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The Man who Tried to Put it All Together: A Hesped for Rav Kook on His Eightieth Yahrzeit

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The Man who Tried to Put it All Together: 
A Hesped for Rav Kook on His Eightieth Yahrzeit 
By Yehudah Mirsky 

Yehudah Mirsky is an Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, Brandeis University, and the author of Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution (Yale University Press), available here (link).  

This is his first contribution to the Seforim Blog. 

Jerusalem of the 1930s was boiled in fury. The inevitability of bitter conflict with the Arabs of Palestine had become too clear to deny, while the fighting among Jews, if not quite as violent, was bitter and unmistakable. How to deal with the Arabs, how to deal with the British, how to bring new immigrants and, once they were there, sustain them, how to deal with Hitler’s shadow looming large over Europe – and how to deal with Zionism’s revolution not only against centuries of Jewish politics, but centuries more of Jewish religion and history. The arguments were as heated as the stakes were high. 
All the more striking it was that on Monday, September 2, 1935, the fourth day of Elul 5695, some fifteen thousand people, amounting to one third of Jewish Jerusalem and nearly five percent of Jewish Palestine, religious and secular alike, joined by foreign diplomats, scholars, day laborers and rabbis, came out to follow the coffin of Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook, dead at age seventy. The procession wound from his yeshiva near Zion Square, in three columns through the Old City, to his freshly dug grave on the Mount of Olives, as thousands more watched from the rooftops. 
The night before, just a few hours after his passing, the Nineteenth Zionist Congress, meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland, had held a memorial service of its own. Menachem Ussishkin, president of the Jewish National Fund responsible for land-purchases in Palestine and incoming President of the Zionist Executive, had long been Rav Kook’s chief interlocutor in the Zionist leadership, navigating between the movement’s relentlessly secularizing thrust, and the rabbi’s dogged insistence that the movement was bound to be the very vehicle of spiritual rebirth, for Jews and the world. Ussishkin said the rabbi had told him the building modern-day Palestine, its roads, factories and farms was nothing less than rebuilding the Temple – and that now, as then, all the ranks were meant to work together, the secular, itself charged with divine energy, being the indispensable foundation of the sacred. 
Ussishkin was followed by Meir Berlin, leader of the perpetually-embattled Religious Zionist movement, the Mizrachi (whose Hebraized name would later garnish Israel’s religious university, Bar-Ilan). Rav Kook, Berlin said, “loved the Jewish people the way only a father can love his children. Nobody is left after him who will love his nation that fiercely…He understood his people, the situation of the generation, and its life conditions, and that is why he forgave them everything.” There was a lot to forgive. 
Berlin and Rav Kook went back a very long way, longer than the former’s own lifetime. In the fall of 1884, then aged nineteen, Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook had become a student and disciple of Berlin’s father, Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin, known as “The Netziv,” dean of the great yeshiva of Volozhin. The yeshiva teemed with prodigies, future rabbis and future revolutionaries, among whom young Kook stood out, for an unfamiliar mix, appealing to some, off-putting to others, of intellectual prowess, intense piety, and lyric sensibility. 
In the early years of his career, begun in a tiny Lithuanian shtetl, Kook was drawn to Maimonidean rationalism. With time, and intense grief at the death of his first wife, he turned inward, undertook deep introspection and extensive study of Kabbalah, on his own and with Rav Shalom Elyashiv (grandfather of the recently departed Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv). Alongside his command of Talmud and halakha, he mastered an extraordinary range of Jewish mystical, philosophical and other texts, read widely in the rich Hebrew and Yiddish periodical literature of the day, and became an autodidact of contemporary philosophy. In a departure from rabbinic conventions, he made serious study of the non-halakhic portions of the Talmud, the Aggadah and all its divergent voices. 

“There are those who erroneously think that world peace will only come from a common character of opinions and qualities. But no – true peace will come to the world precisely by multiplication of all the opinions and perspectives… all facets of the larger truth… peace (is) the unification of all opposites. But there must be opposites, so that there be those who labor and that which will be unified… Hence peace is the name of God, who is the master of all the forces, omnipotent and gathering them all.” (Eyn Ayah to Massekhet Berakhot, vol. 2, pp. 397-398, 9:361, on BT Berakhot 64a.) 

In another, marking his burgeoning conviction that God is to be found in the stormy recesses of one’s own inner life, he began to keep a spiritual diary. 
In the summer of 1904 Kook moved to Palestine after accepting an offer to become the rabbi of Jaffa and the surrounding colonies, effectively becoming rabbi of the New Yishuv (Jewish collective). The year of his arrival marked the beginning of the Second Aliyah, the migration wave that brought a small but influential cadre of young intellectuals and revolutionaries who left an outsized mark on the political and cultural development of the New Yishuv. The combined effect of his encounters with their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the Jewish people and for the ethical universalism of Socialism, with the vibrancy of the New Yishuv and sheer embodied-ness of the land was electrifying. In public, he became the leading rabbinic champion of the New Yishuv, and thus the target of traditionalist attacks. In private, as time went by he wrote more and more furiously and extensively in his diaries, lost in a torrent of thought as he began to train the dialectical worldview which he had developed to understand the complex mix of his own soul and the ideological debates of Eastern Europe onto larger historical patterns. His thinking also became explicitly Messianic. 
Thus in his reading, and in a move which astonished and enraged many of his Rabbinic peers, the rebelliousness of the pioneers was neither accidental, nor evil, but in fact nothing less than part of God’s plan to restore to Judaism a vitality and universal spirit worn thin in centuries of exile. The young rebels against tradition in the name of Jewish nationalism and social justice were nothing less than the bearers of a new revelation. 
In a major essay of 1912, Li-Mahalakh Ha-Ideiot be-Yisrael, (“The Progression of Ideals in Israel,”) he presented a philosophy of Jewish history structured along series of mirroring, theses and antitheses, whose collective synthesis is redemption: The vital, collective, bodily Judaism of the Bible followed by its antithesis, the subdued, individualized, spiritualized,Judaism of Exile, all to be synthesized in the fullness of redemption. 
The Land of Israel was central to his reflections. 

“The holiness within nature is the holiness of the Land of Israel, and the Shekhinah that went down into exile with Israel (BT Megillah 29a) is the ability to preserve holiness in opposition to nature. But the holiness that combats nature is not complete holiness, it must be absorbed in its higher essence to the higher holiness, which is the holiness in nature itself, which is the foundation of the restoration and tikun olam… And the holiness in exile will be joined to the holiness of the land, and the synagogues and batei midrash of Bavel will be reestablished in the Land of Israel.” (Ibid; and Shemonah Kevatzim 2: 326-327, Orot pp. 77-78). 

Here and throughout he was reinterpreting a rich skein of Kabbalistic thought, in which the divine presence, the Shekhinah, as the Oral Torah, is Knesset Yisrael, the sacred community of Israel, and thus the Land, are all ultimately as one, constituting, as Sefirat Malkhut the very meeting point of God and the world. The “Ideals” under discussion in his 1912 essay were not only the Ideals of Western philosophy and the moral, spiritual and aesthetic ideas driving all human yearning, but also, and more deeply, the Sefirot, the nodal points of divine energy that in Kabbalistic teaching are the deep structure of all of Being, and, animated as it is with divine energy, its endless Becoming. 
The outbreak of World War One caught Rav Kook in Germany, where he’d hoped to attend a rabbinic conference and mollify some of his peers’ fierce opposition to the Jewish national revival. He spent the war years in Switzerland and then England, in horrified witness to the great civilizational suicide. 
The world crisis and slaughter were redeemed for him by the Balfour Declaration, which he took as electrifying confirmation of his messianic reading of world events. As always, the national was for him complemented by the universal, and in the midst of the war, in the pages of his diaries, he reached some of the farthest heights of his universalism: 

“There is one who sings the song of his self, …And there is one who sings the song of the nation, who cleaves with gentle love to Knesset Yisrael as a whole, and sings her song with her, grieves for her sorrows and delights in her hopes…And there is one whose soul expands further beyond the bound of Israel, to sing the song of man…And there is one whose spirit expands and ascends even higher, to the point of unity with all creation, with all creatures and all worlds, and sings with them all…And there is one who ascends above all these songs in a single union, and all sound their voices…The song of the self, of the nation, of man, of the world – all come together within him at every time, in every hour. And this perfection in all its fullness ascends and becomes a sacred song, God’s song, Israel’s song…a simple song, doubled, tripled, fourfold, the Song of Songs of Shlomo (Cant. 1:1), (as the Midrash says) The King to Whom Peace, belongs.” (Midrash Shir Ha-Shirim Rabbah, 3:1(6), Vilna ed.) (Shemonah Kevatzim, 7:112, Orot Ha-Kodesh, vol. 2, pp. 444-445). 

On his return to Palestine be became, first, chief rabbi of Jerusalem, and in 1921, the co-founder, with his Sephardi colleague Yaacov Meir, of the Chief Rabbinate. What was for the British an extension of established colonial policy of delegating religious services and some legal jurisdiction to local religious authorities was for him an opening to institutions that would gradually reshape the law into a new Torah for a redeemed Eretz Yisrael. He hoped to create institutions that would move the historical progression forward, creating the halakha and institutions to guide the great changes to come. 
The reality was more complicated. That which made him the obvious choice to head the Rabbinate and indispensable to the burgeoning project of building the Jewish national home – his mix of erudition and piety, his engagements with modern thought and culture, a deeply conciliatory personality and a theology and historical perspective to make that conciliation the basis of a new philosophy – his ability to square seemingly incommensurate circles, left him out of the political mix and unable to make headway on his most prized projects, the new Rabbinate and bringing the Zionist movement into deep dialogue with Judaism. 
It all came to a head in 1933 with the murder of the general secretary of Ben-Gurion’s Mapai party, Chaim Arlosoroff. Suspicion fell on Jabotinsky’s Revisionists, who had been doing rhetorical and sometimes physical battle with Mapai over its willingness to negotiate Jewish immigration with Hitler, and several were arrested. Rav Kook himself had never affiliated with a party, or even formally joined the Zionist movement as such. But once convinced of the Revisionists’ innocence, Rav Kook threw himself and all his stature into their defense. The accused were exonerated, but his ties to the Left were irrevocably broken. 
The ultra-Orthodox, for their part, throughout his Jerusalem years, saw him as their gravest foe and attacked him relentlessly, even while on his deathbed, and after. 
The ensuing decades saw growing interest in Rav Kook’s teachings and their significance. The thousands of pages of his diaries were edited and published, in different series, by his disciple “ha-Rav ha-Nazir,” David Cohen (see here) and by Rav Kook’s son, Zvi Yehudah. 
The latter eventually assumed the deanship of his father’s yeshiva, renamed Mercaz Ha-Rav, and in the late 1960s and early ‘70s became spiritual leader of the new vanguard of Religious Zionists. 
When in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War of October 1973 religious Zionists decided to capture the flag and lay hold, not only of the hilltops of Judea and Samaria but of the Zionist movement as a whole, they were taking the religious language that Labor Zionism had made into a functional tool for a political program and re-infuse it with its classical religious meaning. And they did so, with the conceptual tools provided them by Zvi Yehudah, in his interpretation of his father. 
The central question for Zvi Yehudah, his own successors, and for his and their critics within Religious Zionism, (most notably Rav Yehudah Amital) was what his father would have said, and how his ideas ought to be interpreted. It’s hard to think of another Jewish theologian whose legacy has been as consequential as AvrahamYitzhak ha-Kohen Kook. 
Those arguments continue in present-day Israel, where new volumes by and about Rav Kook, academic, sectarian and popular, continue to be published at a dizzying pace year after year. The publication in recent years of his diaries in their original form has heightened interest in him, while showing the depth of his immersion in Kabbalah, and the depths he was plumbing in his own complicated soul. He simultaneously embraced both universalism and particularism with rare vehemence. He saw genuine revelation in the spiritual life of all peoples, and in the very body of Israel, whose unique collective vocation was the salvation of mankind. He affirmed both pragmatism and utopia, or in his terms, sagacity and prophecy. The common thread to this entire way of thinking is the dialectic, a principled appreciation of complexity, and the ways in which precisely that complexity, that coincidence of opposites, is that which gives birth, slowly, to whatever it is that we can know of truth. 
The last day of his life was the third day of Elul, sixteen years to the day since his arrival, after the Great War, in Jerusalem. He had been ailing with cancer for months and gone to the then-suburb of Kiryat Moshe. In his last days he’d received a number of visitors, including a disciple of the Rebbe of Munkacs, come to query Rav Kook’s support for the Zionists, and the young rabbi and theologian, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who was visiting from America on what would be his only visit to the Land of Israel (see here). And, after asking his physician how long he had left to live, did his best to read through the Mishna, Bible and Bahya ibn Paquda’s eleventh-century classic, Duties of the Heart, one last time. 
On the first day of Elul, the penitential month, Ha-Nazir had brought him the elegantly designed title page of the theological compendium he’d wrought out of the spiritual diaries, to be entitled, “Light of the Holy,” Orot Ha-Kodesh. Rav Kook wept and asked that on the title page he be referred to simply as “Rav” and nothing more. He was surrounded by treasured rabbinic colleagues – Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, Rav Yechiel Michel Tukachinsky, Rav Aryeh Levine – and Ha-Nazir stood in the courtyard downstairs, his face buried in a tree. At the very end, Rav Kook’s lips were moving. His disciple and soul-mate, Rav Yaakov Moshe Charlap leaned over him, and heard him say, “Even now, my hope in God doesn’t falter.” 
Rav Kook turned his face to the wall as the attending physician rinsed the blood from his body, and once his visitors re-entered the room, he faced them all once again. They began to say the Shema together, and he joined them on the final word, “Echad / one.”


More on R. Kook’s Recently Published Writings

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More on R. Kook’s Recently Published Writings
by Marc B. Shapiro

