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Shofar Blessings

2011-09-23T14:14:00.000-07:00

MUSICAL NOTE by Cantor Sherwood Goffin

The Blessings of the Shofar

Although, as your cantor, I am very much engrossed with the proper interpretation of the Yomim Noraim liturgy, there is no question that the moment that captures the attention of every worshipper is when the shofar is sounded.

The blowing of the shofar is the oldest ritual that is still heard in synagogues all over the world. It is interesting to note that it was used to proclaim the Jubilee Year in biblical times, as seen in Lev. 25:9-10: "to proclaim liberty throughout the land," the same verse engraved on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia! The shofar's purpose is to proclaim G-d's Kingship, and at the same time, to summon the Jewish People to repent. As the Baal Tokeahfor at least one day of R"H, I will recite two blessings in a traditional melody which is also used for the Megillah on Purim, and which some also utilize for the Shehecheyanu on Yom Kippur Eve. My teacher, Cantor Macy Nulman, theorizes that "the same melodic theme was intended for all three occasions in order to direct the worshipper's attention to the same sentiment. On Rosh Hashana the shofar reminds us of the Day of Judgment, on Yom Kippur each person's lot is determined, and on Purim Haman cast lots to determine the most favorable month and day ... to exterminate the Jews of Persia."

May the sound of the shofar awaken our hearts and encourage us to repent. But, may it also be the harbinger of the day when all of the world will recognize G-d's kingship and usher in an era when humankind will live together in peace and harmony.

Shana Tova! Daven well and sing along!

DAVEN WELL, DON'T TALK, AND SING ALONG!

Musical Mnemonics

2011-07-07T07:02:00.000-07:00

I have a bunch of musical mnemonics I picked up from Mom, who I think got them in elementary school. Do other people know them, or know similar things? Where did you pick them up?

E.g.

Have you heard, of Beethoven's Third?

Morning is dawning and Peer Gynt is yawning da dee da da dee da de dah
and: In the hall of the mountain king, the mountain king, the mountain king. In the hall of the mountain king: the Peer Gynt Suite by Grieg

This is, the symphony, that Schubert wrote and never...

___
So, I don't have to be profound all the time.

Siyum Seder Taharos - Dad's Yahrzeit

2011-06-28T13:51:00.000-07:00

.
This is a very long one. It's the speech I gave at our shul's siyum mishnayos, somewhat elaborated for a wider audience.

Siyum Seder Tohoros, Shabbat afternoon 25 June 2011

Yavneh Minyan of Flatbush,

Siyum of the community mishnah study program, the first year we were able to cover all six sedarim of Mishnah

Two days before the yahrzeit of Dad, Sydney Baker, hareini kaparat mishcavo

I want to talk about the Pharisees and Sadducees, or Prushim and Tzdukim, or Chazal and the Kohanim.

What's the most common characterization of the Tzdukim in the Talmud? That they don't accept the Oral Torah. That's true as far as it goes, but doesn't explain their total difference with Chazal over biblical legal and narrative interpretation.

Who are the Sadducees? Yechezkel designates the family of Tzadok Hakohen to be the future Kohanim. As for their legal positions vis-à-vis the Pharisees, we turn to Josephus:

Antiquties XIII:10.6: What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers. And concerning these things it is that great disputes and differences have arisen among them, while the Sadducees are able to persuade none but the rich, and have not the populace obsequious to them, but the Pharisees have the multitude on their side.

Aharon Shemesh (Halakhah in the Making, 2009) notes that where the Pharisees derived law through the drasha process, including explicating verses through the Thirteen Hermeneutical Principles of Rabbi Ishmael, from the opening of Midrash Sifra, the halakhic midrash to Leviticus, the Sadducees derive law through continuing revelation. That is, they study and meditate on the literal text, and the get ideas about interpretation which they attribute to Divine revelation. This can, of course, lead to chaos, as Korach wanted to do because of his personal interpretations of Scripture, so the system of development based on a defined process is probably better as far as uniform understanding of the law goes.

Lawrence Schiffman – "From Text to Tradition" 1994 notes that some have suggested that they have their own exegetical methods, which are not simply literalism, and which are non-rabbinic. He believes, and there seems to be growing acceptance of the idea, that the Qumran people were a kind of super-Sadducees – they had the Sadducee calendar, they had multiple copies of a document called MMT (Miqsat Maaseh Torah, or the Halakhic Letter, a catalogue of legal issues wherein they differ with the Pharisees and the Pharisee-dominated Sadducees who were running the Temple) indicating its importance, and, most important, MMT (only released in 1990) parallels known Pharisee/Sadducee arguments in the mishnah. So passages in the mishnah and in the DSS can shed light on Sadducee exegesis and their legal assumptions.

We can see that through a few cases drawn from the mishnayot in Seder Tohorot

Mishnah text

English mishnah translation

4QMMT

Parah 3:7

ג,ו ]ז] לא הייתה פרה רוצה לצאת--אין מוציאין עימה שחורה, שלא יאמרו שחורה שחטו; ולא אדומה, שלא יאמרו שתיים שחטו. רבי יוסי אומר, לא משום זה; אלא משום שנאמר "והוציא אותה" (במדבר יט,ג), לבדה. זקני ישראל היו מקדימין ברגליהם להר המשחה, ובית טבילה היה שם. ומטמאין היו את הכוהן השורף את הפרה, מפני הצדוקיין שלא יהו אומרין במעורבי שמש הייתה נעשית.

THE ELDERS OF ISRAEL USED TO PRECEDE THEM ON FOOT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, WHERE THERE WAS A PLACE OF IMMER-SION.⁴⁴THE PRIEST THAT WAS TO BURN THE COW WAS (DELIBERATELY] MADE UNCLEAN ON ACCOUNT OF THE SEDDUCEES: IN ORDER THAT THEY SHOULD NOT SAY,⁴⁵‘ONLY BY THOSE ON WHOM THE SUN HAS SET⁴⁶MUST IT BE PREPARED’.

(44) Also built, like the causeway, over a hollow as a protection against a corpse uncleanness in the depths.

(45) Var. lec., ‘because they used to say’.

(46) Sc. those only who are in all respects clean.

And also in what pertains to the purity of the red heifer in the sin offering:

17 that whoever slaughters it and whoever burns it and whoever collects the ash and whoever sprinkles the [water of]

18 purification, all these ought to be pure at sunset,

19 so that whoever is pure sprinkles the impure. For the sons of

20 [Aaron] ought [to be…]

First idea: Parah – it's rabbinic legislation how we deal with a tevul yom (one who has gone to the mikvah to be purified from some tumah, but the next sunset has not yet passed – many know this from the first mishnah in Brochot, that the evening Shema is said "from the hour when the Kohanim go in to eat their trumah", that is, when the sun has set after they had gone to mikvah) vis-à-vis burning the parah.

