmudic sages who had a different perspective. Did Maimonides regard them as lacking intellect?
Here is another point I would like to add: In my Limits of Orthodox Theology I argue that it is most unlikely that Maimonides would choose to establish something as a dogma if it was a matter of debate among the Sages. (If establishing dogma was simply part of the halakhic process, this would not be problematic.) I see that R. Shlomo Fisher apparently has the same perspective, as he writes in his Hiddushei Beit Yishai, no. 107 (p. 413):
וגוף הדברים שכתב הרמב”ם בפה”מ ועשאן עיקר גדול תמוהין מאד. חדא, אם הם עיקר גדול היכי פליג עלה ר’ יהודה.
The issue of deciding matters of hashkafah in a halakhic fashion has also recently been discussed by R. Yaakov Ariel in his new book Halakhah be-Yameinu, pp. 18ff. I have to say that the more I read by Ariel the more impressed I am, as everything he writes is carefully formulated and full of insight. He strikes me as very open-minded with a good grasp of Jewish philosophy. He is, of course, also an outstanding posek. I now understand why it was so important for the haredim, under R. Elyashiv’s lead, to prevent him from being elected Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel. What the haredim wanted, and were successful in this, was to destroy the Chief Rabbinate as a force to be reckoned with. The way to do this was to make sure that its occupant would be nothing but a “crown rabbi”. That is, they wanted to appoint a chief rabbi who is a figurehead, who interacts with the government on behalf of the haredi leadership, who goes around the world speaking about Jewish topics to the masses, and who can deal with non-Jews. What they absolutely did not want in a chief rabbi was a figure who had any rabbinic standing and who could thus challenge haredi Daas Torah.
At a time when much of the right wing religious Zionist world appears to have gone off the deep end, R. Ariel stands as a voice of sanity. Be it his attack on Torat ha-Melekh (a book which I still plan on discussing) or his strong rejection (together with R. Aharon Lichtenstein and R. Nachum Rabinovitch) of the outrageous letter written by Rabbis Tau, Aviner and others in support of Moshe Katzav, or his defense of women voting (arguing that today R. Kook would not be opposed; Halakhah be-Yameinu, p. 189) he shows that right wing religious Zionism need not be identified with the craziness we have been accustomed to see in recent years. 
Let us return to his recent essay where he argues, in opposition to what I wrote in my article, that Maimonides often does “decide” in matters of hashkafah no different than in halakhah. To illustrate his point, Ariel notes that there is a dispute among the Sages about whether there are reasons for commandments. He claims that Maimonides מכריע ופוסק  in accord with the position that there are reasons. He concludes:
אף על פי שלדעתו כללי ההלכה אינם חלים בענייני אמונה, בכל זאת ניתן להכריע את האמונה על פי דרך הלימוד הנקוטה גם בהלכה.
The notion of a pesak emunah, if it is to be parallel to a pesak halakhah, would mean that after Maimonides gives his pesak, in his mind it is now forbidden to adopt the other viewpoint (just as when Maimonides rules that something is forbidden on Shabbat) .Yet where does Maimonides ever say that there is an obligation to accept his viewpoint about reasons for the commandments? What Maimonides does is show why his viewpoint is correct, and Ariel cites these sources. But just because Maimonides wants his readers to adopt his own viewpoint, in what way is this a “pesak emunah”? Maimonides is simply expressing his strongly held belief. He is not ruling alternative positions out of bounds, as he does in deciding halakhah. This appplies as well to the other examples Ariel brings to prove his point. All he has established is that Maimonides argues for a position in matters such as the nature of prophecy and providence, but that is far removed from the notion that Maimonides saw his opinions as halakhically binding. On the contrary, just because Maimonides tells us what he thinks the Torah’s position is in a matter such as providence, he had no expectation that the masses would (or in some cases even should) follow him in this, and he was fully tolerant of the masses holding to their errant opinions as long as the matter was not an authentic dogma.
5. I have now finished my book on censorship. I can’t say when it will appear as it still has to be properly edited, typset etc., but hopefully this won’t take too long. I have loads of interesting material that for various reasons I was unable to include in the book, so the Seforim Blog will give me a good opportunity to bring it to the public’s attention. Let me begin with something sent to me by Rodney Falk.
Professor Louis Henkin, the son of R. Joseph Elijah Henkin, died in 2010. Here is his obituary as it appeared in Ha-Modia.

 

Notice what is missing! The obituary won’t even mention who his father was. Had Louis Henkin been a businessman or a doctor this information would not have been excluded, of this there is no doubt. But it is considered a disgrace to R. Henkin’s memory that his son was an intellectual, one who lived the life of the mind, and yet he didn’t become a rav or a rosh yeshiva . People in the haredi world can understand how not everyone is cut out to be a rosh yeshiva or sit in kollel, and these “unfortunates” are therefore forced choose a profession. But apparently, the notion that one who has the brains and intellectual stamina to become a great scholar might choose to devote himself to non-Torah subjects borders on the blasphemous for Ha-Modia. As such, while Louis Henkin can be acknowledged for his achievements, he has to be severed from his father’s house (the same father who sent him and his two brothers to Yeshiva College).
I think Yoel Finkelman has put the matter quite well in discussing the larger issue of which this example is  part and parcel of:
Haredi writers of history claim to know better than the great rabbis of the past how the latter should have behaved. Those great rabbis do not serve as models for the present. Instead, the present and its ideology serve as models for the great rabbis. Haredi historiography becomes a tale of what observant Jews, and especially great rabbis, did, but only provided that these actions accord with, or can be made to accord with, current Haredi doctrine. The historians do not try to understand the gedolim; they stand over the gedolim. Haredi ideology of fealty to the great rabbis works at cross purposes with the sanitized history of those rabbis.[17]
6. Rabbi Jason Weiner, a fine musmach from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, has recently published a Guide to Traditional Jewish Observance in a Hospital. Formerly assistant rabbi at the Young Israel of Century City, he now serves as Senior Rabbi and Manager of the Spiritual Care Department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The book comes with approbations from R. Asher Weiss and R. Yitzchok Weinberg, the Talner Rebbe, and the halakhot in the book have been reviewed by Rabbis Gershon Bess, Nachum Sauer, and Yosef Shuterman. The book can be downloaded here.
7. Some readers have asked me about upcoming shul lectures. Here is what is on my schedule through Passover.
Feb. 15-16: Sephardic Institute of Brooklyn
March 1-2: Beth Israel, Miami Beach
March 8-9: Shearith Israel, New York
March 15-16: Beth Israel, Omaha
If any readers are interested in having me speak at their shuls, please be in touch.
8. No one got the answer to the last quiz, so let me do it again. The winner gets a copy of one of the volumes of R. Hayyim Hirschensohn’s commentary on Rashi. If you know the answer to the question, send it to me at shapirom2 at scranton.edu.

What was the first Hebrew book published by a living author?

[1] What does this last sentence mean? How can an attitude violate a biblical prohibition?

[2] As a good illustration of changes in attitude in the last forty years, here is what R. Norman Lamm wrote in his classic article on homosexuality in the 1975 yearbook of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. Such a sentence would, today, be quite politically incorrect, and regarded by gays as incredibly offensive: “Were society to give its open or even tacit approval to homosexuality, it would invite more aggresiveness on the part of adult pederasts toward young people.” 
[3] R. Meir Schiff (Maharam Schiff) is unique in believing that one without arms should put the tefillin shel yad on the head, together with the tefillin shel rosh. This is the upshot of his comment to Gittin 58a.
[4] See R. Sinai Schiffer, “Mitzvat ha-Metzitzah,” p. 106 (printed together with R. Sinai Adler, Devar Sinai [Jerusalem, 1966])
[5] See Eliyahu Meir Klugman, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, pp. 292-293.
[6] “Following in the Footsteps of Our Fathers,” Nov. 13, 2012.
[7] The words are those of Shlomo Sprecher from his article on metzitzah in Hakirah 3 (2006), p. 51.
[8] Speaking of drinking, take a look at this strange passage. It appears in R. Hayyim Rabbi’s letter at the beginning of R. Haggai Ben Hananyah’s Nimukei Levi (Ashdod, 2008), p. 2. Add this to the long list of texts that I refuse to translate.
בדין חלב אשה. נשאלתי פעם, אם בזמן תשמיש עם אשתו, החלב שלה אסור עליו, או שבעל ואשתו כגופו, ואין בו דין של יונק שרץ. ובפרט לטעם שמא יינק מבהמה טמאה, ובאשתו כגופו שהתירו לו בשעת פיוס וכו’, לא גזרו בזה. ויתכן שמותר כדין פסיק רישיה בדרבנן. ובנידון כזה, שזה חשש גזירה, גם בניחא ליה יש מקום להתיר. כן נראה לכאורה.
[9] The previous post is found here.
In the comments, Yehudah Mirsky wrote:

Fwiw, as I recall, Steve Wald in his book on Eilu Ovrin shows that the genuinely awful am-haaretz passages in Pesachim are a later stammatic addition, and that Jeff Rubinstein argues has a chapter on this in his “The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud” where he argues both that that sugya in Pesachim is sui generis in Hazal and – interestingly – reflects the Stammaim’s needing to justify their very scholastic lifestyle vis-a-vis people who were working for a living. Rubinstein cautions that the whole sugya may have been intended as a series of private jokes and need not necessarily reflect actual social relations between the stammaim and their surrounding society.

[10] Yeshayahu Leibowitz quipped that the Sages must have had a good sense of humor, since they included the following passage in the Talmud: תלמידי חכמים מרבים שלום בעולם. See Sihot al Pirkei Ta’amei ha-Mitzvot (Jerusalem, 2003), p. 289. In all seriousness, however, there are indeed humorous passages in the Talmud, as pointed out by R. Moses Salmon, Netiv Moshe (Vienna, 1897), pp. 45-46. Here is one example he gives (Bava Batra 14a).:
The Rabbis said to R. Hamnuna: R. Ammi wrote four hundred scrolls of the Law. He said to them: Perhaps he copied out the verse  תורה צוה לנו משה
Salmon claims that anyone with a bit of sense can see that R. Hamnuna’s reply is a wisecrack made in response to the obvious exaggeration about R. Ammi.
Nehemiah Samuel Leibowitz states that even in the Zohar we have passages that show a humorous side. One of the many examples he points to is Zohar, Bereshit, p. 27a:
וימררו את חייהם בעבודה קשה בקושיא. בחומר קל וחומר. ובלבנים בלבון הלכתא. ובכל עבודה בשדה דא ברייתא. את כל עבודתם וגו’ דא משנה.
See Leibowitz, “Halatzot ve-Divrei Bikoret be-Sefer ha-Zohar,”Ha-Tzofeh le-Hokhmat Yisrael 11 (1927), pp. 33-45. For more on humor in the Talmud, see Yehoshua Ovsay, Ma’amarim u-Reshimot (New York, 1946), ch. 1; R. Mordechai Hacohen, “Humor, Satirah, u-Vedihah be-Fi Hazal,” Mahanayim 67 (5722), pp. 8-19.
[11] Such a community also establishes special rules for itself, of which I can cite many examples. Here is one, from R. Solomon Luria, Yam Shel Shlomo, Bava Kamma 8:49:
ואם חוזר בפעם השלישי א”כ הוא משולש בחטא, אזי אין מניחין כלל לפדותו מן המלקות אלא ילקה בב”ד ודיו, אם לא שהוא בר אורין שאין ראוי להלקותו
After all we have seen in the last few years, I am quite certain that today the average person would not accept that when it comes to criminal matters that the rabbis should be given special privileges and exemptions.
[12] See also Va-Yikra Rabbah 9:3 where it describes how R. Jannai called his host “a dog”, and then learnt how wrong he was.
[13] See the introduction to the Constantinople 1510 edition of the work, reprinted in the Jerusalem, 1960 edition.
[14] On p. 187 Miller offers a different perspective. Here he quotes another rabbi who said that if necessary it is OK for one to repeat another’s hiddushim in the Shabbat ha-Gadol derashah, because the Sages tell us (Pesahim 6a): שואלין ודורשין בהלכות פסח.  This means:
מותר “לשאול” מאחרים בשעת הדחק ולדרוש בהלכות פסח
[15] I am told that it is still the practice in certain communities for the rabbi to deliver a derashah at a wedding..
[16] I think in particular of S.’s wonderful blog On the Main Line, which routinely provides important, and until now unknown, primary sources that are vital to a wide range of areas of scholarship.
[17] Strictly Kosher Reading, p. 122.


German Orthodoxy, Hakirah, and More

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German Orthodoxy, Hakirah, and More
Marc B. Shapiro
1. I recently published a translation of Hirsch’s famous lecture on Schiller. You can see it here.
At first I thought that this lecture remained untranslated into English for so long because of ideological concerns. (I still think that this is the reason it was never translated into Hebrew.) Yet before the article appeared, I was informed that the reason it did not appear in the English translation of the Collected Writings of Hirsch was not due to ideological censorship, but censorship of a different sort (see the article, note 2). I will let readers decide if this was a smart choice or not. I plan on publishing another translation from Hirsch which has also never appeared in English or Hebrew, and which many people will regard as not “religiously correct” for the twenty-first century.
With regard to the Schiller lecture, I thank Elan Rieser who called my attention to the following: Hirsch quoted Schiller as saying about a plant, “What it [the plant] unwittingly is, be thou of thine own free will.” It so happens that this very thought also appears in the Nineteen Letters, Elias translation, p. 56: “The law to which all forces submit instinctively and involuntarily—to this law you, too, are to subordinate yourself, but consciously and of your own free will.” This shows that even in his earliest work, Hirsch was influenced by Schiller.
While on the topic of non-Jewish writers influencing German rabbis, here is another example which might lead some to wonder if we have crossed the line from influence into plagiarism. (I do not think so, as I will explain.) Rabbi Marcus Lehmann (1831-1890) was a well-known German Orthodox rabbi. He served as rabbi of Mainz and was founder and editor of the Orthodox newspaper Der Israelit. Apart from his scholarly endeavors, he published a series of children’s books, and is best known for that. These were very important as they gave young Orthodox Jews a literature that reflected traditional Jewish values and did not have the Christian themes and references common in secular literature. Yet despite their value for the German Orthodox, R. Israel Salanter was upset when one of Lehmann’s stories (Süss Oppenheimer) was translated into Hebrew and published in the Orthodox paper Ha-Levanon. Although R. Israel recognized that Lehmann’s intentions were pure and that his writings could be of great service to the German Orthodox, it was improper for the East European youth to read Lehmann’s story because there were elements of romantic love in it. This is reported by R. Isaac Jacob Reines, Shnei ha-Meorot, Ma’amar Zikaron ba-Sefer, part 1, p. 46. Here is the relevant passage:
והנה ברור הדבר בעיני כי הרה”צ רמ”ל כיון בהספור הזה לש”ש, ויכול היות כי יפעל מה בספורו זה על האשכנזים בכ”ז לא נאה לפני רב ממדינתינו להעתיק ספור כזה שסוף סוף יש בו מענייני אהבה.
This passage is followed by another, which was made famous by R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg in Seridei Esh, vol. 2 no. 8. This is Weinberg’s well-known responsum on co-ed groups. He describes how R. Israel Salanter visited R. Esriel Hildesheimer and saw him giving a shiur in Tanakh and Shulhan Arukh before young women. R. Israel commented that if a rabbi from Lithuania would institute such a practice in his community they would throw him out of his position, and rightfully so. Yet he only hoped that he would be worthy enough to share a place in the World to Come with Hildesheimer: הלואי שיהי’ חלקי בג”ע עם הגה”צ ר”ע הילדסהיימר.
Weinberg doesn’t say where he learnt of this story, but it comes from Reines, who heard it directly from R. Israel Salanter. Yet Weinberg’s recollection was not exact. Before World War II, Weinberg had access to Shnei ha-Meorot, and he refers to it in his essay on Reines (Seridei Esh, vol. 4, p. 355, originally published before the War). After the War he no longer had access to this book, and thus was not able to check R. Israel Salanter’s exact words. Although, based on Weinberg, people often repeat Salanter’s comment that he hopes for a share of the World to Come together with Hildesheimer, he never actually said this. Here are his words, as recorded by the only witness, Reines, and I hope that from now on the great R. Israel Salanter will be quoted accurately. (The passage in the parenthesis is a comment from Reines himself.)
הלכתי לבקר גם את ביה”ס אשר לבנות, ששמעתי שגם שם מגיד הרה”ג הנ”ל [הילדסהיימר] איזה שעור, ומצאתי שבחדר גדול ורחב ידים עומד באמצע שולחן גדול וסביב השולחן יושבות נערות גדולות, והרה”ג הנ”ל בראש השלחן מגיד לפניהם שעור בשו”ע (הוא אמר לי אז גם באיזה הלכה שאמר להם אבל שכחתי) והוסיף לומר בזה”ל “ברור הדבר בעיני כי כוונת הרב היא לש”ש, וגם נעלה הדבר בעיני מכל ספק, כי כל התלמידות האלה השומעות לקח מפיו תהיינה לנשים כשירות, תמלאנה כל המצות שהנשים חייבות בהן, תחנכנה ילדיהן על דרכי התורה והאמונה, באופן שיש לומר בוודאות גמורה ומוחלטת כי הרה”ג הנ”ל עושה בזה דבר גדול באין ערוך, בכ”ז ינסה נא רב במדינתינו לעשות ב”ס כזה, הלא יקראו אחריו מלא ומן גיוו יגרשוהו; ואין ספק כי יהי’ מוכרח לנער את חצני’ מן הרבנות כי לא תהלמו עוד”, כל הדברים האלה דבר הרה”ג הצדיק הנ”ל בהתרגשות מיוחדה והתלהבות יתירה
Returning to Lehmann, one of his short stories is titled Ithamar. Eliezer Abrahamson called my attention to the fact that chapter 17 tells the same story as is found in Lew Wallace’s classic American novel, Ben-Hur, Book 3, chs. 2-3. I prefer to call this “borrowing”, rather than plagiarism, since Ben-Hur was a worldwide sensation and Lehmann was not trying to hide his borrowing. At that time, any adult reading Lehmann’s book would know what he was basing the chapter on, and that he was providing a Jewish version of certain episodes. In fact, the name of the main character of Lehmann’s book, Ithamar (not a very common name), is also the name of the father of the main character of Ben-Hur (Judah ben Ithamar ben Hur). By naming his character Ithamar, Lehmann was signaling his debt to Wallace.[1]
Regarding Lehmann’s stories, in the 1990s they also appeared in a censored haredi version. Ha-Modia actually published an article attacking this “reworking”. Here it is, followed by the response. (You can right-click to open larger images, or download it as a pdf here.)

I found these on my computer and don’t remember anymore how I got them (and unfortunately, there is no date visible on the articles). Click them to enlarge.

2. Not too long ago Hakirah 13 (2012) appeared, and as with the previous issues, it is a great collection of articles. The other Orthodox journals have to ask themselves why Hakirah has been so successful in overshadowing them. I think the answer is obvious. Hakirah is not afraid to take risks in what they publish. They don’t mind rocking the boat a bit, and dealing with controversial matters. I want to respond to two articles in the issue. The first is R. Elazar Muskin’s piece in which he discusses a 1954 Yom ha-Atzmaut event in Cleveland, which featured R. Elijah Meir Bloch, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Telz yeshiva. From the article one sees that Bloch had a positive attitude towards the State of Israel. Before reading further, I suggest people look over Muskin’s article again, so you can best appreciate that which will follow. You can find the article here.
Muskin notes that Bloch’s letter justifying his appearance at the Yom ha-Atzmaut event was published in R. Joseph Epstein’s 1969 book Mitzvot ha-Shalom. Although there have been many books that express a positive, or tolerant, view towards Zionism, anti-Zionist extremists chose to focus on this volume. Muskin quotes Gerald Parkoff who wrote as follows in a letter published in the Torah u-Madda Journal 9 (2000), p. 279:

When the first edition of the Mizvot ha-Shalom was published, the unsold inventory, which represented most of the extant copies, was kept in Rabbi Epstein’s garage. As it turned out, the sefer came to the attention of some misguided people[2] who were particularly upset with Rabbi Epstein’s association of Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Bloch with Yom ha-Azmaut. They proceeded to burn the first edition of Mizvot ha-Shalom in Rabbi Epstein’s garage. Subsequently, the perpetrators of this dastardly act were found and brought to a Satmar Bet Din. Financial restitution was then made to Rabbi Epstein.

As Parkoff notes, when the next edition of the work was published, Epstein took out Bloch’s letter, so as not to have another confrontation with the extremists. Yet something doesn’t make sense. Why would Satmar (or Satmar-like) extremists care about a letter from Bloch in Epstein’s book? What does this have to do with them? The extremists certainly had no interest in defending the honor of an Agudist whose ideology is rejected by them just as they reject the Mizrachi position. So why would they care about Epstein’s book at all?
If you compare the first edition of Mitzvot ha-Shalom to the second edition, the answer is, I think, obvious, and it has nothing to do with the Bloch letter. Pages 605-624 from the first edition are omitted in the second edition. The first few pages of this is Bloch’s letter, but beginning on p. 612 there is a section titled “Al ha-Geulah ve-al ha-Teshuvah.” This section is a rejection of R. Joel Teitelbaum’s views (in which, by the way, Epstein refers to the writings of R. Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, R. Yissachar Shlomo Teichtal, and R. Menachem M. Kasher). The very title of the section is an allusion to the Satmar Rav’s book, Al ha-Geulah ve-al ha-Temurah. While Epstein’s views are expressed respectfully, it is easy to see why the extremists would have gone after him, as a means of upholding the honor of their Rebbe. They presumably also saw the following passage, p. 611, as directed against the Satmar Rav, and even if it wasn’t directed against him personally, it is certainly directed against his followers.
אמנם השטן מרקד בין תלמידי חכמים על תלמי הפירוד והפילוג בישראל להטיל קטטיגוריא ביניהם, עד כדי השמצת שמות אהלי תורה ויראה, ועד כדי הורדת כבוד גדולים ארצה בכתבי פלסתר והוצאת דיבה, ללא חשש הלבנת פנים, וחטא מבזה תלמיד חכם, ונמצאים נכשלים בחטאים יותר חמורים מאלה שבאו לצעוק עליהם.
On p. 615 he writes as follows (even referring to the Satmar Rav’s views as “has ve-shalom”):
עיני גדולי וצדיקי הדור רואים נסים ונפלאות (ראה לעיל מבוא, מ”מ 32) – קול דודי דופק – אם אתחלתא דגאולה, אם רק פקידה, אם רק רמז רמיזה “מן החרכים” מאבינו שבשמים לריצוי, לפיוס – בהדי כבשי דרחמנא למה לן – איתערותא דלעילא הקוראת לאיתערותא דלתתא – וכי כל זה אך אור מתעה הוא חו”ש? (ראה “על הגאולה ועל התמורה עמ’ כ’ . . . )

I found a relevant “open letter” in the R. Leo Jung archives, File 2/1, at Yeshiva University. I thank the Yeshiva University Archives for permission to reproduce the letter here.