In my post here here I mentioned that R. Kook argued that there is good reason to observe mitzvot even if one does not have a traditional view of the Torah’s authorship. On the one hand, there is nothing surprising in this. After all, would anyone tell a non-Orthodox Jew that it is OK if he eats on Yom Kippur?[1] R. Kook’s originality is therefore not seen in the bottom line, but in the argument he uses.[2] He notes that Maimonides and other medieval greats used arguments that they themselves did not accept in order to make religious points. For example, Maimonides used an argument that assumed the eternity of matter in order to prove the existence of God.[3] This was valuable in that those who accepted the former point would also be forced to acknowledge the latter point, i.e., God’s existence. Only then could he attempt to weaken the belief in eternity. Similarly, R. Kook is prepared to argue for the binding nature of Torah law even on the assumption that it was not given to Moses. This is valuable since, in his day at least, it was the acceptance of biblical criticism that encouraged people to give up the observance of mitzvot. If R. Kook can therefore show that even an acceptance of biblical criticism does not mean that there is no place for mitzvot, it will be a great achievement.[4]
R. Kook notes that traditional Jews observe rabbinic laws and even customs. His point is that these are regarded as valuable and help form the religious personality Yet no one believes that they were given to Moses by God. Why, then, should believers in biblical criticism not feel bound to other laws, which while traditionally seen as from Sinai, can also be regarded as rabbinic or even as customs (“folkways” in Mordecai Kaplan’s language). In other words, the mitzvot should be seen as having value regardless of their origin.
I have to say, however, that the weakness in R. Kook’s argument should be apparent. For those who accept the entire system, it makes sense that on top of the divinely revealed Torah laws, that rabbinic laws and customs are also added. But if one rejects the basis of Torah law, then the other two components simply fall away.
R. Kook picks up with his theme in a later passage.[5] Before dealing with the matter of biblical criticism, he briefly discusses the so-called dispute between science and Torah that caused so much difficulty in his day. In a passage that is very similar to one that appears in his letter to Moshe Seidel,[6] R. Kook explains that the Torah makes use of the “science” of its day, and writes about such matters in a simple and understandable fashion. The Torah makes no attempt at scientific accuracy (which would not have been understandable in earlier days). As R. Uri Sharki, a follower of R. Kook, puts it, the creation story (which contains great secrets) is presented in the language of myth בסגנון המיתי.[7] Most people today who have examined the matter accept this approach, but since the average person does not understand what myth is (seeing it as synonymous with fairy tale or legend), you don’t have a typical Orthodox rabbi using this language in his sermon on parashat Bereshit.
I have discussed this matter in detail in an earlier post here so there is no need to repeat what I have already said. Let me only add that the use of the term “science” in this context is not really accurate. What R. Kook is discussing is the early history of the universe, knowledge of which we have arrived at by means of science. R. Kook is saying that we should not treat the Torah’s descriptions as “history”, as that is not the Torah’s purpose. As I have pointed out in the post mentioned above, I believe that R. Kook’s approach was not only intended to answer problems dealing with the first chapters of Genesis but with any problems that might arise between what historians conclude and what appears to be the peshat in the Torah, e.g., the lifespans recorded in Scripture, the description of the Flood, and the huge number of people who took part in the Exodus, to mention just a few that are often discussed.[8]
Following this matter, R. Kook returns to the issue of Torah mi-Sinai. He states that even if one believes that the Torah was written after Moses or that the text has been corrupted, this does not affect his obligation to observe the mitzvot, since the acceptance of the Torah was dependent on its acceptance by the nation. Therefore, an individual cannot remove himself from this group. This is no different than a host of other matters where we say that an individual cannot choose a separate path from that which was decided by the group.[9]
Regarding the revelation of the Torah, it is important to also cite R. Kook’s words in Shemonah Kevatzim 1:633, about which an entire post could be written. I ask readers to focus carefully on the implications of what he says.
There is denial that is like an affirmation of faith, and an affirmation of faith akin to denial. A person can affirm the doctrine of the Torah coming from “heaven”, but with the meaning of “heaven” so strange that nothing of true faith remains. And a person can deny Torah coming from “heaven” where the denial is based on what the person has absorbed of the meaning of “heaven” from people full of ludicrous thoughts. Such a person believes that the Torah comes from a source higher than that! . . . Although that person may not have reached the point of truth, nonetheless this denial is to be considered akin to an affirmation of faith. . . . “Torah from Heaven” is but an example for all affirmations of faith, regarding the relationship between their expression in language and their inner essence, the latter being the main desideratum of faith.[10]
Since we are speaking about R. Kook, let me also call attention to a few more significant passages in the newly published Li-Nevokhei ha-Dor. I previously referred to this text which a few years ago was somehow illegally placed online. In 2014 R. Shahar Rahmani published the work with notes, and it is to this edition that everyone should now refer. In studying Li-Nevokhei ha-Dor, readers should remember that it was written before R. Kook came to the Land of Israel.
In chapter 13 R. Kook acknowledges that in a future era, when we will have a Sanhedrin, there will be a need for new derashot in halakhah, which will respond to the then current circumstances, something we at present cannot do. In this future era people will no longer be able to complain, as they do now, that the rabbinic obligations are not suitable for the current time. This is an acknowledgment that there are indeed aspects of rabbinic law that should, and will, be changed. But R. Kook falls back on the procedural problem of doing this prematurely, before the mechanism to do so exists (i.e., the Sanhedrin).
I have no reason to assume that R. Kook is speaking about the messianic era, since he does not mention this, instead writing about the “far off future”. Had he intended the messianic era, he would have said so. What this means is that when the Jews are once again dwelling in their land there is a possibility for the revival of a living halakhah, by means of a Sanhedrin which would create derashot. See, e.g., these two sentences, where he responds to suggestions by those living in Europe to alter halakhah. He insists that no changes in halakhah can take place at present, but it is significant that he does not mention the messianic era (and note the positive way he describes the רגש of the advocates of halakhic change). In other words, while haredim push off all such talk to the messianic era, R. Kook is not bound by such conservatism and could imagine halakhic change via a Sanhedrin in the pre-messianic era as well.
אבל הרוצה לדחוק את הקץ, ולהתנהג בדרישות שאנו חייבים ויכולים לקיימן רק בהיותינו בבית חיינו, גם לעת פזורינו ודלדולינו, ופורץ גדר של המרכז הלאומי הנשגב, התלמוד וחתימתו, בשביל קורת רוח של חיי שעה ודרישת אסתתיקא זמנית, הוא מחליף עולם קיים בעולם עובר בכלל האומה ומביא אנדרולומוסיא לעולם
ידעתי אמנם שהדעה הנשאה הזאת תוכל להיות למפגע לקלי דעת החפצים לדחוק את הקץ ורודפים את העתיד הרחוק בלא זמנו, אלה הם השועלים המחבלים, שאף שהרגשתם היא הרגשה רוממה ונעלה, אבל רוחם אינו רוח שוקט הראוי לכל איש ישר היודע את אשר לפניו
The future Sanhedrin will be able not only to overturn talmudic halakhot, but it will also be able uproot Torah laws if it finds it necessary. R. Kook further tells us that if the Sanhedrin is able to change our understanding of a biblical law by means of a derashah, it is not even to be regarded as an “uprooting.” It is by means of derashot that the Sanhedrin would be able to permanently alter the way of Torah observance. Consider for example the matter of women not being accepted as witnesses for certain matters. Rather than using apologetics to explain this to contemporary women, R. Kook’s approach allows people to say that indeed, this can be changed by a future Sanhedrin by means of a new derashah, but that today there can be no change since we do not have the mechanism to do so. The matter is thus turned into a technical problem rather than an ideological one.[11]
R. Kook also elaborates on the idea that the closing of the Talmud was a historical phenomenon brought on by the difficulties of the galut. But the Jewish people only accepted such a closure until the time that they returned to their land and the nation was once again rejuvenated.
Chapter 13 of Li-Nevokhei ha-Dor can stand alone as an essay. It is a very important statement of how R. Kook understood Jewish law, and I hope someone will translate it into English. I think what R. Kook was talking about is the same thing later advocated by R. Eliezer Berkovits, although I am not claiming that R. Kook would have supported Berkovits’ ideas as practical in our time. However, the concept that Berkovits was speaking about, of an Eretz Yisrael halakhah, is exactly what R. Kook had in mind.[12]
If this wasn’t enough, R. Kook has more to say in chapter 13. He discusses how the great stress on Talmud study in recent centuries has brought much that is positive to the Jewish people. However, he also notes the downside of this single-minded focus on Talmud study, a criticism that (for those who accept it) would be even more applicable in our day. He says that this focus on Talmud study has led to a weakness of the body for many students, a point already known from Orot. He also states that the Talmud-only curriculum has led people to be unaware of those secular studies that are indeed essential.[13]
חסרון המדעים הנחוצים לאדם באשר הוא אדם
Most interesting, however, is the additional problem R. Kook sees with the exclusive focus on Talmud study. He says that it has led to ethical problems, problems that arise when people spend their time focused only on halakhic details without seeing the broader picture, that of the heart which cannot be encompassed in halakhic details but only in a broad ethical vision.
וגם חסרונות מוסריים שבאו לרגלי התיחדות העסק השכלי רק בפרטי ודקדוקי הלכות מאין שם לב לרגשי לב והגיוני מוסר כלליים
R. Kook is quick to point out that it is not the study of Talmud per se that is responsible for the problem he mentions, but rather the single-minded focus on Talmud to the exclusion of all else, meaning that there is no room for secular studies, physical exercise, and exposure to the larger ethical teachings of the Torah.
אמנם כל המגרעות האלה לא באו לנו מצד השקידה על למוד התלמוד וקיומו, כי אם מצד ההפרזה הקיצונית על שלא הנחנו מקום לחלקי החינוך האחרים להכשרת החכמות והמדעים, לחוזק הגוף, להרחבת הדעה וההגיון המוסרי שבתורה, שעל זה כבר צוחו גם כן גדולי הדורות, ומקוצר רוח לא היה להם שומע
For good measure R. Kook adds that extremism, be it in actions or beliefs, is always bad for us.
והנטיה הקיצונית היא לעולם מכאבת בנו כל חלקה טובה, הקיצוניות בחינוך ובמעשים וכמו כן הקיצוניות בדעות
I will continue with more from Li-Nevokhei ha-Dor in future posts, but for now I would like to add one more comment about R. Kook. At least one reader is upset that I haven’t focused on R. Kook’s halakhic and talmudic writings, as he thinks that this is the main aspect of R. Kook, while his philosophical writings were only done on the side, as it were. This exact same point has been made with regard to R. Soloveitchik. That is, people have criticized certain academics for portraying the Rav as primarily a philosopher for whom his talmudic studies were a secondary element. In this case the criticism is certainly correct, as when it came to the Rav his talmudic studies were the main focus and it was his philosophical writings that were secondary.
Yet this is not the case when it comes to R. Kook. It is true that he was a great posek, however this was not where his heart was. In his inner essence he was a thinker and kabbalist, not a talmudist or halakhist. This is not just my own speculation. R. Kook himself said as much to both R. Reuven Margaliyot and R. Moshe Zvi Neriyah. Here is what he told R. Neriyah:[14]
שעה שחפץ היה הפילוסוף קנט להנפש מקצת ממחקריו הפילוסיפיים, עסק בגיאוגרפיה. וכך היה אומר: “מחמת שאני איש האבסטרקים, חש אני הרגשת-נופש וחילוף כחות כשאני מעיין בדברים מוצקים כגון: הר, נחל, עיר כפר וכדומה,” אף אני כך – ציין הרב – הרי אני מטבעי איש המחשבה והרגש, אולם בבואי להנפש, אני עוסק בהלכה ואני חש שרגלי עומדות על קרקע מוצק.
R. Kook told R. Margaliyot the same thing:[15]
מטבעי “בעל מחשבות” אנכי ושורש נשמתי היא “המחשבה”, וכשאני זקוק למנוחה והחלפת כוח הנני מתעסק בהלכה.
See also my post here where I discuss R. Kook’s belief that the nitty-gritty of halakhic study can have a negative effect on great people’s spiritual life. 
All that I have just mentioned is far removed from R. Soloveitchik’s understanding of the role of halakhic study and its place in his own spiritual personality.[16]
Based on what I have cited, we can also reject what Hillel Goldberg has written in a generally very positive review of Yehudah Mirsky’s new book on R. Kook.
R. Kook’s status as a major halakhic decisor was not just something added onto an already impressive resume. It was not just one more remarkable thing he did. It was of his essence. And the elevation and illumination it entailed were of a piece with, perhaps even a spur to – certainly not in opposition to – the strivings of his soul.[17]
These are very nice words by Goldberg, but the problem is that they are contradicted by none other than R. Kook himself who denies that halakhic study is “of his essence” and confesses that halakhic study was at times indeed in opposition to “the strivings of his soul.”
In previous posts I have quoted all sorts of amazing passages from R. Kook, and here is another one. It appears in Shemonah Kevatzim 2:34.

At the beginning of the passage R. Kook refers to those special tzaddikim who do not need to learn Torah or pray on a regular basis. (When he speaks of learning Torah he is referring to traditional talmudic learning.) That there are some individuals who are so close to God that they don’t need to learn is not that surprising, as one can find the idea in certain hasidic texts that learning Talmud removes one from devekut with God. Some hasidic texts also state that the tzaddik does not need to heed the proper times of prayer, as he is above time. Yet I don’t know if there are any hasidic texts that go as far as R. Kook in assuming that that since the tzaddik is so closely connected to God that he can go for weeks without praying. I assume all this was only theoretical for R. Kook. I stress this since when one studies the totality of his writings it is obvious that R. Kook includes himself among the special tzaddikim he speaks of.
Now look at how this passage appears in Arpilei Tohar,[18] p. 16. 

The words לפי מדרגתם have been added to the original. This entirely alters the passage’s meaning, turning it on its head. R. Kook is now saying that there are tzaddikim who only rarely need to learn or pray at their special level (meaning that on a daily basis they learn and pray at a lower level, like everyone else). This alteration completely removes the antinomian sense of the passage, since one reading Arpilei Tohar will have no way of knowing that in the original text R. Kook’s point was that the tzaddikim only rarely need to learn or pray at all.
There has been a great deal of discussion about the changes made in Arpilei Tohar, and how they subverted R. Kook’s original intent. In this example, however, it was R. Kook himself who made the change,[19] obviously because he regarded his initial formulation as too provocative to appear in print.
Returning to the matter of Torah mi-Sinai, I was recently asked the following question. In Genesis 46:23 it says ובני דן חושים. “And the sons of Dan: Hushim.”[20] Many commentators discuss why it says “the sons” and not “the son”, since only one son is mentioned.[21] We find the same issue in 1 Chronicles 2:7-8 where it states ובני כרמי and ובני איתן but in each case only one son is listed. The Malbim wrote a commentary on Chronicles entitled Yemei Kedem. In this commentary, ibid., he explains that Carmi and Eitan had more sons, but Ezra, the author of Chronicles, was simply copying this information from an earlier source and only gave the name of the son that was important for his purposes. However, he kept the earlier part of the sentence, which mentions “sons”, and in the original source from which he was quoting other sons’ names also appeared.
Say what you will about this explanation, there is nothing radical in it. However, following this the Malbim says that the phenomenon he just described also explains the verse in Gen. 46:23: ובני דן חושים as well as the verse in Num. 26:8: ובני פלוא אליאב. That is, there were other sons but “he” only included the names that were important for his purpose.[22]

The questioner wondered, who is the “he” that the Malbim is referring to? Is it possible that he has Ezra in mind? I find this most unlikely, as everything that I know about the Malbim argues against the notion that he could have thought that Ezra had a role in the writing of the Torah. This leads me to assume that when the Malbim writes ולא חשיב רק הצריך לו לענינו that he is referring to Moses, and saying that just like Ezra only included the information that he needed, so too Moses chose to leave off the additional names since it wasn’t important for the story he was telling. This preserves complete Mosaic authorship, which I believe the Malbim genuinely affirmed (i.e., I don’t think he is hinting to a more radical view here). 
Some will still see the Malbim’s explanation as problematic in that it assumes that Moses independently made choices about what to include in the Torah. But in truth, even from a traditional perspective this is not problematic, and no different from the many other sources that speak of Moses formulating passages in the Torah on his own. As I pointed out in Limits, p. 113, the traditional view has always been that God’s imprimatur, as it were, was later given to those words originally stated by Moses on his own. So too the Malbim would say that while Moses originally chose what to include here, when the Torah was later given to the Children of Israel this was done at God’s direction, and this is what sanctified the text. So there is really nothing radical about what the Malbim is saying.[23]
Regarding the Malbim, R. Mordechai E. Feuerstein shares the following from R. Soloveitchik.[24]
He told me about the Malbim, the great Torah commentator, who in 1834 paid a visit to the Chasam Sofer in Pressburg. The Malbim was a younger person, about twenty-five years old at that time, while the Chasam Sofer was at the zenith of his career, one of the greatest rabbanim of the 19th century and of the whole period of the Acharonim. The Chasam Sofer accorded much honor to the Malbim, seating him on his right side at the Shabbos table, enabling them to speak together at greater length.
Apparently, after the Shabbos-day meal, the Malbim was so engrossed in what he had heard from the Chasam Sofer that he wandered back to the shul, lost in thought. It was quite dark inside the empty shul, and the Malbim found a place to stand near what seemed to be a wall, and remained there in profound contemplation.
Later when the congregants began returning to shul for Mincha, they were stunned to see the Malbim standing near the aron, still deep in thought, right in the makom kavua of the Chasam Sofer! An angry murmur swept through the crowd; people were about to step forward to rebuke the Malbim when the Chasam Sofer walked in. Quickly sizing up the situation, he stopped them and said: Zol ehr blaiben shtayn (“Let him remain standing there”). The Malbim awoke from his trance and, horror-struck to discover that he had inadvertently been standing in the Chasam Sofer’s place, offered the Chasam Sofer profuse apologies, which were accepted.
For the rest of his life, the Rov told me, the Malbim used to sequester himself in a room for a period of time, right after Shabbos Mincha. Afterwards, he would emerge red-eyed from weeping. With the passage of years, he gradually came to interpret the Chasam Sofer’s words, Zol ehr blaiben shtayn as a punitive decree: Let him remain standing where he is now—his qualitative advance in Torah knowledge is over. Where he is now is where he will stay. The Malbim sensed that the divine gift of creative inspiration which he had experienced before his inadvertent slight to the honor of the Chasam Sofer, had been irrevocably taken away.
R. Hershel Schachter, Nefesh ha-Rav, pp. 251-252, also tells the story, as he heard it from R. Soloveitchik, and in his version there are some differences. To begin with, he records that the Malbim came to Pressburg to request a haskamah on his halakhic work Artzot ha-Hayyim, which the Hatam Sofer provided. According to R. Schachter’s version, the mistake happened not when the Malbim returned to the synagogue before minhah, but when he returned for maariv. Furthermore, the Malbim was not standing in the Hatam Sofer’s place, but actually sat in his seat. As he explains, this was an understandable mistake as it was dark and throughout Shabbat he has been sitting in the seat next to that of the Hatam Sofer. When one of the laypeople tried to point out to the Malbim that he was in the Hatam Sofer’s seat, the latter was so involved in his learning that he did not even realize that someone was speaking to him. It was then that the Hatam Sofer said to leave him be. From that time on the Malbim’s main area of hiddush was in the study of Tanakh but not in halakhah[25]:
וכאילו לשונו של הח”ס שאמר לו “שישאר שמה” היה מוסבת על דרגת הלימוד שלו, שלא יעלה עוד הלאה בהלכה
* * * *
I was hoping to discuss the recent political developments that revolve around R. Meir Mazuz, but I see that the post is already quite long as it is. I will therefore postpone this discussion until a future post.