The text in the Torah is not entirely clear – the kohen who burns the parah is not a tevul yom until after burning the parah, as we just leined now (Shabbat afternoon). Which implies that it's not relevant before the burning. But the Sadducees don't accept rabbinic legislation. The clear situation for many types of purification is that one's purification doesn't end until sunset after going to the mikvah, and the kohanim have to be pure to do divine service, so they have to be fully pure to burn the Parah.

But the Rabbis legislated that it was OK for a Tevul Yom to burn the Parah. The Sadducees didn't accept rabbinic legislation, and would object, so the Rabbis deliberately did this to prove "We're not Tzdukim."

Yadayim 4:7

ד,ז אומרין צדוקיין, קובלין אנו עליכם פרושים: שאתם מטהרין את הניצוק

THE SADDUCEES SAY: WE COMPLAIN AGAINST YOU, O YE PHARISEES, THAT YOU DECLARE AN UNINTERRUPTED FLOW OF A LIQUID TO BE CLEAN.42 THE PHARISEES SAY: [DO] WE COMPLAIN AGAINST YOU, O YE SADDUCEES, THAT YOU DECLARE A STREAM OF WATER WHICH FLOWS FROM THE BURIAL-GROUND TO BE CLEAN?43

(42) Cf. Maksh. V, 9. If a liquid is poured from a clean vessel into an unclean vessel, the liquid remaining in the former vessel remains clean, as the uninterrupted flow does not form a connective.

(43) Cf. Mik. I. 4. The Sadducees agreed that this was the case. On this controversy v. Finkelstein, The Pharisees II, p. 638.

And also concerning flowing liquids: we say that in these there is no

59 purity. Even flowing liquids cannot separate unclean

60 from clean because the moisture of flowing liquids and their containers is

61 the same moisture.

Similarly in the case of poured liquids (irui, nitzok) – we have a case of conflicting legislation in an unclear case. In our case, we rely on the rule of "heat rises", or "tata'ei gavar", which may be familiar from one's study of the rules of meat & milk. Only when the stream springs back up on disconnection, like thick honey, does it physically carry the tumah to the upper container. They evidently don't have that rule, so any connection connects tumah.

Yadayim 4:7 continued

ד, אומרין צדוקיין, קובלין אנו עליכם פרושים: מה אם שורי וחמורי שאיני חייב בהן מצוות, הריני חייב בנזקן; עבדי ואמתי שאני חייב בהן מצוות, אינו דין שאהא חייב בנזקן. אמרו להם, לא, אם אמרתם בשורי וחמורי, שאין בהן דעת--תאמרו בעבדי ואמתי, שיש בהן דעת, שאם אקניטנו, ילך וידליק גדישו של אחר ואהא חייב לשלם.

THE SADDUCEES SAY: WE COMPLAIN AGAINST YOU, O YE PHARISEES, IN THAT YOU SAY, MY OX OR ASS WHICH HAS DONE INJURY IS LIABLE,44 YET MY MANSERVANT OR MAIDSERVANT WHO HAS DONE INJURY IS NOT LIABLE’.45 NOW IF IN THE CASE OF MY OX OR MY ASS’ FOR WHICH I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE IF THEY DO NOT FULFIL RELIGIOUS DUTIES,46 YET I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR DAMAGE, IN THE CASE OF MY MANSERVANT OR MAIDSERVANT FOR WHOM I AM RESPONSIBLE TO SEE THAT THEY FULFIL RELIGIOUS DUTIES,47 HOW MUCH MORE SO THAT I SHOULD BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR DAMAGE? THEY SAID TO THEM: NO, IF YOU ARGUE ABOUT MY OX OR MY ASS’ WHICH HAVE NO UNDERSTANDING, CAN YOU DEDUCE ANYTHING THEREFROM CONCERNING MY MANSERVANT OR MAIDSERVANT WHO HAVE UNDERSTANDING? SO THAT IF I WERE TO ANGER EITHER OF THEM THEY WOULD GO AND BURN ANOTHER PERSON'S STACK AND I SHOULD BE LIABLE TO MAKE RESTITUTION?48

(44) I.e., I am responsible for the damage they do. Cf. Ex. XXI, 35. The Sadducees did not dispute this, as it is expressly stated in the Torah.

(45) Cf. B.K. VIII, 4. Not being expressly ‘stated in the Torah, the Sadducees did not accept this.

(46) Since the Torah does not enjoin religious duties on animals.

(47) E.g., to see that they do not work on the Sabbath.

(48) Hence the law provides that I should not be liable for the damage they do. On this controversy v. Finkelstein L. op. cit. II, p. 684.

Second idea – drasha. We mentioned the 13 Exegetical Principles at the beginning of the Sifra – since it's midrash, it's a foundational document of rabbinic exegesis. Further, its inclusion in the priestly midrash (Toras Kohanim) seems indicative, that even in the Temple the rabbinic writ extends, despite the Sadducees. Look at the liability case. The Sadducees use kal vachomer, the first of the 13 Principles, the only one that is purely logical, not requiring a tradition about some part of the argument. Thus, it's the one principle that doesn't require a mesorah (tradition). Shemesh notes a few other places where the Sadducees use kal vechomer, but that's the only one of the principles they use.

So they have their own exegetical methods, perhaps based on logic, but not on mesorah. Aviram Ravitzky, in his recent book on the relationship between the 13 Principles and Aristotelian logic, notes that even kal vachomer isn't quite the Aristotelian syllogism of the Prior Analytics. Kal vechomer the other ideas, such as combinations of generals and particulars, or the gezerah shavah – the similar language idea that REQUIRES a tradition. So, looking at the elaboration of the Main Categories of Damages in the first few pages of Tractate Bava Kamma, we see a rabbinic elaboration, that looks like what I think of as the uncertain origin of drash. That is, whether it's rabbinic exegesis or Mosaic tradition, it's treated as part of Torah law. The Sadducees don't have that, so they rely on syllogism alone, kal vechomer.

Let me elaborate on what I mean by uncertainty, and share some of my personal journey. It took me a long while to convince myself to be Orthodox, and my main sticking point was the Divine origin of the Oral Law.

I had read a book by Rabbi Elliott Dorff on the varieties of Conservative Judaism. All of them shared one idea that distinguished them from Orthodox Judaism – none of them accepted a Divine origin of the Oral Law. To Conservatives, the Oral Law, while necessary to understand the Torah, is a completely human construct. And that makes a lot of sense – if the laws weren't written down until the Mishnah or after, how can we know that they were reliably transmitted from Sinai? How do we know that the laws as we have them aren't the result of a 1500-year game of telephone, distorted by time and transmission?