From this letter we see again that the issue had nothing to do with Bloch. Yet since there were other people attacking the Satmar Rav’s views during this time, I still think we need an explanation as to why these crazies decided to focus on Epstein. From the “open letter” it would appear that this was just another way to attack R. Moshe Feinstein, who wrote a haskamah for Epstein. In the “open letter” it states that if R. Moshe does not retract his haskamah then those behind the letter will take action. This action no doubt includes the burning of Epstein’s sefer.[3]

Here is how these wicked people expressed themselves, sounding just like mobsters:
משה’לע תדע שזה היא האזהרה האחרונה שאם לא תתחרט ברבים על ההסכמה שכתבת להספר הנ”ל לא נבוא עוד בכתב רק בידים נעשה מעשים נבהלים שתסמר שערות ראשך שתבוש להראות פרצופך הטמא.
Regarding R. Elijah Meir Bloch, he was a real Agudist, even serving on the U.S. Moetzet Gedolei ha-Torah. Yet his positive view of the establishment of the State of Israel is not unexpected. I say this because his father, R. Joseph Leib Bloch, Rosh Yeshiva of Telz and also rav of the city – the combination of rosh yeshiva and city rav was not so common [4] – appeared to be inclined to a type of Religious Zionism. Here is his letter to R. Zvi Yehudah Kook, published in the latter’s Li-Netivot Yisrael (Beit El, 2001), vol. 1.

 

I realize that R. Joseph Leib Bloch is usually portrayed as a strong anti-Zionist. This needs further investigation, but it could be that his opposition was only against secular Zionism and what he regarded as the Mizrachi’s compromises with the secular Zionists. From his letter, we see that he had a much different view of R. Kook’s Degel Yerushalayim.[5]
The letter above that of R. Joseph Leib Bloch is from R. Avraham Shapiro, the Kovno Rav, who unlike many other Lithuanian gedolim was a real opponent of Agudat Israel. (Another noteworthy opponent was R. Moses Soloveitchik.) Here is R. Shapiro’s picture.

R. Shapiro also was a supporter of Religious Zionism and a great admirer of R. Kook. Unfortunately, we don’t yet have a biography of his life. Those who want to know a little more about his attitude towards Zionism can see his 1919 letter to R. Kook in Iggerot la-Re’iyah, no. 94. Here he writes as follows:

החלטנו שבהמעשים הפוליטיים להשגת חפצנו באה”ק, כלומר העבודה לפני אסיפת השלו’, נלך ביחד עם הציונים שלא בהתפוררות כבאי כח מפלגה ומפלגה, כי אם כבאי כח כל העם העברים בסתם. למטרה זו נבחרה קומיסיה פוליטית לבוא בדברים עם הציונים, וכבר נעשה הצעדים הדרושים לזה. מקוה אני שתמצא הדרך להתאחדות הפעולות.
We see very clearly from this letter that the Kovno Rav supported working with the non-Orthodox Zionists in order to achieve the Zionist objective, which became a real possibility after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War 1.
In a 1921 letter to R. Zvi Yehudah Kook, Iggerot la-Re’iyah, p. 557, the Kovno Rav refers to the Agudah paper Ha-Derekh in a mocking tone: כפי שראיתי מ”הדרך” לא-דרך. In this letter he tells R. Zvi Yehudah that it is important for the Orthodox in Palestine to be involved in the political process that was set up by the British Mandatory authorities. Yet instead of doing that, he claims that the Orthodox have turned a large portion of the women against them, alluding towards the Eretz Yisrael rabbis’ ruling forbidding women’s suffrage, a ruling which R. Avraham Yitzhak Kook was at the forefront of. Look at these words and remember that the one writing them was one of the greatest poskim of his time, the great rav of Kovno, not some minor Mizrachi figure:
האומנם חושבים הם את השתתפות הנשים לאיסור גמור המפורש בתורה שאין אומרים בו מוטב יהיו שוגגים כו’? לדעתי הסכילו עשה.
This opposition to women voting in Israeli elections has disappeared from the haredi world, for obvious political reasons. Yet examination of haredi writings leads to the conclusion that female suffrage is only a hora’at sha’ah, and that if the haredim ever became a majority the right to vote would be removed from women. But I think that this is more theory than reality, as I can’t imagine that even a haredi society would take this step as the backlash from women would be quite significant. As for the followers of R. Kook, do they also think that female suffrage is hora’at sha’ah and hope for a day when the vote will be taken away from women, for all the reasons R. Kook offered? Based on a recent statement by R. Aviner, it appears that for some of them the answer to this question is yes.
The Kovno Rav ends his letter to R. Zvi Yehudah with these strong words against Agudat Israel:
כנראה אסע אי”ה בקרוב בשביל צרכי צבור ללונדון. כמובן לא בשביל אגודת-ישראל. כנראה אחר כ’ את האספה בפ”ב. מה דעתו עליה? אנכי בכוונה לא נטלתי חלק בה, לפי שכל מעשיהם עד עכשיו אינם רצוים בעיני ואינם בדרך האמת. הדו”ח של רוזנהיים לא הי’ אמת. הקומיסא הפוליטית איננה יודעת מאום מאשר עשו ולכה”פ אנכי איני מסכים על כל דרכיהם שהזיקו רק להאורטודקכסיא ולא לאחרים. אני אומר זאת לכל מפורש מבלי התחבא בהשקפתי.
I mention the Kovno Rav’s opposition to Agudat Yisrael not only for its historical significance, but also because it brings us back to a time when Agudat Israel actually did something other than put on a big Daf Yomi celebration every seven years.[6] There was a time when Agudat Israel tried to accomplish great things, so there was reason to oppose it by those who thought that it was moving in the wrong direction. Today, however, what is Agudat Israel? There was a time when it was a movement, and today it is a lobbying organization, pure and simple, and without much influence at that. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t even have a website or a journal. You sink into oblivion, only to be remembered in another seven years at the next Siyum ha-Shas.
In a 1931 letter to R. Kook, Iggerot la-Re’iyah, no. 273, the Kovno Rav asks R. Kook if he agrees with him that a world congress of rabbis should be convened – אספת רבנים עולמית . I mention this only because in later years it became almost an article of faith in the haredi world that such rabbinic gatherings were absolutely forbidden. The fear was that the gatherings would make decisions at odds with the haredi Daas Torah. The only way to make sure that their followers would not attend these gatherings, where they might actually hear different viewpoints, was for the haredi leaders to ban these gatherings.[7] This is as good an example of any of how the haredi leadership uses its rabbinic “muscle” for political goals. If someone were to ask on what basis can one state that it is forbidden for rabbis with different viewpoints to gather to discuss issues, the answer is obviously not going to be that the Talmud or Shulhan Arukh says it is forbidden. It is forbidden because the gedolim say it is forbidden, i.e., Daas Torah.
R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg writes as follows about the Kovno Rav (Kitvei ha-Rav Weinberg, vol. 2, p. 234):
ועלי להעיר כי הגאון דקאוונא שליט”א הוא אחד מגדולי הדור בזמננו, אחד המוחות היותר טובים שבתוכנו. ואעפ”י שאנשים ידועים משתדלים להשפילו ולהמעיט את ערכו, מ”מ אי אפשר להחשיך את אור תורתו וחכמתו.
What does Weinberg mean when he speaks of those who oppose the Kovno Rav and try to minimize his importance? Who are these people and what led them to this judgment of the great Kovno Rav? Let me thicken the plot. The late R. Tovia Lasdun wrote to me as follows: “Kovner Rav was a great person, but his views did not always meet the views of the Orthodoxy [!]”[8] By “Orthodoxy” he meant Lithuanian yeshiva world Orthodoxy. From what we have seen already, namely, his anti-Agudah stand and the other points I noted, one can begin to understand why there would be opposition to the Kovno Rav from yeshiva circles.

R. Jeffrey Woolf recorded the following story about the Kovno Rav. He heard it from an eyewitness and it is very illuminating.[9]

The pre-war Jewish community of Kovno (Kaunas, today) Lithuania was divided into different components, divided by the Neris River. On the one side was the general community, which was made up of every type of contemporary Jewish religious and cultural population. Indeed, the community was a bit notorious for a lackadaisical form of religiosity. On the other side of the Williampol bridge, was the famous Slabodka Yeshiva, a flagship of the Mussar Movement. As might be expected, relations between the two sectors were often tense. There was a saying attributed to the Alter of Slabodka, R. Nosson Zvi Finkel זצ”ל, that the bridge from Kovno to Slabodko only went one way.

Coping with the myriad of challenges, modernization and secularization in Kovno was its illustrious rabbi, R. Avraham Dov-Bear Kahana-Shapira זצוק”ל, author of the classic collection of responsa and Talmudic essays דבר אברהם, and known more popularly as the ‘Kovner Rov.’ One central concern of his was the alienation of young Kovner Jews from the synagogue. Thus, when the administration of the Choral Synagogue came to him with an intriguing approach to the problem, he jumped at it.

The idea was to have the synagogue’s cantor, the internationally renowned tenor Misha Alexandrovich, offer public concerts that would feature classical חזנות alongside renditions of serene Italian bel canto compositions. The hope was that this type of cultural evening would draw modernizing young Jewish men and women to the synagogue, where they would socialize and (perhaps) find mates. 

The first concert was a smashing success and more were planned. Everyone was thrilled, except for the heads of the Slabodka Yeshiva. They turned angrily to the Kovner Rov and demanded that he intervene to stop the concerts. They were indecent, the Rashe Yeshiva objected. The led to fraternization between men and women, and in the synagogue. Worse still, they might corrupt yeshiva students.

The Kovner Rav listened quietly, and then firmly rejected the Yeshiva’s objection. “You are responsible only for your yeshiva,” he asserted. “I am responsible for the spiritual welfare of all of the Jews of Kovno.” The concerts, he declared, would continue.

Returning to R. Elijah Meir Bloch, there is another relevant source and that is found in Chaim Bloch’s Dovev Siftei Yeshenim. (There was no familial relationship between the two Blochs.) As we have discussed numerous times, one can’t believe anything that Bloch wrote, and all of the letters of gedolim he published must be assumed to be forgeries. However, this only applies to the letters he published of deceased individuals, but the letters he published of living figures are indeed authentic. In vol. 1 (1959), p. 392, he published a letter he received in December 1944 from Jacob Rosenheim, the president of World Agudat Israel, then living in New York. Chaim Bloch had written to him asking on what basis the Agudah was now supporting the establishment of a Jewish state. Rosenheim replied that this policy was based on the decision of the “gedolei ha-Torah.” He also mentioned that this support was dependent on two important points. (1) The State had to be run according to Torah, and (2) that the new State would be accepted peacefully by the Arabs. He states that if the Arabs and the world governments agree to the establishment of the State, then there is no prohibition of שלא ימרדו באומות. He also adds that there is no prohibition to establish a state without a Temple, i.e., a State before the coming of the Messiah.
Chaim Bloch strongly rejects Rosenheim’s words, and declares that based upon what Rosenheim writes, there is now no difference between the Agudah and the Mizrachi. This was exactly the claim of the Edah Haredit in Jerusalem, and eventually it and the Agudah would go their separate ways.
The end of Rosenheim’s letter is of interest to us, because after stating that he personally doesn’t believe that in the current (end of 1944) circumstances there is any chance of a Torah state, he adds that R. Eliezer Silver and R. Elijah Meir Bloch do think such a Torah state is possible. I don’t know what this says about the political acumen of Silver[10] and R. Elijah Meir Bloch, but it shows that R. Bloch had a very optimistic view of the religious development of the future State.
Rosenheim concludes his letter by stating that, unlike Silver and R. Elijah Meir Bloch, “we” (by which he must mean the rest of the Agudah leadership) regard the creation of a State as a real catastrophe. Rosenheim and the others assumed (correctly) that the non-religious would be the majority and that this would create a very difficult circumstance for Orthodox Jews. Their preference was that the land remain under British control, with religious freedom given to all. Rosenheim’s comments today appear surprising, but we must remember that from the perspective of most Agudists, nothing was worse than having a secular “Hebrew State”. Many of them assumed that Zionist control of the Land of Israel would lead to anti-religious measures (which turned out to be correct in some instances). Others might even have believed that the Zionists were to be suspected of wanting to kill the Orthodox![11]
Regarding R. Elijah Meir Bloch, let me call attention to one more interesting source. In the volume Yahadut Lita, vol. 2, pp. 234-235, Bloch contributed an article on Agudat Israel, in which, as mentioned, he was very involved. In this article he says the following, which fits in very well with what we learn from Muskin’s essay (I have added the emphasis).
“אגודת ישראל” בליטא, כמו מרכז “יבנה”, התענינו גם בהפצת הדיבור העברית והשתמשו בטקסיהם בדגל הכחול-לבן, שכן סיסמתה של ה”אגודה” בליטא היתה ללחום רק נגד הדברים שהם בניגוד להשקפתה, אבל לא נגד דברים נכונים כשלעצמם, אף שאחרים דוגלים בהם בדרך מנוגדת להשקפת העולם החרדית. סיסמתנו היתה שכל דבר טוב שייך לנו, אף שאחרים הרימוהו על נס, ונקבל את האמת ממי שאמרו. אדרבה, בזה יכולנו לרכוש את דעת-הקהל לצדנו בהיות מאבקנו רק נגד הדברים שהם בניגוד למסורת.
As Bloch says, the approach of the Lithuanian Agudah was not to oppose something just because it was supported by the non-Orthodox. Just because the non-Orthodox spoke in Hebrew in their schools and used the blue and white flag didn’t mean that the Orthodox had to avoid these things. (I have to admit that for Agudah members to use the blue and white flag strikes me as very strange, as from its beginning this was a Zionist flag, not a flag for the Jewish people as a whole.)
In his article, Bloch describes how in the 1930s two hundred Agudah halutzim went on aliyah, after hakhsharah at Tzeirei Agudah kibbutzim in Lithuania. Sounding very Zionistic, he notes that among them were those who took part in defense of the yishuv against Arab attacks: ופעלו במסירות למען בנין הארץ.[12]
* * * *
In a previous post I asked two quiz questions. No one was able to answer no. 1, which means that the prize will remain for the winner of a future quiz. These were the questions.
1. Tell me the only place in the Shulhan Arukh where R. Joseph Karo mentions a kabbalistic concept? I am referring to an actual concept e.g., Adam Kadmon, Ein Sof, etc.
2. If more than one person answers the above question correctly, the one who answers the following (not related to seforim) will win: Which is the only United States embassy that has a kosher kitchen?
Nachum Lamm and Ari Zivotofsky both got the answer right for no. 2. The embassy is in Prague and the ambassador is Norman L. Eisen. I had the pleasure of davening with him every morning on my trip to Prague last summer. You can read about him here.
Now let’s turn to the question no. 1. The first thing to note is that there are many halakhot in the Shulhan Arukh. If R. Joseph Karo was a mystic, as in the title of Werblowsky’s book on him,[13] one would expect to see evidence of this in the Shulhan Arukh, and also in the Beit Yosef. Yet we don’t have this, and references to the Zohar and even basing halakhot on the Zohar have nothing to do with whether one should be thought of as a mystic. By the 16th century the Zohar was a canonical text, so referring to it says nothing about whether one is a mystic, neither then nor today.
However, we know that R. Joseph Karo was a mystic because of his book Magid Meisharim, which recounts his visions of a heavenly figure, who taught him over many decades.[14] Interestingly, R. Leopold Greenwald denied that Karo wrote this book. He attributes it to an anonymous לץ.[15] This reminds me of something I noted in an earlier post. See here where I mention how Abraham Samuel Judah Gestetner denies that R. Jacob Emden wrote Megilat Sefer, his autobiography. Gestetner claims that it could only have been written by a degenerate maskil! (There is no doubt whatsoever that Emden wrote the work.)
Despite the fact that the Shulhan Arukh does not generally mention kabbalistic ideas, there is one place, and only one place, where he indeed does so. It is in Orah Hayyim 24:5, where he states that the two tzitzit in front have ten knots, which is an allusion to the ten Sefirot:
כשמסתכל בציצית מסתכל בשני ציציות שלפניו שיש בהם עשרה קשרים רמז להויות

* * *

I am happy to report that this summer, God willing, I will once again be leading Jewish history-focused tours to Central Europe and Italy. (A trip to Spain is being planned, but will not be ready by the summer.) For information about the trip to Central Europe, please see here.
Complete information about the Italy trip will will soon be available on the Torah in Motion website.

To be continued

[1] With regard to Ben-Hur, there are at least eight different Hebrew translations, and they all censor Christian themes in the novel. See Nitsa Ben-Ari, “The Double Conversion of Ben-Hur: A Case of Manipulative Translation,” Target 12 (2002), pp. 263-302.
[2] Why such lashon nekiyah? I can think of many more appropriate ways to refer to such criminals.
[3] In the introduction to Iggerot Moshe, vol. 8, p. 27 (written by the sons and son-in-law), it states that some Satmar hasidim would come to R. Moshe for advice and to receive blessings. But on p. 26 it also records as follows:
בגלל עמדת האגודה לגבי ארץ ישראל וההתנגדות החריפה של חסידות סטאמר לעמדה זו, הוחלט אצלם לתקוף את רבנו ופסקיו (כך ספרו לרבנו אנשי נטורי קרתא בירושלים כאשר היה שם בשנת תשכ”ד). כמטרה להתקפה זו נבחרו תשובותיו בעניין הזרעה מלאכותית ושיעור מחיצה של עזרת נשים. מחלוקת זו שלא היתה לאמיתה של תורה גרמה לרבנו עגמת נפש מרובה. התקפות אלה לא היו רק באמצעות מאמרים ותשובות, אלא גם בהתקפות אישיות חירופים וגידופים, מעשי אלימות, איומי פצצות, הטרדות טלפוניות ושריפת ספריו.
[4] His father-in-law, R. Eliezer Gordon, also held both positions, as did his son, R. Avraham Yitzhak Bloch (who was martyred in the Holocaust). Although in the U.S. the Telz yeshiva adopted a very anti-secular studies perspective, this was not the case in Europe. R. Joseph Leib Bloch was very involved with the Yavneh day school system in Lithuania, which incorporated secular studies (and also Tanakh), and in the context of Eastern Europe can be regarded as a form of Modern Orthodox education. It is also significant that in Yavneh schools Hebrew was the language of instruction for all subjects. The preparatory school (mekhinah) of the Telz yeshiva also contained secular studies (which the government insisted on if students wanted to be exempted from the draft).
The graduates of Yavneh attended universities, in particular the University of Kovno, and they had an Orthodox student group named Moriah. By the 1930s, Lithuania had begun to produce an academically trained Orthodox population. Had the Holocaust not intervened, much of Lithuanian Orthodoxy would have come to resemble German Orthodoxy. This is important to realize since people often assume that Bnei Brak and Lakewood are the only authentic continuation of Lithuania, when nothing could be further from the truth. What R. Ruderman attempted to establish in Baltimore was, speaking historically, the true successor of the pre-War Lithuanian Orthodox society’s dominant ethos. (I am speaking of Orthodox society as a whole, not the very small yeshiva population.)
In speaking of R. Joseph Leib Bloch, Dr. Yitzhak Raphael ha-Halevi Etzion, the head of the Yavneh Teacher’s Institute in Telz, writes as follows:
בדברי על הגימנסיה העברית לבנות “יבנה” בטאלז ובהזכרי על החינוך בעיר בכלל אינני יכול שלא להזכיר את דמותו המופלאה והדגולה של הרב ר’ יוסף ליב בלוך זצ”ל, רבה של טאלז וראש ישיבתה. אחד הרבנים הגדולים והקנאים ביותר של ליטא – היה הראשון שהבין את הנחיצות של חינוך עברי דתי-מודרני לבנות ולבנים.
See “Ha-Zerem ha-Hinukhi ‘Yavneh’ be-Lita,” Yahadut Lita, vol. 2, pp. 160-165.
R. Shlomo Carlebach wrote as follows, after describing the creation of the Kovno Gymnasium, a Torah im Derekh Eretz school established by R. Joseph Zvi Carlebach (Ish Yehudi: The Life and the Legacy of a Torah Great, Rav Joseph Tzvi Carlebach (Brooklyn, 2008), pp. 74, 76):

The Kovno Gymnasium left a deep impression upon the Lithuanian Torah leaders, who could not help but notice the enthusiastic response to the Torah im Derech Eretz educational approach on the part of students and parents. They realized that this approach caused no compromise in Yirat Shamayim. The enormous upheaval in the political and social structure of Jewish society throughout the land, in the aftermath of war, threatened the stability and loyalty of Jewish youth. Under those circumstances, these Torah leaders felt an urgent need to introduce a similar educational program, on a broad scale, by reorganizing existing schools and establishing new ones, where subjects in Derech Eretz would be taught alongside Limuday Kodesh.

At the behest of the Telzer Rav, Rav Joseph Leib Bloch, a world-renowned gaon and Rosh Yeshivah of the equally renowned Telzer Yeshivah, Dr. [Leo] Deutschlaender, director and guiding spirit of the Keren Hatorah Central Office in Vienna, was summoned to Kovno to organize, in consultation with the Rav [Joseph Zvi Carlebach] such an educational system, to be called Yavneh. . . . At its conclusion, he published a summary of the “Yavneh educational project” in the “Israelit”. He reported that separate teachers’ seminaries for men and women had been established in Kovno, in addition to “gymnasium-style high schools in Telz, Kovno, and Ponevesh, and approximately 100 elementary schools spread throughout the land.”