[1] R. Elhanan Wasserman suggests that it makes no difference if a non-believer fulfills a mitzvah since he does not believe in the concept of mitzvot. See R. Elhanan’s Kovetz Ma’amarim ve-Iggerot (Jerusalem, 2000), vol. 1, p. 96. However, this does not mean that R. Elhanan would actually tell a non-believer that he can violate the Torah, and I am certain that he would encourage him to fulfill mitzvot, as a means of kiruv.
[2] See Kevatzim mi-Ketav Yad Kodsho, pp. 125-12.6
[3] See his addition to the Fourth Principle, found in the Kafih edition of Perush ha-Mishnah, Sanhedrin, introduction to ch. 10 (p. 142), Guide 1:71.
[4] In Yehudah Mirsky’s fantastic new book (which deserves all the accolades it has received), Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution (New Haven, 2014), p. 38, he writes: “He [R. Kook] suggests that one may accept the findings of biblical criticism and still keep faith with tradition.” This sentence is poorly formulated as it implies that R. Kook thought that biblical criticism was acceptable. Yet this is not true, as all R. Kook was saying is that even if one unfortunately does accept the falsehoods of biblical criticism, this does not mean that he should then discard Torah observance.
[5] Kevatzim mi-Ketav Yad Kodsho, p. 133.
[6] See Iggerot ha-Re’iyah, vol. 2, no. 478.
[7] See here. R. Chaim Navon apparently approves of Cassutto’s contention that the Torah incorporates pagan mythological conceptions, such as the taninim referred to in Genesis 1:21. See Navon, “The Torah and Ancient Near Eastern Culture,” available here.
[8] Regarding non-historical understandings of the Torah, let me call attention to an unpublished medieval work, falsely attributed to Ramban, entitled Zekhut Adam ha-Rishon. A selection of it is published in Adolf Jellinek’s edition of Ramban’s Torat ha-Shem Temimah (Leipzig, 1853), pp. 39-40. (This text I print below is not included in the second edition of Torat ha-Shem Temimah that Jellinek published in Vienna in 1873.)
I have not seen any discussion of Zekhut Adam ha-Rishon among modern scholars. This work advocates taking the narrative sections of the Torah literally, including the Cain and Abel episode. However, when סברא האנושית הישרה tells us that the text is not to be taken literally, then it is time to offer a non-literal interpretation, for the Torah does not require us to believe things that are impossible or מהתלות which I would translate as  “absurdities”:
חובה עלינו שנבין ונקבל כל תרי”ג מצות על פשוטיהם כמו שעשו אבותינו כאמרו כל אשר דבר ה’ נעשה, לכן כל הנביאים כולם היו שומרים מצות התורה ועושים אותן לפי דרך המצווה, הם עשיית הפסח בימי חזקיהו וככה בימי עזרא, ועל כולם היו מזהירים באמרו זכרו תורת משה עבדי ובזה אין חולק ואין מדחה חלילה, אבל הספורים הרומזים או הנבואיים אשר אין מצוה תלויה בהם דין אחר, וזה כי אם סברא האנושית הישרה לא תבגוד [צ”ל תנגוד] ותקביל לספור ההוא אין ראוי לנו שנתן לו ציון וחקוי דמוי או המשל אבל ראוי שנבינהו על פשוטו כמדרגת ספור עניני האבות, כמו נצחון אברהם את המלכים וספור הריגת משה רבינו ע”ה את המצרי, כי הספורים האלם [צ”ל האלה] יגידו הענינים אשר קרו בימים ההם ומה לנו לתור אחריהם חקוי ודמוי, ומזה המין הוא אצלי הפירקין והכל [צ”ל בפ’ קין והבל], אבל כאשר ימצא ספור מה בתורה אשר הסברא האנושית הישרה תחלוק עליו, ותספק בו בצדדים ודרכים עיוניים אמיתיים, ראוי שנעזב הפשט מהספור ההוא ונתן לו ציור או דוגמה מה, כי לא בא התורה להכריחנו להאמין נמנעות או מהתלות חלילה, כי תורת ה’ תמימה מחכימת פתי
[9] See also R. Kook, Eder ha-Yekar, pp. 38-39. Regarding Torah mi-Sinai, and how some segments of the Modern Orthodox world have begun to accept aspects of Higher Criticism, see my post here.
In that post I wrote: “In the next installment of this series I will present further evidence that in some parts of the Modern Orthodox world the old taboo against Higher Criticism has begun to fade.” I have decided to incorporate this further material into an academic article. Once this appears, I will summarize matters on the Seforim Blog. But in the meantime, let me offer the following interesting example relevant to the wider subject (called to my attention by a reader). 

Ba’al ha-Turim to Lev. 1:1 states that because Moses was so modest, he did not want to write the word ויקרא, but instead ויקר which implies happenstance. God however told him that that he should also include the aleph at the end of the word, so Moses wrote this letter smaller than the other letters. In other words, this was done independently by Moses, without being told to do so by God. (The comment of Ba’al ha-Turim in the standard Mikraot Gedolot humashim is abridged. The entire comment can be seen in R. Yaakov Koppel Reinitz’s edition [Jerusalem, 1996]).
R. Akiva Eger, Teshuvot, Mahadura Kamma, Orah Hayyim no. 75, summarizes the Ba’al ha-Turim as follows:
שמשה רבינו ברוב ענותנותו לא רצה לכתוב אלא ויקר ואמר לו הקב”ה לכתוב בא’ זעירא
R. Akiva Eger summarizes Ba’al ha-Turim as saying that when Moses did not want to write the word ויקרא, God told him to write the word with a small aleph. Yet this is not what Ba’al ha-Turim says. According to Ba’al ha-Turim, Moses made this decision on his own. The abridged version of the commentary available to R. Eger reads:
                       
ואמר לו הקב”ה לכתוב גם באל”ף וכתבה קטנה
The complete version printed by Reinitz reads
ואמר לו הקב”ה לכתוב גם האל”ף ושוב אמר לו משה מחמת רוב ענוה שלא יכתבנה אלא קטנה יותר משאר אלפי”ן שבתורה וכתבה
The person who alerted me to this assumes that this is a form of censorship, i.e., for dogmatic reasons R. Akiva Eger altered what Ba’al ha-Turim wrote. I think it is more likely that when he wrote his responsum he did not bother to check the actual words of Ba’al ha-Turim and simply misremembered, and thus unintentionally altered Ba’al ha-Turim’s explanation so that the provocative element was removed.
In the forthcoming article I will deal not merely with biblical criticism, but also with those who assume that the Torah is not necessarily teaching historical truths. One such example is R. Shlomo Riskin’s Oct. 14, 2014 devar Torah, available here After telling us that the Torah is “not interested in conveying literal and chronological facts in its story of creation,” R. Riskin writes:
Maimonides, in his Guide for the Perplexed, interprets all of the early biblical stories until the advent of Abraham as allegories, whose purpose is to convey moral lessons rather than historical fact.
What R. Riskin says about Maimonides is simply incorrect, as Maimonides does not say what he attributes to him. However, R. Riskin does reflect a common sentiment in the Modern Orthodox world that the first eleven chapters of Genesis (i.e., up until Abraham) are not to be understood as “history” in the way we think of it today. (Yet contrary to his point, other than the Garden of Eden story, I don’t think that there are many who would regard any of the other stories in the early Genesis chapters as allegories.)
It will be the task of Modern Orthodox theologians to explain why it not problematic to regard Gen. 1-11 as (prophetic) myth, and at the same time to insist that the events dealing with the Patriarchs are to be regarded as historical. Why the distinction?
R. Kook already stated that when it comes to determining which portions of the Torah’s narrative section should be taken literally, this is something that is left to the “clear feeling of the nation”. He also acknowledges, as I  have mentioned already, that the Torah’s descriptions could be in line with how matters were understood in ancient times, which need not be historically or scientifically accurate. See Iggerot ha-Re’iyah, vol. 2, p. 119:
ואם אין כל יחיד יכול להציב גבול מדויק בין מה שהוא בדרך משל בתורה ובין מה שהוא ממשי,  —בא החוש הבהיר של האומה בכללה ומוצא לו את נתיבותיו לא בראיות בודדות כי-אם בטביעות-עין כללית. ואם נמצא בתורה כמה דברים, שחושבים אחרים שהם לפי המפורסם מאז, שאינו מתאים עם החקירה של עכשו, הלא אין אנו יודעים כלל אם יש אמת מוחלטת בחקירה הזמנית, ואם יש בה אמת, ודאי יש גם מטרה חשובה וקדושה שלצרכה הוצרכו הדברים לבא בתיאור המפורסם ולא המדויק.
As with the matter of biblical criticism, R. Kook believed that there could be a source of spiritual growth and value even in the mistaken view that none of the stories recorded in the Torah are historical. See Iggerot ha-Re’iyah, vol. 1, pp. 48-49:
                       
שמא כל החלק הספורי שבתורה, אומרים הם, איננו כ”א דברי אגדה ולא דברים שבפועל . . . ונאמר להם: אחים, אם כדבריכם, —דברי אגדה, שכ”כ הם יכולים לפעול לטובה ולברכה, לתקות עולמים ולמוסר השכל, הם כ”כ יקרים ונכבדים עד שהנם ממש דברי אלקים חיים, והם ראויים שכל מה שנעוץ בזכרונם יהי נשמר בכבוד ואהבה רבה. זה לא יספיק להחיות לגמרי בכל המילוי, אבל יספיק לפתח פתח, להסיר את הבוז והשנאה, את המאיסה והבחילה, מכל אשר ליהדות, ג”כ בלבם של הבנים הרחוקים.
Both of these sources from R. Kook have been cited by Tamar Ross in various publications, and I will deal with her position in my forthcoming article.
[10] Translation in Jerome (Yehuda) Gellman, “Judaism and Buddhism”, in Alon Goshen-Gottstein and Eugene Korn, eds. Jewish Theology and World Religions (Oxford, 2012), p. 315.
[11] See here where I discussed R. Kook’s suggestion that the future Sanhedrin could come up with new derashot to put an end to the practice of animal sacrifice.
[12] See my “Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits’s Halakic Vision for the Modern Age,” Shofar 31 (Summer 2013), pp. 16-36.
[13] R. Zvi Yehudah Kook stated that working the Land of Israel was the equivalent kiddush ha-shem as studying in yeshiva. See Hilah Wolberstein, Mashmia Yeshuvah (Merkaz Shapira, 2010), p. 248.
[14] Neriyah, Likutei ha-Re’iyah, vol. 1, p. 427.
[15] Quoted in R. Ze’ev Aryeh Rabiner, Or Mufla  (Tel Aviv, 1972), p. 80.
[16] In my post here I wrote: “There are, of course, many other differences between R. Soloveitchik and R. Kook. From the excerpt printed in The Rav Thinking Aloud, pp. 155-156, we see that the Rav regarded R. Kook as a saintly figure, but not as an intellectual great. Yet this impression was derived from one short conversation. All the gedolim who knew R. Kook had the exact opposite impression. They correctly saw that R. Kook was a master of the entire Torah, in all of its facets. I think you have to go back to Maharal, or perhaps even Nahmanides, to find such a wide-ranging Torah scholar as R. Kook.”
In addition to what I wrote, readers should be aware that R. Kook was quite ill when R. Soloveitchik spoke to him.
Here are the pages from R. David Holzer, The Rav Thinking Aloud.

When The Rav Thinking Aloud was reprinted, what I refer to was deleted. Here is how it looks in the currently available edition.

Regarding how R. Soloveitchik viewed R. Kook, R. Ezra Bick called my attention to his important comments from 1959 available here beginning at minute 10.
While R. Soloveitchik might not have been intellectually impressed by R. Kook after his one meeting with him, R. Kook saw in R. Soloveitchik the continuation of his grandfather, R. Hayyim. Because of this, R. Zvi Yehudah Kook made a point of attending all of the shiurim delivered by R. Soloveitchik when he was in Eretz Yisrael. Here is the recollection of R. Avraham Shapira, from Siah Ish (published with his Hag ha-Sukot [Jerusalem, 2012), p. 123.

In my previously mentioned post I wrote, “I think you have to go back to Maharal, or perhaps even Nahmanides, to find such a wide-ranging Torah scholar as R. Kook.” Subsequent to writing this I saw that R. Simhah Assaf, in his eulogy at R. Kook’s funeral, stated as follows (Zohar Elyon [Jerusalem, 2011], pp. 25-26):

ממהר”ל מפראג לא קם כמוך, איש המוח והלב הגדול והרגיש. איש הרגש והמחשבה, יושב אוהל ושקוע בתורה ויחד עם זה איש המעשה, שידע ללכת לפני העם.

Since I mentioned R. Ezra Bick, let me also note the following. In an earlier post from March 11, 2013, available here, the following appears:
In my post of January 13, 2013, I wrote: “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.” I saw this comment of Maharam Schiff many years ago, and unfortunately did not examine it carefully before adding this note. As R. Ezra Bick has correctly pointed out, Maharam Schiff is not speaking about wearing tefillin shel yad on the head to fulfill the mitzvah, but only stating that this is a respectful way to carry the tefillin shel yad if you have to remove it from your arm. This has no relevance to what I wrote about someone without arms (unless he has to carry the tefillin shel yad).
Yet I have now seen the following responsum of R. Jacob Meskin in his Even Yaakov: Rosh ha-Shanah (New York, 1954), no. 55 (p. 101a), who indeed derives from the Maharam Schiff that one can fulfill the mitzvah of the tefillin shel yad by putting it on one’s head.

[17] “Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of a Revolution,” Tradition 47:3 (2014), p. 71.
[18] The title of R. Kook’s work is ערפלי טהר. How is one to pronounce the first word? I write Arpilei since in my experience this is how it is pronounced in Religious Zionist circles. It also appears this way in some machzorim (mussaf of Rosh ha-Shanah, at the beginning of Shofarot, in the paragraph (אתה נגלית. Most importantly (to me at least) is that R. Meir Mazuz states that the word is pronounced this way. See Ha-Mahzor Ha-Meduyak: Rosh ha-Shanah, at the end of לאוקמי גירסא which is found at the beginning of the volume. He sees ערפל (segol under the peh) as parallel to כרמל  (segol under the mem). In Isaiah 1:18 the latter word appears as וכרמלו, with a hirik under the mem.
Others write Arpelei, with a sheva under the peh, and intuitively this is what most would assume. This is also how the word is vocalized by R. Seraya Deblitzky, Tikun Tefilah (Bnei Brak, 2010), vol. 2, p. 27, and by the ArtScroll machzor. Wolf Heidenheim, Philip Birnbaum, and Daniel Goldschmidt, in their editions of the machzor, place a patah under the ayin and under the peh. They also do not put a dagesh in the peh, so ערפלי is pronounced Arfalei. Heidenheim explains some of his reasoning in the Rodelheim Machzor (1872), p. 63b, and says that his vocalization is “without any doubt the correct version”.
                       
Regarding the words ערפלי טהר, it is also worth noting that in Bereshit Rabbah 99:3 the following words appear: ערפלא טורא. When I first saw this I thought that there must be some connection to the Rosh ha-Shanah prayer, and this is indeed noted by Matenot Kehunah, ad loc. Yet the truth is that none of the commentaries really know what to make of these words, and it would appear to be a corrupt text. See Albeck’s note in his edition of Bereshit Rabbah, vol. 3, p. 1275.
[19] See Omer Silber, ‘Ha’arafel be-Taharato,” Ma’galim, 5 (2007), p. 311.
[20] חושים is written defective in the Torah.
[21] In Bereshit Rabbah 46:26 it states:
בתורתו של ר’ מאיר מצאו כתוב ובן דן חשים
This apparently means that R. Meir’s Torah scroll differered from the current Masoretic text. However, many traditional commentators assume that it is only referring to a note that R. Meir added to his personal copy of the Torah or to a book of his commentaries on the Torah.
[22] The book of Jubilees must have also been troubled by the plural ובני דן, as it provides us with the names of Dan’s other sons and tells us that they died in the year that they entered Egypt. See Jubilees 44:28-30.
                       
According to Sotah 10a Hushim killed Esau. However, the Jerusalem Talmud, Ketubot 1:5 and other rabbinic sources state that that Judah killed him. See S. Buber’s note to Aggadat Bereshit (Cracow, 1903), p. 160 n. 14. Tosafot, Gittin 55a s.v. bihudah, tries to reconcile the conflicting sources, but there are difficulties with this reconciliation. See Buber’s note referred to above. Regarding this matter, R. Samuel Jaffe, in his classic commentary on the Jerusalem Talmud, Yefeh Mar’eh (Venice, 1590), to Ketubot 1:7 (p. 264a), has quite a strange passage. In commenting on the text in the Jerusalem Talmud that Judah killed Esau, rather than note that this is disputed by the Babylonian Talmud, Jaffe writes:
וליתא דחושים בן דן הרגו ביום קבורת יעקב אבי’ ע”ה כדאי’ בפ”ק דסוטה
Has anyone ever seen this type of language – וליתא – used with reference to a talmudic source? It is one thing to use the term וליתא when rejecting a view put forward by one’s contemporary, but here Jaffe is rejecting a passage in the Jerusalem Talmud.
[23] In my post here I wrote:

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. 
[24] “The Rov zt”l: The Nigleh and the Nistar,” in Zev Eleff, ed., Mentor of Generations (Jersey City, N.J., 2008), pp. 262-263.
[25] For other versions of the story, see Nathan Kamenetsky, Making of a Godol (Jerusalem, 2002), vol. 2, pp. 1118ff. See also Otzrot ha-Sofer 14 (5764), for a story (really a fairy tale) about how the Malbim came to the Hatam Sofer to request a haskamah. He falsely told the Hatam Sofer that the haskamah was for a book of his teacher when it was actually for a book the Malbim wrote. When the Hatam Sofer learnt of this deception, he declared that the Malbim’s life would bring him no peace, which is indeed what would later happen. 