Then I spent a few weeks learning the Rambam’s introduction to the commentary on the Mishnah. He classifies the laws into different categories. One is the “halacha lemoshe misinai”, a tradition that is a) universally accepted, b) not argued with, and c) not derivable from Scripture. Examples include the requirements that tefillin be square and black. There’s no way to get that from “totafot” etc., but everyone agrees, and the archeological evidence shows that it was the case all the way back, at least in the last 2000 years.

Then there are the regular laws, which are details of the mitzvoth which are known through drasha, and argumentation, etc. What relation do these bear to a possible Sinaitic revelation? I read somewhere, I don’t remember where, that basically, it doesn’t matter whether these laws are known by drasha or by tradition. The laws generated by drasha, since drash is part of the system, are equivalent to laws known by tradition. We generally hold, or at least in the time of the Tannaim they held, that a law known by tradition, from one’s teacher and one’s teacher’s teacher, is not to be argued with, it’s “hilcheta gemiri lah”, learned law from ancient tradition. This is generally held in higher esteem than laws known by logic, which are in turn considered stronger than laws derived from a verse. But they’re all d’oraita laws, Torah-originated laws.

That was another thing, I had to understand that d’oraita vs. d’rabbanan, as against written law and oral law, were different spectra of legal origin. Rabbinic law is legislation. D’oraita law is law derived from the Sinaitic revelation. And I realized, it doesn’t matter whether a given law is known by tradition or by drash. It Doesn’t Matter. They’re all considered d’oraita. Because laws reconstructed (yes, reconstructed, we know that legal matter was lost over the generations – there’s a tradition that 3000 laws were lost at the death of Moshe, and the continuing pattern of exile and death continues to erode our capacity for oral legal transmission) through the drash process, through the 13 Principles of Exegesis, or the 32 Principles of Midrashic Interpretation, etc., since the interpretive rules are themselves part of the system of law – derived law is the same Torah-originated law as traditional law.

So imagine my pleasure at finding the Mishnah in Yadayim 4:3 which validates this whole outlook.

Here it is:

ד,ג בו ביום אמרו, עמון ומואב מה הם בשביעית. גזר רבי טרפון, מעשר עני; וגזר רבי אלעזר בן עזריה, מעשר שני. אמר רבי ישמעאל, אלעזר בן עזריה, עליך ראיה ללמד, שאתה מחמיר--שכל המחמיר, עליו הראיה ללמד. אמר לו רבי אלעזר בן עזריה, ישמעאל אחי, אני לא שניתי מסדר השנים; טרפון אחי שינה, ועליו ראיה ללמד. השיב רבי טרפון, מצריים חוצה לארץ, ועמון ומואב חוצה לארץ--מה מצריים מעשר עני בשביעית, אף עמון ומואב מעשר עני בשביעית. השיב רבי אלעזר בן עזריה, בבל חוצה לארץ, ועמון ומואב חוצה לארץ--מה בבל מעשר שני בשביעית, אף עמון ומואב מעשר שני בשביעית. אמר רבי טרפון, מצריים מפני שהיא קרובה, עשאוה מעשר עני, שיהו עניי ישראל נסמכין עליה בשביעית--אף עמון ומואב שהן קרובין, נעשים מעשר עני, שיהו עניי ישראל נסמכין עליהן בשביעית. אמר לו רבי אלעזר בן עזריה, הרי אתה כמהנן ממון, ואין אתה אלא כמפסיד נפשות: קובע אתה את השמיים מלהוריד טל ומטר, שנאמר "היקבע אדם אלוהים, כי אתם קובעים אותי, ואמרתם, במה קבענוך; המעשר, והתרומה" (מלאכי ג,ח). השיב רבי טרפון. אמר רבי יהושוע, הריני כמשיב על דברי טרפון אחי, אבל לא לעניין דבריו: מצריים מעשה חדש ובבל מעשה ישן, והנידון שלפנינו מעשה חדש; יידון מעשה חדש ממעשה חדש, ואל יידון מעשה חדש ממעשה ישן. מצריים מעשה זקנים, ובבל מעשה נביאים, והנידון שלפנינו מעשה זקנים; יידון מעשה זקנים ממעשה זקנים, ואל יידון מעשה זקנים ממעשה נביאים. נמנו וגמרו, עמון ומואב מעשר עני בשביעית. וכשבא רבי יוסי בן דורמסקית אצל רבי אליעזר ללוד, אמר לו, מה חידוש היה לכם בבית המדרש היום. אמר לו, נמנו וגמרו, עמון ומואב מעשר עני בשביעית. בכה רבי אליעזר ואמר "סוד ה', ליראיו; ובריתו, להודיעם" (תהילים כה,יד); צא והודיעם ואמור להם, אל תחושו למניינכם--מקובל אני מרבן יוחנן בן זכאי, ששמע מרבו, ורבו מרבו הלכה למשה מסיניי, שעמון ומואב מעשר עני בשביעית.

As you can see, it’s very long. I’m not going to translate the whole thing. To summarize: It’s a story of a dispute held on the day that R’ Elazar b. Azariah became the head of the academy. You all know about that, he was “like a man of seventy years” because his hair miraculously turned white, to give him gravitas when made Rosh Yeshivah at age 18. Anyway, they’re arguing a question. Various people argue with R Elazar, he gives counterarguments, then they vote, and R’ Elazar loses.

Now the crucial bit:

WHEN R. JOSE B. DURMASKITH22 VISITED R. ELIEZER23 IN LYDDA HE SAID TO HIM: WHAT NEW THING DID YOU HAVE IN THE HOUSE OF STUDY TO-DAY? HE SAID TO HIM: THEIR VOTES WERE COUNTED AND THEY DECIDED THAT [X_idea]. R. ELIEZER WEPT AND SAID: THE COUNSEL OF THE LORD IS WITH THEM THAT FEAR HIM: AND HIS COVENANT, TO MAKE THEM KNOW IT.24 GO AND TELL THEM: DO NOT HAVE ANY APPREHENSION ON ACCOUNT OF YOUR VOTING. I RECEIVED A TRADITION FROM R. JOHANAN B. ZAKKAI WHO HEARD IT FROM HIS TEACHER, AND HIS TEACHER FROM HIS TEACHER, AND SO BACK TO AN HALACHAH GIVEN TO MOSES FROM SINAI,25 THAT [X_idea is true].