It is interesting that when the late, unlamented, Jewish Observer published a review of this book by R. Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer, the editor felt constrained to insert the following “clarification,” knowing that its readers would be shocked to learn that Lithuanian Torah Jewry was not an enlarged version of Lakewood.

The best part of this “clarification” is the final sentence. I wonder, why does such a careful scholar and talmid hakham as Rabbi Carlebach need to have his book vetted by “gedolei Torah and roshei yeshivos”, who for all their talmudic learning are not known as experts in historical matters? Since the Agudah gedolei Torah and roshei yeshivot are prepared to cover up historical truths (as seen in their signing on to the ban of Making of a Godol), why in this case did they agree to allow the masses to learn what really was going on in Lithuania? Is it because they too feel the need to change the direction of American haredi Orthodoxy to a more secular studies friendly perspective, and this could help set the stage for this?

Returning to Telz, the question remains why Telz in Cleveland adopted such an extremely negative outlook regarding secular studies? Maybe a reader can offer some insight. R. Rakeffet has reported that R. Samuel Volk of YU, who was himself an old Telzer, commented that Telz in Cleveland distorted what Telz in Europe was about.

An interesting story about the Cleveland Telz was told to me by Rabbi M.C., a Cleveland native (and YU musmach). He was at the Telz high school and upon graduating decided to go to YU. R. Mordechai Gifter summoned M.C.’s mother and told her that if her son goes to YU, within a few months he will no longer be religious. She then angrily demanded that R. Gifter return to her all the years of tuition she had paid. She said: “If you tell me that after all the years my son has studied here, it will only take a few months at YU before he becomes non-religious, then the education you offer must be pretty lousy, and I want my money back!”
R. Dov Lior recalls that R. Zvi Yehudah Kook had a similar reaction when at a meeting of roshei reshiva with Minister of Defense Shimon Peres a haredi rosh yeshiva claimed that putting yeshiva students in the army could lead to them becoming non-religious (Hilah Wolberstein, Mashmia Yeshuah [Merkaz Shapira, 2010], p. 296):
הרכין הרב צבי יהודה את ראשו כולו בוש ונכלם. הרי צבא ישראל, צבאנו הוא, ולא צבא הפריץ הנוכרי, ולכן חובה עלינו להשתתף בו. זאת ועוד, האם המטען שהבחורים קיבלו בישיבות אינו חזק דיו שיש לחשוש כל כך לקלקולם?
[5] See his Shiurei Da’at (Tel Aviv, 1956), vol. 3, p. 65 (in his shiur “Dor Haflagah”), where we see that he was also opposed to messianic Zionism, so it appears that he didn’t really understand R. Kook’s ideology.
הגאולה אי אפשר להביא על ידי תחבולות בני אדם ואי אפשר לדעת אותן, נעלה ונעלם הוא ענין הגאולה, ולכן תבא בהיסח הדעת, כי לא ידעו בני אדם אל נכון איזה מצב הוא הראוי לגאולה.

[6] In all the discussions recently about the success of Daf Yomi, I didn’t see anyone note that one of the reasons this success is so surprising is that the whole notion of Daf Yomi goes against what for many years was the outlook of the rabbinic elite. The Shakh, Yoreh Deah 246:5, quoting the Derishah, states that laypeople should not only study Talmud but also halakhah, which he thinks should be their major focus as practical halakhah is שורש ועיקר לתורתינו. It is not hard to understand the point that since a layperson’s time is limited, he will get more out of his learning by focusing on practical material. If, for example, one has an hour a day to learn, what makes more sense: to go through hilkhot Shabbat or to study Talmud? While people today prefer Talmud, the Shakh prefers halakhah, and I don’t know of any rabbinic figures in years past who disagreed with the Shakh. This Shakh is also mentioned in the introduction to the Mishnah Berurah. While it is obvious that one who has time to learn both Talmud and practical halakhah is in the ideal circumstance, how did we get to the situation where those whose time is limited are now encouraged to focus on Talmud? The credit (or blame, depending on your outlook) for this development can, I think, be laid at Artscroll’s door, for Artscroll made learning Talmud exciting for the masses, in a way that halakhah is not, and maybe can never be.
Daf Yomi is so revolutionary precisely due to its democratic ethos, that everyone is welcome to study that which used to be the preserve of only the elites. Much like American universities opened up higher learning to the masses, and created a situation where for the first time in history texts such as Plato and Aristotle were now taught (or spoon-fed) to all, so too, for he first time in history, Daf Yomi allowed Talmud to become a product of mass consumption.
[7] See e.g.. R. Eleazar Shakh, Mikhtavim u-Ma’amarim, vols. 1-2, no. 111.
[8] Rabbi Rakeffet has reported the following story that he was told by R. Bernard Revel’s widow, Sarah. When the Kovno Rav was in New York he was at some gathering with Revel. Revel told him that he had to excuse himself as he had yahrzeit and had to go recite kaddish at a minyan, The Kovno Rav replied: “You also believe in that?” The implication was that the notion of saying kaddish on a yahrzeit was folk religion, not something that Torah scholars take seriously. Mrs. Revel was shocked when she heard the comment, but Rakeffet is probably correct that this was an example of Lithuanian rabbinic humor.
[9] See here.
[10] I heard from a Holocaust survivor that in 1946 Silver came to Kielce. Dressed in a military uniform, he gave a speech telling the people to remain in Poland in order to rebuild Jewish life there. The man who told me this thought that Silver’s speech was directed against the Mizrachi. (Silver was in Poland on July 4, 1946, the date of the infamous Kielce pogrom, yet I don’t know if his visit to Kielce was before or after the pogrom.) Silver was not a chaplain, but rather an emissary of Agudat ha-Rabbanim and Vaad Hatzalah. “The American government agreed to Silver’s wearing an Army uniform so its insignias would add to his protection in areas where anti-Semitism was still rife.”Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff, The Silver Era (Jerusalem/New York, 2000), p. 228.
[11] It has been reported that R. Moshe Sternbuch claims that he was told by R. Velvel Soloveitchik that his father, R. Hayyim, once expressed fear of not being left alone with a religious Zionist. He was worried that the latter would kill him, since the Zionists are suspected of shefihut damim. See Mishkenot ha-Ro’im, vol.1, p. 271, quoting Om Ani Homah, Sivan 5732. (I don’t know if Sternbuch is being quoted accurately, but I can’t imagine that R. Hayyim would ever have said this about a religious Zionist. A number of his own students and relatives were religious Zionists!). The exact same fear was, according to Moshe Blau, expressed by R. Joseph Rozin, the Rogochover:
הלא הם [הציונים] חשודים על הכל, הם חשודים גם על שפיכות דמים
See Yair Borochov, Ha-Rogochovi p. 70. (After the killing of Jacob de Haan, this viewpoint was given some basis.) See ibid., where Blau also quotes the Rogochover as saying that the reason he stopped publicizing his anti-Zionist views was because he was asked to do so by his daughter, who was married to R. Yisrael Abba Citron, the rav of Petah Tikvah. Citron was a Mizrachi supporter and it was creating problems for him that his father-in-law was attacking the Zionist movement. Regarding Citron, see the fascinating book-length biography of him that appears at the beginning of his volume of hiddushim, published in 2010.
[12] As Eliezer Brodt noted in his last post, Bloch’s son, R. Yosef Zalman Bloch, Be-Emunah Shelemah (Monsey, 2012), pp. 115-116, quotes a strongly anti-Zionist and anti-Mizrachi letter of the elder Bloch, attempting to leave the impression that when it came to this issue his father had a completely negative attitude. However, as we have seen, the truth is more complicated. In general, Y.Z. Bloch’s book is quite a strange mix of wide learning combined with unbelievable nonsense, a point alluded to much more gently by Brodt. On the very page that he quotes his father’s view of Zionism, he tells us that one who does not believe that God’s individual providence encompasses everything in the world, even the animals, insects, falling leaves, etc. הרי הוא כופר בעיקר, ואין לו חלק לעוה”ב. He says that the sages in earlier times who didn’t have this perspective were tzadikim and they are at present in Olam ha-Ba, but today, after the matter has been “decided” by the Masorah, holding such a position is heretical. Leaving aside the question as to why he feels he is a prophet and can in bombastic fashion declare who has lost his share in the World to Come (something he is fond of doing in this book), does he not realize how many great Torah scholars from even recent generations he has (inadvertently?) condemned as heretics?
This is all so obvious to me that I don’t see any need to cite “authorities.” But for those who want this, let me offer the following. A few years ago, an author writing in Mishpahah asserted that one who believes that animals are not subject to individual providence, it is like he is “eating fowl with milk” (which is a lot less severe than Bloch’s judgment that such a person is a heretic with no share in the World to Come). R. Meir Mazuz, Or Torah, Tamuz 5769, pp. 867-868, responded to this strange assertion by citing many authorities who indeed held this position, and he mentions nothing about it being “rejected by the Masorah.” He concludes:
אבל אטו מי שסובר כדעת הרמב”ם והרמב”ן והרד”ק ורבינו בחיי וספר החינוך ומהרש”א והרמ”ק ומהר”י אירגאס והגר”א נקרא אוכל בשר עוף בחלב?
A large section of Bloch’s book is designed to show that the only acceptable Torah belief is that the sun, planets, and stars revolve around the earth. As for Copernicus, he refers to him as קופירניקוס הרשע שר”י (p. 351 n. 36).
Among his nuggets of wisdom is that astronomy is the most heretical, and anti-Jewish, of all the sciences. P. 387 n. 1:
וצריכה למודעי, דספרי חכמת התכונה גרעי טובא יותר מכל שאר ספרי חכמתם, שמלאים אפיקורסות ושנאת הקב”ה ר”ל, שנאת דת יהודית, ושנאת האמת, שטויות ושגעונות, עד שיש להתפלא מה טעם יהיו “חכמיהם” וספריהם האלו כל כך מטופשים ומלאי ארס הכפירה יותר מכל שאר ספרי חכמיהם.
Since, as he states, these scientists are not only heretics but also stupid fools, one can only wonder how they were able to figure out how to put a man on the moon.
On p. 331 he refers to the view of R. Jacob Kamenetsky (without mentioning him by name) that the first four chapters of Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah are not to be regarded as Torah but as פילוסופיא בעלמא. See Emet le-Yaakov (New York, 1998), pp. 15-16. Bloch sees this as absolute heresy, and he quotes R. Yehudah Segal of Manchester as saying that even if the Hatam Sofer or the Noda bi-Yehudah said this, we would not accept what they said, and would be forced to reinterpret their words. Bloch quotes this approvingly, and this illustrates the problem. He is so locked into his dogmatic assumptions that his mind is closed and doesn’t want to be confused with the facts.. If most people were shown an explicit text of the Hatam Sofer or Noda bi-Yehudah that diverges from their dogmatic assumption, they would conclude that their assumption of what is “acceptable” needs to be revised. But Bloch refuses to even acknowledge the possibility that people greater than him might have a different perspective on what constitute the fundamentals of faith.
Bloch advocates this approach even when it comes to the rishonim (p. 117):
ואפילו מה שכתבו עמודי העולם הראשונים ז”ל, אם אינו מתאים עם האמונה הפשוטה הברורה שבה”אני מאמין”, וכפי שנמסרה לנו ה”אני מאמין” מאבותינו ואמותינו הצדיקים והצדקניות, הַניחו אותה בקרן זוית.
On p. 336 Bloch goes further than merely rejecting the Copernican outlook that earth revolves around the sun. He also denies that the earth rotates on its axis. According to him, it is a Torah truth that the earth stands still: שהארץ עומדת על עמדה ואינה זזה כלל.
The absolute craziest thing he says, in a book filled with absurdities, is that the sun, moon, and all the stars [!] revolve around the earth every twenty-four hours!:
שהשמש והירח וכל הכוכבי-לכת וכל הכוכבים וכל צבא השמים סובבים יחד את כדור הארץ בכל עשרים וארבע שעות.
I  guess it is a neat trick that stars so many light years away (i.e., trillions of miles away) are able to circle earth each day. (Our galaxy alone has hundreds of billions of stars.) But seriously, is one supposed to laugh or cry when reading this? How should one relate to a rabbi who so dishonors the Torah by claiming that this is Torah truth, and a required belief of any religious Jew?
On p. 289 Bloch writes:
והא דמצינו לפעמים שאחד מרבותינו הראשונים או אחד מגדולי האחרונים ז”ל אשר מימיהם אנו שותים, אמרו על איזה אגדתא שזה גוזמא, תדע לנכון דלא משום שח”ו לא הרכינו ראשם לכל הנאמר בגמרא, וחשבו שמה שרחוק מהמציאות שלעינינו בהכרח יתפרש רק כגוזמא, אלא דכך היתה קבלתם דזה המאמר המובא בתלמוד לא נאמרה מעיקרא כפשוטה אלא כגוזמא.
Everything in this sentence is incorrect, and is contradicted by numerous explicit statements in rishonim and aharonim.
[13] Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic (Oxford, 1962)
[14] Regarding why R. Joseph Karo doesn’t mention the maggid in his halakhic writings, see Eliezer Brodt, Likutei Eliezer (Jerusalem, 2010), pp. 106ff. As usual, Brodt shows incredible erudition.
[15] Kol Bo al Avelut (Brooklyn, 1951), vol. 2, p. 31, in the note. Greenwald elaborates on this position in Ha-Rav R. Yosef Karo (New York, 1953), ch. 8.


Concerning the Zohar and Other Matters

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Concerning the Zohar and Other Matters
Marc B. Shapiro
1. In the last issue of Milin Havivin I published an article dealing with the Zohar and the supposed obligation to accept that it was written by R. Shimon ben Yohai. You can see it here. In the article I mentioned authorities who pointed to passages that in their minds were certainly post-Rashbi interpolations.[1] At the end of the article I also published a letter from R. Isaac Herzog in which he briefly deals with the issue of non-literal interpretation of the Torah. We see that he was uncertain as to what the boundaries are in this matter, and thought that this was an issue that needed to be worked out. That is, he did not believe that the last word on this issue had been stated.
Subsequent to publication I found some more interesting material and I also received a number of emails making various points, so now is as good a time as ever to return to the topic.
First, let me mention what David Farkas wrote to me in an email. In the article I cited Bruriah Hutner-David who brings the following proof that R. Zvi Hirsch Chajes rejected the traditional authorship of the Zohar: In order to show that the Targum to Ecclesiastes should be dated to the geonic period, Chajes notes that while the angel Raziel is mentioned in this Targum, he is not mentioned in talmudic literature. Hutner-David notes that Raziel is mentioned in the Zohar, a fact that Chajes was presumably aware of, meaning that he was hinting that the Zohar is also a late work.
Chaim Landerer called my attention to the fact that in a talmudic era Aramaic incantation bowl the name Raziel does appear, and I cited this to show that Chajes was incorrect in his assumption that the name Raziel post-dates the rabbinic period. However, Farkas has correctly noted that the name Raziel in the bowl refers to God, while Chajes was specifically referring to Raziel as a name of an angel. In other words, there is no refutation of Chajes. Yet I still think that Chajes assumed that the name Raziel itself was post-talmudic. Once we see that the name existed in the rabbinic period, even if so far the only evidence of its use is for God, it is certainly possible that it was also used for angels as well. If that is the case, there is no evidence that the use of the word Raziel as an angel’s name points to a post-rabbinic date.
I also found that Saul Berlin notes, in the introduction to his Kasa de-Harsana (his commentary to Besamim Rosh), that unlike all other ancient Jewish books, the Zohar has an introduction. Because of this, he writes that when it comes to the authorship of the Zohar he inclines to the view of his great-uncle, R. Jacob Emden.
A few years ago the outstanding scholar, R. Yaakov Yisrael Stoll, published the anonymous Sefer Kushyot. Here are pages 123-124.

I ask readers to look at note 887. He discusses a mistake made by many in assuming that an expression is a biblical verse. He then notes that the Zohar also makes the same mistake, and refers to other such mistakes made by בעל הזוהר. He doesn’t say so explicitly, but I think the way he formulates the note lets the reader, who is attuned to these things, know that in his mind בעל הזוהר is not R. Shimon ben Yohai.

Someone called my attention to this video. 

I have no idea who the speaker is, and if he has ever even read a page of the Zohar, but he does seem very sure of himself. I have no objection to discussing the authorship of the Zohar and the ideas found there, or Kabbalah as a whole. However, I would think that a little humility is called for when discussing a discipline that was a basic part of the religious worldview of so many central figures. Do the names Nahmanides, R. Joseph Karo, or the Vilna Gaon mean anything to this speaker?
In my article, I cited all sorts of texts by Orthodox figures dealing with the authorship of the Zohar. Yet I overlooked the following by R. Joseph Hertz.
The question of the authorship of the Zohar, like that of Sefer Yetzirah, is one of the cruces of Jewish literature. The authorship by Simeon ben Yochai, or by his immediate disciples, though this is still an article of faith with millions of Jews in Eastern Europe, has from internal evidence long proved to be untenable. The Zohar explains Spanish words, contains quotations from Gabirol, and mentions the Crusades.[2]
As noted, in my article cited a number of sources that point to additions to the Zohar. Rabbi Akiva Males commented to me that I neglected to mention R. Isaac Haver, Magen ve-Tzinah, ch. 21. This book was written in response to R. Leon Modena’s Ari Nohem, a work aimed at disproving the antiquity of the Zohar. Unless one’s head is totally in the sand, it is impossible to deny that there are passages in the Zohar that post-date the tannaitic era. For Modena, this was proof that the Zohar could not have been written by Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai. Haver, who wants to hold onto the ancient dating, adopts the only path open to him, arguing that there are indeed many post-tannaitic additions, but the core of the book is ancient.
ובאמת ספר הזוהר נכתב כמה דורות אחר רשב”י מה שנכתב ונתקבל משמו ומשאר חבריו ותלמידו שהיו בימיו, וגם זה נעשה בו הוספות רבות עד מאוד מן אחרוני האחרונים אחר שבאו בכתב וניתנו להעתיק ושלטו בו ידי רבים כל אחד מה שנראה בדעתו ומה שנתחדש לו וכתב בגליון על ספר הזוה”ק מן הצד ואח”ז בא ריעהו מעתיק מן המעתיק ומצא בגליון דברים רבים ובמעט התבוננות חשב שזה היה חסרון בגוף ספר והכניסם בפנים.
Haver points out that is how we can explain the obviously late passages, where we see that the Zohar includes material that comes from Rashi and R. Tam. Among kabbalists, it was not unheard of to say that Rashi actually knew the Zohar and was influenced by it.[3] But Haver will have none of this and recognizes that the influence is in the reverse direction, i.e., Rashi influencing the Zohar. He states that anyone who understands the Zohar will recognize these additions.
What does Haver mean when he mentions that there is material from R. Tam in the Zohar? I am aware of one obvious example. It says in Kiddushin 30b that “one should always divide his years into three: [devoting] a third to Mikra, a third to Mishnah, and a third to Talmud.” R. Tam explains why the practice in his day was not in accord with what the Talmud states, an explanation that became very influential and served as a justification for the widespread ignoring of the study of Tanakh in the Ashkenazic world[4]
בלולה במקרא ובמשנה וכו’: פירש רבינו תם דבתלמוד שלנו אנו פוטרין עצמנו ממה שאמרו חכמים לעולם ישלש אדם שנותיו שליש במקרא שליש במשנה שליש בתלמוד.
What he says is that since the Talmud itself contains Bible and Mishnah, there is no need to divide one’s time among the three categories. Rather, by studying Talmud one combines all three areas. I always found this a difficult explanation, for if the Talmud agreed with this perspective, it would have said so, instead of stating that one is to divide one’s time. The intention of the talmudic instruction in Kiddushin was that people become well acquainted with all three subjects, and if they only devote themselves to Talmud, there is a great deal of Bible and Mishnah[5] they will never encounter. (According to Maimonides, Hilkhot Talmud Torah 1:12, once one is already a scholar, he does not need to divide his time between the three areas, but can focus almost entirely on Talmud.)
Despite what R. Tam says, R. Samson Raphael Hirsch claims that it was due to a misunderstanding of this opinion that people were led to stop studying Tanakh.[6] Not mentioned by Hirsch is that even before R. Tam some scholars ignored Tanakh. There were even talmudic Sages who were not expert in Bible. Bava Kamma 54b-55a states:
R. Hanina b. Agil asked R. Hiyya b. Abba: Why in the first Decalogue is there no mention of wellbeing [טוב], whereas in the second Decalogue there is a mention of wellbeing?[7] He replied: While you are asking me why wellbeing is mentioned there, ask me whether wellbeing is in fact mentioned or not, as I do not know whether wellbeing is mentioned there or not.
Tosafot, Bava Batra 113a, s.v. travayhu, cites this text to support its contention about the amoraim: .פעמים  היו שלא היו בקיאין בפסוקין After referring to this strange passage in Tosafot (concerning which there is an entire literature), R. Moses Salmon sarcastically declares[8]: ועל זה סומכים הלומדים עמי הארץ וד”ל
Unlike Salmon, R. Samuel Strashun, in his note to Bava Batra 8a, defended those talmudists who were deficient in knowledge of Bible.
משמע דאפשר שיהיו בעלי משנה או בעלי גמרא ולא בעלי מקרא . . . ודלא כאותן ששופכין בוז על מקצת גדולי זמנינו בש”ס ופוסקים ואין להם יד כ”כ במקרא.
So returning to my question, what does Haver mean when he says that there is material from R. Tam in the Zohar? Well it turns out that R. Tam’s explanation, which we have just been discussing, is also found in the Zohar Hadash (ed. Margaliyot), Tikunim p. 107b:
תקינו רבנן לשלש שנותינו במקרא בתלמוד . . . ואוקמוה דמאן דמתעסק (במשנה) [בתלמוד] כאלו התעסק בכלא בגין דאיהי בלילא במקרא במשנה בתלמוד.
There is no question that this passage is adopted from R. Tam, who lived a millennium after R. Shimon ben Yohai.
Incidentally, regarding R. Tam’s view, here is a page of an article by R. Yehudah Aryeh Schwartz that appeared in the Agudah journal Kol ha-Torah, Adar 5765 [2005], p. 102 (second pagination).

The following page comes from R. Yehiel Michel Stern’s Ha-Torah ha-Temimah on the Book of Joshua, p. 84 no. 3, which appeared in 2009.