Rav Kook’s Missing Student

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Rav Kook’s Missing Student[1]
by Bezalel Naor
Recent years have seen a breakthrough regarding the elusive identity of “Monsieur Chouchani,” the mysterious vagabond who in the capacity of mentor, exerted such an incredibly profound effect upon the Nobel-laureate novelist Elie Wiesel as well as the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas in the post-war, post-Holocaust years in France. I am referring to the identification of Chouchani as none other than Hillel Pearlman, an early student of Rav Kook in his short-lived Jaffa Yeshivah.[2]
Pivotal to the identification (which we shall not enter into here) is a letter that Rav Kook penned from exile in St. Gallen, Switzerland to two students of the Yeshivah. We offer the letter in English translation:
With the help of God
6 Tishri 5676 [i.e., 1915]
A good conclusion[3] to my beloved soul-friends, each man according to his blessing,[4] the dear “groom,” the Rabbi, sharp and encyclopedic, crowned with rare qualities and character traits, our teacher Rabbi Hillel, may his light shine; and the dear “groom,” exceptional in Torah and awe of heaven, modest and crowned with rare character traits, Mr. Meir, may his light shine.
Peace! Peace! Blessing with abundant love.
My dear friends, for too, too long I delayed the response to your dear letter. In your goodness you will give me the benefit of the doubt. Only as a result of the preoccupation brought on by the pain of exile and the heart’s longing produced by the general situation (God have mercy), were things put off.
Many thanks to you, our dear Mr. Meir, for your detailed letter, whereby you deigned in your goodness to write to us in detail the state of our family members in the Holy Land, especially the state of the girls, may they live.[5] May the Lord repay your kindness and gladden your soul with every manner of happiness and success, and may we together rejoice in the joy of the Land of Delight upon the holy soil, when the Lord will grant salvation to His world, His land and His inheritance, speedily, speedily, soon.
And you, my beloved Mr. Hillel, all power to you for your dear words, upright words pronounced with proper feeling and the longing of a pure heart. We are standing opposite a great and powerful vision previously unknown in human history. There is no doubt that changes of great value are hidden in the depths of this world vision. There is also no doubt that the hand of Israel through the spirit, the voice of Jacob,[6] must be revealed here. Far be it from us to treat as false all the deeds and events, the longing for general life, that we experienced the past years. As much as they are mixed with impurities; as much as they failed to assume their proper form, their living description, their true life—we see in them in the final analysis, correspondence to the holy vision, unmistakable signs that things are happening according to a higher plan. The hand of the Lord holds them, to pave a way for His people, weary from its multitudinous troubles, and also for His world, crouching under the weight of confused life.
It is certainly difficulty at this time to trace which is the way of the process, but in this respect we may be certain: The terrible wandering of such great and essential portions of our nation residing in Eastern Europe, where the spiritual life of Israel is concentrated, and the necessity of rebuilding physically and spiritually new communities, educational institutions and Torah academies—will bring numerous new results, certainly for good. From those new winds that have been blowing in our world for the past half-century and more, something is to be derived, if we can purify them, erecting them upon foundations of purity and holiness. The opinions and longing for spiritual and physical building of Israel; the mighty desire of building the Land and the Nation, despite external and internal obstacles; the visions tucked away in the hearts of numerous thinkers to uplift the horn of Israel and its spirit, to bind together the strength of life with the sanctity of the soul, the talent of understanding with the depth of faith, immediate implementation with longing for salvation—all these are things that will bear fruit, and the Master of Wars, blessed be He, will grow from all of them His salvation.[7]
One thing we know for certain, that we are invited to great projects: philosophic projects; literary and publicistic projects; practical and social projects; projects at the interior of eternal life and projects of temporal and secular life; projects that remain within the border of Israel; and projects that overflow and touch the streams of life of the world at large and their many relations with the world of Israel, which was, is, and will be a blessing to all the families of earth,[8] as the word of the Lord to our ancestor [Abraham] in antiquity.
My beloved, I request that you write to us whatever is [happening] to you, your situation in detail, whether in spiritual or material matters; whatever you imagine might interest us, whether of private or public affairs. For all I will be exceedingly grateful to you, with God’s help.
I am your fast friend, looking for your happiness and success, and your return together with all our scattered people to the holy soil in happiness and success. May the Lord bless you with all good and extend to you peace and blessing and a good conclusion, as is your wish and the wish of one who seeks your peace and good all the days, longing for the salvation of the Lord,
Abraham Isaac Ha[Kohen] K[ook][9]
In order to understand the contents of the letter, the better to grasp the identities of its two recipients, we must first acquaint ourselves with the circumstances in which it was written.
For one decade, from 1904 to 1914, Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook served as Rabbi of the port city of Jaffa (precursor to Tel-Aviv). During those years in Jaffa he taught a select group of students in a yeshivah of his own making. (This yeshivah is not to be confused with the famous Yeshivah Merkaz Harav founded by Rav Kook in Jerusalem in the early 1920s.) In summer of 1914, Rav Kook set sail for Europe to attend the Knessiyah Gedolah or World Congress of the recently organized Agudath Israel movement. Due to the outbreak of World War One (on Tish’ah be-Av of that year), the conference was cancelled. Unable to return to Jaffa, Rav Kook remained stranded in Europe for the duration of the War, first in St. Gallen, Switzerland, where his needs were provided for by a sympathetic Mr. Abraham Kimhi, and later in London, where Rav Kook served as Rabbi of the Mahzikei Hadat synagogue in London’s East End.[10]
Much concerning the Jaffa yeshivah remains shrouded in mystery. No archive remains of this short-lived institution.[11] Thus we are pretty much left in the dark as to the curriculum,[12] enrollment, and even location. Fortunately, significant headway has been made in this direction in the recent article by Moshe Nahmani of the Yeshivat Hesder of Ramat Gan, “She’areha Ne’ulim—Yeshivat Harav Kuk be-Yaffo” (“Closed Gates—The Yeshivah of Rabbi Kook in Jaffa”).[13] Through painstaking research, the author was able to put together a list of students. Researchers had no difficulty identifying the “Hillel” of the letter as Hillel Pearlman. It was merely a case of “connecting the dots.”[14] But Nahmani was baffled by the “Meir” who is one of two co-addressees in our letter.[15]
I believe that I have solved the mystery of the missing Meir. In 1977, I was a visitor to the home of Rabbi Mayer Goldberg of Oakland, California. Rabbi Goldberg was a successful businessman (at that time in real estate) and a Jewish philanthropist, especially supportive of yeshivot or rabbinical academies. Rabbi Goldberg revealed to me that he had studied under Rabbi Kook in Jaffa.[16] He then went on to share with me a teaching of Rav Kook that I have since repeated on many an occasion. He said that before being exposed to Rav Kook’s teaching, the term “yir’at shamayim” (“fear of heaven”) had only a restrictive, narrowing connotation. Rav Kook explained the term in a totally different light. By the term “yir’at shamayim,” Rav Kook conveyed to his young listeners the vastness, the enormity, the infinitude of the universe.
Reading Moshe Nachmani’s article concerning Rav Kook’s yeshivah in Jaffa, and his bafflement as to the full identity of the student named simply “Meir,” I recalled my meeting with Rabbi Mayer Goldberg. I resolved that during my forthcoming visit to the East Bay area (as it has come to be known) I would meet with the late Rabbi’s children to learn from them more details of their father’s involvement with Rav Kook. What emerged from our discussion (conducted on February 14, 2013) is the following reconstruction of events.
Mayer Vevrick was born circa 1890 “near Kiev.”[17] At some time before World War One, Mayer boarded a ship from Odessa to Jaffa. In the words of his daughter Rachel Landes:
Once he arrived in Jaffa, he sought out the yeshiva of Rabbi Kook. Rabbi Avraham Kook was a world renowned scholar and it was there my father headed to study further. He became a “hasid,” a follower of the Rabbi, and thoroughly enjoyed his studies there. He lived in Rabbi Kook’s home.[18] He studied Talmud…with Rashi and the commentaries, for many hours a day with the other young men. These were the happiest days of his life, with uninterrupted Torah study, and the joy of learning with Rabbi Kook. Mayer adopted [Rabbi] Kook’s philosophy and was guided by it for the rest of his life.[19]
In World War One, Mayer left Jaffa for Egypt. There he was held by the British in an internment camp. Eventually, with some ingenuity, he was able to book passage on a boat to the United States.[20] Initially he resided on the East Coast. In Boston, he received a ketav semikha (writ of ordination) from Rabbi [Joseph M.] Jacobson. The semikha was written by Rabbi Jacobson on the spot in recognition of Mayer’s knowledge of Torah.[21] Later, Rabbi Mayer relocated to the West Coast, first to Washington State and finally to California.[22]
What becomes apparent from the letter of Rav Kook is that “Meir” remained in Jaffa after Rav Kook’s departure for Europe (followed almost immediately by the outbreak of World War One), and thus was in a position to give the Rav an update on the welfare of his daughters left behind in Jaffa. What also becomes apparent, is that in the Fall of 1915, “Meir” and his companion Hillel were no longer in the Land of Israel but somewhere else, for in his concluding remarks Rav Kook expresses the wish that they return to the Holy Land. This is consistent with Rabbi Goldberg’s biography, whereby he (along with countless other Jews of Erets Israel) was forced to flee the Holy Land at that time.[23]
This also coincides with the reconstructed biography of Hillel (Pearlman). Both students of Rav Kook, Hillel (Pearlman) and Meir (Goldberg) ended up in the United States in World War One. Whereas we are being told that Hillel (Pearlman) later left the United States for Europe and North Africa, reinventing himself as the mysterious “Monsieur Chouchani,” Mayer Goldberg remained in the United States.
Rabbi Mayer Goldberg passed away on September 25, 1992, a centenarian.[24] Shortly before his passing, Rabbi Goldberg had published in Jerusalem a collection of kabbalistic insights (culled from his marginalia in the books of his library), entitled Margaliyot shel Torah (Pearls of Torah). Much of the material in the book is attributed to the kabbalistic work Yalkut Reubeni.[25] My attention was riveted to an unattributed piece, which would appear to originate with Rabbi Mayer Goldberg himself:
In Exodus 2:12 we read that Moses slew the Egyptian (who was beating a Hebrew) and buried him in the sand. The Hebrew words are: “Vayyakh et ha-mitsri vayitmenehu ba-hol.”
Rabbi Goldberg observes that the word “ha-mitsri” (“the Egyptian”) has the same numerical value (gematria) as the word “Moshe” (“Moses”). In other words, Moses slew himself! The Rabbi then goes on to explain that what is truly conveyed by the verse, is that Moses slew the opinions of Egypt. Moses, growing up in the house of Pharaoh, had imbibed secular knowledge stripped of Godliness. So in other words, on a deeper level, what Moses was actually slaying was himself, or a part of himself that was thoroughly Egyptian in outlook. He then buried that secular learning devoid of Godliness “in the sand.” Here the Rabbi plays on the word “hol,”which may have another meaning beside “sand”: the secular. This is to say, Moses buried that tainted learning in the secular realm.[26]
Mayer Goldberg in youth:

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rabbi Mayer Goldberg in rabbinic attire:
©2013 by Bezalel Naor
[1] The writer wishes to express his gratitude to Eve Gordon-Ramek and Robert H. Warwick, children of the late Rabbi Mayer Goldberg, for their invaluable contribution to the preparation of this article.
[2] Prof. Shalom Rosenberg, former Professor of Jewish Philosophy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who was present at the time of Chouchani’s death in Uruguay, was so convinced of the identification that he named his son “Hillel” after his revered master. See Moshe Nahmani, “Mi Kan Hillel,” Mussaf Shabbat, Makor Rishon, 3 Ellul, 5771 [2.9.2011]; Yair Sheleg, “Goodbye, Mr. Chouchani,” Haaretz, Sept.
26, 2003; Solomon Malka, Monsieur Chouchani: L’énigme d’un maitre du XXème siècle (Paris, 1994). Recently, a website has been devoted exclusively  to Chouchani. At www.chouchani.com we are told that a film is being produced of the life of Mr. Shushani!
I have two anecdotes to contribute to the growing literature on Chouchani, the first heard from Prof. Andre Neher (1914-1988), the second from Rabbi Uziel Milevsky (former Chief Rabbi of Mexico).
·
My dear friend Andre (Asher Dov) Neher z”l had been a distinguished professor of Jewish studies at the University of Strasburg. I knew him in his last years after his retirement to Jerusalem. Neher told me that in his youth, his father had hired Chouchani to teach him Talmud. At their initial meeting it was decided that they would study Tractate Beitsah. Chouchani said to the young Neher: “In the next hour I can either teach you the first folio of the Tractate, or sum up for you the entire Tractate!”
Similarly, in the final phase of Chouchani’s career (in Montevideo, Uruguay), Rabbi Aaron Milevsky (1904-1986), Chief Rabbi of Uruguay, hired Chouchani to tutor his young son Uzi in Talmud. Chouchani rewarded Uzi’s diligence by allowing him to quiz him on any entry in the dictionary. Uzi asked Chouchani for the Latin name of some obscure butterfly, which Chouchani was able to supply without hesitation! (Heard from Rabbi Nachum Lansky of Baltimore, shelit”a, quoting Rabbi Uziel Milevsky z”l.)
At the onset of this article I wish to clarify one point. Should the identification of Hillel Pearlman with “Monsieur Chouchani” one day prove incorrect, that would in no way affect the positive identification of Rav Kook’s addressee “Meir” as Rabbi Mayer Goldberg of Oakland, California. The identification of the mysterious “Meir” as Rabbi Meir Goldberg is in no way contingent upon the identification of Hillel Pearlman as “Chouchani,” but rather stands on its own merits.
[3] Traditional blessing for the New Year uttered between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
[4] Cf. Genesis 49:28.
[5] While Rav Kook and his Rebbetzin (as well as their only son Tsevi Yehudah) were together in Europe, their daughters were left behind in Jaffa, and Rav Kook was most anxious as to their welfare. The family would not be reunited until after World War One, when Rav Kook returned from European exile to the Holy Land.
[6] Genesis 27:22.
[7] Allusion to the conclusion of the Yotser prayer recited in the morning service: “ba’al milhamot, zore’a tsedakot, matsmi’ah yeshu’ot” (“Master of wars, Planter of righteousness, Grower of salvations”). A year into World War One, Rav Kook already envisioned that the outcome of the War would be a shifting of the center of Jewish life from Eastern Europe elsewhere, as well as the further advancement of the building of the Holy Land.
[8] Genesis 12:3.
[9] Igrot ha-Rayah, Vol. III (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1965), Letter 740 (pp. 2-3).
[10] Mr. Jacob Rosenheim, organizer of the Knessiyah Gedolah, subsequently penned a letter of apology to Rav Kook, for by extending the invitation to him to attend the conference, Rosenheim had indirectly brought about Rav Kook’s misfortune.
[11] Moshe Nahmani posits that it existed for 6-7 years from 1909/10-1915.
[12] We do know that one subject on the curriculum, namely Kuzari by Rabbi Judah Halevi, aroused the ire of the Jerusalem zealot Rabbi Isaiah Orenstein. See my translation of Orot (Spring Valley, NY: Orot, 2004), p. 236, n. 169.
[13] Available on the website www.shoresh.org.il, dated 4/17/2012 or 25 Nissan, 5772.
According to Moshe Nahmani, the true reason that so little is known of this earlier yeshivah of Rav Kook is that Rav Kook himself suppressed publicity concerning its inner life, for fear that should word of the curriculum leak out, the yeshivah would come under attack from the ever vigilant rabbis of Jerusalem. (In fact, Rav Kook’s teaching of Kuzari to the students was sharply criticized by the zealous Rabbi Isaiah Orenstein of Jerusalem.) Nahmani believes that Rav Kook was dispensing the arcane wisdom of Kabbalah to the students—sufficient grounds for keeping publicity away from the yeshivah. (But the Kabbalah may not have been the standard Kabbalah as taught in Jerusalem. We know that one of the instructors in the yeshivah was Shem Tov Geffen (1856-1927), an autodidactic genius who fused the study of Kabbalah together with mathematics and physics.) Of course, this is speculation on Nahmani’s part. What is factual, is that Rav Kook taught in Jaffa the Kuzari of Rabbi Judah Halevi and Maimonides’ Eight Chapters (Maimonides’ introduction to his commentary to Tractate Avot or Ethics of the Fathers)—which in themselves represented a departure from the standard curriculum of the contemporary yeshivot.
[14] In one day, 26 Iyyar, 5675, Rav Kook sent two letters from St. Gallen to America (Igrot ha-Rayah, Vol. II [Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1961], Letters 733-734 [pp. 329-330]). The first letter is addressed to Rabbi Meir Berlin asking that he lend assistance to Rav Kook’s student, newly arrived immigrant Hillel Pearlman. The second letter is addressed to Hillel Pearlman himself, expressing pain that he too was exiled from the Holy Land, and offering encouragement, as well as the practical suggestion that he establish contact with Rabbi Meir Berlin, and with Rav Kook’s staunch friend Dr. Moshe Seidel, who might be in a position to help. In a postscript Rav Kook, noting that Hillel Perlman had spent some time in the house after Rav Kook’s own absence, asks for details concerning the welfare of the two Kook daughters left behind in Jaffa, Batyah Miriam and Esther Yael. Logic dictates that our Hillel is Hillel Pearlman of the earlier letters. What eventually became of Hillel Perlman and whether he in fact “morphed“ into “Monsieur Chouchani” remains something of a mystery. See Moshe Nahmani, “Mi Kan Hillel?”
[15] “She’areha Ne’ulim—Yeshivat Harav Kuk be-Yaffo,” Part II, note 51. So too in Nahmani’s earlier article “Mi Kan Hillel?”
[16] He told this writer that before arriving in Jaffa from his native Russia, he had studied under the “Gadol of Minsk.”
According to the memoir of Rabbi Goldberg’s daughter, Rachel Landes, “My Father, Mayer Goldberg” (October 15, 2009), her father grew up in Krementchug, Ukraine. She also writes that at one point in his career, her father studied in a Yeshivah Gedolah under Rabbi Zimmerman. Though Landes does not specify that the Yeshivah was located in Krementchug (to the contrary she writes that the Yeshivah was in Kiev), one ventures a guess that this Yeshivah of Rabbi Zimmerman was actually that of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Halevi Zimmerman, Rabbi of Krementchug. The latter was the father-in-law of Rabbi Baruch Baer Leibowitz (famed student of Rabbi Hayyim Halevi Soloveitchik, known as “Rabbi Hayyim of Brisk,” and himself Rosh Yeshivah of Knesset Beit Yitzhak, first located in Slabodka, and between the two World Wars in Kamenetz) and grandfather of Rabbi Dr. Aharon Chaim Halevi Zimmerman (1915-1995), Rosh Yeshivah of Beit ha-Midrash le-Torah (Hebrew Theological College) in Skokie, Illinois. (Rabbi Dr. Zimmerman’s father, Rabbi Ya’akov Moshe Halevi Zimmerman was the son of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Halevi Zimmerman of Krementchug.) But again, this is mere conjecture on my part.
[17] According to Rachel Landes’ memoir, her father was born in Krementchug. In his Application for a Certificate of Arrival and Preliminary Form for Petition for Naturalization (1940), Mayer writes that he was born in “[illegible] near Kiev.” Mayer adopted the surname “Goldberg” in the United States.
[18] The fact that Meir (or Mayer) resided in the Kook home would explain how he was able to supply Rav Kook with information concerning the Rav’s daughters. Nahmani noted that Rav Kook had earlier asked Hillel Perlman for details concerning the girls, the assumption being that Hillel Perlman had resided in the Rav’s home (though that is not explicitly stated in Rav Kook’s letter to Hillel Pearlman). See Moshe
Nahmani, “Mi Kan Hillel?”
[19] Rachel Landes, “My Father, Mayer Goldberg” (2009), p. 2.
[20] According to Mayer Warwick Goldberg’s Application for a Certificate of Arrival and Preliminary Form for Petition for Naturalization (1940), he booked passage on a Greek steamship from Alexandria, Egypt to New York under the assumed name “Othniel Kaplan” in Spring of 1915 or 1916. Writing twenty-five years after the fact, Mayer could no longer recall the precise date, whether the arrival in New York had taken place in Spring of 1915 or Spring of 1916. We are in a position now to aid his memory. We know from Rav Kook’s letters to Rabbi Meir Berlin and to Hillel Pearlman, both datelined “St. Gallen, 26 Iyyar 5675,” that as of Spring 1915, Hillel Perlman was in America. In order for Rav Kook’s letter of 6 Tishri, 5676 to be addressed jointly to Hillel and Meir, Meir too would have had to reside in America by Fall of 1915. That could only be so if Meir (or Mayer) arrived in New York in Spring of 1915—not 1916!
[21] The fact that Rav Kook does not address Meir by the title “Harav” in the salutation (as he does Hillel) indicates that Meir was not yet an ordained rabbi in the Fall of 1915.
[22] According to information supplied in his 1940 Application for…Naturalization, Mayer resided in New York City and Brooklyn from 1916 to 1917; in New Haven and Colchester, Connecticut from 1917 to 1919; in Seattle and Tacoma, Washington from 1919 to 1922; in San Francisco from 1922 to 1930; and in Oakland from 1930 to 1940.
[23] To quote from Rachel Landes’ memoir (p. 2): “…World War I broke out. The Turks, who were in control of Palestine, sided with Germany, and Russia was on the side of the Allies. My father, being from Russia, found himself classified as an enemy alien. The Turks began to round up all foreign nationals. It became clear that my father could not stay there.”
[24] At the 24th Annual Banquet of the Hebrew Academy of San Francisco, held on Sunday, December 6, 1992, a moving tribute was paid to the recently departed Rabbi Mayer Goldberg.
[25] Yalkut Reubeni (Wilmersdorf, 1681), by Reuben Hoshke HaKohen (Sofer) of Prague (died 1673), is a kabbalistic collection on the Pentateuch.
[26] Rabbi Mayer Goldberg, Margaliyot shell Torah (Jerusalem, 5750), p. 112. The Hebrew original reads:
ויך – 36 כמנין ל”ו כריתות [משנה, כריתות א, א], משה כרת את המצרי, כרת את החיצונים, ויטמינם בחולין. המצרי שהרג משה – הדעות של מצרים שמשה למד, חיצוניות בלי אלוהות –הרג וטמן בחולין, כי מש”ה בגימטריא המצר”י.