And there you have it. By arguing and voting, by following the reconstructive process, they came to the correct conclusion, the correct halacha, which was validated by the tradition received by R’ Eliezer. So IT DOESN’T MATTER that laws are lost and we can’t say for certain whether a given law comes from tradition or from reconstruction – they’re the SAME THING. They’re all d’Oraita laws, originated at Sinai, even if the transmission path isn’t direct and reliable. We have error-correcting codes built in.

But I had to work all this out from first (or second) principles. It was never enough to just take on faith ideas that sounded ridiculous, like “the Oral Torah came from Sinai, just as we have it.” I had to dig, to understand that while true, it was a ridiculous oversimplification.

* * *

My father also took a spiritual journey, although his went through emotions and behavior rather than intellect. Started out atheist, knew Yiddish and a bit of Hebrew. As we went to school, and switched to R Riskin's O shul, he taught himself Hebrew. He later took R Cohen's intro Talmud class, and learned more biblical exegesis following Mom's example.

Because he could sing and read/understand Hebrew, he learned to lein and daven, because the summer C-nagogue needed people, following my example (I learned to lead High Holidays shacharit/mincha so that they could hold services without having to pay someone). At 68, he was the "kid" in their davening/leining crew.

After some years, I asked if he was still an atheist. He told me that after davening for all this time, he thought that maybe there might be something there. By the end, in the nursing home, he was insisting on kosher (icky frozen meals) rather than fresh kosher-style food, and wore a yarmulke all day. Now, I don't know about his theological state at the time, communication was difficult with his lost hearing aid, but I have to figure that the insistence on behavioral correctness reflected a change in internal belief. Atheist – agnostic – by the end, I think a believer, to some extent, although I may be fooling myself.

At any rate, at Michael's (Michael Klein, organizer of the community Mishna study program) urging, I undertook to learn all of Seder Taharot in Dad's memory, so that we could, as a shul, complete all six orders of Mishnah for the first time. I want to thank him for his organizing efforts, I want to thank all of you for your efforts in this program. I want to thank Debbie for her support this year, forgoing a public honor because I was insecure during shloshim, and I want to thank Dad (and Mom too, of course), for support during his life, for sending us to Ramaz despite a lack of belief in God, although he always believed in the value of tradition and Jewish peoplehood, for being proud of his children whether or not they followed his own path. Yehi zichro baruch.

Variations in the Siddur - Cantor Goffin

2011-05-05T13:10:00.000-07:00

MUSICAL NOTE by Cantor Sherwood Goffin

Variations in the Siddur

I have often been asked why one siddur uses one form of a word, and another siddur uses another form of the same word. For instance, we pronounce the phrase sho-ato hu, which is found in Modim and the paragraph after Sh'ma, whereas it is pronounced She-ato hu in a Nusach Sfard siddur. This often causes a Baal tefilla to pronounce the word incorrectly in our Nusach Ashkenaz services. Here, the difference is simply a matter of difference between the text of Sfard versus Ashkenaz. It makes no grammatical difference. However, one leading the services at LSS should use the version found in our siddur, so that the congregation will not think that he has made a mistake. Sometimes, within Ashkenaz siddurim, there are differences, such as the word Na-avo at the end of Mizmor Shir/Hashem Moloch in our De Sola Pool RCA siddur. The Artscroll siddur, however, writes the word as No-avo. Again, I counsel those leading the services to read it according to the way our siddur writes it. One of the most startling changes is that in the Adon Olam of the Chabad siddur, which writes the words Ye-tsur Nivra, instead of Ye-tsir Nivra which we know well. Sometimes the changes are because we follow the Vilna Gaon's customs, such as Yisga-dale instead of Yisgadal, etc. The best rule, generally, is to always read the version that is found in our siddur.

Daven Well, Don't Talk, and Sing Along!

Can you tell a Bible by its cover?

2011-03-28T16:22:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe not. I was in a local bookstore this afternoon, and saw a display of JPS English and Hebrew-English pocket-sized Bibles. They had a black covered Hebrew-English, a pink-covered all-English (I guess for girls), the website has other colors such as black, white, and green - nice and neutral. The translation is the usual New JPS - terrific translation, been using it for over 30 years. Where it says "b--b meaning of Heb. uncertain", it's a sure sign to go check out the meforshim (commentaries, mostly medieval).

But the one that caught my eye was the one printed in "Denim". A back-pocket, to be precise, mirrored on the back of the book. IOW, the cover of this Bible was a tuchus. I don't know what their cover-designer was thinking, probably trying to be "hip" or whatever, but what comes across is "the Tanakh is compared to a tuchus." Or maybe, the product of the backside? Really not the message I'd think a Jewish publisher would want to project about their flagship product.

Hm, thinking about denim-jeans images - I had a passbook bank account when I was in Jr High and High School. The original passbook was the same design as my parents' - a photo of a local park. I lost it at one point, and had to get a replacement, so they gave me a "kids'" model - with a drawing of a pair of jeans. I felt rather condescended to. Maybe designers of kid-versions of adult objects should consult with real children of the age they're targeting.

BTW, "tuchus" may sound Yiddish, but it's really direct from Hebrew - tuchus is an Ashkenazic pronunciation of "tachat", which means "underneath".

(image copyright Jewish Publication Society, used without permission qua fair use - quotation in a review)

Changes in Jewish publishing - response

2011-03-23T13:35:00.000-07:00

Gil Student wrote an article in Jewish Action, the OU magazine, on the changes in Jewish and mainstream publishing. He avoided the one big question looming on the horizon of Jewish publishing, as it is beginning to make inroads into mainstream publishing: the e-book.

He addresses the information-chunking and short-attention-span issues pretty well.

But there need to be heterim found for e-book readers on Shabbos, if we're not to have people dropped from Orthodoxy for "half-shabbos", esp. as more and more seforim are online in PDF and etext, if they wish to learn Torah stored in an ebook reader. Do you really learn all those seforim in your shrank, bought when a kid in yeshiva, or are they mostly for show, and occasional reference?

I carry around a good-sized library in my e-book reader, whether Torah or fiction, academic or popular material. Until people start using iPads or Kindle DX's widely, things like Gemara pages will still be difficult, although who knows - maybe the small-format Gemara may yet make a comeback. I have, for instance, a scanned PDF of Bava Kamma from the Lemberg half-page edition on the ebook-reader. Legible, but barely, on the 3x4" screen. But if I can get e-texts of Rishonim from Bar-Ilan, in pieces (how many blatt gemara does an in-depth once-a-week shiur cover, after all), that makes it more accessible to be on the Palm or the EZ-Reader.

The standard Gemara page was defined by Bomberg in the 1520s, because he issued the first full set of Shas. It made sense to keep using the same pagination for standard reference. Why did he use that page size (folio pages)? Ultimately, because of the size of sheep. Sheep are a certain size, so their skins are a certain size, which governs the dimensions of parchment pages made from those skins.