As you can see, Stern’s comment is lifted word for word from Schwartz’s article. I am not sure what to make of this. That is, are dealing with a simple plagiarism? Perhaps one of the readers has some insight. (Stern may be the world’s most prolific writer of Torah publications.)

In my article I referred to passages in the Zohar which traditional authorities had claimed were really later interpolations. There are examples of the opposite phenomenon as well, namely, attributing things to the Zohar that are not found there. The most famous instance of this that I know of is found in the Bah, Orah Hayyim 4 (and quoted from there in Be’er Heitev, Orah Hayyim 1:2) that upon waking up if you walk four amot without washing your hands you are subject to the death penalty![9]  This Zoharic text is quoted in the name of the work Tola’at Yaakov, authored by R. Meir Ibn Gabai (1480-ca. 1543). The passage is cited over and over again by aharonim in trying to show the importance of the morning washing. Yalkut Meam Loez, Deut. 4:9, doesn’t even mention the Zohar, stating simply:
ואמרו חז”ל כל המהלך ד’ אמות בלי נטילת ידים חייב מיתה
A few scholars actually point out that this passage is not to be found in the Zohar.[10] One of those who realized this is R. Eleazar Fleckeles, Teshuvah me-Ahavah, vol. 1 no. 14, whom we will come back to later in this post. He writes that he looked in the Zohar and didn’t find the passage referred to. With reference to the Tola’at Yaakov, whom he (falsely) thinks cited the Zohar (since that is what it says in the Bah), Fleckeles writes:
ושארי לי’ מארי’ שעשה רוב ישראל לחייבי מיתות
Because very few of the aharonim actually had the sefer Tola’at Yaakov (which is itself a little strange as the book was printed a number of times), they were unable to see that the Tola’at Yaakov never quotes the Zohar!  Here is p. 9a from the Cracow 1581 edition.

If you look in the second paragraph you will see that Ibn Gabai does state that one who doesn’t wash his hands is חייב מיתה, but he doesn’t attribute this to the Zohar. How he derives this idea is worthy of investigation at a different time. For now, it is important to just note that what we have here is an independent idea of a sixteenth-century Kabbalist which for some reason was misquoted by the Bah as if Ibn Gabai was citing the Zohar. This misquotation was to be repeated again and again, down to the present day.

The supposed Zohar text has led to additional stringencies. For example, the hasidic master R. Meshulam Zusha of Anapole stated that that one should not even to put one’s legs on the ground before washing one’s hands.[11]

Here is an interesting story that relates to the false Zohar quotation: A very learned and rich student came to study with R. Simhah Bunim of Peshischa.[12] The problem was that this young man was a bit of an independent thinker, and the Kotzker, who was also there, didn’t think that the young man belonged with them. The story explains how the Kotzker was able to convince the young man to leave. What was it about this man that turned the Kotzker against him? We are told the following:
הוא הגיה בזוה”ק שכתב “ההולך ד’ אמות בלי נטילת ידים חייב מיתה”, והוא הגיה: “והוא שהרג את הנפש”, וזה נגד חז”ל.
So here we have a story of an emendation of a non-existent Zoharic text. And even if we assume that the man was emending the text as it appears in the Bah, we see from the story that the Kotzker thought that the quote was authentic.

I wasn’t sure what to make of this passage. I therefore consulted a learned friend who said that the problem was that the young man who emended the text to read והוא שהרג את הנפש was making a joke at the expense of the (supposed) Zoharic passage. He was saying that you are only deserving of the death penalty if you kill someone while walking the four amot. I then sent him a page from R. Zvi Yavrov, Ma’aseh Ish, vol. 4, p. 113, where it appears that the Hazon Ish took the emendation-explanation just mentioned as an authentic understanding of the passage. The text in Yavrov reads as follows:

על מה שהביא ה”באר היטב” (או”ח סימן א’ סק”ב) שההולך ד’ אמות בלי נטילת ידים שחרית חייב מיתה, אמר רבינו להגאון ר’ שמריהו גריינימן זצ”ל, שמישהו כתב בגליון הספר “והוא שהרג את הנפש” (מבנו הג”ר ברוך שליט”א).

My friend replied by referring me to a discussion on Hyde Park here where the text from Yavrov is also mentioned. One of the commenters there claims that the Hazon Ish was also joking in his remark, and the one who heard this (who was hardly a tyro), or the person who passed on the information to Yavrov, didn’t realize that it was a joke. The commenter also assumes that despite what appears in the Bah and Be’er Heitev, the Hazon Ish would have known that that it wasn’t an authentic quote from the Zohar. I find this very unlikely, as the Hazon Ish is not known to have been an expert in the Zohar, and what reason would there be for him to doubt that which is quoted in numerous earlier sources? 

The one point that the commenter has going for him is that he is correct that there are many examples in this book, and others like it, from which we see that the author does not know how to distinguish between what should and should not be included in a book. The commenter gives an example to illustrate this. In vol. 5, p. 141, Yavrov gives us the following important information about the Hazon Ish, recorded by one of his students: They never saw the Hazon Ish picking his nose! I kid you not.

העיד אחד מגדולי תלמידי רבינו: מעולם לא ראו את הרבי עם אצבע באף (מהרב מרדכי ויספיש)

Regarding this issue, R. Eliezer Melamed – who really is a great halakhic scholar – writes that picking one’s nose in public is forbidden.[13]

ויש מעשים שכשאדם עושה אותם בסתר, אין בכך פגם, אבל בפני אנשים אחרים הם נחשבים למגעילים ואסורים משום ‘בל תשקצו’ ומשום המצוות שבין אדם לחבירו. למשל, המחטט באף או מגרד פצעונים שבפניו, עובר באיסורים אלו. וכן אמרו חכמים (חגיגה ה, א): “כִּי אֶת כָּל מַעֲשֶׂה הָאֱלוֹהִים יָבִא בְמִשְׁפָּט עַל כָּל נֶעְלָם. אמר רב: זה ההורג כינה בפני חבירו ונמאס בה. ושמואל אמר: זה הרק (היורק) בפני חבירו ונמאס בה”. ובמיוחד בעת שאוכלים, צריך להיזהר בכך יותר, כי מעשים מאוסים, וכן דיבורים מגעילים, מבטלים את התיאבון ומעוררים בחילה בקרב הסועדים.
Getting back to the supposed Zoharic passage, R. Yitzhak Abadi discusses this in Or Yitzhak, vol. 1, no. 1. He begins his responsum by pointing out that despite the fact that the Mishnah Berurah records how one is not to walk four amot before washing one’s hands, R. Aaron Kotler did not concern himself with this. Abadi then explains that the words of the Zohar are not intended for everyone,[14] and none of the rishonim write that it is forbidden to walk four amot before washing. He concludes by stating that he is inclined to rule – ולולי דמסתפינא הייתי אומר להלכה למעשה – that the entire practice of negel vasser is no longer relevant to us because ruah ra’ah is no longer a concern.[15] Here again we see that the author of a responsum assumes that the issue he is discussing, of not walking four amot before hand washing, is based on the Zohar, when in fact the Zohar doesn’t mention this at all.

Finally, I must mention that R. Hayyim Joseph David Azulai, Birkei Yosef, Orah Hayyim 1:1, recognizes that there is nothing in the Zohar about being subject to the death penalty for walking four amot. However, he notes that both he and his forefather, R. Abraham Azulai, saw an alternate version which indeed states that one who walks four amot אתחייב מיתא לשמיא. Based on this alternate text, the Hida declares that the Tola’at Yaakov is correct in how he quoted the Zohar, and the criticism of him for the inaccurate quotation is therefore misplaced. Even the Hida didn’t have access to the Tola’at Yaakov, and based on the Bah assumed that the Tola’at Yaakov quoted the Zohar and must indeed have had the alternate text. Yet as we have already seen, the Tola’at Yaakov does not quote the Zohar, and there is no actual alternate version of the text such as quoted by the Hida.

What happened was that someone saw the Bah quoting the Tola’at Yaakov as quoting the Zohar that one who walks four amot is subject to the death penalty. Not finding this passage in the Zohar, this individual inserted it into his text of the Zohar in the section that deals with hand washing in the morning (Zohar, vol. 1 p. 10b). I don’t think this was intended as a forgery. Rather, whoever put it in assumed that it was an authentic Zoharic teaching, found in an alternate text, and he was inserting it where it should be. He thought that it was an authentic Zoharic teaching because the Tola’at Yaakov had testified to it. But as we have already seen, Tola’at Yaakov said nothing of the sort. This alternate girsa can therefore be traced back to the Bah’s misquotation of the Tola’at Yaakov.

How can we explain the Bah? I think the answer is simple. When the Bah cited the Tola’at Yaakov he did not have the book in front of him, and was relying on his memory, the sort of mistake that is found among all of our great sages. That is how this error crept in which has had a great influence on Jewish religious texts and practice for hundreds of years, and yet it all goes back to a simple mistaken quotation.

Returning to my article on the Zohar, Rabbi Akiva Males called my attention to the following paragraphs that appear in an essay by R. Aryeh Kaplan.[16] It would be great if a reader has examined the manuscript and can testify to the accuracy of what Kaplan reported.

Rabbi Yitzchok deMin Acco is known for a number of things. Most questions regarding the authenticity of the Zohar were raised by him, since he investigated its authorship. He was a personal friend of Rabbi Moshe de Leon, who published the Zohar. When questions came up regarding the Zohar’s authenticity, he was the one who investigated, going to the home town of Rabbi Moshe de Leon. The whole story is cited in Sefer HaYuchasin, who abruptly breaks off the story just before Rabbi Yitzchok reaches his final conclusion. Most historians maintain that we do not know Rabbi Yitzchok’s final opinion – but they are wrong.

Around three years ago, someone came to me and asked me to translate parts of a manuscript of Rabbi Yitzchok deMin Acco, known as Otzar HaChaim. There is only one complete copy of this manuscript in the world, and this is in the Guenzberg Collection in the Lenin Library in Moscow. This person got me a complete photocopy of the manuscript and asked me to translate certain sections. I stated that the only condition I would translate the manuscript is if I get to keep the copy. This is how I got my hands on this very rare and important manuscript.

Of course, like every other sefer in my house, it had to be read. It took a while to decipher the handwriting, since it is an ancient script. One of the first things I discovered was that it was written some 20 years after Rabbi Yitzchok investigated the Zohar. He openly, and clearly and unambiguously states that the Zohar was written by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. This is something not known to historians, and this is the first time I am discussing it in a public forum. But the fact is that the one person who is historically known to have investigated the authenticity of the Zohar at the time it was first published, unambiguously came to the conclusion that it was an ancient work written by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai.
Leaving aside for now the important information recorded by Kaplan, there is a good deal that can be said about R. Moses de Leon and the creation of the Zohar, and it is questionable if one can even speak of a single author. One essential point that must be recognized by all who investigate this matter is that De Leon himself was involved in other forgeries, in particular forgeries of geonic responsa.[17] As such, he obviously is not the most reliable source when he announces to the world that he is in possession of a text of mystical lore dating from the tannaitic period.

Regarding the Zohar and forgery, I think readers will also find the following interesting.  (Many already know some of the story, but it is worth repeating for those who don’t.) In the journal Or Torah, Tevet 5772, p. 362, a reader, whose knowledge of Jewish bibliography is not that great, had a question. He saw the following page in R. Yudel Rosenberg’s Hebrew translation of the Zohar to Va-Yikra.


This is important information, as Emden confesses that his attack against the Zohar was only designed to pull the wool out from under the Sabbatians, whose ideology was linked to the Zohar. The man who wrote to Or Torah, not knowing anything about Rosenberg, asked for help from the readers. He tried to locate the book Tzur Devash quoted by Rosenberg, but was unable.

In Or Torah, Adar 5772, pp. 555-557, two individuals let the first writer in on the “not-so-secret” that there is no book Tzur Devash, and that Rosenberg had a long history of making up texts; see here. This is so even though Rosenberg was a respected rabbi and posek. Here, incidentally, is the picture of Rosenberg that appears at the beginning of his Zohar translation.

With some of Rosenberg’s “forgeries”, it seems that what he was doing was creating a form of literature, and anyone who takes the story literally has only himself to blame (much like anyone who thinks that Animal Farm is really about animals has no one to complain to but himself). At times, Rosenberg would even hint to the reader what he was doing, as in Hoshen ha-Mishpat shel ha-Kohen ha-Gadol, where in the preface he mentions that part of the story also appeared in a work of Arthur Conan Doyle. If any reader would have taken the time to find out who this was, he would have realized that we are dealing with a fictional account. At other times, however, Rosenberg offers no such hint, at least none that I am aware of, and what we have appears to be a simple forgery. That would seem to be the case here, with the phony letter from Emden.

The second correspondent in Or Torah also calls attention to R. Yaakov Hayyim Sofer’s discussion in Etz Hayyim 7 (5769), pp. 267-268. While for a long time everyone has known that the Emden letter was a forgery, Sofer identifies another forgery. Rosenberg’s translation (second edition) vol. 1, contains a letter of approbation from R. Hayyim Hezekiah Medini, the Sedei Hemed.[18] Sofer claims, and I think he is correct, that this approbation is a forgery. His prime proof is that in the approbation Medini refers to the Hida as האזולאי. There are many hundreds, if not thousands, of references to the Hida in Medini’s work, and not once does he refer to the Hida as האזולאי, which is a form only used by Ashkenazic rabbis. What Sofer didn’t realize, and further supports his point, is that Rosenberg himself, in his introduction, p. 5a, refers to Hida as האזולאי.

In Or Torah, Iyar 5772, p. 744, another writer called attention to Sedei Hemed, Peat ha-Sadeh, kelalim, mah’arekhet bet, no. 47, where Medini states that it is disrespectful to use this sort of language, referring specifically to the expression האלגאזי.[19] This is another proof, if any was needed, that Medini would never have referred to the Hida as האזולאי. Let me also add that the way Medini (=Rosenberg) concludes the forged haskamah is not like any of his other letters, which are included in Iggerot Sedei Hemed (Bnei Brak, 2006). In the authentic letters, before his name Medini always adds הצב”י or הצעיר , which he does not do in the forged haskamah.. In his authentic letters, he also never closes them by adding to his name רב ומו”ץ בעיר הקדש חברון. Therefore, there can be no doubt that the letter of approbation sent by Medini to Rosenberg is simply another one of the latter’s forgeries.

Now let us turn to the incredible recent publication of a derashah by R. Yehezkel Landau, the Noda bi-Yehudah.[20] But before doing so, it is necessary to say a few words about R. Eleazar Fleckeles, the outstanding student of the Noda bi-Yehudah. (Fleckeles’ grave, entirely ignored by tourists, stands right near that of his teacher.) Ever since the publication over two hundred years ago of the strong comments of Fleckeles downplaying the authority of the Zohar, people have wondered where this came from. It just seemed strange that an 18th-19th century traditional Torah scholar would express himself this way. We now have the answer. Fleckeles was following in his teacher’s footsteps. Thanks to the publication of the Noda bi-Yehudah’s derashah by Michael Silber and Maoz Kahana, a derashah that had previously only appeared in a censored form, we now know that that the Noda bi-Yehudah had a skeptical view of the Zohar, at least in the form that it has come down to us. The issue that the Noda bi-Yehudah was concerned with was the same thing that bothered Emden and Fleckeles, namely, distinguishing the authentic ancient Jewish mysticism from the many later additions that found their way into the Zohar.

What caused the Noda bi-Yehudah in his later years to adopt a skeptical position, one so much at odds with his earlier outlook, is of course worthy of investigation and something for the scholars to fight over (and they already have!).

Regarding Fleckeles, his negative comments about the Zohar that appear in Teshuvah me-Ahavah are well known and have often been cited. In my article I also referred to Fleckeles’ citation of Wessely who quoted R. Jonathan Eibschuetz as supposedly stating that one need not believe in Kabbalah. (Needless to say, it is very difficult to believe that Eibschuetz could have ever expressed himself this way.) In preparing for my Torah in Motion talks on R. Moses Kunitz,[21] I found another relevant text from Fleckeles that as far as I know has gone unnoticed among those who have discussed the matter. It appears in Kunitz’s responsa Ha-Metzaref,[22] which happens to be one of the strangest responsa works ever published. It is also noteworthy in that it contains something extremely rare, namely, a responsum from R. Nathan Adler, the Hatam Sofer’s teacher. Knowing that some people might doubt that the teshuvah could really have been authored by R. Nathan, he also included a letter from the Hatam Sofer testifying to the responsum’s authenticity. 

In Ha-Metzaref, vol. 1 no. 11, Fleckeles again focuses on additions to the Zohar that are not part of the authentic work, but here he adds a new point which is important for an accurate description of Fleckeles’ position. He says that if a Zoharic text is quoted by R. Isaac Luria, R. Moses Cordovero, or R. Menahem Azariah of Fano then you can assume that it is part of the original Zohar, authored by R. Shimon ben Yohai.

One final comment regarding the Noda bi-Yehudah’s derashah: Yehoshua Mondshine somehow got hold of it before it was published by Silber and Kahana. Here is the relevant page, from Or Yisrael, Nisan 5766, p. 202.

Notice how Mondshine doesn’t reveal where this text comes from, something not expected from a careful scholar. Since this is such an amazing passage, and Mondshine’s article was the first time it appeared in print, you can be sure that loads of people must have turned to Mondshine asking him for its source. Presumably, when he was given the text he gave his word not to reveal its source. He might not have even known the source, and was only given the small passage.

2. Due to correspondence with a couple of people, I realized that I forgot to include something about the word מחיה in my last post. So here it is now.

In the Amidah we say מחיה מתים אתה. There is a tzeirei under the yod meaning that this is not a verb. Artscroll correctly translates “Resuscitator of the dead.” Sacks,[23] on the other hand, gives the mistaken translation “You give life to the dead”. The next line reads

מכלכל חיים בחסד, מחיה מתים ברחמים רבים

Is מחיה in this verse a verb? Ifמכלכל  is translated as a verb, then מחיה will also have to be translated this way. The Tehilat ha-Shem siddur has a segol under the yod of מחיה, and with this vocalization it is correct to translate it as a verb. However, for siddurim with a tzeirei the only accurate translation is a noun. Metsudah, which we have seen is consistent in this matter, translates: “Sustainer of the living with Kindliness, Resurrector of the dead with great mercy.” Both Artscroll and Sacks, however, translate מחיה as a verb which is incorrect. But why is it incorrect? It is only incorrect because of the vocalization (tzeirei), but I think that in the sentence מחיה is indeed a verb. This means that it is the vocalization that is incorrect, and that instead of a tzeirei under the yod, there should be a segol, as in the Tehilat ha-Shem siddur[24]. So my recommendation to Artscroll and Sacks would not be to change the translation, but only to change the vocalization.

After reading my last post, Ben Katz sent me an example where of all the translations, only Artscroll gets it right. The last lines of Adon Olam read:
בידו אפקיד רוחי בעת אישן ואעירה
ועם רוחי גויתי ה’ לי ולא אירא

Sacks translates as follows (and Metsudah is similar):

Into His hand my soul I place,
when I awake and when I sleep.
God[25] is with me, I shall not fear;
Body and soul from harm will He keep.
What this means is that God has my soul at all times, when I am awake and when I sleep, and  that that is why I have no fear.

Artscroll translates as follows:

            Into His hand I shall entrust my spirit
            When I go to sleep – and I shall awaken!
            With my spirit shall my body remain.
            Hashem is with me, I shall not fear.
Before getting to what I think is the significant  part of the translation, let us look at the last line: ועם רוחי גויתי, ה’ לי ולא אירא. In his translation, Sacks has turned the order of the sentence around. That is OK as it was done so that the rhyme works (and Sacks deserves enormous credit for having most of the song rhyme in English). The real problem is Sacks’ rendering of the words  ועם רוחי גויתי. There is no way this can be translated as “Body and soul from harm will He keep.” The words imply nothing about keeping from harm. The typical translation sees ועם as referring to God, meaning that God is with my soul and body and therefore I will have no fear.

However, Artscroll gets it right, I think, by translating these words literally: “With my spirit shall my body remain.” To see how Artscroll gets to this translation, we have to look at the previous verse, and that is where we see Artscroll’s brilliance. בידו אפקיד רוחי בעת אישן ואעירה. The other translations understand this to mean that I place my spirit (or soul) in God’s hands when I sleep and when I am awake. The problem with this rendering is that if my spirit is always in God’s hands, then what sense does it make to say that I place it there? If it is always there, during the day and at night, there is nothing for me to place.

Artscroll translates: “Into His hand I shall entrust my spirit when I go to sleep – and I shall awaken!” This is an allusion to the famous Midrash that we are all taught in school, that when you go to sleep your spirit returns to God, and is given back to you in the morning.[26] This isn’t just some random Midrash, but is derived from Psalm 31:6, which states: בידך אפקיד רוחי.[27] In other words, the Midrash is commenting on the exact words used by Adon Olam. This shows that Artscroll’s translation has indeed beautifully captured the correct meaning.

We now can properly understand the next verse. Since my spirit has returned and joined with my body, I know that God is with me and I shall not fear.

3. There is a relatively new publication for all who are interested in Jewish intellectual life. I refer to the Jewish Review of Books, expertly edited by Abraham Socher. Modeled after the New York Review of Books, each issue is full of great material. In the latest issue I published a translation of part of an essay by R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg on Berdyczewski. Only subscribers can access the essay, but everyone can see the artwork that went along with it. See here. (Due to copyright restrictions, I can’t reproduce the artwork in the post.)

If you examine the picture of Weinberg produced by the artist, you will see that it was modeled after this picture that appears in my book on Weinberg, and also on the front cover of the soft-cover edition.


The original photograph was part of a faculty picture taken when Weinberg taught at the University of Giessen. However, the artistic reproduction adds something that is not found in the original, something that the artist assumed no rabbi should be without; see here.

4. Those outside of the United States who want to post (or read) comments, please access the Seforim Blog site by going to http://seforim.blogspot.com/ncr.  Only by doing this will you be taken to the main site (and not have a country code in the URL). Readers outside the United States do not have access to the comments posted in the U.S. We don’t know why this is, or how to fix it yet, but the above instruction fixes the matter.

* * * *
Quiz

I have an extra copy of one of the volumes of R. Hayyim Hirschensohn’s commentary on Rashi. The person who answers the following question will receive it. Send answers to me at shapirom2 at scranton.edu

1. Tell me the only place in the Shulhan Arukh where R. Joseph Karo mentions a kabbalistic concept? I am referring to an actual concept e.g., Adam Kadmon, Ein Sof, etc.