 



Kalir, False Accusations, and More

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Kalir, False Accusations, and More
by Marc B. Shapiro
1. I now want to return to Kalir and the criticism of me. To recap, I had earlier mentioned how Artscroll originally correctly identified Kalir as post-tannaitic, but later changed what it wrote in order to be in line with Tosafot’s opinion that he was a tanna. Some think that it is wrong to criticize Artscroll by using academic methodology instead of judging them by traditional sources, since they don’t recognize the academic approach.
My first response is that this is nonsense and a textbook example of obscurantism. If there is evidence of a certain fact, one can’t say that it is only a fact if it appears in some “traditional” source, and therefore one who ignores this evidence gets a pass.
Furthermore, when it comes to Kalir one can also date him using traditional sources.[1] One of these sources is quite fascinating. Whether there is any truth to the event described, I can’t say, but the fact that a traditional source dates him after the tannaitic era is what is important for us at present. This shows that Tosafot’s dating is not the only traditional source in this matter. The source I refer to is the medieval R. Ephraim of Bonn who states that the paytan Yannai, who is usually dated to the seventh century but could even be a few centuries earlier (but still post-tannaitic), was the teacher of Kalir.
R. Ephraim notes that Yannai was not the most kind of teachers and he was jealous of his student Kalir, showing that the Sages’ statement that people are jealous of all, except for a son and student (Sanhedrin 105b), can have exceptions. In order to deal with his problem, Yannai decided to terminate Kalir, with extreme prejudice of course. He therefore put a scorpion in Kalir’s sandal which took care of matters. R. Ephraim reports that because of this murder, in Lombardy (Italy) they refused to recite one of Yannai’s hymns.[2]
אוני פטרי רחמתים. ואמר העולם שהוא יסוד ר’ יניי רבו של רבי אלעזר בר קליר, אבל בכל ארץ לומברדיאה אין אומרים אותו, כי אומרים עליו שנתקנא בר’ אלעזר תלמידו והטיל לו עקרב במנעלו והרגו. יסלח ה’ לכל האומרין עליו אם לא כן היה.
R. Ephraim is the source for this report and as you can see from his final words, he took the report very seriously and literally, declaring that if it wasn’t true then those who spread this rumor were in need of repentance. Israel Davidson, however, claims that to take the report literally would be “absurd”, and the report of the scorpion is merely an “idiom, undoubtedly Oriental in origin, for expressing unfriendliness.”[3] The problem with this is, as we have seen, R. Ephraim and the community of Lombardy did take the report literally, so why should Davidson, living well over a thousand years after the supposed event, know more than people who lived in medieval times?[4] It is one thing to say that the murder never occurred, but that doesn’t mean that the story as told was not meant to be understood literally, and there is every reason to assume that it means what it says. If it happened, it would hardly be the first murder committed by a Jew. Thus, although the story is almost certainly a legend, our reason for making this determination is not because it is impossible to imagine one Jew doing such a thing to another.
Another important source is found in R. Hayyim Joseph David Azulai, Mahazik Berakhah, Orah Hayyim 112 (end). Azulai, as we all (should) know, had a keen bibliographical sense, and knew rabbinic history very well. After mentioning how Tosafot and the Rosh state that Kalir was really the tanna R. Eleazar ben Shimon,[5] the Hida quotes R. Isaac Luria as follows:
דהפייטן היה בו ניצוץ מנשמת ר’ אלעזר ברבי שמעון.
In other words, it is not that Kalir was actually a tanna, but that his soul was connected with R. Eleazar ben Shimon. I presume that this is an attempt to preserve the old tradition identifying the two, while at the same time recognizing that historically they were two different people. We find the same approach among many commentaries that deal with aggadic statements that make all sorts of identifications, of what can perhaps be called the rabbinic “conservation of people.” In other words, there is a tendency to identify biblical figures with other known biblical figures, such as Elijah with Pinhas and Harbonah, Hagar with Keturah, Pharaoh with the King of Nineveh, Yocheved and Miriam with Shifrah and Puah, Mordechai with Malachi[6] and Ezra, Tziporah with the Cushite woman,[7] Balaam with Laban, Daniel and Haman with Memukhan, to mention just a few.[8]
I don’t think people should be surprised that also among traditional commentators one can find the viewpoint that these identifications are not to be taken literally[9]—kabbalists are often inclined to see these texts as referring to reincarnation[10]—and some modern scholars have spoken of these identifications as examples of what they term “rabbinic fancy.” Some of these identifications are so far-fetched that I have no doubt that R. Azariah de Rossi and R. Zvi Hirsch Chajes are correct that the Sages who expounded them never intended them to be taken literally.[11]  Although I haven’t investigated the matter, I assume one would find the same tendency to non-literal interpretation when dealing with Aggadot that insert historical figures into other biblical episodes, e.g., Balaam and Jethro becoming Pharoah’s advisors, or when the Aggadah identifies spouses, e.g., Caleb marrying Miriam and Rahab marrying Joshua (and having daughters with him[12]).
2. In the previous post I quoted what the late R. David Zvi Hillman said in the name of R. Shlomo Yosef Zevin regarding Saul Lieberman. Some people were incredulous, and this raises the question of how reliable Hillman was and if he would distort things for ideological purposes.[13] I have spoken about him before, and I reproduced his defense of the Frankel edition of the Mishneh Torah not citing R. Kook.[14] Despite his strong ideological leanings, as of yet I haven’t found any evidence that he would purposely distort. My sense is that he was quite honest in his scholarship (and the issue with R. Zevin and Lieberman might have been something he misunderstood or perhaps R. Zevin wasn’t clear in what he said. It simply is impossible now to reconstruct events.)
Even though I believe that Hillman was honest in his scholarship (i.e., not intentionally distorting as is so often the case with haredi writers), we do find that his ideology led him to unfounded conclusions. These are not intentional distortions because he really believed what he was saying, but they are distortions nonetheless. Here is one example.
In 1999 a memorial volume appeared called Ohel Sarah Leah. Beginning on p. 246 is an article by Hillman dealing with R. Joseph Saul Nathanson’s view of the International Date Line. In this article, he deals with a letter by R. Zvi Pesah Frank published by R. Menachem M. Kasher. He believes that Kasher added material to the letter so as to align it with his own viewpoint. The fact that Kasher published the letter in 1954, almost seven years before R. Zvi Pesah Frank’s death, does not deter Hillman from his argument. Other than Hillman, I think everyone realizes that if you are going to forge something in another’s name, you don’t do it when they are still alive![15] We can thus completely discount Hillman’s argument and see it as an ideologically based distortion.
Despite this defense of Kasher, it must also be pointed out that there are serious questions about the reliability of some things he published. In Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy I mentioned R. Eliezer Berkovits’ claim that the Weinberg letter Kasher published was not authentic. Berkovits clearly thought that Kasher forged it, but when I pressed him to say so openly, he wouldn’t. All Berkovits would say is that Weinberg never wrote such a letter, and it was fraudulent. When I asked, “So R. Kasher forged it?” he replied that he wasn’t going to speculate about this, and would only say that the letter did not exist. Being that Kasher claimed that Weinberg wrote the letter to him, this means that Berkovits was accusing him of forgery, but for whatever reason did not want to say so openly.
I have a 1982 letter from Berkovits to another rabbi, and in this letter he is not as circumspect as he was with me. Here he pretty much states that Kasher forged the letter “le-shem shamayim.”
בענין מו”ר הגאון זצ”ל אני בטוח שהוא מעולם לא כתב אותם הדברים שהרב כשר מוסר בשמו בנועם. אדרבה יראה לנו את מכתבו של מו”ר זצ”ל. לפני כשנה כתבתי לו בדואר רשום ובקשתי בעד צילום או העתק של מכתבו של הרב וויינברג זצ”ל. עד היום לא קבלתי תשובה ממנו. מבטחני שהדברים שנאמרו ושנכתבו בשמו אינם אמיתייים. בעונותינו הרבים הגענו למצב שגם אנשים ירא שמים וכו’ מורים היתר לעצמם בכל מיני ענינים כשהם חושבים שכל כוונתם לשם שמים היא. והוא רחום יכפר וכו’.
In the recently published Genazim u-She’elot u-Teshuvot Hazon Ish, pp. 263ff. the unnamed editor also levels serious accusations against Kasher, in a chapter entitled הזיוף החמור והנורא. He puts forth a series of claims designed to show that another letter Kasher published on the International Date Line, this time a posthumous letter from R. Isser Zalman Meltzer, is also forged. I have to say that in this example, unlike the one dealt with by Hillman, there is at least circumstantial evidence, but no smoking gun. The most powerful proof comes from Kasher himself in which he tells of a meeting with the Hazon Ish and how at that meeting he told the Hazon Ish about the letter he received from R. Isser Zalman in opposition to the Hazon Ish’s position. Yet the letter Kasher publishes from R. Isser Zalman is dated from after the Hazon Ish’s death. There is clearly a problem here, but more likely than assuming forgery is that Kasher was simply mistaken in his description of his visit with the Hazon Ish. Let’s not forget that this element of the account of his visit was published thirty-three years after the event, and it is possible that Kasher didn’t recall everything that was said. The followers of the Hazon Ish have indeed always claimed that his description of his visit, in Ha-Kav ha-Ta’arikh ha-Yisraeli (Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 13-14, is not to be relied upon. Since his own recollection of his visit is the strongest evidence in favor of Kasher forging R. Isser Zalman’s letter, it is not very convincing.
In the previous paragraph I wrote that “this element” of Kasher’s account was published thirty-three years after his visit, so let me explain by what I mean by that. In Ha-Pardes, Shevat 5714, p. 30, soon after the Hazon Ish’s death, he originally published his account. Only when he later published his Kav ha-Ta’arikh ha-Yisraeli did he mention that he told the Hazon Ish that he received letters from R. Zvi Pesah and R. Isser Zalman, and this point is mentioned after his description of his visit. In his original description he mentions nothing about receiving letters, only that R. Zvi Pesah told him his opinion and R. Isser Zalman agreed with this. I think what likely happened is that in the passing decades Kasher forgot that the letters he received only arrived after the Hazon Ish’s death. As mentioned, if you look at what he wrote right after the death of the Hazon Ish, he doesn’t mention any letters, and he even states explicitly that he didn’t have anything in print from R. Zvi Pesah. I think this shows that while Kasher’s recollection was not exact, there is no evidence that he forged the letter.
I do, however, have to mention that in the 1977 version of the visit Kasher adds something that is not in the original recollection and must therefore be called into question. In the original recollection he reports that the Hazon Ish began reading Kasher’s work on the dateline and then said that he is tired and asked if he could hold on to the work to read later. In the 1977 version Kasher then adds the following, which shows the Hazon Ish as not very committed to his own position, a point which is at odds with everything else we know about the Hazon Ish and the dateline:
והוסיף בזה הלשון: נו, יעדער מעג (קען) זיך האלטען ווי ער פערשטעהט. [כל אחד רשאי (יכול) להחזיק כפי הבנתו].
Kasher was also involved in another problematic episode related to his book Ha-Tekufah ha-Gedolah, which is dedicated to showing the messianic significance of the State of Israel. In the book, pp. 374ff., he includes a proclamation urging participation in the Israeli elections. This proclamation is signed my many rabbinic greats and states that the State of Israel is the beginning of the redemption. This is a very significant document and is often referred to, because among the signatories are some who were never identified with Religious Zionism.
But is the document authentic? Zvi Weinman has shown (and provided the visual evidence) that a number of the rabbis signed a document that did not mention anything about athalta di-geula but instead referred to kibutz galuyot.[16] In Kasher’s book, their names are listed together with those who signed the document referring to athalta di-geula, even though they never agreed with this formulation. This would appear to be a Religious Zionist forgery (unless it is simply a careless error), although it is impossible to know whether Kasher was responsible for this or if he was misled by someone else.
If it can ever be proven that Kasher was indeed responsible for a forgery, there is still a possible limud zekhut for this type of behavior (and I mentioned it in a prior post): If you are convinced of the correctness of your position, it is not hard to construct an argument, based on traditional Jewish sources, that false attribution and even forgery is permissible. In the book I am currently working on I bring all sorts of examples of this which I think will be very distressing for readers, as it is in complete opposition to what most of us regard as basic intellectual honesty.
Returning to the recently published Genazim u-She’elot u-Teshuvot Hazon Ish, the editor also makes an outrageous accusation and I am surprised that no one has yet publicly protested. The canard is leveled at Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog, whose saintliness was universally acknowledged even by those who opposed his Zionist outlook. It was R. Herzog who in early 1940 flew to London and was able to convince the English government to grant a number of visas for Torah scholars. He was thus directly responsible for saving the lives of, among many others, R. Velvel Soloveitchik and R. Shakh.[17] This fact alone should have been enough to prevent any scurillous accusations directed against R. Herzog.
On pp. 226ff. there appears a 1941 letter, dated 24 Elul, from R. Shlomo Yosef Zevin to the Hazon Ish asking him about the problem of Shabbat in Japan for those who had escaped the Nazi clutches. R. Zevin wrote to the Hazon Ish at the request of R. Herzog, who said that only two people in the Land of Israel were expert in this matter, R. Tukatchinzky and the Hazon Ish.
There is a good deal that can be said about R. Zevin’s letter and the Hazon Ish’s response, but that is not my concern at present. Yet I must at least mention that the editor provides another letter from the Hazon Ish in which he expresses his displeasure that R. Zevin’s Torah writings had appeared in the newspaper Ha-Tzofeh. According to the Hazon Ish, these should have been published as a special booklet, as it is inappropriate to publish Torah articles in a newspaper that in the end is used to wrap food in. He also mentions that Ha-Tzofeh itself is not suitable, referring obviously to its Religious Zionist outlook. (R. Zevin would, over his lifetime, write hundreds of articles for Ha-Tzofeh, many of which have not yet been collected in book form.)
Also noteworthy is that in his reply to R. Zevin the Hazon Ish raises the possibility that the viewpoint of the rishonim would have to be rejected if it turns out that they were mistaken in their understanding of the metziut.