Technology has changed. We need no longer be governed by the sizes of medieval sheep. It is certainly possible to maintain indicators to standard pagination in text of other configurations (just look at, e.g., a two-volume two-column Zohar of the 17th century which has indicators of the pagination of the by-then standard three-volume single-column Zohar, so you can find page references easily.

So too here - as e-readers and pad computers improve, we should be able to use them with cross-linked etexts of the Talmud, Tanach, Midrashim Rishonim and Acharonim. Must we continue to spend hundreds of dollars on dead trees for use on Shabbos alone? Perhaps rabbis should work with electrical engineers to design an e-book reader that will not violate Shabbos, as Tzomet has done for doctors and the handicapped. Perhaps we should resurrect the arguments used by RSZA, and only not implemented out of respect for the Chazon Ish, and find ways to use solid-state technology lehagdil Torah uleha'adirah. After all, we don't slavishly follow the Chazon Ish, at least not in Galut, where we don't eat normal gelatin (which the CI approved).

If we don't find ways to adapt to such changing technology, then we, and our dead-tree obsession, will be left in the dustbin of history, along with our decaying paper.

Zohar maybe not from Rashbi

2011-03-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

I was reading the Zohar in the Berg-ite translation, and came across the following passage:

30. There are questions that are the garments of the Ha-lachah, NAMELY THE GARMENTS OF MALCHUT, of which it says "inwrought with gold" - as it is written: "The King's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is in-wrought with gold" (Tehilim 45:14). You, AMORAIM, cut THE GARMENT INWROUGHT WITH GOLD into several le-gal sentences and later fix and explain them away using various arguments.

31. If one chapter of the Mishnah is missing, and it has been maintained that something is missing from the Mishnah, you fix it. FOR EXAMPLE, IN PLACES WHERE IT IS STATED IN THE GEMARA: "A CLAUSE HAS BEEN OMITTED, FOR THIS IS THE WAY WE HAVE LEARNED IT...," such is wanting that can be numbered. If a sim-pleton comes and spreads an evil report of the craftsman that cuts the garments, saying: The Torah is lacking - STATING THAT IN THIS PARAGRAPH OF THE MISHNAH, A CLAUSE HAS BEEN OMITTED. Yet, it is written: "The Torah of Hashem is perfect," (Tehilim 19:8) perfect in all the members of the body, the 248 positive precepts, as written: "You are all fair, my love; there is no blemish in you," (Shir Hashirim 4:7), and perfect in her garments. How can anything be lacking in the Mishnah?

32. HE ANSWERS: Say to him - look carefully and find the MISSING piece. You may find it mixed with other verses and Mishnahyot, MEANING, IT IS THE CUSTOM OF THE TORAH TO BE LACKING IN ONE PLACE AND RICH IN ANOTHER. For it is the way of the craftsman to cut garments into several pieces, AND THAT WHICH IS MISSING IN ONE PLACE IS FILLED UP IN ANOTHER. The students, inexperienced in connecting the Halachah to those pieces THAT ARE IN ANOTHER PLACE, confuse the sentences and questions, and cannot explain the dilem-mas until the craftsman comes and explains all the doubts they have. At that time, Halachah the daughter, NAMELY MALCHUT, rises before the King, perfect in eve-rything, in body, garments and jewelry. And in it the verse comes true: "And I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting Covenant" (Beresheet 9:16). Sometimes the craftsman has an experienced student whom he sends to correct them, NAMELY ELIJAH, AS WAS MENTIONED BEFORE.

Note that this passage, in addressing the students of the Amoraim, is clearly set after the time of R' Shimon bar Yochai. It seems to start out criticizing the Amoraim for "cutting up the golden garment" of the Mishnah, but winds up praising them for bringing the disparate parts of the Mishnah together in a coherent whole. They do this by looking for what is missing, perhaps it can be found in another mishnah or in a midrash or Tosefta, and splice it in. Or perhaps they extrapolate what was missing, as in chasurei mechsera vehachi katani - "this is how the lacuna should be read".

In any case, this is clearly the textual criticism that makes up much of the Gemara's discussion of Mishnayot. This story praises the early Amoraim for their textual activity (the early Amoraim feeling freer to emend the text of the Mishnah).

If Rashb"i lived in the late Tannaitic period (according to the JE article on Simeon ben Yohai, citing Graetz, he fled to the cave c. 161), it had to have 50-100 years after his time that this story took place. Thus, this part of the Zohar necessarily postdates Rashb"i.

THE LITTLE BIRD

2011-02-13T04:08:00.000-08:00

Another Musical Note from Cantor Goffin of Lincoln Square Synagogue

MUSICAL NOTE by Cantor Sherwood Goffin
THE LITTLE BIRD

This is a response I gave to a questioner last month:

"I have been very closely associated with this song ever since I began my former folk-singing concert career back in 1962. I taught it at NCSY, Yeshiva U Seminars and everywhere I went. In 1970 I recorded a "Russian Jewry" version of the Little Bird for the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, on an album that featured SSSJ rally songs and Rabbi Riskin interviewing famous refuseniks.

The Little Bird was written by a 17 yr. old Bais Yaakov Camp Jr. Counselor, Millie Steinberg. She used the tune of an old Russian folk melody that was converted in 1948 to the beautiful "B'arvot Hanegev'; words by Menashe Baharav, who was also the accompanist to Shoshana Damari. Millie married Mr. Sachs and moved to Israel in the 1970's. I had asked her if she had other songs, which she did send to me, but I never sang them. I changed some of the words for public concert use, to make it scan better. On my hit album Neshomo (1972) we merely copied the above-mentioned version in the activist style of those years that spoke to the idea of peace and freedom. Many years later, on my 1996 album "Ish Echad," I recorded the original words for the first time." Now you know!

DAVEN WELL, DON'T TALK, & SING ALONG!

Let's pray to the Moon - not

2011-02-12T17:16:00.000-08:00

Tonight was Kiddush Levanah, the monthly sanctification of the New Moon, as much as we can without a central court to actually establish the new moon. Lacking that, we have had the fixed calendar since about 325 CE, and we say prayers in honor of the lunar cycle each month.

My problem with the prayer is that there are one or two lines that seem (no matter how much apologists try to defend them, or say they're referring to God) to be directed to the Moon as if it were a separate (if subsidiary) Power. There certainly are midrashim that portray the Sun and Moon as self-willed entities, and since they're in the heavens, it would seem that that implies that they are powers subservient to God.