2. If more than one person answers the above question correctly, the one who answers the following (not related to seforim) will win: Which is the only United States embassy that has a kosher kitchen?

If no one can answer question no. 2, I will do a lottery with the names of those who answer no. 1 correctly.

[1] R. Moshe Zuriel kindly sent me the following additional sources that should be added to my list.

[א] ספר “אור החמה”, ביאור בשלשה כרכים על הזוהר, נלקט ע”י הרב אברהם אזולאי, מביא דברי ר’ אברהם גלאנטי שם על זהר ח”א קסח, והוא בנדפס דף קנט ע”א ראש טור שמאל, “הם דברי מחבר הספר בימי הגאונים או חכמים אחרים שחברו כל המימרות יחד שכתב ר’ אבא, שהיה סופר של רשב”י והם חלקום לפרשיות כל פסוק בפרשה שלו, והם אמרו משלהם”.
[ב] בפירוש ר’ יוסף חיים מבבל (בן איש חי) בשם “בניהו” (דף ד ע”ב בנדפס) פירוש על תיקוני זהר, בתחילת ההקדמה לתקו”ז (ב ע”ב) מזכיר “ועל האי ציפור רמיזו רבנן בהגדה דבתרא דרבה בר בר חנה” כותב הרב: “נראה פשוט בספר בתקונים הראשון אשר הועתק מכתיבת יד חכמי הזוהר כך כתוב ‘קא רמיזו רבנן’ וכו’ אך חכם אחרון שראה דבר זה כתוב בגמרא דבתרא במאמרי רבב”ח הוסיף על הגליון תיבות אלו בהגדה דבתרא דרבב”ח וכו’ ואחר כמה שנים המדפיסים הכניסו בפנים מה שראו כתוב בגליון. ועל חינם הגאון יעב”ץ הרעיש העולם לערער בדבר זה וכיוצא בו”.
[ג] אדמו”ר ר’ יצחק אייזיק קומרנא בספרו “נתיב מצותיך” שביל התורה אלף, מהד’ שנת תש”ל עמ’ קא  כתב: “ור’ אבא היה כותב כל מה ששמע, הן ממנו הן מהחברים וכו’ בסוף ימי רבנן סבוראי תחילת הגאונים היה איש קדוש אאחד שהיה בו נשמת משה רבנו ממש וכו’ וכו’ והוא חיבר ספר רעיא מהימנא וקרא לזוהר חיבורא קדמאה”.
[ד] ר’ צבי אלימלך (מחבר בני יששכר) בספרו “הגהות מהרצ”א” (נמצא בתוכנת אוצר החכמה) על פרשת בא לח ע”א (בנדפס בספר שם דף קכו) כותב: “לפי גירסא הזו ע”כ [על כרחך] צ”ל דהזהר נתחבר בג”ע [בגן עדן] בזמן הגאונים, דהרי רב חסדא אמורא היה בזמן האמוראים” עכ”ל.
[ה] הרב אברהם יצחק קוק, מאמרי הראי”ה, עמ’ 519: מתוך מכתב להרב קאפח: “אפילו אם נשתלשלו דורות רבים והיו בהם הוספות והערות מחכמים שונים, ואם אפילו נתערבו בהם איזה דברים שראויים לביקורת, כמו שעשה הגאון יעב”ץ במטפחתו, אין העיקר בטל בכך”.
[2] Sermons, Addresses and Studies, vol. 3 p. 308. I learnt of this passage from Ben Elton, Britain’s Chief Rabbis and the Religious Character of Anglo-Jewry, 1880-1970, p. 176.
[3] See Studies in Maimonides and his Interpreters, p. 89 n. 376, where I mention that R. Abraham ben ha-Gra, who (for his time) had a critical sense, was among those who thought that Rashi knew the Zohar.
[4] Tosafot, Sanhedrin 24a s.v. belulah. The uncensored text, found in the Venice edition, reads בתלמוד, but the Vilna edition has בש”ס.
[5] Since the Daf Yomi siyum is just about upon us as I write these words, let me add the following: While I don’t think that R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik can be called an opponent of Daf Yomi, I was present at a shiur in the summer of 1985 where he expressed his dismay that due to the growing popularity of Daf Yomi, people were no longer studying all six orders of the Mishnah, much of which has no Talmud and is thus not included in the Daf Yomi cycle. (Due to how the Talmud was printed, Kinnim and Middot are the only tractates of Mishnah included in Daf Yomi. )
[6] Nineteen Letters, Letter Eighteen.
[7] See Deut. 5:15: כבד את אביך ואת אמך כאשר צוה ה’ אלקיך למען יאריכן ימיך ולמען ייטב לך על האדמה אשר ה’ אלקיך נתן לך
R. Samuel Schonblum offers an explanation of the talmudic passage that many will no doubt claim attributes a heretical assumption to one of the Sages. See his edition of R. Isaac Ibn Latif, Rav Pealim (Lemberg, 1885), p. 54:
כפי השקפה הראשונה נוכל לומר כי השנוים שבדברות האחרונות משה אמרן מדעת עצמו כמ”ש הראב”ע ז”ל כמוסיף וגורע ואפשר לומר כי לא נאמר טוב בסיני כלל ע”כ כאשר שאל לו מ”מ [מפני מה] בראשונות לא נאמר טוב ובאחרונות נאמר טוב השיב לו שאלני אם נאמר טוב אם לאו, שאפשר שגם באחרונות לא נאמר טוב כך משה הוסיף או גורע עד שבא לר’ תנחום בר חנילאי ואמר לו כי באמת נאמרו כך בסיני ע”י משה וזה שלא נכתבו על הלוחות הראשונות יען כי היו עתידין להשתבר ע”כ לא נאמר ע”י הדיבור הנעלם רק ע”י משה, ה’ יראני מתורתו נפלאות.
In Limits of Orthodox Theology, I did not discuss the commentary of Ibn Ezra (Ex 20:1) referred to by Schonblum. That is because I assumed that he agreed with the standard medieval view that even though Moses may have written things on his own accord, when these texts were later included as part of the Torah given to the Children of Israel, this was done at God’s direction and that is what sanctified the text. I am no longer convinced of this. All Ibn Ezra says in his commentary to Ex. 20:1 is that minor variations in wording are due to Moses changing God’s original words. Nowhere in his commentary does Ibn Ezra state that Moses’ changes were ever given divine sanction.
[8] Netiv Shalom (Budapest, 1898), p. 33.
[9] I wonder if this exaggeration is related to the seeming exaggerations found in Sotah 4b regarding those who are not careful with netilat yadayim:  כל האוכל לחם בלא נטילת ידים כאילו בא על אשה זונה . . . כל המזלזל בנטילת ידים נעקר מן העולם  See also Yalkut Shimoni, Ki Tisa, no. 386:  כל האוכל בלא נטילת ידים כבא על אשת איש (I say “seeming” exaggerations, because maybe these are not exaggerations. See the story with R. Akiva in Eruvin 21b.) Why were the Sages so strident in this matter? After citing the two rabbinic passages just mentioned, R. Zvi Hirsch Chajes points to an anti-Christian motivation. See Kol Sifrei Maharatz Chajes, p. 1003:
והטעם שהחמירו חז”ל בזה, דענין נטילת ידים הוא הענין הראשון אשר זלזל בו המחוקק לנוצרים, כמבואר בספריהם דשאלו אותו מדוע תלמידיו אוכלים בלי נטילת ידים והשיב מה שיצא מן הפה הוא טמא ומה שהולך לפה הוא טהור, ומפני זה למען לא יהיה לנו השתוות עמהם, החמירו בנטילת ידים, דהמזלזל בזה הוי כמודה להם.
See R. Mordechai Fogelman, Beit Mordechai, part 2, no. 15:2 (p. 224), who uses the Christian angle to explain another talmudic passage dealing with washing of hands. (Those who have read R. Israel Meir Lau’s wonderful autobiography will recognize Fogelman’s name.) See also Abraham Buechler, Am ha-Aretz ha-Gellili, ch. 4.
[10] See e.g., R. Pinchas of Koretz, Imrei Pinhas ha-Shalem (Bnei Brak, 2003), p. 209:
מה שכתב הבאר היטב (או”ח א, ס”ק ב) בשם תולעת יעקב בשם הזוהר, ההולך ארבע אמות בלי נטילת ידים חייב מיתה, הקפיד מאד הרב ז”ל על זה, שאינו בזוהר כלל, וגם במגן אברהם (או”ח ד, א) ובתולעת יעקב עצמו לא כתב בשם הזוהר רק דעת עצמו.
[11] See R. Zvi Elimelech of Dinov, Igra de-Firka, no. 9.
[12] See Menachem Yehudah Baum, Ha-Rabbi Rabbi Bunim mi-Peshischa (Bnei Brak, 1997), vol. 1, p. 212.
[13] See here.

See also R. Shmuel Eliyahu’s responsum on the topic here, R. Yaakov Peretz, Emet le-Yaakov (Jerusalem, 1979), p. 29, and R. Moshe Zuriel, Tziyon be-Mishpat Tipadeh (Bnei Brak, 2007), pp. 107-108. The section in Zuriel’s book is entitled
                               
 בענין הנוהג הנפסד של חיטוט באף ובאוזן, בעת לימוד תורה והתפילה
There might even be enough material for a booklet dealing with the halakhot related to picking one’s nose. I know some of you are laughing right now, but I am entirely serious. See also R. Israel Pesah Feinhandler, Avnei Yoshpeh, vol. 5, Orah Hayyim no. 71, who discusses if it is permissible to pick one’s nose on Shabbat.

See also R. Ovadiah Yosef, Yabia Omer, vol. 5, Orah Hayyim no. 30:

ואתה תחזה שע”פ האמור יש להעיר עמ”ש הגאון מהר”ח פלאג’י בס’ רוח חיים (סי’ שכא סק”ב וסי’ שמ סק”א), ובס’ כף החיים (סי’ ל אות קה), שיש להזהיר לאלה שמקנחים צואת החוטם (ובפרט כשהיא יבשה), שתולשים עי”ז כמה שערות, ואע”ג דדבר שאינו מתכוין מותר, היכא דפסיק רישיה יש להחמיר

There is also the issue of phlegm and hatzitzah that has been dealt with by many. It is interesting that halakhic sources regard putting one’s finger in one’s ear the same way as in one’s nose (e.g., in discussing if you have to wash your hands after this), while contemporary mores sees the latter as being in much poorer taste.

While on the topic of unusual halakhic subjects, let me call attention to a new book by the young scholar R. Yissachar Hoffman, from whom I have learnt a great deal. It focuses on sneezing. In his approbation, R. Gavriel Zinner writes: ראינו חשיבות התורה שיכולים מכל ענין לעשות ספר שלם

Here is the title page.

[14] I heard from a former student of the Lakewood yeshiva that someone once challenged one of R. Abadi’s pesakim by pointing out that the Mishnah Berurah stated that a “ba’al nefesh” should be stringent in the matter. Abadi replied that in the entire yeshiva, of which he was the official posek, maybe there were four people who would fall into the category of what the Mishnah Berurah designates a “ba’al nefesh”.

[15] I asked R. Yehudah Herzl Henkin the following question: Would you have any hesitation telling someone who didn’t believe in demons that it’s OK to only wash one time in the morning, in accordance with the Rambam’s opinion?
He replied:
“I don’t think ruach ra’ah has any operative role nowadays, either, but I hesitate to encourage the abandonment of accepted practices particularly when they are innocuous (as opposed, say, to doing kaparot with a live chicken). There is something to be said for doing what klal Yisrael does even if one doesn’t believe in the activity. That being said, yes, certainly, if the person is bothered about it to that extent, tell him to follow the Rambam.”
Another posek wrote to me: “These are in my view simply matters of minhag yisrael, and not subject to psak in the classical sense of the word. There are questions of minhag ha’avot and the like – but in the end, I do not sense that one would be sinning if one washed only once.”
[16] “The Age of the Universe:  A Torah True Perspective,” pp. 17-18, available here.
[17] See Elliot R. Wolfson, “Hai Gaon’s Letter and Commentary on Aleynu: Further Evidence of Moses de León’s Pseudepigraphic Activity,” JQR 81 (1991), pp. 365-409; and the sources cited by Shmuel Glick, Eshnav le-Sifrut ha-Teshuvot (New York, 2012), pp. 237-238. Meir Bar-Ilan sugests that the Zohar is the first example of what would later become a common practice: the creation of a forgery by attributing one’s own work to an ancient manuscript. In earlier times, pseudepigraphical works made no such claims. See “Niflaot Rabbi Yehudah Yudel Rosenberg,” Alei Sefer 19 (2001), available here. 
[18] Sofer didn’t realize that the Medini approbation is also found in the first edition, published in 1906.
[19] Medini also says that he will not mention the name of the rabbi who used this expression. Regarding whom he had in mind, see R. Yaakov Hayyim Sofer in Moriah, Av 5769, pp. 143-144. Despite Medini’s feeling, the expression האלגאזי does appear in numerous rabbinic texts.
[20] All bibliographical information for sources cited in this paragraph is found in my article.
[21] Torah in Motion how has a great deal. For only $10.99 you can get a silver membership (good for one month) that allows unlimited access to recorded lectures. See here.
[22] Some have mistakenly transliterated the title as Ha-Matzref. On the title page itself it is spelled in Latin letters Hamzaref; see here.
[23] Regarding the Sacks siddur, I recommend that all listen to the wonderful dialogue between Rabbi Sacks and Leon Wieseltier available here.

I have to say, however, that I was surprised to hear Sacks say at minute 49: “There is no doubt that the actual construction of the Temple was an extraordinarily disastrous moment for the Jewish people.” He then discusses how Solomon, in order to build the Temple, used force labor and thus “turned Israel into Egypt.” What surprises me is that I know of no other Orthodox thinker who sees the building of the Temple as a negative development in Jewish history. Nor, for that matter, have I ever seen an Orthodox thinker read the Bible as criticizing Solomon for this endeavor. If the construction of the Temple was such a negative event, then why on Tisha be-Av are we supposed to mourn its absence?
[24] On my recent trip to Italy, I learnt that the Italian nusah also always puts a segol under the yod of מחיה.
[25] Sacks does not consistently translate ה’ as “Lord”. Metsudah actually translates it as “A-donay”, which I have never seen before.
[26] This is also the meaning of the blessing המחזיר נשמות לפגרים מתים . A similar concept is found among Christians. I am sure many are aware of the Christian prayer recited by children
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I shall die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.
[27] Midrash Tehillim (ed. Buber), 252::
זהו שאמר הכתוב: ‘בידך אפקיד רוחי’ . . . וכשהוא ישן הוא יגע, ומשלים [ומשליש?] נפשו ונפקדת ביד הקב”ה, ולשחרית היא חוזרת לגופו בריאה חדשה, שנאמר ‘חדשים לבקרים רבה אמונתך’.
See also Devarim Rabbah 5:14
והן ישנים וכל הנפשות עולות אצלו, מנין, שנאמר ‘אשר בידו נפש כל כי’, ובבקר הוא מחזיר לכאו”א נשמתו, מנין, שנאמר ‘נותן נשמה לעם עליה’.
Bereshit Rabbah 78:1 (parallel text in Eikhah Rabbah 3:21) states:
על שאתה מחדשנו בכל בקר ובקר אנו יודעין שאמונתך רבה להחיות לנו את המתים.
See also Tosafot, Berakhot 12a s.v. le-hagid.


The Future of Israeli Haredi Society: Can The Written Word Offer Some Insight? (And Assorted Other Comments)

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The Future of Israeli Haredi Society: Can The Written Word Offer Some Insight? (And Assorted Other Comments)
by Marc B. Shapiro

 1. Months ago I was asked to write about the situation in Beit Shemesh that everyone was then focused on (and which will probably heat up again in the future). At the present, I don’t have anything to add to the discussion, and if I did it would be with reference to Jewish books, as this is, after all, a site devoted to seforim. While I have in the past given my views on various issues, it was in the context of Jewish books, and this case would be no different. This point was actually sorely missing in discussions of the Beit Shemesh situation and the haredi world in general. While what happens in real life does not always correspond to what appears in the books, knowledge of the latter is a great help in understanding what is going on in the community, at least with regard to the rabbinic elite. For example, if I were going to write something about the Neturei Karta faction that cozies up to Iran and Hamas, I would deal with how these people have tried to justify their actions from talmudic sources. They have even attempted to justify the sending of congratulations to Hamas after the latter succeeded in blowing up Jews in a terrorist attack.

I have also been asked a number of times to write about the more basic issue of haredi ideology and democracy, which is on many people’s minds. They are wondering if the Israeli haredi community really believes in democracy and allowing everyone the freedom to live as they see fit. More than one has asked me straight out if a haredi majority would mean the end of a democratic Israel.[1] I can’t speak about the haredi man on the street, but examination of the writings of the haredi leadership – and in the haredi world that is what really matters – shows that time and again they have expressed opposition to democratic values as well as democracy as a governmental system.

From the haredi leadership’s perspective, while at the present time the haredi world is forced to take part in the democratic process, they assume that if haredim ever became a majority they would dismantle Israel’s democracy and institute a Torah state (i.e., a theocracy led by the haredi gedolim).[2] Since that is their goal, stated explicitly, we have to wonder what such a society would look like. To begin with, if haredim were ever the majority, funding for non-Orthodox (and perhaps even Religious Zionist/Modern Orthodox) schools would be halted. There would be massive decreases of funding for universities, with the humanities taking the biggest cuts, and money for the arts, culture, and institutions connected to Zionism would dry up. Freedom of the press would be abolished, artistic freedoms would be curbed, and organ transplants would almost entirely vanish. Public Shabbat observance and separate-sex public transportation would likely be required. There would also be restrictions on what forms of public entertainment and media are permissible and on public roles for women. Of course, women’s sporting events would no longer be televised and men would not be permitted to attend them. From the haredi perspective, these steps are all halakhic requirements, and no one who reads haredi literature can have any doubt that these sorts of things are intended when haredi writers refer to the time when it will be possible להעמיד הדת על תלה. How many non-haredim will be affected by this is questionable, because as soon as the haredi numbers come close to a majority, the non-religious and non-haredi Orthodox emigration will begin (followed no doubt by the yeridah of some haredim as well). No one who has lived in a Western style democracy will want to live in a society where cherished freedoms are taken away.

Everything I am saying now could change. It is indeed possible that the haredi leadership could do a complete turn-around and decide that it is not helpful to take the country in a direction which while more “pious” would end up destroying it at the same time. But this would take some incredible acts of courage by the haredi leadership. They would have to break with a message that has been advocated for the last thirty years or so.

Here is what R. Shakh wrote about democracy (Mikhtavim u-Ma’amarim, vol. 5, p. 124):

בל נחשוב, שהשיטה הנקראת “דמוקרטיה” היא דבר חיובי . . . האמת היא שהיא אסון לעולם. היא נותנת הרגשה מדומה של “חופש” בו בזמן שלאמיתו של דבר היא רק הפקר, ותו לא . . . הדמוקרטיה היא דבר טרף, וכל כוונתם לעקור דרכה של עם ישראל ולהרסו

On p. 127 he writes:

ואנו תפילה להרבונו של עולם, אנא פטור אותנו מקללת הדמוקרטיה החדשה שנשלחה לעולם, שהיא ממש כמו מחלת הסרטן שנשלחה לעולם. כי רק התורה הקדושה היא הדמוקרטיה האמיתית.

If the “curse” and “cancer” of democracy is so bad, what would take its place in a haredi dominated society? The answer is obvious, namely, a theocratic state with a religously sanctioned parliament along the models of Iran. Reading the history of Iran in the years prior to and immediately following the revolution provides great insight into how religious figures learned to make use of the mechanisms of power which they had never before had access to. Just like in Iran the theocracy is for the people’s “own good”, so too will be the case in a haredi theocracy. Here is R. Shakh again, offering the paternalistic explanation as to why people should be denied democratic freedoms, freedoms that are the only guarantee that different types of Orthodoxy can flourish (forgetting for a moment about the non-Orthodox[3]; p. 126):

 האדם חייב לחיות בתוך מגבלות, לצורך אושרו וטובתו. ודוקא הדמוקרטיה ההורסת את המגבלות היא המחריבה את האנושות

Do any American haredi leaders agree with these sentiments, that it is democracy that is destroying humanity? I highly doubt it. But by the same token, I don’t think there can be any doubt that the Israeli haredi political parties, if they ever achieved electoral success, would put R. Shakh’s vision into practice by dismantling Israeli society’s democratic protections. So yes, the non-haredi segment of Israel has plenty of reason to be worried about the growth of the haredi electorate, especially when they hear the haredi triumphalist assertions that the future will be theirs. If the comments one sees on Voz is Neias and elsewhere are any indication, there are also many in the haredi world who recognize that the haredi ideology is really only suited for a minority community, and that troubles begin when people attempt to impose this ideology on others, or insist that no matter how large the haredi community is, its young men should never have to go to the army or receive any vocational training.[4] It didn’t have to be this way, as there are plenty of precedents even in haredi writers for a different perspective. But those alternative views are entirely forgotten today.

If anyone still has doubts that the future growth of the haredi parties will present a serious threat to Israeli democracy, here is a passage, from R. Yissachar Meir, that appeared in an official Degel ha-Torah publication, Ve-Zarah ha-Shemesh (Bnei Brak, 1990), p. 630 (emphasis added; many other similar passages could be cited). What will take the place of democracy in the haredi state is spelled out right here:

טעות אחת טעו מנהיגיה הראשונים של המדינה, הם חוקקו חוק הנקרא “דמוקרטיה”. כל אחד יודע דמוקרטיה זו מהי, על פי השיכורים הנמצאים במדינה – שלוש מאות אלף מסוממים חיים במדינה – ועל פי זקנים מסוידים וכו’ נקבע השלטון. כמו כן בכל מיני שוחד, ודרכי כפיה, נקבע ע”י מה שנקרא “בחירות”, איך תנהג המדינה בכל הנושאים העולים על הפרק. על פי דרך התורה, גדולי התורה הם הקובעים את המנהיגות.