העומד עדיין על הפרק הוא אם טעם הראשונים ז”ל הוסד על המחשבה שאין ישוב בתחתית הכדור, ואז נקח עמידה נועזה לנטות מהוראת רבותינו ז”ל ולעשות למעשה היפוך דבריהם הקדושים לנו ולכל ישראל, או שאין לדבריהם שום זיקה לשאלת ישוב התחתון.
(In a later letter, quoted on p. 231, we see a different perspective.) In R. Zevin’s letter he mentions why the issue of Shabbat in Japan was so pressing. R. Herzog had recently received a telegram from Kobe, Japan, asking on what day the Jewish refugees should fast.[18] Here is a copy of the telegram, as it appears in David A. Mandelbaum’s Giborei ha-Hayil, vol. 1.





















































Genazim u-She’elot u-Teshuvot Hazon Ish, p. 227, makes the astounding assertion that this telegram was a scheme cooked up by the Chief Rabbinate (i.e., R. Herzog).This would enable R. Herzog to call a gathering a great Torah scholars at which time he could push them to accept his opinion in opposition to the viewpoint of the “gedolei Yisrael.” It is hard to imagine a more outrageous accusation directed against a man of unquestioned piety such as R. Herzog.

Quite apart from the slander I have just pointed to, the volume also contains a good deal of ideologically based distortion, which is why it is noteworthy that it not only includes the letter from the Hazon Ish to Saul Lieberman (p. 330) that I published in Saul Lieberman and the Orthodox,,[19] but even identifies him in the following respectful way:
המכתב נשלח לבן דודו פרופ’ ר’ שאול ליברמן ז”ל מחה”ס תוספתא כפשוטה, ירושלמי כפשוטו וש”ס.
Considering how Lieberman is persona non grata in the haredi world, I find this identification, as well as mention of his books, nothing sort of remarkable.[20]
In fact, the story gets even more interesting. A couple of months ago volume two of Genazim u-She’elot u-Teshuvot Hazon Ish appeared. Before I was able to get a copy, people emailed me to let me know that this volume contained a lengthy letter from Lieberman to the Hazon Ish. (I thank Ariel Fuss for sending me a copy of the letter.) It appears on pages 207-209 and is really fascinating. Leaving aside the talmudic analysis, the end of the letter shows the different outlooks of these cousins. We see that the Hazon Ish had criticized Lieberman for referring to Prof. Jacob Nahum Epstein as mori ve-rabbi. Lieberman didn’t understand why the Hazon Ish found this objectionable, since Epstein was a pious Jew and Lieberman learnt many things from him, “true Torah and not the path of the maskilim but that of our teachers of blessed memory, who search for the truth in the words of Hazal, in all possible ways, and many obscure places in the Jerusalem Talmud were explained to me precisely through this approach.”[21]
Lieberman then turns to another criticism of him by the Hazon Ish, that he was not devoting himself adequately to his Torah study. It is hard to know what to make of this critique, as who was more devoted to his studies than Lieberman. Lieberman defends himself from this accusation, noting:
אני לפעמים נופל על הספסל מחוסר אונים מרוב התאמצות ויושב אני לפעמים כמה ימים על סוגיא אחת עם ראש חבוש.
Here is Lieberman’s grave, in the Sanhedria cemetery. Note who he is buried next to. (As I mentioned in Saul Lieberman and the Orthodox, according to Chaim Herzog, Lieberman was R. Herzog’s closest friend. It is therefore fitting that he be buried next to R. Jacob David.)
3. Regarding the last post, a number of people emailed me pointing out other “immodest” title pages and also learned women that I didn’t mention. I thank all who emailed. Many of the other title pages I knew about and might refer to at a future time, but the post was specifically concerned with censorship of title pages, and this explains the ones I cited. One of the commenters did refer to a title page that I did not know, from a 1731 Hamburg manuscript. See here (the rest of the Haggadah has other interesting pictures). If you ever needed an example of how what we today regard as unacceptable is not necessarily how people hundreds of years ago viewed matters, this is it.[22]
Regarding learned women, a great deal has obviously been written about this and I don’t see it as my purpose to simply repeat what others have written elsewhere. I hope that in the prior post (and indeed in all my posts), people find new material and learn things that they wouldn’t know from elsewhere, even those who are experts in the various topics.
Since the matter has been raised again, le me mention something that I originally was going to write about. At the last minute I took it out, as I was convinced (by both a scholar who will remain anonymous and Prof. Shamma Friedman) that I was in error.
Tosefta Ketubot 4:7 (and the parallel passage in J. Ketubot 5:2) reads:
נושא אדם אשה . . . על מנת שתהא זנתו ומפרנסתו ומלמדתו תורה.
It then follows by telling us that R. Joshua son of R. Akiva arranged exactly this sort of marriage. I think that if you show this passage to people, and cover up the commentaries, they will translate it to mean that a man can marry a woman on the condition that she will take care of his physical sustenance “and will teach him Torah.” (This is how Neusner translates in his Tosefta and Yerushalmi translation, and is also found in some academic articles.) Yet all of the traditional commentaries understand this text to mean that the woman provides the financial support her husband needs in order that he is able to study Torah on his own. For a while I assumed that this was an apologetic understanding by the commentators, and we know that the Talmud does offer a few examples of learned women. Yet as mentioned, I was convinced of my error.[23] In email correspondence, Friedman also called attention to other unusual Hebrew formulations which don’t mean what they literally say. For example, Yevamot 13:12 states: בא על יבמה גדולה תגדלנו. Yet this does not mean that she has to raise the boy, but only that she has to wait until he is of age to give her a divorce. He also pointed to Nazir 2:6 (and see also 2:5) which uses the language of הרי עלי לגלח חצי נזיר and this has nothing to do with shaving the Nazir.
One final point I would like to make about learned women is that before drawing any conclusions about their knowledge, we must be sure that we are not dealing with ghost writers. For example, Dov Katz, Tenuat ha-Mussar (Jerusalem, 1982), vol. 1, p. 242 n. 30, refers to the wife of R. Aryeh Leib Horowitz (the son of R. Israel Salanter) as a “learned woman” based on the introduction she wrote to her deceased husband’s Hayyei Aryeh (Vilna, 1907). Here is the text.

I can’t prove it, but I am very confident that someone wrote this on behalf of the wife, who was a traditional rebbetzin, not a maskilah.

4. In preparation for the trip I am leading to Italy in July (we still have room for some more people, and also for the August trip to Central Europe), I thought it would be helpful to read the letters of R. Ovadiah Bartenura. Right at the beginning of the first letter[24] I found something very interesting. I immediately suspected that this passage would be omitted from a translation directed towards the Orthodox masses. I checked, and lo and behold, the passage is indeed deleted. Here is the text:

Note how R. Ovadiah testifies that while the Jews in Palermo were careful about not drinking non-Jewish wine, which was noteworthy since elsewhere in Italy Jews routinely consumed this, their sexual morality and observance of the Niddah laws left something to be desired. He claims that most young women there were already pregnant at their wedding.
Here is how the page appears in the translation by Yaakov Dovid Shulman:
This text was censored even though the preface to the book states: “In publishing these letters in their entirety, including the critical comments made by Rabbi Ovadiah Bartenura of those people and practices of which he disapproved, the assumption is made that these criticisms were written to instruct the reader and not to denigrate any individuals.” As you can see, the letter has not been published in its entirety, and if one were to go through the text carefully, perhaps some other deleted passages would be discovered.[25]
5. I have done six posts on R. Kook and from email I receive I know that some people want me to return to this. I plan to, but I still have a few more posts to do before I get to that. In the meantime, however, I want to inform readers that a new volume of R. Kook’s writings has just appeared. It is called Ginzei ha-Rav Kook and I thank R. Moshe Zuriel for drawing my attention to it. My sense is that this volume does not have much importance, as much of it, and maybe even the majority, has already appeared in other collections, particularly the Shemonah Kevatzim. I was able to determine this using the R. Kook database, which except for the most recently published material includes all of R. Kook’s writings.
I did find one passage (p. 87, no. 85) which I am pretty sure has not yet appeared, even in the most recent writings. It relates back to a point I already called attention to in R. Kook, namely, his privileging of the pious masses over the Torah scholars in certain ways. One rabbinic text that would appear to oppose R. Kook’s conception is the famous Avot 2:5: ולא עם הארץ חסיד. See how R. Kook neutralizes this text, pointing out that there are a lot of things more important than being a hasid. Here is R. Kook, a member of the rabbinic elite, nevertheless insisting that the am ha-aretz can have just as much holiness as the Torah scholar, be visited by Elijah, and even have ruah ha-kodesh:
“ולא עם הארץ חסיד”. אבל מה שהוא למעלה מהחסידות, כמו קדושה וענוה ותחית-המתים וגילוי אליהו ורוח-הקודש, מפני גודל קדושתם הם שוים לכל נפש. כי כל לבבות דורש ד’, ואחד המרבה ואחד הממעיט ובלבד שיכוון לבו לשמים, ומעיד אני עלי שמים וארץ, אמר אליהו, בין איש בין אישה, בין עבד בין שפחה, בין נכרי בין ישראל, הכל לפי מעשיו רוח הקודש שורה עליו. וכיון שלא יצאו שפחה ונכרי מכלל רוח-הקודש, קל-וחומר שלא יצא עם-הארץ שהוא מזרע קודש, מעם ה’ וצבאותיו אשר הוציא ממצרים להיות לו לעם נחלה כיום הזה, סגולה מכל העמים.
(The reference to Elijah is from Tanna de-Vei Eliyahu, ch. 9.)
P. 112, no. 104, returns to a theme I have also dealt with, that study of halakhic details can be problematic for a mystical personality such as R. Kook.[26] Yet he adds that this is still the job of the righteous ones, and we can see here an autobiographical reflection.
אף על פי שלימודם של המצוות המעשיות בדקדוק קיומם מכביד לפעמים הרבה על הצדיקים הגדולים השרויים תמיד באור המחשבה העליונה, מכל מקום מתוך כח היראה העליונה שבלבבם, מתגברים הם גם על שפע קדושתם, ועוסקים בתורה ובמצוות במעשה ובדקדוק, אף על פי שהם צריכים למעט על ידי זה את אורם העליון.
Can we also see an autobiographical reflection on p. 114, no. 106, where R. Kook speaks about the righteous who want the world to recognize their greatness and holiness?
לפעמים מתגלה בצדיקים גדולים תשוקה גדולה, שיכירו הכל את מעלתם ושיאמינו בקדושתם. ואין תשוקה זו באה כלל משום גסות הרוח או אהבת כבוד המדומה, כי אם מפני החשק הפנימי של התפשטות האור הטוב שבהם על חוג היותר רחב האפשרי. וזהו מעין התשוקה של הופעת החכמה על ידי המצאות טובות וספרים טובים שכשהיא אידיאלית היא עומדת בנקודה היותר עליונה שבאור הנשמה הא-להית.
He then returns to the difficulty the Tzaddik has with halakhic particulars (p. 115):
ישנם צדיקים גדולים כאלה, שהם למעלה מכל שרש הדינים, ועל כן אינם יכולים ללמוד שום דבר הלכה. וכשהם מתגברים על טבעם ועוסקים בעומקא של הלכה, מתעלים למעלה גדולה לאין חקר, והם ממתקים את הדינים בשרשם.
[1] R. Yaakov Yisrael Stoll, in his recently published Segulah (Jerusalem, 2012), pp. 50ff., takes it as a given that Kalir is post-tannaitic.
[2] Israel Davidson, Mahzor Yannai (New York, 1919), p. xlix                     
[3] Ibid, p. xxv.
[4] Unless R. Ephraim was misinformed about Lombardy, this practice must have changed at some time because we know that in Lombardy the piyut was recited on Shabbat ha-Gadol. See R. Moshe Rosenwasser, Le-Hodot u-le-Halel  (Jerusalem, 2001), p. 379. As Rosenwasser points out, R. Ephraim is also the source for the story of R. Amnon of Mainz writing U-Netaneh Tokef.
[5] This is impossible as in one of his hymns he tells us that is father’s name is Jacob. See R. Simon Federbush, Ha-Lashon ha-Ivrit be-Yisrael u-ve-ha-Amim (Jerusalem, 1967), pp. 70-71.
[6] This identification explains how in Italy Jews with the Hebrew name Mordechai were sometimes given the vernacular name Angelo (= מלאכי). See Cecil Roth, Venice (Philadelphia, 1930), p. 168.
[7] This identification is rejected by Rashbam. See his commentary to Num. 12:1. Regarding Rashbam’s comment, see the lengthy discussion of Lockshin in his translation. While Rashbam rejects the notion that the Cushite is Tzipporah, he apparently has no problem repeating the legend  that “Moses reigned in the land of Cush for forty years and married a certain queen [from there].” He knew this legend from the work Divrei ha-Yamim de-Moshe Rabbenu, although as Lockshin mentions, it is also found in more “kosher” sources, such as Yalkut Shimoni. Ibn Ezra also cites the legend of Moses ruling in Cush in his commentary to Num. 12:1, despite the fact that in his commentary to Ex. 2:22 he writes:
Do not believe what is written in the book called the History of Moses. I will give you a general rule. We should not rely on any book not written by prophets or by the sages who transcribed traditions passed on to them. We definitely should not rely on these books when they contradict reason. The same applies to the Book of Zerubavel, the Book of Eldad ha-Dani, and similar compositions.
In a previous post I discussed Rashi’s understanding of the word Cushite, and how it is not to be taken literally. Ibn Ezra does take it literally (and still thinks that it refers to Tziporah). As with Rashi, he assumes that Cushites are not very attractive and explains that Miriam and Aaron, who spoke negatively about Moses, “suspected that Moses refrained from sleeping with Tzipporah only because she was not beautiful.” (Commentary to Num. 12:1).
Regarding the Cushite woman, I found something strange in R. Joseph Solomon of Posen’s Yesod Yosef (Munkacs, 1907), p. 8b. This is how he explains Aaron’s and Miriam’s talk against Moses on account of the Cushite he married (Num. 12:1):
מרים ואהרן רצו לתלות בוקי סריקי במשה ולהטיל מום בקדשי’ לפי דברי התרגום שני שפירש אשה כושית מלכה כוש שטימא את ברית קודש ובעל בת אל נכר וכל ביאה שאינה בהיתר נקרא הוצאת זרע לבטלה
R. Joseph Solomon goes on to explain why Aaron and Miriam were mistaken in their judgment.
[8] See R. Joseph Zekhariah Stern, Zekher Yehosef, Orah Hayyim no. 121 (p. 34a). R. Shmuel Avraham Adler, Aspaklaryah, vol. 27, s.v. shem, pp. 119ff
[9] R. Menahem Azariah of Fano acknowledges that when it comes to Elijah-Pinhas, most scholars understood this literally. Yet he rejected this position, perhaps because it would require Pinhas to have lived at least 350 years.) See Asarah Ma’amarot, Hikur Din section 4 ch. 18:
ואף על פי שיש מרבותינו אומרים בפשיטות פינחס הוא אליהו אין הדבר כמחשבת המון החכמים שפינחס לא מת ושקיים בעצמו שנוי השם.
[10] Opponents of gilgul had argued that if this was an authentic Jewish doctrine, certainly the Talmud would have mentioned it. R. Elijah Benamozegh argues that these texts, identifying various people as one and the same, are the proof that the talmudic sages indeed accepted reincarnation. He assumes that for many of these passages, where the different eras of the individuals mentioned is an obvious problem, no one with any intelligence can believe that the Talmud meant these passages to be understood literally. The meaning must therefore be reincarnation. See Eimat Mafgia, vol. 2, p. 2b:
איככה יוכל האיש לא טח עיניו מראות להניח כי לבן הארמי אשר חי בימי יעקב אבינו הוא עצמו בלעם הרשע, אשר היה בימי בני בניו האחרונים . . . וחירם שהיה בימי שלמה הוא אשר היה בימי יחזקאל . . . כיצד נוכל לייחס הבנתם הפשטית לחכמינו הקדושים אשר גם לפי דעות המנגדים לא יתכן לתלות בהם חסרון ושגעון כ”כ עצום כאשר כל אחד יראה בדמיונות האלה.
There are two books entitled Eimat Mafgia, one by Benamozegh and the other by R. Moses ben Ephraim of Brody (Warsaw, 1888). Both of them are directed against R. Leon Modena’s Ari Nohem. The title comes from Shabbat 87b: אימת מפגיע על ארי
[11] Meor Einayim, ch. 18; Mevo ha-Talmud, ch. 21, in Kol Sifrei Maharatz Chajes, vol. 1. In other words, the peshat is not literal. According to traditional commentaries, we find plenty of examples of this in the Bible also. Thus, when the Torah speaks of God’s outstretched arm, Maimonides insists that the peshat is that these words are not to be understood literally. Many have argued that even according to the peshat “an eye for an eye” is not to be understood literally. I think that most people today who read the book of Job will conclude, as did Maimonides, that the peshat is that it is not a historical tale.
[12] See Megillah 14b, Tosafot, Megillah 3b s.v. melamed, Maharsha, Hidushei Aggadot, Eruvin 63b (why does he quote Tosafot and not the Talmud in Megillah14b?), R. Samuel Strashun’s note to Eruvin 63a.
[13] Some people might have been led to thinking this because his letter was published in Yeshurun, which has in the past published articles that have engaged in censorship and ideological distortion. In the most recent volume, Nisan 5772, which also contains the Hillman letter, we find another instance of the disrespect for Torah scholars that is routine, and almost required, in haredi literature, and which in previous posts I have provided numerous examples of. (I refer obviously to Torah scholars not in the haredi camp.) On pp. 456-467,  there are letters from five deceased rabbis to R. Avraham Zeleznik. Four of them have the acronym זצ”ל put after their name. The only one who doesn’t merit זצ”ל, and instead is given ז”ל , is the Zionist R. Avraham Shapira (who incidentally was by far the most distinguished Torah scholar of the five.) R. Shapira also wasn’t provided with a short biography, presumably because then his position as Rosh Yeshiva of Merkaz ha-Rav and Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel would have to be mentioned.
[14] See here. With regard to Hillman, in this post I misstated his genealogy. Prof. Shlomo Zalman Havlin wrote to me as follows:
יש לתקן: הגרד”צ אינו נכד של הגרמ”מ חן הי”ד כפי שכתב [ע”פ האיזכור מבטאון חב”ד שהשתבש.] הוא בנו של ד”ר אשר הילמן בעל משרד רו”ח בת”א, נינו של הגרד”צ, רבה הידוע של צ’רניגוב, אביו של הרמ”מ. אגב, גם המשוררת זלדה [מישקובסקי] היתה נכדת הגרד”צ מצ’רניגוב, ואף אחיינית האדמו”ר האחרון מליובאוויטש.מאחיו של הגרמ”מ היה הרב אברהם חן, שהיה סופר מעולה, מחבר ‘במלכות היהדות’, קונטרס יפה ומרגש על אביו  
הגאון. היה רבה של שכונת בית הכרם [כמדומה שהיתה זו שכונה שלא נזקקה לרב]. מעניין לעניין, כדאי להוסיף, כי לגרמ”מ דובר בשעתו שידוך עם בתו של ר’ חיים מבריסק. לצ’רניגוב בא שליח להכיר את החתן המיועד, ולפי התיאורים ששמעתי ,הוא היה כנראה הגאון ר’ זלמן סענדר, אביו של הגאון ר’ אברהם בעל דבר אברהם, ורבה של קובנה [הוזכר ג”כ במאמר זה]. וכמה נשים ממשפחת הגרד”צ נסעו לבריסק להכיר את הכלה ומשפחתה. בגלל שיבושי הדואר הרוסי, חשבו בצ’רניגוב שאין תשובה, בעוד התשובה החיובית נדדה לעיר אחרת, והשידוך כידוע לא יצא אל הפועל. אגב, שמעתי, כי הנשים ממשפחת הגרד”צ כששבו אמרו, שלאור המסופר על גדולת ר’ ‘חיים וכו’, הרי כאשר שמעוהו בתפילת ערבית, אמרו, אצל אבא רואים יותר אפילו ב”אשר יצר
[15] See the response to Hillman by R. Ephraim Greenbaum (Kasher’s grandson), in Ohel Leah Sarah, pp. 942-943.
[16] Mi-Katovitz ad Heh be-Iyar (Jerusalem, 1995),  pp. 130ff.
[17] See A. Bernstein et al., Yeshivat Mir: Ha-Zerihah be-Fa’atei Kedem (Bnei Brak, 1999), vol. 1, pp. 218-219.
[18] One of my high school teachers was with the Mir yeshiva during the War. He told us how on Yom Kippur some people actually fasted for two days, eating pahot mi-ke-shiur after the first day so that they would be able to fulfill both the opinion of R. Herzog and the rabbis aligned with him as well the Hazon Ish’s view.
Fasting two days on Yom Kippur is actually not new. Ibn Ezra records how certain people did it in medieval times. He minces no words about what he thinks of them. See Sefer ha-Ibur, ed. Halbertam, pp. 4a-b:
ואם טען טוען הלא אתם אומרים כי שני ימים טובים צוו לעשות קדמונינו בעבור הספק למה לא קבעתם צום כפור שני ימים גם יש טפשי עולם מחברינו שיתענו שני ימים ואני אראה להם שלא יועיל להם תעניתם כי הוא שוא ושקר.
[19] This letter was previously printed in Sefer Zikaron Tuv Moshe (Bnei Brak, 2008), p. 253, and here too Lieberman is referred to respectfully. This book does not inform the reader where it found this letter, although Genazim u-She’elot u-Teshuvot Hazon Ish informs us that its source is Sefer Zikaron Tuv Moshe. I know that a number of copies of Saul Lieberman and the Orthodox made their way around Bnei Brak, and one of them apparently found its way to the editor of Sefer Zikaron Tuv Moshe.
[20] With reference to the Hazon Ish’s family, in Saul Lieberman and the Orthodox I noted how the Steipler stated that one should not study Lieberman’s books since he left the Orthodox world. Last year a new edition of the Tosefta was published and included some questions to R. Chaim Kanievsky. In the original question the authors spoke negatively about Lieberman. When they gave the page with their question and R. Hayyim Kanievsky’s reply to the typist (who might even have been a woman) they added the word להשמיט with reference to the comment about Lieberman. Perhaps this was because they didn’t want people to know about the family connection between the Hazon Ish and Lieberman. However, the typesetter didn’t understand their intention and included the word להשמיט, thinking that this word was to be added to the text. Here is the page (click to enlarge, or see detail directly below it).