Which inspired the following:

Oh Selene, with your rays so white
Reflecting Helios' starry light.
God created you, to rule the night
Along with the stars, to whom we don't pray "Starlight, star bright."

which more or less reflects what saying the prayer feels like.

"Just as I dance towards you but cannot reach you, so may my enemies be unable to touch me." - a line from the prayer, carefully enwrapped with other lines talking about God and Israel.

Oh, well, it's an excuse to say an extra kaddish, which I'm sure Dad's soul could use during his up to eleven months in Gehinnom.

Turnabout is Fair Play

2011-02-07T15:04:00.000-08:00

As I have been rebroadcasting Cantor Goffin's "Musical Note" columns, this week he took my posting of last week's column, with my speculations about Nusach Sfard vs. Nusach Ashkenaz, and turned it into this week's Musical Note column.

Any Nusach Sfard people over the age of 45 out there who want to chime in?

La-ad Kayamet after Shma: Musical Note

2011-01-30T17:12:00.001-08:00

MUSICAL NOTE by Cantor Sherwood Goffin
L'DOR VADOR HU KAYAM...

I want to point out an essential difference between the Artscroll Hebrew-English Siddur and the subsequent All- Hebrew version, the Yitzchak Yair Siddur. For those who are functioning as the chazzan, whether on weekdays or Shabbat, one has to be informed that the English Artscroll is incorrect as to where the chazzan is to recite immediately after the reading of the Sh'ma. As far as most of us can remember, after the recitation of Shma in Shacharit, the chazzan always continued at the words "L'dor vador Hu Kayom Ush'mo kayom" - NOT at "Al Avoseinu." The special indicator for the chazzan is incorrect in the English version. However, in the all-hebrew version, the indicator has been corrected to indicate that one begins at "L'dor Vador..." This is the correct choice because, in actuality, a NEW "topic" begins at "Ud'varav Chayim." I surmise that the original Artscroll editors for the English version were mislead because some anonymous printer more than a century ago arbitrarily made a new paragraph at "Al Horishonim." Despite that, it is well documented that baalei tefilla for centuries have always ended the first topic at "L'dor Vador." I would ask all those who lead the Shacharit services to please follow this guideline. Thank you!

Daven Well, Don't Talk, and Sing Along!

The preceding copyright (c) Lincoln Square Synagogue and Sherwood Goffin

Well. That clears up something I've long suspected. Listening to people lead davening, those who say aloud "Ledor vador ... la'ad kayamet" seem to be people who learned to daven Before Artscroll, while those who say "Al Avoteinu..." were those who learned from Artscroll. This confirms it - the Chaz says outright it is an error in the English Artscroll.

Contra the Chaz, I wonder if it's a Nusach Sfard thing. In the all-Hebrew Nusach Sfard Artscroll, at least the chazan-sized one that I've been using for the past 6 months by the `amud in a local shtibl, I think they do begin at Al Avoseinu.

I checked - yes, the Artscroll NS siddur has the chazan start at Al Avoseinu. Further, I checked with the gabbai, who, like me, grew up Before Artscroll, and asked what he grew up with. As far as he knows, he always started from Al Avoseinu. So now we know - rather than being an error of the siddur printers, it was a Nusach Sfard custom, that leaked into the Artscroll Nusach Ashkenaz, probably because whoever edited that section grew up with Nusach Sfard. Not that siddur printers are innocent of introducing changes in the davening.

Response to RYGB and the HoS view

2011-01-28T06:21:00.001-08:00

RYGB: your attempt [in the comments to the previous post] to disavow the anecdotes you brought to support your position looks disingenuous. You certainly wrote to give the impression that you support the position RAS took, given that it was brought as support for your dismissal of RNS as "flippant", There was also the story of RYBS' dismissal of the Meiri. As well, you brought R Kamelhar as evidence that Chazal didn't take the aggadita literally, when there's absolutely no reason to believe that, v. infra.

"most courteous manner possible" - repudiation? hope that he recant, like Galileo Eretico? calling him flippant where you simply call others wrong? Ad hominems are courteous? They're Internetty, sure, but I thought you were trying for something better.

Although, reading Micha's quote above, I think RNS could have expressed the same idea without being quite so, well, abrasive. "Chazal were mistaken"? Really. "Chazal ruled in accordance with the science of their time, we have no evidence that they should have known current science through ruach hakodesh, therefore, when our poskim rule in accordance with the science of our time, they are following in the footsteps of our Sages."

The sociological characterizations, stipulated. The vehemence and flippancy of your disassociation essay, led me to think that you had actually supported his earlier positions, rather than supporting him personally. Sorry not to have remembered your actual position.

I'm not dismissing Kamelhar on the basis of his obscurity, but on the basis of the irrelevance of a modern reading for understanding how Chazal thought. As RNS said, there was a different metzius then, that Chazal thought Aristotle was right on physiology. To take a post-Harvey metaphorical reading is anachronistic and does not explain anything, except to make the aggadita more palatable to us, so that we don't have to reject it as "wrong" in a Maimonidean sense.

I wrote a paper on Galileo and the Church in HS for a history class. For a year afterwards, I would not say the Shir shel yom on Fridays, Ps. 93, "the world is set firm, it does not move." Until I read a metaphorical explanation by RSRH. Now, sure, that's not necessarily what Dovid Hamelech was thinking, but it allowed me to have a true idea in mind when reading the posuk. So too here. Kamelhar allows us to accept the aggadita without having to say Chazal were wrong. But that doesn't change the fact that Chazal thought they were right. It's just not an idea based on mesorah, hence independent of physical truth.

And that's the different metzi'us - not an actual change in teva (although that too may allow us to rationalize the change in rabbinic positions), but a change in scientific worldview between their day and ours. The metzius includes their mental state, the possibility of their having knowledge through non-supernatural means. Since they didn't espouse a position that was clearly not compatible with their medicine, that of brain-death, we have no evidence that they knew what we know about brain-stem death and rejected it in the face of supernatural knowledge.

I for one have no trouble accepting that they perceived phenomena that they interpreted as bas kol, or appearances of dead people - such stories continue on to today. How can a believing Jew deny the possibility of the supernatural? But there is no evidence of their having supernatural knowledge here, only natural knowledge. Which places them soundly within normal intellectual history - they ruled in accordance with reality as they knew it to be, but we understand reality differently. Shifts in psak due to the influence of the Zohar and the Ari are the same - rabbinic perceptions of reality changed, so psak changed. Supernarual or natural changes are still changes in reality. Only God is the Knower, the knowledge and the known - for us, they are different things.

Maybe I'm being an apologist for RNS because the HoS perspective resonates with me. Ainochenami, it's a different perspective than has yet been expressed in this debate, one which might help bring some resolution to the two "sides" that may not really be so far apart.