Meir could have used a little lesson in history, because just like the Islamic world never had a theocracy until the Iranian revolution, Jewish history also does not know of theocracies (and the closest example we had, with High Priests involved in rulership, did not bring good results).[5]

The truth of the matter is that we get no honesty from haredi spokesmen in these matters. They go on about how the non-religious have such a negative view of them. Well, what about the reverse, namely, what the haredim think of the non-religious? One of the leaders of the extremist haredim is R. Moshe Sternbuch. Here is the first page of a responsum he wrote (Teshuvot ve-Hanhagot, vol. 1, no. 816) in which he states that if a non-religious store owner makes a monetary mistake (e.g., gives you too much money) there is no obligation to point out the error.

He even quotes a 19th-20th century authority (and one who has a fairly moderate reputation) that there is no obligation to save his life! If this is what a well known haredi posek is teaching his followers, by what right can one criticize the non-religious for what they think of the extremist haredim? Let me pose this question to Avi Shafran and the rest of the apologists: How exactly should the non-religious feel about the extremist haredim when the latter are being taught that they don’t have to deal with the non-religious in an honest fashion, and that their lives are not important?

(Quite apart from his religious views, Sternbuch’s political views are perhaps even more distasteful. At the recent protest against haredim serving in the army, he said that “the Zionists expelled the Arabs from the Land of Israel.” See here).

Here is another responsum, by R. Israel David Harfenes, Nishmat Shabbat, vol. 5 no. 500:4.

I know that people wouldn’t believe me without seeing with their own eyes. The author is asked if you can violate Shabbat to save the lives of irreligious Jews who came from the former Communist countries, that is, Jews who never had the benefit of a Jewish education. His answer is absolutely not, and he questions whether it is even permitted to save their lives during the week! Incredibly, he puts the Reform and Conservative in a better position than the secular Russian Jews, seeing the former as brainwashed by a false ideology. There is thus a possible limud zekhut regarding them.

None of this makes any sense, as people can be under the influence of a secular or anti-religious ideology much like they are under the influence of a Reform or Conservative ideology. If you can apply the logic of tinok she-nishbah to one, there is no coherent reason not to apply it to the other. For good measure, Harfenes also throws in that one who doesn’t believe in the Rambam’s Thirteen Principles is among those who should be killed. Taking a line from the Inquisition, he adds that killing these people is actually good for their souls, not to mention a benefit to the community at large.

In a previous responsum, 400:1, he discusses the same question with regard to the typical secular Jew and concludes likewise that one cannot save them on Shabbat. The only heter he can find is that if the haredi doctors don’t save them, then the secular doctors will refuse to save haredi patients. But unbelievably, rather than seeing this as a natural reaction of the secular Jews upon learning how people like Harfenes don’t value their lives, and are even are prepared to let them die, Harfenes sees this as an example of anti-Orthodox hatred! You can’t make this stuff up.

שאם יתפרסם שרופאים חרדיים אינן מטפלין בשבת עם החולים החילוניים אז הרופאים החילוניים ינקמו נקם ולא ירצו גם הם לטפל להציל חולים מסוכנים מן יהודים חרדיים  (כידוע תוקף שנאת הדת הארצינו הקדושה ירחם ה’).

Some might assume that this extremist Satmar outlook [6] is not to be found in the non-hasidic yeshiva world. However, this is not the case. I can cite parallels to what we have just seen in non-hasidic authors as well. I will mention just one such text, as it happens to be among the most depressing, and extreme, of the books to appear in recent years.[7] I refer to R. Menahem Adler’s Binah ve-Daat. Here is the title page.

This book engages in the most crude incitement of hatred for the non-religious that I have ever seen in a sefer, all packaged as a typical halakhic text. Are the views expressed in this book taught in any heders or yeshivot or held by any but the most extreme in Israel? Perhaps the fact that the standard haskamot from figures such as R. Elyashiv, R. Wosner, R. Scheinberg and others are missing is a sign that they didn’t agree with the author. It would take a complete post to cover this book properly (some aspects of the book were already discussed on Hyde Park here).

I will call attention to only some of the points Adler puts forth as halakhah. When I read things like this I wonder, how big can the Orthodox tent really be? When are the various communities in Orthodoxy so much at odds with each other that we must speak of two entirely different communities, much like the Protestants are divided into various sects?

One of the main points of the book is to argue that contemporary non-Orthodox Jews are not to be regarded as tinok she-nishbah, and thus they are subject to all the disabilities of brazen Sabbath violators. This means that they do not need to be treated with any respect or dignity. Those who know the relevant halakhot know what I am referring to, but let me cite some examples that you might not have thought of and which are results of his position. These come from chapter 31 and are stated with reference to most contemporary non-religious Jews (since only very few of them qualify as a tinok she-nishbah). How should the non-religious respond when they hear that this is what a rabbi is saying about them:

אין להקדים שלום לאדם רשע . . . אסור לראות פני הרשע . . . ונראה דהוא הדין תנוק שנשבה
In other words, although he denies that contemporary non-religious are tinok she-nishbah, even if you want to argue that they are, you still can’t look at them.

אין נוהג בו איסור אונאת דברים . . . נראה דאין כלפיו איסור “לא תחמוד”
And talking about humrot, how about this one?
יש מחמירים ליטול ידים אחר שנגעו בהם

When I saw this I thought of the following wonderful story recorded in R. Asher Anshel Yehudah Miller, Olamo Shel Abba, p. 415:

פעם ביקר אצל הרבי יהודי חילוני מגולח ובכ”ז הושיט לו הצדיק [ר’ ישראל האגער] את ידו וקבל אותו בסבר פנים יפות, כדרכו בקודש. ישב שם אחד מחסידי צאנז, שהיה מוכר כמתנגד לבית-וויז’ניץ. לחש החסיד באזני הרבי ושאל “מדוע פושט הרבי ידו לפושעי-ישראל זה?” אמר לו הצדיק: “עד שאתה מתפלא עלי, תתפלא על הקב”ה, שגם הוא דרכו בכך, כמו שנאמר ‘אתה נותן יד לפושעים וימינך פשוטה לקבל שבים


On p. 408 Adler writes:
המחלל שבת בפרהסיא (גם אם מחלל לתיאבון) יוצא לענין דינים שונים מכלל “אחיך” עמיתך” “רעך” ומכיון שיצא מכלל עמיתך, אין כלפיו את המצוות הנוהגות “בין אדם לחבירו” וכן אין נוהגים כלפיו את האיסורים, כגון הכלמה ולשון הרע.

Is there anyone in the kiruv world who believes this? Would anyone ever become religious if he even had an inkling that there are rabbis who advocate this position about the future baal teshuvah’s parents?[8] Aren’t the many haredi hesed organizations that don’t distinguish between Jews’ levels of religiosity a good sign that the mainstream haredi world rejects the viewpoints of Adler and Sternbuch?

On p. 470 he says that it is forbidden to belong to an organization that has non-Orthodox members, and this even includes charitable organization. The reason given for this position is as follows:

כיון שהישיבה עמהם גורמת קירור בעבודת השי”ת, ומלבד זאת, אופן החשיבה וקבלת ההחלטות אינם לפי דעת תורה.

So we see that it is problematic for an Orthodox Jew to have any dealings with the non-Orthodox. Although the author cites R. Samson Raphael Hirsch to justify this extreme position, this is a complete distortion. Hirsch opposed membership in organizations that were led by the non-Orthodox or even had organizational ties with non-Orthodox groups. He never said that individual non-Orthodox Jews would not be welcome to join with the Orthodox for the betterment of the Jewish community.

On p. 406 Adler tells us that one cannot sell or rent an apartment in a religious neighborhood to a non-religious person. Will the author then complain when the non-religious don’t want to sell or rent to haredim (especially if they think that these haredim might hold the same views as Adler)? If it is OK for haredim not to want to live together with secular Jews because of  the “atmosphere” the latter bring, why have the haredi Knesset members cried racism when secular residents don’t want an influx of haredim for exactly the same reason? In a democracy one can’t have it both ways.[9]

Adler is part of a growing trend in haredi writings not to see the secularists as tinok she-nishbah, with all the halakhic implications this entails. While Adler acknowledges the existence of tinok she-nishbah as a category, note what he puts in brackets which pretty much empties the category of any meaning (p. 31):

ולענין הלכה, מכיון שאין בנו כח להכריע, במחלוקות אלו, וגם אין כל הענינים שוים, מתי נקרא בשם “תנוק שנשבה” ומתי לא, ובפרט קשה ההכרעה המציאותית של “שיעור ידיעת כל אחד ואחד” בזמנינו, לכן, בכל הנוגע לדיני תורה, יש להחמיר ולנהוג כלפי מחלל שבת בפרהסיא [שלא ידוע ככופר] ככל דיני “אחיך”, כגון לענין דיני גמילות חסד, לבקרו בחוליו, לתת לו צדקה, להלוות לו, להשיא לו עצה טובה. וכן יש להצילו ולהחיותו.

But when it comes to Shabbat, Adler states that it is absolutely forbidden to violate the Sabbath to save a non-religious person, even if he is a tinok she-nishbah! (p. 556).

I realize that, with only some exceptions, Adler hasn’t made up any of the material in his book, and even the most extreme rulings can be found in earlier traditional sources. So what does it say about so much of contemporary Orthodoxy, be it haredi, Habad, or Modern Orthodox, that its adherents would never dream of relating to the non-Orthodox the way Adler prescribes?[10] The reason they wouldn’t dream of relating to the non-Orthodox this way is not because they can point to other halakhic sources that disagree with the ones Adler cites (although the scholars among them can indeed point to these sources). There is something much more basic at work, namely, the moral intuition of people which even when it comes into conflict with what appears in halakhic texts does not agree to simply be pushed aside. Most Orthodox Jews of all stripes refuse to believe that what Adler is advocating is what God wants. It is impossible for them to accept that the Judaism they know and cherish, which has been taught to them by great figures, would have such a negative outlook, and all the halakhic texts in the world won’t be able to change their minds.

Since we are dealing with Adler, let me also note that he gives us advice on how to create anti-Semitism in the world and reinforce the stereotype of the “cheap Jew” (p. 415):

אין לתת לגוי מתנת חינם [כגון “טיפ” (-תוספת) הנהוג לשלם למלצר או נהג מונית]

On p. 417 he writes (emphasis added):

אין איסור לייעץ לגוי עצה שאינה הוגנת ולא זו בלבד אלא שאסור להשיא לו עצה הוגנת

As the source for the underlined halakhah he cites Sefer ha-Hinukh no. 232. To begin with, there is the methodological problem of recording something as halakhah because it is found in the Sefer ha-Hinukh when it is not found in the Shulhan Arukh or any of the classic responsa volumes. This is what I call cherry picking halakhot, and is quite common today. People write books on the most arcane topics and in order to fill the pages they cite opinions from any book ever written, and record all the opinions they find as if they are halakhah. In this case, however, the halakhah cited here does not explicitly appear in the Sefer ha-Hinukh. All the Sefer ha-Hinukh states is that there is a biblical prohibition to give bad advice to a fellow Jew. But who says that this means that it is permitted when dealing with a non-Jew? It could still be forbidden for a variety of other reasons (perhaps even rabbinic), just not from this particular verse. Even if the Sefer ha-Hinukh does mean what Adler says (and the Minhat Hinukh also assumes that this is the meaning), only in the note does Adler reveal that the Minhat Hinukh explicitly holds an opposing position. This is the general trend in the book. He puts extreme positions in the text itself, which are on some occasions based on his own understanding, while only in the notes does he reveal the authorities who disagree.

(R. Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg defends the Minhat Hinnukh‘s position in his Mishmeret Hayyim, vol. 1, pp. 125-126. But it still makes for uncomfortable reading as he writes:

כיון דבעלות דגוי אינו חשוב כל-כך אין לאו דגזל שייך גבי גוי, וכן באיסור רציחה דהאיסור הוא דנוטל נשמתו וגבי גוי דלא חשוב נשמתו כל-כך לא שייך לאו זה

It would be pretty hard to be an Or la-Goyim while at the same time following Adler’s prescriptions. In a previous post I already mentioned that there is no Modern Orthodox synagogue in the country that would hire someone who had his perspective, and this shows a real cultural divide between at least some haredim and the Modern Orthodox. (I say “some haredim” because I believe that in this matter many, and perhaps most, haredim share the Modern Orthodox perspective.)[11]

At the end of the section in which Adler records what I quoted from him about tipping waiters or cab drivers, he adds:

מפני דרכי שלום מותר

I would like someone to explain to me how it could ever not be darkhei shalom?[12] Adler is speaking to people who wear black suits and hats, the sort that everyone recognizes as Jewish. So by definition if you stiff the cab driver or the waiter it is an immediate hillul ha-shem? Therefore, what sense does it make to even quote the halakhah mentioned above? Isn’t it irresponsible to allow yeshiva students on their own to determine when their actions will cause a hillul ha-shem and when not?

Since this post has dealt with how to relate to the non-religious and non-Jews, let me now turn once again to something relevant in Artscroll. Originally I thought that the example I will now point to was an intentional falsehood, because the Hebrew Artscroll gets it right. However, based upon the note to the passage that we will see, I am now no longer sure. It is one thing to translate a censored passage in the name of good relations, but it is hard to imagine that people who know the truth would go so far as to insert a false note. As thousands of people doing daf yomi have been misled as to the meaning of the talmudic passage we will see, if the distortion is intentional this would seem to be a classic case of ziyuf ha-Torah. When authors added a note at the beginning of their books stating that all references to non-Jews referred to those pagans in China and India, everyone knew it wasn’t to be taken seriously, so there was no ziyuf ha-Torah. Yet people who reads the Artscroll translation and note assume that they are getting the Torah truth. As such, I am more inclined to think that what we will now see is a simple error, rather than a “tactical” mistake.

Avodah Zarah 26a-b reads:

העובדי כוכבים ורועי בהמה דקה לא מעלין ולא מורידין אבל המינין והמסורות והמומרים היו מורידין ולא מעלין

Artscroll translates: “Idol worshipers and shepherds of small animals, the law is that we neither raise them up from a pit nor lower them into a pit. But as for the minin, the informers and the renegades, they would lower them into pits and not raise them up.”

This is, indeed, a proper translation of what appears in the Talmud. Yet in every edition of the Talmud before the Vilna Shas of 1883 the text states אבל המינין והמסורות והמומרים מורידין ולא מעלין  . That is, the word היו, which makes the passage past tense (and thus no longer relevant), is not authentic but was added to avoid problems with the censor. The Oz ve-Hadar edition of the Talmud points out that the word היו was only recently added. Soncino and Steinsaltz also recognize this. What is particularly noteworthy is that the Hebrew Artscroll also knows this, and tells the reader that the word היו is not authentic.

In its note on the passage in both the Hebrew and English editions, Artscroll quotes the Hazon Ish, Yoreh Deah 2:16, that the type of actions referred to in the Talmud are no longer applicable. Why then didn’t Artscroll mention in the English edition that the word היו is not authentic? Furthermore, Artscroll’s citation of the Hazon Ish is mistaken, although as mentioned, I am not sure whether it is an intentional falsification. Contrary to what Artscroll states, the Hazon Ish’s comment was only made with reference to heretics. His “liberal” judgment was never stated with regard to informers.

In its note, Artscroll states: “It goes without saying that the law never applied in places where government regulations would prohibit such an act.” Once again, I am not sure whether Artscroll really believes that this is true. As a historical statement it is false. Here is a page from R. Reuven Margaliyot’s Margaliyot ha-Yam, vol 1, p. 91b (to Sanhedrin 46a), that shows how even in the not-so-distant past an informer could be killed.

2. In this post I mentioned the outrageous accusation, based on nothing at all, that the telegram from Kobe was actually sent by the Chief Rabbinate in order to be able to pressure other rabbis to accept the Chief Rabbinate’s position on the dateline issue. Dr. Dov Zakheim sent me the following valuable email:

I noted in your recent blog you point out that some chareidim are asserting there was never a telegram from Kobe. There was. My father zt”l sent it. He had been the legal counsel of the Jewish community of Vilna (as well as a musmach of Ramailes) and also Reb Chaim Ozer ztl’s personal assistant and legal advisor (see his introduction to his sefer Zvi ha-Sanhedrin). He escaped from Vilna in 1941 and managed the Mirer Yeshiva’s legal affairs (where my uncle zt”l was a talmid) when they left Vilna, on the trans-Siberian, in Kobe and then in Shanghai.

Also in the post I referred to the letter published by R. Kasher in which lots of great rabbis refer to the State of Israel as the beginning of the redemption. I noted how Zvi Weinman has shown that this is a religious Zionist forgery, as at least some of the rabbis never signed such a letter. I mentioned that we don’t know if Kasher was responsible for the forgery (as Weinman appears to think) or someone else. Sholom Licht was kind enough to call my attention to this source from where we see that the letter Kasher published already appeared in Ha-Tzofeh many years prior, so Kasher clearly had nothing to do with the forgery.

3. In the last few posts I have dealt with Artscroll a good deal, as is only proper since Artscroll is the most significant Jewish publishing phenomenon of our time. I still have a lot more to say, but let me now turn to R. Jonathan Sacks’ siddur, and give an example where Sacks gets it wrong while Artscroll gets it right.

The blessing to be recited upon lightning and Birkat ha-Hamah is עושה מעשה בראשית This goes back to Mishnah Berakhot 9:2. Although the standard version of the Mishnah omits the word מעשה, it is recorded in various medieval texts and this is how the blessing has come down to us.

What does עושה מעשה בראשית mean? The first thing we must do is figure out if there is a segol or a tzeirei under the shin in עושה. Looking at the siddurim in my house that have English translations, I found that Sacks, Birnbaum, Sim Shalom, and Artscroll, have a segol.[13] This is also what appears in the Kaufmann Mishnah. See here. However, the Metsudah siddur and the Blackman Mishnayot have a tzeirei.

What is the difference between the vocalizations? If there is a segol than the words עושה מעשה בראשית should be translated in the English present, as עושה is a verb. If there is a tzeirei then עושה  is a noun, as in the words of Hallel (from Ps.115:15): עושה שמים וארץ, which means “Maker of heaven and earth.” Let us see if the translations follow this rule. Artscroll, which has a segol, translates: “Who makes the work of Creation.” This translation is correct, although I don’t know why the C in creation is capitalized. This translation implies the continuing work of creation, as reflected in the words of the prayer: המחדש בטובו בכל יום תמיד מעשה בראשית

Birnbaum translates עושה מעשה בראשית as: “Who didst create the universe.” This is incorrect, as the passage is not in the past tense. Sacks, who also has a segol, translates: “Author of creation.” This too is incorrect, as עושה with a segol is a verb, not a noun. Sim Shalom, also with a segol, translates: “Source of Creation.” This too is incorrect.

Now for the texts that have a tzeirei: Blackman translates: “the author of the work of the creation”, which is a correct rendering. Metsudah, on the other hand, translates: “Who makes the work of Creation.” Leaving aside the capital “C”, this is a mistaken translation. While Metsudah has עושה with a tzeirei under the shin, it translates as if there was a segol.[14]

Artscroll, while being correct when it comes to this blessing, does not get a pass when it comes to the word עושה. In the Artscroll siddur, pesukei de-zimra, p. 70, we find the words עושה שמים וארץ. This comes from Psalm 146:6. There is a segol under the shin which means that it is a participle and should be translated here with the English present tense, as are all the other verbs in this Psalm. Yet Artscroll translates עושה שמים וארץ as “Maker of heaven and earth”, which is incorrect. Sacks follows many other translations by rendering the words: “who made heaven and earth”. Yet this too is not correct and doesn’t follow the model of the Psalm, which has a series of participles that are to be translated as the present tense:
עושה שמים וארץ
השומר אמת לעולם
עושה משפט לעשוקים
נותן לחם לרעבים
מתיר אסורים
פוקח עורים
זוקף כפופים
אוהב צדיקים
שומר את הגרים

What about the word בונה in the blessing בונה ירושלים? There is a tzeirei under the nun in בונה which means that it is not a verb. Artscroll correctly translates the phrase as “Builder of Jerusalem”. Birnbaum and Metsudah also get it right. However Sacks (and also De Sola Pool and Sim Shalom) are mistaken in their translation. Sacks renders בונה ירושלים as if the nun had a segol: “Who builds Jerusalem.”

Since בונה ישראל must be translated as “Builder of Jerusalem”, and all translations are in agreement that גואל ישראל means “Redeemer of Israel”, does this mean that the conclusion of all the blessings of the Amidah should follow this model? What about חונן הדעת? Artscroll translates : “Giver of wisdom”, seeing חונן as a noun. Birnbaum and Metsudah do likewise. However, Sacks assumes חונן is a verb and translates: “who graciously grants knowledge.” This rendering (which I thinnk is in error) is also found in De Sola Pool and Sim Shalom.

How about מחיה המתים? Is the word מחיה a verb? Artscroll assumes yes and translates: “Who resuscitates the dead.” Sacks agrees with this, but Metsudah, striving for consistency, translates: “Resurrector of the dead.” Metsudah is, in fact, the only siddur that as a rule translates the concluding blessings of the Amidah along this model, while the other translations alternate between verb and noun. Here are some of Metsudah’s translations:

רופא חולי עמו ישראל – Healer of the sick of His people Israel
מברך השנים – Blesser of the years
מקבץ נדחי עמו ישראל – Gatherer of the dispersed of His people Israel
שובר אויבים ומכניע זדים – Crusher of enemies and subduer of the insolent

Although Metsudah follows this rule, for every rule there are exceptions, and even Metsudah translates שומע תפלה as “Who hears prayers”. Yet perhaps this is not an exception, and even here Metsudah intended “The hearer of prayers”, but since this doesn’t sound so good in English they came up with a more felicitous wording. It is true that the underlined words of the blessings המחזיר שכינתו לציון and המברך את עמו ישראל בשלום  have to be seen as verbs, and Metsudah translates them as such. But I think that these are a different type of blessings than the ones in the middle of the Amidah.

The question to be asked is must we assume that there is a consistency of form in a prayer like the Amidah? If the answer is yes, then Metsudah is the only translation to get it right, and they must be recognized as having picked up on something that eluded all their predecessors and successors.