Portions of the letter of the Hazon Ish to Lieberman, referred to on this page, are also found in Kovetz Iggerot Hazon Ish, vol. 3, no. 2.

I just mentioned women typists, which is common in the haredi world (Kitvei R. Weinberg vol. 1, which was printed by a Satmar company, was typed by a woman.) Let me now turn to what I think is an example of a woman translator, and I thank Elchonon Burton for bringing this text to my attention. Here are two pages from R. Shakh’s Lule Toratekha.

In it he mentions how the Hafetz Hayyim famously referred to Adam ha-Kohen as yemah shemo. Adam ha-Kohen was the pen name of Abraham Dov Baer Lebensohn, and for more on how the Hafetz Hayyim viewed him, see S.’s post here. Note how R. Shakh adds שר”י  to Adam ha-Kohen’s name. This stands for שם רשעים ירקב (“the name of the wicked shall rot” – Prov. 10:7) and is only applied to the most wicked.

Here is how this passage appears in Artscroll’s English translation, Rav Shach on Chumash.

The translator did not understand what שר”י means and assumed that it was part of his name, creating a previously unknown maskil, Adam HaKohen Sherry. Based on this error, I assume that the initial translation was done by a woman who knew modern Hebrew but not “rabbinic code.” The final translator, who is a talmid hakham, probably just revised the initial translation. Now knowing anything about the Haskalah, when he saw the name Sherry it didn’t raise a red flag leading him to check the original. S. pointed out to me that in the Wikipedia entry for Yimach Shemo, Adam HaKohen Sherry also makes an appearance.

[21] While on the topic of Lieberman, let me note that he has an unknown article in Otzar ha-Hokhmah 10 (1934), pp. 83-84, signed ש. ל.. In this short article he criticizes some of what R. Leopold Greenwald wrote about the Jerusalem Talmud. I refer to this article as “unknown” because I have never seen anyone refer to it, and it is not found in Tuvia Preschel’s bibliography of his writings included in Sefer ha-Zikaron le-Rabbi Shaul Lieberman, ed. Shamma Friedman (New York and Jerusalem, 1993).
 [22] After writing these words I saw that the title page of this haggadah was included in Leon Wieseltier’s article in the most recent Jewish Review of Books (Spring 2012), which is presumably where the commenter saw it. See here. See also this post regarding a different Haggadah, and see also Dan’s post here.
Here are some other pictures that I think people will find interesting. They appear in R. Leon Modena’s Tzemah Tzadik (Venice, 1660). This is not found on hebrewbooks.org but is on Otzar ha-Hokhmah (at least for now). This particular copy was originally part of Elkan Nathan Adler’s collection. (Adler used for his middle name the name of his father, R. Nathan Adler, chief rabbi of England. This was not unusual. To give another example, R. Samson Raphael Hirsch’s father’s name was Raphael.) Here is Adler’s book plate. His Hebrew name was Elhanan.
From Tzemah Tzadik, here is an illustration showing love of people.
Here is one showing love of man and wife.

Here is an “immodest” picture showing mermaids, which Modena, like so many others of his time, believed in.

Modena’s name does not appear on the title page of Tzemah Tzedek, but he reveals his authorship at the beginning of ch. 1, where first letters of the first sixteen words read: יהודה אריה ממודינא

Here is the page.

[23] He had already corrected Tal Ilan in this regard. See “A Good Story Deserves Retelling – The Unfolding of the Akiva Legend,” Jewish Studies Internet Journal 3 (2004), p. 85 n. 96.
[24] Darkhei Tziyon (Kolomea, 1886), pp. 5a-b
[25] As part of my preparations for the trip I have also been reading Elliot Horowitz’ many important articles on Italy. Not long after finding the censored text I saw that Horowitz had already discussed this passage and showed that there is indeed a history of omitting and distorting it. See “Towards a Social History of Jewish Popular Religion: Obadiah of Bertinoro on the Jews of Palermo,” Journal of Religious History 17 (1992), pp. 140ff. While the examples Horowitz discussed are motivated by a Victorian style of writing, the example I give is probably motivated by a desire to shield the masses from the knowledge that even in pre-Reform Europe violation of halakhah was in many places a common phenomenon. It never ceases to amaze me how little knowledge of history some otherwise very intelligent people have, which I guess means that the censorship and rewriting of history is having an effect. Not long ago I was with someone who had spent a number of years in yeshiva, and he really believed that in 19th century Eastern Europe the porters and wagon drivers were all great talmidei hakhamim whose free time was devoted to mastering Shas.
[26] See also Tomer Persico, “Ha-Rav Kook: Al Tzadikim Gedolim ve-Yishrei Lev – be-Ma’alah ha-Hasagah ha-Mistit,” Moreshet Yisrael 5 (2008), available here.


Post-script by S. of On the Main Line:

Two points may be of further interest.

1) Regarding the Western Askenazic custom of using the father’s name as a middle name ala  the aforementioned R. Hirsch and Elkan Nathan Adler, E. N.’s two older half brothers also used  their father’s name, Nathan, as middle names; there was Marcus Nathan Adler, best known for his edition of Benjamin of Tudela’s Travels. In addition, Chief Rabbi Herman Adler also used it as a middle name, especially in his earlier years. In his university matriculation record from 1856 he is listed as “Hermann Nathan Adler.”

2) In addition to the coded acrostic self-reference by the author of Zemach Zedek in the opening lines referred to above (‘יושר האהבה וכו), R. Yehuda Aryeh Modena also refers to himself in the opening lines of the hakdamat ha-mekhaber: נודע ביהודה אלקים ובישראל אריה שאג.



The censorship of Rav Kook and other Hebrew books on Hebrew book databases

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Today, censorship of Hebrew books takes place on many levels. Although previously the censorship of Hebrew books was driven in large part due to external concerns, today, most of the censorship takes place internally, by Jews for Jews. This censorship is generally driven by the false notion that Orthodox Judaism is and was monolithic. Of course, students of history know that this is entirely false; within the confines of Orthodoxy, there was diversity of opinion and practice (perhaps due to modern day censorship, this diversity has been slowly eroding within the Orthodox community).
It’s worth noting that one of the more insidious examples of censorship is that of the modern Hebrew book databases. Today, there are three distinct databases, although they each borrow from one another.[1] The three are Otzar HaHochma, Otzrot ha-Torah and Hebrewbooks.org. The first two are more explicit about their censorship of some texts. They provide options when purchasing their databases, a scrubbed version and a more complete version. Some refer to the scrubbed version as the “Benei Yeshiva” version. It is unclear why those in Yeshiva, presumably dedicating their time to the study of Jewish literature, became short hand for a database that refuses to allow large portions of Jewish literature to be seen. In all events, these at least clue the buyer or user in on the fact that the databases may be incomplete.

Hebrewbooks, however, is in a different category. Hebrewbooks, which is funded by donations, states that its “goal is to bring to life the many Seforim that were written and unfortunately forgotten, and to make all Torah Publications free and ubiquitous.” (Emphasis added). In truth, not all Torah publications are included in the Hebrewbooks database. This is not a product of happenstance that these authors are left out. To the contrary, in many instances, these works were scanned, uploaded and included in the Hebrewbooks database, only to have them disappear when presumably someone decided that these books should be removed. To be clear – Hebrewbooks will take the time, money and effort to make a Torah publication available online, only to remove it – without ever offering a reason or noting that it has been removed.[2] While Hebrewbooks is a modern day example using modern technology to advance a particular ideology, such ideological censorship, especially regarding R. Kook, has and still takes place.[3]

Regarding censorship, one person who has suffered terribly is R. Kook.[4] And, while one can debate the legacy of his philosophy,[5] it is hard to do so when all vestiges of him are removed. Ironically, some of the censorship of R. Kook is partially cured by Hebrewbooks’ inclusion of many of the originals that include comments or portions from R. Kook that no longer appear in the current editions. [Of course, one hopes that the censor at Hebrewbooks doesn’t read this and “remedy” this.] While R. Kook has been censored in various ways, from not mentioning his name, even when it’s merely a reference to a publishing house bearing his name and is not actually a reference to R. Kook (see here), the most common form of censoring R. Kook is to remove his approbation from works, and there are many, for he was a renowned ga’on in his time. One such work is the excellent and erudite commentary on Torah, Pardes Yosef by R. Yosef Pazanavski. Although Pardes Yosef is described as a Torah commentary, in reality is a veritable encyclopedia of highly interesting Rabbinic miscellany. For comparison, Pardes Yosef is what a Torah commentary would look like if R. Ovadiah Yosef wrote one. It is full of interesting tangents that are treated in an incredibly comprehensive manner. Indeed, many speakers and modern day commentaries appear to be heavily based upon Pardes Yosef even if it’s not always cited.
The first volume, on Bereshit, was first published in Lodz in 1930.[6] This work contains the approbations of many well-known Rabbis, including R. Menachem Mendal of Gur (Gur [Gerrer] Rebbi – Penei Menachem), R. Yosef Hayyim Sonnenfeld, R. Meir Shapira, R. Yisrael Meir ha-Kohen (Hafetz Hayyim). In this instance, unlike the case for many approbations, many of those praising the work actually read it, indeed many include glosses and notes on the text. R. Pazanavski was especially proud of the Gur Rebbi’s approbation as R. Pazanavski was a Gur hassid.[7] Now, not everyone seems to have gotten their approbation back to R. Pazanavski in time to include it at the beginning of volume, instead, R. Pazanavski includes some late-received approbations at the end of the book, one of which is R. Kook’s. R. Pazanavski prefaces R. Kook’s approbation with the following:
From the true Gaon, who is known throughout the world for his wisdom and Torah in both the revealed and hidden Torah, and his many precious works, the glory of our generation, the polymath our leader and Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak ha-Kohen Kook shlit”a. The head of the Rabbanut in Israel and the head of the Bet Din of Jerusalem.
As mentioned above, many of the approbations contain comments on Pardes Yosef, and R. Kook’s is one of these. R. Kook, in attempting to answer a question raised in the work, records an interesting story regarding R. Yehoshua Leib Diskin. R. Kook explains that R. Diskin remained lucid, with all his mental faculties, right up until his death. As proof, R. Kook tells the story of a woman who brought a cloth which had a stain to determine a niddah issue. R. Diskin ruled strictly. The woman was unhappy with the ruling and assumed R. Diskin only ruled that way because he couldn’t really see or understand the issue. So, without telling R. Diskin brought it back to him, but didn’t tell him it was the same as before. R. Diskin looked at it and immediately identified it as the very same cloth and issue as before. Those around him were astounded, how could he possibly know that this nondescript cloth was the same? To which R. Diskin responded that it has such-and-such number of threads. The students then took the cloth apart and sure enough it had exactly the thread-count R. Diskin said.[8]
The Pardes Yosef was and is a fairly popular work and as such has been reprinted multiple times. Indeed, since its publication in 1931, it was published an additional three times in photo-mechanical reproductions. In some of these reproductions, however, R. Kook’s approbation is missing. Instead, there is a blank page where his approbation previously appeared.
Uncensored:
Censored:
The Pardes Yosef while popular was a difficult work. In part this is due to the overuse of obscure abbreviations.[9] In 1995, a new edition of Pardes Yosef was published, and this edition attempted to make the book more user-friendly by removing the abbreviations, resetting the type and other improvements. This edition was published in Benei Berak, and notably includes R. Kook’s approbation in reset type. But, for this edition, only part of the first volume was published and then no more.
In 1998, a new edition, boasting many of the improvements contained in the 1995 edition began being published again in Benei Berak. Although titled Pardes Yosef ha-Shalem (emphasis added), this edition is incomplete at least regarding R. Kook’s approbation. That approbation is again missing.
Today, Hebrewbooks includes the first edition – the edition that includes R. Kook’s approbation (link). While presumably unintended, Hebrewbooks has followed R. Pazanavski’s wish that his work bear the approbation of R. Kook.
[1] In reality there are many more databases which either include Hebrew books or are devoted to Hebrew books. Generally, these are found on various library’s websites and are limited to the works that the particular library owns and are not intended to be comprehensive. The three databases discussed above intend to include all Hebrew books.
[2] A partial list of Hebrew books which appeared, but were removed from Hebrewbooks.org is:
  • Arnold Ehrlich – Mikra Kifshuta (Berlin 1899)
  • R. Gedaliah Nadel – Betorato shel R. Gedaliah (see Rabbi Natan Slifkin on that here)
  • Moses Mendelssohn – Phaedon (Hebrew)
  • Moses Mendelssohn – Netivot Shalom – Bamidbar (Vienna 1846) (40004)
  • Moses Mendelssohn – Netivot Shalom – Devarim (Vienna 1846) (40005)
  • R. Yom Tov Schwartz – Maaneh Leigrot (which is available elsewhere online here)
  • Joseph Perl – Megaleh Temirin 1819 (43110)
  • A Karaite siddur from 1737 (43124)
  • Naftali Herz Wessely – Olelot Naftali – Bereshit 1842 (34363)
  • Naftali Herz Wessely Wessely – Shirei Tiferet 1809 (43205)

The numbers are provided in some cases, where available, showing where they used to be on Hebrewbooks.org. Needless to say, many books remain which would be removed, if the criteria applied to these were able to apply to the many needles in a nearly 50,000 piece-strong haystack.