Brain Death and Arguments at Cross Purposes

2011-01-27T11:29:00.000-08:00

Reading the extensive debates on the brain death vs. heart death issue, I begin to discern positions, and understand to some extent where various parties are coming from. And I am coming to the conclusion that the one who best pursues Emes in this case is R' Slifkin (RNS), while other parties seem to sometimes argue disingenuously.

R' Moshe Feinstein, and yblcht"a R' Moshe Tendler, agree on brain-death as equalling death, based on close readings of a mishna in Ohalot, a Rashi in B. Yoma 86a, and other sources. Never mind that those who support heart-death read the same things another way. R' Tendler doesn't approach the scientific basis of Chazal and the Rishonim in understanding this, he seems to treat the whole thing as an empirical exercise. His primary motivation seems to be to allow heart, lung and liver transplants, which cannot take place from a donor whose heartbeat has stopped. Therefore, read the halacha, take what you can, and who cares what the science was underlying their opinions?

R' Slifkin, taking off from there, looks at what Chazal thought about science, based on an aggadita in B. Ber. 61a. Seeing that it doesn't agree with modern science, but does agree with Aristotelian ideas about the functions of the various organs, he says that "Chazal were mistaken in this regard", and then goes on to say that the modern understanding of brain-death vs. cerebral death vs. heart death is based on that flawed understanding of science. Now that we know the true function of most organs, we can follow those who say brain death is death.

R' YGB (Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer), in a fit of political pique, finds a 19th-century source (R Kamelhar is a good writer, I have his capsule biographies of 18th and 19th century rabbis "Dor Deah", but do people really take him more seriously outside his field than, say, the Torah Temimah?) that understands R' Slifkin's aggadita metaphorically, and uses that to say R' Slifkin was wrong, and further heretical to believe that Chazal were wrong. RYGB's post and comments seem based on a desire to disassociate himself from RNS, whom he had supported in the earlier banning of R' Slifkin's books.

Note that R' Slifkin is not disagreeing with Chazal, he's not saying they're wrong in any metaphysical sense, just that they had outdated science, and ruled in accordance with that.

Note further that RYGB also says that contemporary poskim should rule in accord with modern science, in some cases. Where to draw the line? Apparently, where it crosses a line. What line? The line drawn in the sand by loud "gedolim" and their handlers. (in quotes because one never knows what's really from a godol and what from the handler - e.g. the RYSE-Crocs controversy).

RYGB paints himself into a contradictory position: poskim can/should depend on science/secular knowledge, AND poskim who rely on science/secular knowledge where that knowledge is true yet different from that of Chazal, are heretics.

RYGB tries to portay his position as one of respect for Gedolim, using the story of his smicha farher, but even that fails, in that he embraces positions of ziluzul chachomim, like that of RASolo who would have put R' Yitzchak Lampronti into cherem.

RNS demonstrates clearly that the Acharonim had no problem embracing science and its changes since the days of Chazal, or even in their own times, e.g. R' Yonasan Eibeschutz ruling in accord with post-Harvey understandings of the heart and circulation as against the Chacham Tzvi who extensively supported Chazal's understandings of organ function as literally true. He doesn't even seem to have a problem himself with using modern understandings of biology to change psak (not just explain changes in psak, but actually change it).

I think RYGB really gives away the game in comments such as "[the Chasam Sofer used Conservative reasoning in ruling that karpas is celery based on Arabic language] Certainly not! He was using secular wisdom to understand chazal, not to override them," and "[if you have no proper fear of Chazal] you have no business in the world of psak." Either RYGB is completely misreading RNS intentionally, and thus fighting tooth and nail against a strawman for political purposes, or he is truly misunderstanding RNS beyond his evidently superficial reading, which seems unlikely.

RNS' whole purpose appears to be understanding Chazal, rather than overriding them. Others have already long since overridden Chazal on matters dependent on changing understandings of science - R Tendler, the Chasam Sofer, etc. They just don't make it explicit that they're disagreeing with the science of Chazal. They just ignore the history of science, and run roughshod over precedent. That seems to be the position of R' Tendler and, by extension, his late father-in-law. As is psak. RNS is not paskening, he's using evidence of change in our Rabbis' understandings of science, based on the changes in the ongoing history of science, to understand the shifts in their thinking and psak. So RYGB's arguments are not really aimed at RNS, but at a strawman. I don't think RYGB would actually disagree with RNS if he were to take the time to understand him.

Really, most people don't think all that much about history of science. Good history of science writing is often based on the idea of "we would know what they thought when they did it." (Richard Hamming, 1980) The discipline of the history of science has long been developed by amateurs. E.g. Galileo studies, my late aunt's field, was largely developed by Stillman Drake, who started out with several decades as a financial consultant, teaching himself about Galileo. He never took a PhD. Her advisor, a prominent figure in the history of mathematics, did her PhD is in math, albeit a historical survey of modern abstract algebra. (Full disclosure, I minored in Science in Human Affairs, and wrote my bachelor's thesis on "The IBM 650, A Computer in Context", advised by the late Prof. Michael S. Mahoney).

This may be a problem for RNS in being accepted by those who want to be seen supporting Yeshivish positions. He is engaging in intellectual history, and the history of Halakhah is often seen as a Maskilic undertaking (about it, not it.) But who better to write history of halachah than one who has spent his life within its daled amos, and who has been forced by circumstances to take the long view in understanding intellectual shifts?

By raising the issue of "they could say this but we cannot", his banners created a consciousness of shifts in intellectual trends within the Torah world over the millenia of its development. I get the feeling RNS started out writing his animal books in the spirit of "ignore what they used to think, here's a way to think about them for kiruv," much as R' Tendler's approach to brain-death ignores history in accommodating contemporary needs. But in the course of the dispute, he seems to have gained a sense of history. Is it any wonder that he now applies that sense to other disputes in contemporary Orthodoxy? It was not he who started the brain-death dispute, it was an RCA committee report.

To sum up then, from what I can see, R' Tendler (and the other poskim who rule for brain-death rather than heart death) ignore Chazal's history of science, and simply rule in accordance with changes in science and technology, motivated by the need for organ transplantation and Jews not being portrayed as takers but not givers. RYGB pretends that there is no history of science, and that RNS is being disrespectful of his betters by saying they were wrong and paskening against them. On that basis, he disassociates himself from an effigy of RNS. And RNS honestly undertakes an investigation of the history of rabbinic science, explaining the shift in psak, not paskening for anyone.