Finally, let me return to the blessing מחיה המתים. I asked if the word מחיה is a verb, and noted that Artscroll and Sacks indeed translated it this way. However, they are both incorrect for the simple reason that in their siddurim there is a tzeirei under the yud of מחיה. There are siddurim, such as Tehilat ha-Shem, that have a segol under the yud. In such a case,  the word should be translated as a verb. However, when there is a tzeirei it must be translated as a noun. Metsudah once again gets it right, translating “Resurrector of the dead.” [15] Right before this, we find the words מלך ממית ומחיה. Here there is a segol under the yud, meaning that it is a verb and is to be translated as “Who causes death and restores life”.

Artscroll and Sacks also err in their translation of מחיה מתים במאמרו in Magen Avot in the Friday night service. There is a tzeirei under the yud meaning that it must be translated as “Resurrector of the dead with His utterance.” Artscroll mistakenly renders: “Who resuscitates the dead with His utterance,” using the same translation from the Amidah for the words  מחיה המתים.

I can’t figure out Sacks’ method here. In the Amidah he translates מחיה מתים as: “who revives the dead”, but in Magen Avot he translates: “By his promise, He will revive the dead.” This is incorrect, as it turns the sentence into the future tense, which it is not. Furthermore, if it was to be translated as such, why not do so in the Amidah as well, as the words are identical? Indeed, Magen Avot is nothing but an abridged version of the Amidah, so by definition the translation must be the same.[16] Translating במאמרו as “By His promise”, which I assume means “in accordance with His promise,”[17] is also incorrect, as the passage refers to God’s word, or better yet, the power of God’s word, not any promise.[18]
3. I want to briefly call attention to three books that have recently appeared and which I hope to discuss in future posts. The first is Gil Perl’s The Pillar of Volozhin: Rabbi Naftali Zvi Judah Berlin and the World of 19th Century Lithuanian Torah Scholarship. The second is Eugene Korn and Alon Goshen-Gottstein, ed., Jewish Theology and World Religions. The third is Ben Zion Katz, A Journey Through Torah: A Critique of the Documentary Hypothesis. I know that there are many Seforim Blog readers who will find these books worth reading.

4. Those who want to post (or read) comments, please access the Seforim Blog site by going to http://seforim.blogspot.com/ncr  Only by doing this will you be taken to the main site (and not have a country code in the URL). We have recently learnt that readers outside the United States do not have access to the comments posted and in the U.S. We don’t know why this is, or how to fix it, but the above instruction fixes the matter.

[1] As a result of these discussions, which led to investigations of haredi literature and discussions with haredi friends, another point became ever more obvious to me. It appears – and I welcome being corrected – that once someone has been crowned a gadol in the haredi world, it is almost impossible for him to lose this status, no matter what he says (and we have seen examples of this time after time). If, for instance, a recognized gadol expresses racist or misanthropic sentiments, or declares that a known and continuing sexual abuser or wife abuser must not be turned over to the authorities, even that would not be sufficient to “defrock” him. In other words, the “immunity” given to haredi (and hardal) gedolim is much more far-reaching than anything that could be imagined in the Modern Orthodox world.
[2] A January 2012 Avi Chai poll found that 7 percent of the Israeli population defines itself as haredi, 15 percent as dati, and 32 percent as traditional. Only 3 percent defines themselves as secular anti-religious. However, approximately 20 percent of primary school students are haredi, which shows the direction the future is going.
[3] It was actually the Religious Zionists who were responsible for creating the undemocratic situation in which Israel is perhaps the only country in the world in which Jews are not free to be married by the rabbi of their choice. I would like someone to show me where, in the entire history of halakhic literature, it is stated that people who are not observant must be forced, or even encouraged, to have a halakhic marriage. The current situation means that when secular Israelis leave Israel and then get divorced, being that they are secular most will simply get a secular divorce. Thus, any future marriage will be halakhically adulterous and the children will be mamzerim. Outside of Israel this is almost never an issue since non-Orthodox people generally don’t get married by Orthodox rabbis, which means that in the event of a divorce we can assume that the first marriage was not halakhically binding. But in Israel, where everyone gets married halakhically, it opens the doors to mamzerut on a massive scale. This was actually recognized by R. Eliyahu Bakshi Doron when he was chief rabbi. He created a big controversy when he revealed that it is a practice among some rabbis that when they perform weddings for the non-religious, they make sure that the marriage is not halakhically binding, precisely in order to prevent future mamzerut. Just this week R. Yaakov Yosef publicly advocated this position. See here.

[4] R. Eliyahu Pinchasi writes as follows in his Dibrot Eliyahu, vol. 1, p. 19:
החכמה נמצאת בגוי אבל היא רחוקה מאוד מלהיות דוגמת התורה. שהרי הוגי דעות נודעים בנו לעצמם פילוסופיה מתוחכמת הממלאים ספרים עבי כרס להצדיק את ההפקרות שנקראת בלשונם דמוקרטיה חופש הבטוי, רעיונות זדוניות מחרבי העולם.
The sheer ignorance of what democracy means is beyond comprehension. Do people like Pinchasi have so little knowledge of basic history that they do not know that it is only democracy that ensures protections for Jews around the world? Does he want the world to go back to the era of dictators when Jews suffered so terribly? Presumably yes, as he feels democracy is destroying the world.. I can easily provide parallels to the language used by Pinchasi in the writings of communists and fascists, especially from Weimar Germany. I was also shocked to read what R. Elhanan Wasserman writes in his Ikveta di-Meshiha, par. 2, published on the eve of the Holocaust.
“ראו כי אני אני הוא”. הגיע כבר העת שתבינו, כי בלעדי אין מושיע. אבל העם מסרבים להבין. עוד נאחזים בשולי הדמוקרטיה הגוססת. אף היא לא תועיל, בדומה לעבודות הזרות הקודמות.
I can’t for the life of me understand how he could regard democracy as avodah zarah, and why he sees democracy as being in opposition to proper faith in God, as if we are dealing with a zero-sum game. Instead of democracy, what political system did R. Elhanan want the Jews to support?
[5] I have many other sources regarding democracy, including traditional sources very much in favor of it (especially in pre-messianic times). I hope to provide them on a future occasion. Reading the haredi attacks on democracy, I can’t help but be reminded of Pius IX’s 1864 Syllabus of Errors and the later silencing of John Courtney Murray. The Church identified certain doctrines as false, yet now recognizes that its position in these matters was mistaken. I mention these examples because I am convinced that the American haredi world also rejects the anti-democratic sentiments that I have quoted, seeing them as out of step with where their world is. 
It is worth contrasting the anti-democratic sentiments of haredi leaders with the response of the Church, which fortunately was able to examine its own long history of anti-democratic abuses and come to the conclusion (much later than it should have) that in modern times democracy is the only viable system. As Pope Benedict put it (see here), democracy “alone can guarantee equality and rights to everyone.” He continues with the following valuable words:

Indeed, there is a sort of reciprocal dependence between democracy and justice that impels everyone to work responsibly to safeguard each person’s rights, especially those of the weak and marginalized. This being said, it should not be forgotten that the search for truth is at the same time the condition for the possibility of a real and not only apparent democracy:  “As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism”  (Centesimus Annus, n. 46).

[6] R. Asher Anshel Yehudah Miller, Olamo shel Abba (Jerusalem, 1984), p. 308, reports that the Satmar Rav, R Yoel Teitelbaum, once declared that there were 50,000 Jews in the world. When asked how he could give such a figure when there were many millions of Jews, he replied:
בעיני, יהודים הם רק יהודים שששומרים תורה ומצוות כמוני . . . [שאר היהודים] או שיחזרו בתשובה, או שצריך להוציא אותם מכלל ישראל

[7] I will deal with Torat ha-Melekh in a future post.
[8] Alan Brill, Judaism and Other Religions: Models of Understanding (New York, 2010), p. 255 n. 43, has recently noted that since many laws stated with reference to non-Jews apply equally to heretical Jews: “the main problem is the fundamental use of a double ethic as described by Max Weber in his description of an ethnic economy.”
[9] Interestingly, R. Avraham Yosef has recently spoken of the spiritual advantages of living together with the non-religious. See here.

For Israeli haredim, there is now a mindset that they can only live among other haredim, and this is why they create exclusively haredi neighborhoods and towns. Such a concept is entirely new, and not only did it not exist in Europe but didn’t even exist in Israel in the first decades of the State. Many readers probably recall the time when hasidic rebbes lived in Tel Aviv.

[10] I have to admit, however, that one sometimes does find even moderate haredim who seem to have sympathy with Adler’s approach. R. Moshe Eisemann, who used to have a great deal of influence in the moderate haredi camp, wrote as follows with reference to the Jerusalem fanatics who throw stones at passing cars (not knowing, of course, if the drivers are Jewish or Arab): “If it is true that he who hurls a stone were well-advised to be pretty sure that he is doing the right thing, I believe that the one who feels no urge to do so, must engage in even deeper soul-searching.” Tradition 26 (Winter 1992), p. 34. Maybe I was absent that day in yeshiva, but I was never taught that it is normal to have an urge to throw a stone at a fellow Jew (which of course could kill him, as we have seen with the Palestinian stone-throwers). On the contrary, I was taught that I should have an urge to show the non-religious Jew about the beauty of Shabbat, which an invitation to a Shabbat table will accomplish much better than a rock in his windshield. 
[11] What is one to make of R. Shmuel Baruch Genot, Va-Yomer Shmuel (Elad, 2008), no. 84, that it is forbidden for Jews to oppose the death penalty in places where Jews are not affected (unless done for reasons of darkhei shalom): דאסור להציל גוף נכרי. This is the sort of pesak (and I can cite many similar examples) that in the Modern Orthodox world is regarded not simply as wrong, but as deeply immoral (especially since during the Holocaust so many non-Jews adopted Genot’s position vis-à-vis the Jews!).
While at least since Jacob Katz’s Exclusiveness and Tolerance scholars are now no longer deterred from studying the medieval Jewish view of “the other”, there is still great reluctance to examine contemporary views, for fear of how this might play into the hands of anti-Semites. I am curious to hear what readers think about this. How long can we keep all of this “under the carpet,” and should we even be attempting to do that?
Ruth Langer has discussed the medieval tradition in her new book Cursing the Christians? A History of the Birkat HaMinim (Oxford, 2012), p. 12:
For Jews engaged in dialogue, it has been much easier to identify the problems within Christianity than to turn that scrutiny back on our own heritage. Jews, after all, were very much the victims, not just of the Holocaust, but also of centuries of Christian anti-Jewish venom and oppression. Consequently, traditions developed among those studying Judaism in the wissenschaftflich mode to obscure embarrassing elements of the tradition rather than to confront them. . .  Christian anti-Judaism in its many expressions led to Jewish responses and attitudes that were equally vicious; the power relationships between the two communities prevented Jews from expressing this with physical violence, but Jews still lacked respect for their neighbors. . . . In our time, Jewish publishers are restoring uncensored versions of many texts, reclaiming a difficult heritage. While from an academic perspective, this has merit, there has been all too little discussion about its impact on the Jewish community.
I would, however, dispute the use of the expression “equally vicious.” Once Langer assumes that it was Christian anti-Judaism (and I would add “anti-Semitism”) that led to the Jewish responses and attitudes, then I don’t think it is correct to portray them as “equally vicious.” The one who is responding to widespread murder of his coreligionists, and responding only through the pen, cannot be regarded as “equally vicious.” Furthermore, considering the oppression that Jews suffered in medieval times, all the anti-Gentile sentiments found in texts from this period are completely understandable.
[12] I have often heard people pronounce דרכי as darkei. This is incorrect. There is no dagesh in the kaf.
[13] The Artscroll Talmud also has a segol but the Artscroll Mishnah has a tzeirei.
[14] There are times in the Bible where the word עושה with a tzeirei is to be translated as if it has a segol, but these are exceptions. When it comes to vocalizing a text, one should certainly not insert a tzeirei if one is going to translate the word as a verb. The exceptions, where we find a tzeirei under the shin, are Ex. 15:11: עושה פלא, which appears to mean “doing wonders”, although,  as R. Mazuz pointed out to me, it could also be translated as “doer of wonders”= עושה-הפלאים. Amos 5:8: עושה כימה וכסיל, and Ps. 14:1, 3, 53:2, 4: עושה טוב, could perhaps also be read in this way. However, in Jer. 51:15: עושה ארץ בכחו, the word appears to be a verb.
[15] See R. Mazuz’s comment in R. Yosef Hayyim Mizrahi, Yosef Hayyim (Jerusalem, 1993), p. 123, Or Torah, Adar 5772, p. 568.
[16] See Abudarham ha-Shalem (Jerusalem, 1963), p. 148:
וכיצד היא ברכה זו מעין שבע, מגן אבות בדברו כנגד מגן אברהם. מחיה מתים במאמרו כנגד מחיה מתים. הא-ל הקדוש שאין כמוהו כנגד הא-ל הקדוש . . .
[17] See Daniel 12:2.
[18] See Abudarham ha-Shalem, p. 148: מחיה מתים במאמרו על שם (יחזקאל לז) כה אמר ה’ הנני פותח את קברותיכם



Taliban Women and More

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Taliban Women and More

Marc B. Shapiro

1. In this post I am going to respond to a number of emails and requests to deal with certain topics. I can’t get to everything I was asked about, and will only touch on some topics, but here is a start.
Let’s begin with the common practice in the Israeli haredi world of ignoring what the Sages tell us in Kiddushin 29a and not teaching young men a trade so that instead they can devote themselves to Torah study.[1] People assume that this is a late twentieth-century phenomenon. While it is true that the numbers of people who currently follow this approach is much larger than ever before in history, it must be noted that even in previous years there were those who acted in the same fashion. We see this from R. Pinhas Horowitz’ strong words against this approach in his Sefer ha-Berit, vol. 2, ma’amar 12, ch. 10.
R. Meir Mazuz has recently suggested that this negative attitude towards work explains a passage in one of the most popular Shabbat zemirot.[2] The following lines appear in Mah Yedidot.

חפציך בו אסורים וגם לחשוב חשבונות, הרהורים מותרים ולשדך הבנות, ותינוק ללמדו ספר למנצח בנגינות
Artscroll, Family Zemiros, translates as follows:

Your mundane affairs are forbidden on it [Shabbat] and also to calculate accounts; Reflections are permitted and to arrange matches for maidens; To arrange for a child to be taught Scripture, to sing a song of praise.

(R. Jonathan Sacks, in his siddur, p. 388, translates the last words similarly: “singing songs of praise.”)
The first thing to note is that the translation is incorrect. The words למנצח בנגינות do not mean “to sing a song of praise”. The word למנצח is not an infinitive (that would be לנצח, patah under the nun). It is a noun with a prefix, and means “to the choirmaster” or something like that. Artscroll, in its Tanach (Ps. 6:1), translates למנצח בנגינות: “For the conductor, with the neginos.” The note tells us that neginos are a type of musical instrument.
I sympathize with Artscroll when confronted with the need to translate the words למנצח בנגינות in the song. It is obvious that the words make no sense. Until then the passage was speaking about what was permitted on the Sabbath and then you have למנצח בנגינות .
This is an old problem and while a couple of forced answers have been suggested, others have argued that what we have here a mistaken reading, and instead of למנצח בנגינות it should read וללמדו אומנות (perhaps even reading אומנות with a final holam in order to make it rhyme). The entire paragraph in Mah Yedidot is derived from Shabbat 150a, and there it states: משדכין על התינוקות ליארס בשבת ועל התינוק ללמדו ספר וללמדו אומנות. After seeing this, can anyone still have a doubt that the standard version is incorrect?

R. Mazuz is apparently unaware that others before him had already suggested that וללמדו אומנות was the original version,[3] but he is the only one to suggest why the text was changed. Although it strikes me as a bit far-fetched, he assumes that when people stopped teaching their sons a trade this verse became problematic, and therefore someone took it upon himself to alter the text.
After criticizing Artscroll’s translation (and in future posts I will have more such examples), let me now mention an instance where of all the translations I have consulted, only Artscroll gets it right.

Every Friday night we say the following (which is based on Isaiah 52:1):
התנערי מעפר קומי לבשי בגדי תפארתך עמי
Sacks translates: “Shake yourself off, arise from the dust! Put on your clothes of glory, My people.” All the translations I have consulted render along these lines. The problem, however, is obvious. If “My people” is being addressed, then why are the verbs and the suffix of תפארתך  feminine?
Artscroll recognized the problem and translates: “Shake off the dust – arise! Don your splendid clothes, My people.” The translation is explained in the note: “Jerusalem – your most splendid garment is Israel. Let the redemption come so that they may inhabit you in holiness once more.” In other words, Jerusalem is being addressed, not the people of Israel. “My people” is therefore identified metaphorically with “your splendid clothes.” The stanza thus needs to be read as a continuation of the prior stanza – מקדש מלך עיר מלוכה – which is also addressed to Jerusalem.
Furthermore, if you look at Isaiah 52:1, upon which the text is based, it reads: לבשי בגדי תפארתך ירושלים עיר הקודש  “Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city.” So we see that also in the original verse it is Jerusalem that is being addressed. Artscroll cites this interpretation in the name of Iyun Tefillah (found in Otzar ha-Tefilot) and refers to it as “novel”. This understanding (which is actually the peshat of the words) was also suggested by R. Kook[4] R. Baruch Epstein,[5] and R. David Hadad.[6] 
2. A long time ago I was asked to deal with the so-called Jewish Taliban women, who completely cover their faces when they go out. I know that everyone has downplayed their significance and referred to them as crazy. I think that this is too optimistic an assumption. Although I am not predicting it, I would not be surprised if this turned into a real phenomenon. All these women need is one somewhat respected Torah scholar to support them and they will then become just another faction in extremist Orthodoxy. You will then have groups that don’t allow women to drive (or smoke, or use a cellular phone, etc.), and another group that also requires that they cover their faces when they leave home. The real difference today is that while with the other groups we have men telling women how to behave for reasons of tzeniut, the Taliban group is completely female driven and led.

The truth of the matter is that the Taliban women make a certain amount of sense. They are part of a community that forbids women’s (and even little girl’s) pictures to appear in printed matter because seeing this might arouse sexual thoughts in men.[7] Even though these women never studied Talmud, we know that one doesn’t need to be talmid hakham to derive a basic kal va-homer. Even these uneducated women can conclude that if men’s souls can be destroyed by seeing a picture of a woman or a little girl, how much more so can they be driven to sexual frenzy by seeing a live woman or girl? As such, it makes perfect sense that when they go out on the street they are completely covered and only their husband and children are permitted see their faces.[8] It is their opponents in the haredi word who have to explain why it is permitted to see the faces of real live women but forbidden to see their pictures. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, as the Taliban women have rightly concluded.
I am sure that any rabbinic authorities that come to support the Taliban women will be able to find relevant sources to defend this lifestyle. I know this will surprise readers, especially as many rabbis have declared that the Taliban women are completely distorting Jewish rules of modesty. These rabbis have claimed that unlike Arabs, Jewish women have never dressed this way (unless they were forced to) as the face is not ervah. Therefore, these rabbis have asserted, Jewish tzeniut has never, has ve-shalom, seen it as a value for women to completely cover their faces.

Lines like this are good for applause in a Modern Orthodox (and even a haredi) shul, among people anxious to be reassured that these Taliban women couldn’t possibly have any sources in our tradition for their actions. The truth of the matter is that, whether we like it or not, there are sources that are strong supports for the Taliban women, and there is no reason to deny that they exist.[9] Sotah 10b is clearly praising Tamar when it mentions that she was so modest that she covered her face in her father-in-law’s house. R. Joseph Messas (Mayim Hayyim, vol. 2, Orah Hayyim no. 140) points out that Shabbat 6:6 refers to Arabian Jewish women going out veiled, which means that their entire face was covered except for their eyes. He also points to Shabbat 8:3: כחול כדי לכחול עין אחת, which as explained in the Talmud refers to those women who were so modest that they were completely veiled, with only one eye showing in order for them to see (see Rashi, ad loc. See also Rashi to Isaiah 3:19.) Messas tells us that in his youth he personally saw Jewish women who dressed like this: וכן ראינו בימי נעורנו. R. Meir Mazuz’s mother testified that brides in Djerba would only show one eye, also for reasons of modesty.[10]

Here we have evidence that the Taliban dress was actually a traditional Jewish dress, just the sort of material that can be used to support the new dress code. In fact, one doesn’t even need to look to Morocco or Djerba, or even to talmudic literature, to find sources that women dressed this way. It is found right in the Song of Songs 4:9. This verse states: “Thou has ravished my heart with one of thine eyes.” The Soncino translation explains: “It is customary for an Eastern woman to unveil one of her eyes when addressing someone.” In other words, normally, for reasons of modesty, the woman is entirely covered (although this covering would be see-through so she could walk properly), and only at certain times would she remove it to reveal one eye. I know some people are thinking that this is exactly the sort of explanation you can expect from Soncino, which loves to quote non-Orthodox and even non-Jewish commentators, and if you look at the various traditional commentaries they do indeed provide all sorts of allegorical meanings for this verse. Yet the Jerusalem Talmud, Shabbat 8:3, also understands the verse as giving an example of modest behavior on the part of the woman, that she only uncovers one eye. As explained by Korban ha-Edah:
מביא פסוק זה לראיה שדרך הצנועות לצאת באחת מעיניה מכוסה ואחת מגולה
(Korban ha-Edah and all the other traditional commentaries I have seen assume that the woman always goes with one eye uncovered, while Soncino explains that she only uncovers this one eye on special occasions.)
R. Baruch Epstein takes note of this passage in the Jerusalem Talmud in his commentary to Song of Songs, and adds.
לפנים בעת שהיו נוהגות הנשים ללכת עטופות היו מגלות רק עין אחת כדי לראות מהלכן, ומכאן רמז שמנהג כזה הוא מנהג כשר וצנוע, שהרי כן משבחה הכתוב שלבבתו בעין אחת.
If this practice is, as Epstein says, a מנהג כשר וצנוע, then I don’t think we should be surprised if some circles attempt to bring it back into style.
A few paragraphs above I quoted a responsum of R. Joseph Messas.[11] In this teshuvah he also explains why women can’t be given aliyot. As is well known, in earlier days this was permitted but the Sages later forbid it on account of kevod ha-tzibbur (Megillah 23a). There have been lots of interpretations of what kevod ha-tzibbur means, but Messas has a very original perspective. He claims that the reason women were banned from receiving aliyot is because this would lead to sexual arousal among the male congregants. Messas believes that this came from the actual experience of the Sages, who saw what happened when women received aliyot. He also assumes that these women would have been dressed in a Taliban-like fashion[12]: בהסתר פנים כמנהג נשים קדמוניות. But even such a woman, covered head to toe, still created problems with the sexually fixated men.[13]
ובדורות שאחריהם ראו שיש בזה מחשבת עריות, שהצבור היו שואלים זה לזה, מי זאת עולה . . . ואם היה קולה ערב מוסיף להבעיר אש היצר, ולכן עמדו ובטלו את הדבר.
Knowing how concerned the Sages were about avoiding situations that could lead to sexual thoughts, it makes sense that they would ban the practice if they thought that women’s aliyot would lead in this direction.[14] But Messas now has a problem, because the Talmud doesn’t give this as a reason for abolishing women’s aliyot. Instead, it states that they were abolished because of kevod ha-tzibbur. This leads Messas to offer one of the wonderfully original interpretations that can be found so often in his writings. He claims that because the Sages didn’t want to insult the (male) community by telling them the real reason why they abolished the aliyot, namely, that even during Torah reading men can’t control themselves from sexual thoughts, therefore they invented the concept of kevod ha-tzibbur! However, this is not the real reason, and therefore all attempts to explain the meaning of the term are irrelevant. The real reason is the male sexual desire which as Messas states, is always in need to being fenced in:[15]
וכדי שלא להראות את הצבור שחשדו אותם, תלו הטעם מפני כבוד הציבור, שלא תהא האשה הפטורה מן הדבר מתערבת עם האנשים המחוייבים בו וכן בכל דור היו גודרים גדרים בעריות
Based on this male weakness, Messas claims that the mehitzah has to be built in such a fashion that the men cannot see the women. He even has a most original way to explain to the women why they are placed in what amounts to a completely other room. Rather than being a sign of their insignificance, it is a sign of how important they are. The proof of this importance is that men are constantly drawn to look at them. Therefore, by building a high mehitzah we are able to save the men from themselves.
I haven’t yet mentioned the shawls that some women have started wearing (and which was the practice in the days of the Rambam; see Hilkhot Ishut 13:11) Most shawl-wearers are not so extreme as to completely cover their faces, and because of this the practice has been defended by some fairly mainstream people. According to R. Ovadiah Yosef’s son-in-law, R. Aharon Abutbol, and R. David Benizri, R. Ovadiah sees the practice in a positive light for those women who are able to take it on.[16] Among others who have spoken out in favor of the shawls are R. Yitzhak Ratsaby,[17] R. Avraham Baruch,[18] and R. Mendel Fuchs, a dayan for the Edah Haredit (who refers to the “heilige shawl”).[19] There is even a fairly recent book that discusses the matter in detail. It is Ahoti Kalah, by R. Avraham Arbel. Here is the title page.
Arbel is a great talmid hakham.[20] His book carries haskamot from mainstream figures, including R. Ovadiah, R. Neuwirth, and R. Nebenzahl. In the book, he explains the importance of the shawl, how women are not supposed to leave their home and if they must go out they should appear unattractive so that men are not drawn to them, and how it is absolutely forbidden for women to wear jewelry outside their home. (Recently, Arbel expanded the section of the book dealing with women’s tzeniut into a full-fledged book of its own.)