Here is a graphic depicting how one of these books was on Hebrewbooks.org. It is no longer.
Note that this very book bears approbations from Chacham Isaac Bernays and R. Jacob Ettlinger. For more on Wessely in seforim, see Eliezer Brodt’s post here.

The Otzar Ha-hochma removes books as well, even from it’s standard “non-Benei Torah” version. For example, the periodical Yerushalayim (Zolkiew 1844) was there. Now it is gone.
[3]For other examples of using modern technology and modern methods to promote a traditional (albeit anachronistic) point-of-view, see Yoel Finkelman, Strictly Kosher Reading: Popular Literature and the Condition of Contemporary Orthodoxy, Academic Studies Press: 2011.
[4] For examples of censorship regarding R. Kook see Dr. Meir Raflad “’al Peletat Soforim” Sinai 122 (1998) 229–232; Dr. Meir Raflad “Oy l’Tzadik v’Oy l’Shcheno” Hatzofeh, Sept. 2, 2005.
[5] See, e.g., Gershom Gorenberg, The Unmaking of Israel, HarperCollins Pub., 2011, arguing that the modern-day Israeli settlements and their attendant issues springs from R. Kook’s philosophy.
[6] The title page records the date of publication as the Hebrew year of 5690, (printed in the year “Kechu Sefer Pardes Yosef ha-Zeh”) in reality it wasn’t completed until 5691, as R. Pazanavski signs the final page 13 Tishrei 5691. Ultimately, only three volumes would be published, Berashit, Shemot and Va’yikrah. While R. Pazanavski wrote on all five volumes of the Torah, the remaining manuscript was lost during the Holocaust. The Mandelbaum edition, discussed below, “completes” the remaining volumes in the same style as the first three. Thus, today, Pardes Yosef is available on the entire Torah.
[7] In light of R. Pazanavski’s affilation with Gur and specifically, the then current rebbi, Penei Menachem, it’s unsurprising that R. Pazanavski viewed R. Kook positively. It is well-known that the Penei Menachem had a favorable view of R. Kook. See R. Eliezer Sirkes, Ish ha-Emunah, Yitzhak Alfasi ed., Tel Aviv: 1979, pp. 111, 124, 128, 131. One of the putative goals of the Penei Menachem when he went to Israel was to attempt to reconcile R. Kook and R. Sonnenfeld. Thus, it is especially ironic that, as discussed below, the Mandelbaum edition removes R. Kook’s approbation as Mandelbaum is a Gur hassid.
[8] This story appears to have been related at one of the eulogies after R. Diskin’s death. See Yeshah Orenstein, Ma’amar Shelamut ha-Mitzeyot, in Hiddushei R. Yeshayah Orenstein, Jerusalem: 1972, p. 185. A similar story is told about R. Eliyahu Mizrachi (1450-1526). See R. Abraham Kalphon, Ma’aseh Tzaddim, Assaf Revivi ed., Ashkelon: 2009, p. 160. According to this story the king (presumably it would be the Sultan and not a king as after 1453, Constantinople was ruled by the Ottomans and its leader was a sultan) wanted to show the greatness of R. Mizrachi. To do so, he took a special chair and placed R. Mizrachi upon it and asked him to calculate the distance between him and the sky. R. Mizrachi asked for a pen and paper and, after some calculations, wrote down a number which the king took as proof. Of course, this wasn’t convincing to those around. But what the king then did was some time later the king took out the chair again but this time he ordered a small coin be placed under the chair’s legs, unbeknownst to anyone else. He then had R. Mizrachi come back and the king feigned that he couldn’t recall R. Mizrachi’s prior calculation and asked him to repeat it. This time R. Mizrachi wrote down the same number but said that is now seems that it needs to be reduced by the width of a coin. Like the story with R. Diskin, this demonstrated R. Mizrachi’s amazing estimation ability. Unfortunately, to our knowledge, there are no recorded stories of any famous rabbi winning guess the number of jelly beans in a jar contest.
[9] On the use of obscure abbreviations see Ya’akov Shmuel Speigel, “Ha-Shimush be-Kitzurim ve-Roshei Tevot Shanom Shichim,” Yeshurun 10: 2002, pp. 814-30.


The Head Movements of Shema’

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THE HEAD MOVEMENTS OF SHEMA’

by Bezalel Naor

Rabbi Bezalel Naor is a multifaceted scholar, recognized as the leading interpreter of R. Kook in the English language. His newest book is The Limit of Intellectual Freedom: The Letters of Rav Kook. It can be purchased from his website, www.orot.com.

The most important utterance in Judaism is the Shema’: Shema’ yisrael adonai eloheinu adonai ehad. (Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.) This declaration of the absolute unity of God is the cornerstone of our faith. By Biblical mandate, a Jew recites the Shema’ twice daily, be-shokhbekha u-ve-kumekha (“when you lie down and when you rise up”). See Deuteronomy 6:7.

All of the above is quite famous. What remains today a little known fact is that once upon a time this recitation was accompanied by head movements to the four directions, and up and down. This practice is recorded both in the Ge’onim (post-Talmudic Babylonian sages) and the Rishonim (medieval European sages).[1] The basis for this observance is the following statement in the Talmud:

Symmachus says: “Whoever prolongs the word ehad (“one”), his days and years are prolonged.

Said Rav Aha bar Ya’akov: “And [specifically] the letter dalet [of ehad].”

Said Rav Ashi: “Provided he does not speed up the letter het [of ehad].”

R. Yirmiyah was sitting before R. [Hiyya bar Abba]. He saw that he was prolonging overly much. He said to him: “Once you have proclaimed Him King above and below, and to the four winds of heaven, you need not any further.”[2]

Rashi, the eleventh-century exegete of Troyes, France, comments: “Proclaimed Him King above, etc. – You have prolonged the amount [of time] necessary to think in your heart that the Lord is one in heaven and on earth and its four directions.”

This is a disembodied approach; no mention in Rashi of actual body movements. The visualization of heaven and earth and the four cardinal points is purely mental.

However, if one consults the commentary of Rabbi Menahem Ha-Me’iri of Perpignan, Provence (1249-1306) one finds an added dimension: “The amount of lengthening the letter dalet is that required to picture in the heart that He, blessed be He, rules over heaven and earth and the four winds of the world. And for this reason, it is customary to tilt the head and move it to these sides. Nevertheless, if one prefers not to tilt the head, one need not, because the thing depends not on the tilting of the head and its movements, but rather upon the feeling of the heart.”[3]

Me’iri revisits this theme in his commentary to Tractate Sukkah when discussing the na’anu’im or waving of the lulav (palm frond) during the Sukkot festival. There, he opines that both in regard to the movement of the lulav during the recitation of Hallel and the movement of the head during Shema’, only a to-and-fro and up-and-down movement is called for (as opposed to the four directions, and up and down). “Even that which they said. . .to prolong the word ehad (“one”) sufficiently to proclaim Him King above and below and in the four winds of the world, even this necessitates only a movement to the two directions, and below and above. Furthermore, some say that in ehad no movement is necessary, only picturing in the heart.”[4]

Neither is Me’iri the only Provencal commentator to bear witness to the practice of head movements. His contemporary Rabbi David ben Levi of Narbonne writes: “How long? Long enough to proclaim Him King, etc. – Some interpret that one proclaims Him King by moving one’s head. And so interpreted Rabbenu Hai, of blessed memory.”[5]

In Provence, where we find most evidence of the head movements, there were some who found the practice ludicrous (huka ve-itlula).[6] Perhaps, these authorities took exception not so much to the movements themselves, as to the fact that as often happens in the case of rituals, the simple folk focus on the externals rather than on the inner awareness which is the essence.[7]

The German codifier Rabbi Jacob ben Asher (d. Toledo, Spain before 1340) defended the practice of the head movements accompanying Shema’:

One must prolong the dalet of ehad the amount [of time] necessary to think in one’s heart that the Holy One, blessed be He, is unique in His world, above and below, and in the four winds of the world. There are some accustomed to tilt the head according to the thought, above and below, and to the four directions. Some object to the practice because of the statement of the Rabbis, “He who recites Shema’ should not gesticulate with his eyes or lips.”[8] My father, of blessed memory, used to say that one need not heed [their words], for there, the gesticulations are for an extraneous purpose, and interrupt the concentration, but here, the gesture is a requisite of the concentration and brings it about (tsorekh ha-kavvanah ve-goremet otah).”[9]

Rabbi Joshua Boaz Baruch (Italy, d. 1557) offers a very graphic description of the head movements of Shema’:

This is the amount [of time] to prolong the word ehad: one third in the letter het and two thirds in the letter dalet. How does one proclaim the Kingship? Up and down during the het, and in the four directions during the dalet.[10] And one concentrates while moving the head up and down, to the east and to the west, to the north and to the south . . .[11]

One can only speculate what happened to these head movements. Whereas the movements of the lulav or palm frond continue in full force to this day, wherever Jews are found, we are not aware of any community that has retained the custom of moving the head during Shema’, though as we have seen, it was once widespread in communities as diverse as Babel (today Iraq), Provence, Spain and Italy.

One of the most provocative statements found in Rav Kook’s Orot is this:

We dealt much in soulfulness; we forgot the holiness of the body.[12]

Perhaps these head movements of Shema’ are a “mitsvah yetomah” (orphan mitsvah) due for revival.[13]

Notes

[1] These head movements of the Shema’ are not to be confused with those employed in the so-called school of “Prophetic Kabbalah” founded by Abraham Abulafia (b. 1240), although it is possible that Abulafia was inspired in this respect by the earlier tradition surrounding the Shema’. Prof. Gershom Scholem was struck by the similarity between the Abulafian technique (especially the technique of breathing) and Indian Yogic practices. Perhaps Scholem was unaware of the Judaic practice surrounding Shema’. It is possible though, that Scholem would have regarded even this practice, stretching back at least as far as Rav Hai Gaon, as influenced by Yogic or Sufic tradition. See Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1971), pp. 139, 144; Aryeh Kaplan, Meditation and Kabbalah (York Beach, ME, 1985), pp. 55-114.

[2] Talmud Bavli, Berakhot 13b. The words “Hiyya bar Abba” are bracketed in the standard Vilna edition. In the parallel discussion in Talmud Yerushalmi, Berakhot 2:1, rather than R. Hiyya bar Abba, it is Ze’ira who apprises R. Yirmiyah that he needn’t overly prolong the recitation. R. Aryeh Leib Yellin (Yefeh ‘Einayim) suggests that the text of the Bavli be emended to “R. Zeira” to conform to the Yerushalmi.

[3] R. Menahem ben Shelomo ha-Me’iri, Beit ha-Behirah, Berakhot, Dikman ed. (Jerusalem, 1965), p. 42.

[4] R. Menahem ben Shelomo ha-Me’ri, Beit ha-Behirah, Sukkah, Liss ed. (Jerusalem, 1966), p. 133.

[5] R. David ben Levi of Narbonne, Sefer ha-Mikhtam in: Hershler ed., Ginzei Rishonim / Berakhot (Jerusalem, 1967), p. 28. This comment of Rabbenu Hai ben Sherira Gaon (939-1038) to Berakhot 13b first crops up in the Sefer ha-Eshkol of Rabbi Abraham ben Isaac, Av-Beit-Din of Narbonne (d. 1158). See Albeck ed., Sefer ha-Eshkol, p. 14; included in B.M. Lewin ed., Otsar ha-Ge’onim, Vol. I – Berakhot (Haifa, 1928), Perushim, p. 13. Cf. Rabbi Nathan ben Yehiel of Rome, Arukh, s.v. bar pahatei.

[6] Sefer ha-Mikhtam ibid.; R. Asher of Lunel, Orhot Hayyim, chap. 18.

[7] For example, Rabbi Hayyim El’azar Shapira of Munkatch (Munkacevo) explained the custom of reciting the verse Atah har’eita la-da’at [“Unto you it was shown, that you might know, that the Lord is the God; there is none else besides Him”] (Deuteronomy 4:35) on Simhat Torah at the opening of the Ark before commencing the hakafot or circumambulations with the Torah scroll in hand, as an antidote to any perverse notions that might creep into the common mind. By declaring the absolute unity of God, we stave off any misguided tendency to deify the Torah. See Rabbi Hayyim El’azar Shapira, Sha’ar Yissachar, Simhat Torah. Cf. Rabbi Meir Simha Cohen of Dvinsk, Meshekh Hokhmah (Riga, 1927), Exodus 32:19 who explains that Moses smashed the Tablets of the Law to prevent their deification by the worshipers of the Golden Calf.

[8] Yoma 19b. There, included in the prohibition is gesticulating with the finger(s).

[9] Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, Tur, Orah Hayyim.

[10] The Hebrew letters also signify numbers. Thus, het has the numerical value of 8; dalet, the numerical value of 4. The head movements up and down allude to the seven heavens and earth, a total of eight. It is appropriate that they occur during recitation of the letter het. The movements in the four directions of the compass occur during the recitation of the letter dalet.

On the practical level, one may question how it is possible to prolong the sound of the letter dalet (twice as long as the letter het!) when the consonant dalet is a stop or plosive. The question is based on ignorance of the correct pronunciation of the Hebrew letters. In the Ashkenazic community, the differentiation between dalet degushah (hard dalet, indicated by the dot or dagesh mark) and dalet rafah (soft dalet, lacking the dagesh or dot) was lost. In the Oriental communities, this tradition was maintained. In truth, only the hard dalet has the “d” sound; the soft dalet is pronounced “th” as in the English word “the.” In phonetics, such a sound is referred to as a “continuant,” as opposed to a “stop” or “plosive.” As the dalet of ehad is soft, the word is properly pronounced “ehath.” Adhering to these basic rules of the Hebrew language, the dalet of ehad may certainly be drawn out. See Rabbi Nahum L. Rabinovitch, Yad Peshutah (Jerusalem, 1984), Hil. Keri’at Shema 2:9 (p. 64). For the record, there were several Ashkenazic gedolim who were sensitive to the refinements of Hebrew pronunciation, as practiced by the Oriental communities. In the previous generation, Rabbis Joseph Elijah Henkin and Jacob Kamenecki expressed such concerns, to name but two.

[11] R. Joshua Boaz Baruch, Shiltei ha-Gibborim to Mordekhai, Berakhot (Vilna ed., 46a).

[12] See Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook, Orot (Jerusalem, 1950), Orot ha-Tehiyah, chap. 33 (p. 80); Naor trans., Orot: The Original 1920 Version (Spring Valley, NY, 2004), p. 189.

[13] Rabbi Jacob Moses Harlap, the eminent disciple of Rav Kook, wrote that the revival of mitsvot that have fallen into desuetude is a cure for the malady of our generation of neshamot she-be-‘olam ha-tohu (souls of the World of Chaos), whose vessel is too narrow to contain the great light due to penetrate it. This thought is expressed in a letter Rabbi Harlap wrote in 1946 upon the occasion of the renewed “Hakhel” ceremony. Published as an appendix to Rabbi J.M. Harlap, Mei Marom, Vol. V (Nimmukei ha-Mikra’ot) (Jerusalem, 1981). Cf. the essay entitled “Ha-Neshamot shel ‘Olam ha-Tohu” (The Souls of the World of Chaos) in: Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook, Orot (Jerusalem, 1950), pp. 121-123.

Postscript: In an email to Marc Shapiro, Rabbi Naor adds that R. Kalonymos Kalmish Shapira of Piaseczna advocated these head movements. Unfortunately, he can’t locate the precise source. Perhaps one of the readers can help out.

Postscript 2: Eliezer Brodt adds: See Eric Zimmer, Assufot 8 (1994), Tenuchos Vetenuot Haguf Beshaat Keriat Shema, pp. 343-368. For some reason it is not included in the collection of his articles called Olam Keminhago Noheg.