3. In the last post I quoted R. Kook’s comments about the holiness of the am ha’aretz. This is not a sentiment that has been widely shared among the rabbinic elite, and negative comments about the am ha’aretz abound in rabbinic literature from all eras. Most of these comments appear in non-halakhic contexts, but there are plenty that are found in classic halakhic works. See for example Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh Deah 198:48, where R. Moses Isserles states that if a woman coming home from the mikveh enounters a דבר טמא או גוי , if she is pious she will immerse again. This is obviously not so applicable today, as in any big city in the Diaspora, where people walk to the mikveh, it is impossible not to come across a non-Jew on the way home. The formulation of Rama was made in an era when Jews lived in their own quarters, and at night it wouldn’t be common to come into contact with non-Jews. On this halakhah, the Shakh quotes the Sha’arei Dura who expands the lists of things a woman hopes to avoid on the way home to include an am ha’aretz. (This formulation obviously troubled some, and Pithei Teshuvah quotes the opinion that only an am ha’aretz gamur is meant, i.e., one who doesn’t even recite keriat shema [due to his ignorance]. This definition of an am ha’aretz is found in Berakhot 47b and Sotah 22a. Examination of rabbinic literature shows that the term “am ha’aretz” has a variety of meaning, ranging from a simple ignoramus to one who is actually quite wicked and hates the Sages.)
Speaking of the am ha’aretz, here is something interesting, as it includes both a difficult comment of Rashi (actually, the commentary falsely attributed to Rashi) and what might be is an example of Artscroll purposely omitting mention of it because of how problematic it would be to explain. Nedarim 49a states: “Rav Judah said: The soft part of a pumpkin [should be eaten] with beet; the soft part of linseed is good with kutah. But this may not be told to the am ha’aretz.”
Why don’t we tell this to the am ha’aretz? Artscroll quotes the explanation of the Ran that if the boors knew about this, they would uproot the plants before they could be harvested. Tosafot claims that the ignoramuses won’t believe what we tell them and they will mock the teaching of the Sages. “Rashi” has a completely different explanation. He writes:
משום דדבר מעולה הוא לרפואה ואסור לומר להם שום דבר שיהנו ממנו
What this means is that we don’t let the am ha’aretz know about the medicinal property of this plant. In other words, we don’t want the am ha’aretz, even though he is another Jew, to benefit, and he is thus treated no differently than an idolater. (Tosafot cites this explanation and rejects it.) Even though “Rashi” is referring to a real am ha’aretz, as per the Talmud’s description in Berakhot 47b, it is still quite a shocking explanation. It is true that there is a passage in Pesahim 49b which states: “R. Eleazar said: An am ha’aretz, it is permitted to stab him [even] on the Day of Atonement which falls on the Sabbath . . . R. Samuel b. Nahmani said in R. Johanan’s name: One may tear an am ha’aretz like a fish.” Still, these passages are according to almost everyone not meant to be taken literally,[21] while “Rashi,” on the other hand, means exactly what he says.
[1] Many have discussed why Maimonides doesn’t explicitly record this halakhah in the Mishneh Torah. See the interesting approach of R. Hayyim Eleazar Shapira, Divrei Torah, Eighth Series, no. 18 (p. 974), which can be used to justify the Israeli haredi perspective.
[2] See Or Torah, Heshvan 5772, pp. 169-170. R. Mazuz’s own attitude towards yeshiva students preparing themselves to earn a living is seen in his haskamah to R. Hayyim Amsalem’s Gadol ha-Neheneh mi-Yegio. The book is available here.
Here is R. Mazuz’s haskamah.

Here is the letter of R. Mazuz that appears at the end of the volume.

There are numerous texts I could bring in opposition to the approach of Amsalem and Mazuz (which I believe is also the approach of the Sages). One noteworthy one is found in Ateret Menahem, p. 23a, where R. Menahem Mendel of Rimanov is quoted as follows:

אם א’ אומר לחתנו היושב ולומד תורה בהתמדה שיתחיל לעסוק במו”מ עבור כי איתא [אבות פ”ב מ”ב] יפה ת”ת עם דרך ארץ וכו’, זה הוא מערב רב חו”ש
[3] See e.g., Naftali ben Menahem, Zemirot shel Shabbat (Jerusalem, 1949), p. 134.
[4] See Zev Rabiner, Or Mufla, p. 92.
[5] Barukh She-Amar, p. 238.
[6] See R. Meir Mazuz, Darkhei ha-Iyun, pp. 127ff.
[7] Regarding not seeing women’s pictures, this position can also find sources to support it. R. Joseph Hayyim, Rav Berakhot, ma’arekhet tzadi (p. 137), writes quite strongly against women’s pictures, because men will come to look at them. Here is the page.

[8] For some, it is better if the women basically do not go out of the house at all at all. Such a position is held by R. Hayyim Rabbi, a mainstream Sephardic rabbi (who like all significant Sephardic rabbis, also has a website. See here).
Here is his haskamah to R. Hanan Aflalo’s, Asher Hanan, vol. 3, and see Aflalo’s response that a rabbi has to actually be part of a community and know its situation in order to properly decide matters for it.

While Aflalo’s reply is phrased very respectfully, his feeling that Rabbi is way off base comes through very clearly.

Rabbi’s position about a woman not leaving the house can find support in a variety of traditional texts (not least, the Rambam, Hilkhot Ishut 13:11). What makes it significant is that he offers this advice even today. While it is true that in the Islamic world Jewish women were more accustomed to stay inside than their co-religionists in Europe, we also find European rishonim who see this as something to strive for. See e.g.,, Radak to 2 Samuel 13:2: ודרך הבתולות בישראל להיות צנועות בבית ולא תצאנה החוצה. See also Rashi, Deut. 22:23: פרצה קוראה לגנב הא אלו ישבה בביתה לא אירע לה. For other relevant sources, see R. Mazuz’s comment in R. Raphael Kadir Tzaban, Nefesh Hayah, vol. 2, p. 267.
I was surprised to find that the Moroccan R. Raphael Ankawa, in the twentieth century, ruled that a husband could forbid his wife from leaving the house without his permission. If she didn’t listen, she would lose her ketubah. See Toafot Re’em, no. 3. In a letter of support for Ankawa by R. Shlomo Ibn Danan and R. Mattityahu Serero they go so far as to state that if the woman doesn’t go along with the husband’s command and take an oath binding herself in this matter, the husband can, if he wishes, refuse to divorce her and she will remain an “agunah” her entire life without any financial support from him! He, of course, will be given permission to remarry.
ואם לא ירצה לגרשה תשב עד שתלבין ראשה ונותנין לו רשות לישא אשה אחרת אחר ההתראות הראויות והיא אבדה כתוב’ ואין לה לא מזונות ולא פרנסה ולא שום תנאי מתנאי הכתובה.
(As late as 1965, another Moroccan posek, R. Yedidyah Monsenego, ruled that where the husband had reason to suspect his wife of being unfaithful, he could require her to never leave home without him, even to visit relatives, except when she had to go to work. See Peat ha-Yam, no. 24)
All I can say is that contemporary women should be thankful that the RCA beit din and many of the rabbinic courts in the State of Israel have realized that in modern times men and women must be treated equally in the divorce proceedings, and women can no longer be held prisoner in a dead marriage as was often the case in earlier times. With this in mind, let me remind people that in an earlier post, available here, I wrote as follows:
R. Hayyim Benveniste, Keneset ha-Gedolah, Even ha-Ezer 154, Hagahot Beit Yosef no. 59, in discussing when we can force a husband to give a divorce, 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? I assume the logic behind this position 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 just be doing it to scare her, and that is not enough of a reason to force him to divorce her. 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, sort of like all those who have let pedophiles run loose in the yeshivot, presumably on the assumption that just because a man abused children in the past, that doesn’t mean that he will continue to do so.
(I will return to the issue of sexual abuse in a future post, because readers might recall that I expressed doubt that any rabbis would ever join the Agudah’s proposed rabbinic panel to determine if an accusation warranted going to the police. See here. The Agudah has just acknowledged that it was impossible to form such a panel precisely because of the legal jeopardy it would place the rabbis in. See here. Since it looks like all the public pressure will lead to clergy being made mandated reporters, it will be interesting to see what the Agudah response will then be. Will they instruct their followers to follow the law or expect them to go to jail in order to avoid mesirah?)
Regarding Aflalo’s point mentioned earlier in this note that a rabbi has to know the situation of a community, I recently found a very interesting comment by R. Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, Kedushat Levi ha-Shalem (Jerusalem, 1958), Likutim, pp. 316-317. He asks why we say תשבי יתרץ קושיות ואבעיות, that in Messianic days Elijah will answer all problems. Since Moses will be resurrected, and he is the giver of the Torah, why don’t we say that he will provide the answers? R. Levi Yitzhak explains that only one who is living in this world knows what the situation is and how the halakhah should be decided. This is not the case with one who is dead and has lost his worldly connection. This explains why Elijah will provide all the answers, as he never died and was always part of the world. Therefore, unlike Moses, Elijah is the one qualified to decide matters affecting us. The lesson here is obvious, especially for those who think that every issue must be decided in Israel by authorities who really have really no conception of how American Jews live.

[9] I can’t tell you how often I have been with people (usually at Shabbat meals) who go on about how backwards the Muslims are, the proof being how they treat their women. This is usually contrasted to Judaism, which puts women on a pedestal. As an example of this “backwardness” people have pointed out that in Saudi Arabia (which is only one Muslim country, mind you), women are not even permitted to drive. I never have the heart to point out that there are hasidic sects, less than an hour away from where we are, that also don’t allow women to drive.
[10] See Ma’amar Esther, printed together with Va-Ya’an Shmuel (n.p., 2001), vol. 4, p. 19 (third numbering).
[11] Messas’ responsum is analyzed by Avinoam Rosenack, “Dignity of the Congregation” as a Defense Mechanism: A Halakhic Ruling by Rabbi Joseph Messas,” Nashim 13 (2007), pp. 183-206. On p. 201 n. 41, he provides references to scholarly literature that discusses medieval Jewish women’s adoption of Muslim modes of dress.
[12] Contrary to what Messas assumes, as far as I know there is absolutely no evidence that Jewish women generally dressed like this in the Rabbinic period. The fact that the Mishnah specifies the Arabian Jewish women shows that only one specific group dressed this way.
[13] Since he mentions women’s voices, let me return briefly to my second to last post which dealt with kol isha. I neglected to note the pesak of R. Abraham Yaffe-Schlesinger, Be’er Sarim, vol. 2, no. 54, who sees it as obvious that a woman is permitted to sing in front of non-Jews.
In the post, I mentioned three Modern Orthodox high schools that allow young women to sing solos. I was informed that the North Shore Hebrew Academy also has to be added to this list. See here.
My correspondent further wrote: “I wanted to let you know that the son of Rabbi _____ (former president of the RCA [name deleted by MS]) told me that his father used to go to see Broadway shows based on the Psak of the Rav, who felt that if you couldn’t totally make out the face of the female singer it would be permitted.”
One of the commenters on the post called attention to R. Yehudah Herzl Henkin, Bnei Vanim, vol. 4, no. 7. In this responsum, he says a couple of things very relevant to the post. To begin with, he writes that it is permitted to listen to the singing of a single woman if this is something that you are used it, and it will not be sexually arousing.
לע”ד מדינא מותר לשמוע קול שיר של בתולות אם רגיל בקולן שאז שמיעתן זהה לראיית שערן
This is the same viewpoint I quoted from R. Jacob Pardo, who distinguishes between married women, whose singing is always forbidden, and single women whose singing is only forbidden if it is sensual song. Also noteworthy is that R. Henkin rejects the viewpoint found in various aharonim that a post-pubescent female (i.e., niddah) has the same status as a married woman, and her singing is therefore forbidden:
וכיון שנהגו להקל בשערן של בתולות ולא חלקו בין נדות לטהורות הוא הדין בקולן, כל שהוא רגיל בו ואינו מהרהר.
He concludes his responsum by stating that if the song is not sensual, and the woman’s voice is heard on the radio or out of a loudspeaker, since this is not really “her” voice it is permissible to listen. What this apparently means is that any time a woman sings into a microphone, it is permissible to listen to her (assuming her very appearance is not arousing). This basically gets rid of the entire kol isha prohibition in our time (when the songs aren’t sensual), since today every event with a woman singer uses a microphone. Based on R. Henkin’s responsum, all Modern Orthodox high schools could once more return to having young women sing solos (even though I am certain that this is not his intention).. Here is his conclusion (emphasis added):
ולא מפני שאנו מדמים נעשה מעשה להתיר לכתחילה לשמוע קול אשה המזמרת לפננו לבדה, אבל בשירה ברדיו או דרך רמקול וכו’ שעל פי דין אינה קולה ממש ובצירוף עוד טעמים [ראה להלן מאמר כ’] ובתנאי שהשירה אינה של עגבים נראה פשוט להקל.
In Bnei Vanim, vol. 2, p. 211, he quotes his grandfather as even permitting watching a woman sing on the television, because again, the voice is not her actual voice. He also notes that his grandfather later expressed doubt on this point.
שמעתי מפיו הקדוש שקול אשה על הרדיו אינו נקרא קול אשה ומותר לשמעו [בפעם הראשונה ששאלתי אותו על זה אמר בפירוש שגם בטלביזיה אינו נקרא קול אשה ומותר לשמעו, אבל כשחזרתי ושאלתי אותו על זה אחרי זמן לא היה ברור אצלו – ואולי מפני חולשתו]

In vol. 4, p. 30, he refers to a woman singing the national anthem, which based on his argumentation would, I think, be quite easy to permit, even watching on television. As he notes, this is not the sort of song that arouses sexual thoughts:
ורבים מקילים לשמוע קול שיר של אשה ברדיו כשהיא אינה לפניהם, ואינה שרה שירי עגבים אלא שירי מולדת וכיוצא באלה ורחוק שיהרהרו בה ואינו תלוי באם מכירה או לא.
I would also like to share an email I received from Benny Hutman which relates to R. Moshe Feinstein’s opinion. In my post I called attention to a responsum of R. Moshe Feinstein which I claimed cast doubt on R. Mordechai Tendler’s assertion that according to R. Moshe kol isha is entirely situational and depends on whether or not someone is aroused.
Benny writes:

It seems to me that R’ Moshe must hold that the prohibition on Kol Isha depends on whether a person is used to hearing women sing. R’ Moshe holds like the Aruch Hashulchan that nowadays one can say Shema in front of a woman with uncovered hair because the reality is that we are constantly confronted with such hair and therefore it is no longer arousing. For this to make sense we need to understand the Gemara in Berachos when it says “sear b’isha erva” to mean that hair could be ervah, meaning I would have thought that ervah by definition could only refer to parts of her body, ka mashma lan that hair despite not being skin can be ervah. However it won’t actually be ervah unless it is normally covered. Since the language of the Gemara is exactly the same (as is the source) it follows that the gemara means that Kol Isha could be ervah despite not physically being attached to the body at all. However, just as R’Moshe says that our constant exposure to uncovered hair makes sear no longer be ervah, the same logic dictates that if someone has been listening to women sing all his life kol isha will not be ervah. Arguably it can also be situational so that if someone has been going to the opera all his life such singing will not be kol isha, but pop music will be. It seems to me that this heter should apply to almost all Modern Orthodox men. This would explain how Rabbi Tendler could say that R’ Moshe held that the prohibition is situational despite R’ Moshe’s tshuva apparently holding it is forbidden. It depends on who is asking the question and the time, place and manner of the singing.

Finally, R. Hayyim Amsalem, in his recently published Derekh Hayyim, p. 45, states that it is a well known fact that great Torah scholars and chief rabbis have in the past been present at various official events that included women singing, and they did not walk out. As he explains:
הם ידעו לחשב שכר “מצוה” כנגד הפסדה, ושגדול כבוד הבריות שדוחה לא תעשה שבתורה (ברכות דף יט ע”ב), שלא לדבר על העלבת פנים העלולה להגרם, והרי המלבין פני חברו ברבים אין לו חלק לעוה”ב (בבא מציעא דף נט ע”א), יתכן וכשהיו יכולים להשתמט מלהופיע בטקס כזה שידעו מראש שיכלול גם שירת נשים היו נמנעים מלהופיע, אבל היכן שההכרח אלצם להשתתף הרי שמעולם לא נשמע רינון אחריהם על השתתפותם, או על העלבת המעמד ביציאה פומבית.
[14] Rosenack writes (“Dignity”, p. 190): “Messas’s remarks allow the inference that he knew of an ancient tradition—either from the days of his own ancestors, or from the time of the talmudic sages—of women going up to the Torah, before the institution of the [talmudic] prohibition discussed here.” This is incorrect. What Messas is doing in this responsum is describing what he imagines the situation was like in the era that women received aliyot, and why this was later prohibited. There is not even the hint that he knew of any ancient tradition in this regard, and he certainly did not.
In terms of women’s aliyot, in my post here I called attention to R. Samuel Portaleone’s opinion that in theory it is permitted to give a woman an aliyah in a private synagogue. Without knowing of Portaleone’s view, R. Yehuda Herzl Henkin concluded that ”if done without fanfare, an occasional aliyyah by a woman in a private minyan of men held on Shabbat in a home and not in a synagogue sanctuary or hall can perhaps be countenanced or at least overlooked.” “Qeriat Ha-Torah by Women: Where We Stand Today,” Edah Journal 1:2 (5761), p. 6. (Henkin also assumes that women’s aliyot on Simhat Torah are permissible.) There is another source in this regard that has been overlooked by those arguing for women’s aliyot in so-called partnership minyanim (I hate this term!). R. Moses Salmon, Netiv Moshe (Vienna, 1899), p. 24 n. 112, sees no problem with women getting aliyot today. As mentioned already, women are denied aliyot because of kevod ha-tzibur. Yet according to Salmon, since today men who get aliyot no longer read from the Torah, kevod ha-tzibur is no longer a concern. This was all theoretical for Salmon, as no one in his Hungarian town was dreaming of calling women up to the Torah, but from the standpoint of pure halakhah, he saw no objection. He also claims that according to Maimonides, women can be counted in a minyan. See ibid., n. 111. Here is the page from Salmon.
[15] The same approach is adopted by R. Matzliah Mazuz, Ish Matzliah, vol. 1 no. 10. He writes:
לע”ד כבוד ציבור דהתם, אינו כפשוטו, אלא לישנא מעליא, ועיקר הכוונה כאותה ששנינו בסוכה דנ”א תיקון גדול

[16] See here and here.
[17] See here and here. See also his Shulhan Arukh ha-Mekutzar, vol. 6, pp. 246ff., and here for a placard signed by some leading Sephardic rabbis.
[18] See here. He thinks that a woman who refuses to say good morning to her male neighbor is demonstrating proper tzeniut.
[19] See here.
[20] Incidentally, in no. 328:2, he states that there is no longer a problem taking medicine on Shabbat, since people today do not grind their own medicine.

  • [21] See the numerous explanations of these passages in R. Moshe Zuriel, Leket Perushei Aggadah, ad loc. Tosafot, ad loc., quotes one opinion that does take the passage literally, but this opinion assumes that the am ha’aretz spoken of is a violent person suspected of murder