My Amidah Ia

2010-12-21T13:30:00.000-08:00

The first paragraph of the Amidah, or Shmoneh Esreh, is the most important. Chazal tell us that if we don't have proper kavvanah, intent, while saying this paragraph, the rest of the Amidah is ruined for us. At its least, kavvanah means intending the words and knowing their meanings. So I thought I'd share with you what I've been thinking about while reciting the first paragraph of the Shmoneh Esreh lately. Note, your mileage may vary. And I expect that as I continue to grow and learn more about it, my understanding will change, as will yours. Still, this is where I am at this moment in time (age 47, 2010).

Baruch
Blessed, or (R' Schwab) we join together with:

Atah
You - which establishes our relationship to God as an I-Thou, relating to the Other as a person, implying a certain intimacy, relatability, etc. But:

Adonoy
O God, the Tetragrammaton, the unreachable transcendent God. How does that relate to Atah? There is a dialectic tension set up here, only partially synthesized by:

Eloheinu
Our God, the aspect of God through which we relate, perhaps the immanent God, as the Kabbalists would say, the Ohr Pnimi, the Internal Light, the Divinity that permeates reality. The two, the Transcendent and Immanent God, are of course One, and our relation to Him is through this dialectic tension.

V'elohei Avoteinu
And God of our Fathers. We don't only relate to Him directly, but because of, and in part mediated by, the experiences of our ancestors, particularly the Three Fathers (and fore mothers? not specified, except in certain heterodox rituals, but surely implied).

Elohei Avraham
Elohei Yitzchak
V'elohei Yaakov
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob. Why repeat Elohei for each? The commentators suggest it's that each acknowledged God as individuals, not just as an inheritance from their father. I would go further, noting that each Father had a different experience of God, yet they all related to the One God.

Avraham discovered God, through an "intellective" process, and inspired by that, spread God's word and goodness to all around him, eventually converting 318 of his soldiers/retainers.

Yitzchak experienced God through being the sacrificial victim, saved at the last minute by that God - so he experienced the fear of God innately, both physical fear of death in a Godly act, and the spiritual "yirah me'ahavah", the fear of God knowing that on Him hangs one's life, and one then loves God who sustains and saves his life (viz. R. Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev on Vayosha').

Yaakov was the wanderer. Perhaps his essence was to be a "simple man, a dweller in tents", but he was forced by circumstance to wander, spending 22 years with Lavan, and decades more in Egypt at the end of his life, praying to God at each cusp of his life to help him deal with all difficulties. Yaakov's God is perhaps closest to most of us, as we are in exile, and need the aid of the Deus Absconditus, not knowing if we deserve it or even can get it at all.

(continued later)

The Failure of the Contemporary Yeshivot

2010-12-21T11:26:00.000-08:00

The contemporary yeshiva structure, with its thousands of young men sitting and learning for years, is a tremendous thing. It has massively increased the number of men learning seriously, and the amount of Torah studied overall. Since Torah is the heart and soul of Judaism, this is all to the good. But what was the goal of such mass learning, unprecedented in Jewish history?

It should be clear by now that R' Dessler's advice, which is the foundation of the modern movement for everyone to sit & learn all day, was empirically wrong. He advised, to replace the gedolim lost in the War, that we throw a thousand into the mill of the yeshiva, in hopes of producing one godol, and if we lose a few along the way, the price is worth it.

The problem is, gedolim are not trained by mass yeshiva learning. That may be how to start out, but the potential of true gedolim is generally recognized at an early age, and they are pulled out of the yeshiva and given private tutelage, to maximize their potential.

We see this today. We have no gedolim like the prewar Gedolim, no real Yiftach in our generation as it were. Not in any school of thought. We have ideologues, we have partisans, we have all kinds of hacks, but no real Gedolim who are looked to by all branches of Orthodoxy.

It sounds like R' Aharon Kotler, in calling Lakewood a "sh'at hadechak", a temporary measure, understood that R' Dessler's advice was meant to be temporary, an experiment, to remedy a one-time loss. But by now, too many interests are entrenched for the Charedim to find a better, more productive way in both Torah and communal life. Also, the desire to avoid army service and its corrupting social influence, for many Chareidim, means that they *have* to take the exemptions for lerners.

It will take massive social changes to undo this system, find a way for more than a few Chareidim to serve in the IDF or National Service, return Chareidim to the workforce (which is what Chasidism was meant to help - the working Jew, the hoi polloi - while learning is a goal, all-day learning is not necessarily for everyone) so that they can support the next generation of Chareidim in better than abject poverty, and recognize true genius and support it to create the next generation of gedolim.

The Rambam in Yedid Nefesh

2010-12-20T13:10:00.000-08:00

Something occurred to me during Frinite davening. We say, in Yedid Nefesh, az titchazek vetitrapei, then she will be strengthened and healed. So, Healing suggests Doctors, which suggests the Doctor (no, not that Doctor), Rambam, the most famous Jewish doctor before My Son the Doctor. But is it really referencing the prime Rationalist in a Kabbalistic poem?

Well, the words certainly suggest it. Titchazek, suggests the Yad ha Chazakah, the Rambam's primary legal opus, so called in part because the gematria of Yad matches the 14 books of the work. 14, of course, is the Rambam's magic number. Many of his works contain 14s: the aforementioned legal code, 14 chapters in the Work of Logic, 14 categories of commands in the Guide for the Perplexed, etc. The most likely reason for this is that Rambam was born on 14 Nissan, Erev Pesach, much like my wife's chavrusa, who thus never had birthday parties, but I digress.

But we need some stronger proof. So take the other word, Vetit'rapei, And she shall be healed. The gematria of Vetitrapei is 1087. Count it up, you'll see. Now, the Bach's BWV 1087 is a brief set of short pieces, written highly encoded on one sheet of paper, called the Vierzehn Kanon, or 14 Canons, a Canon being a contrapuntal work of less complexity than a Fugue. The canons are based on the theme of the Goldberg Variations - you know, Dum dum dum dum dum da dum dum. So, now we see it all. 14 canons, which is Rambam's magic number, based on a theme with one of the most stereotypical Jewish names, Goldberg, whose Bach-Werke Verseichnis number is the gematria of a medical word, tells us clearly that R' Azikri, the author of the Sefer Chareidim, and the author of the Yedid Nefesh, wanted us to think about the Rambam at that point, perhaps that his mind should be strengthened to the point where he could accept the mystical tradition which was invented a hundred years later.

Lubavitcher Taqiyya?

2010-11-24T13:08:00.000-08:00

I’ve had this exchange recently on Harry Maryles’ blog. thanbo is me, Lubavitcher and Chareidi are handles chosen by the respective posters. I’ve suspected for years that some Lubavitchers felt free to dissemble about their faith in the Rebbe as Moshiach, and the extent of that faith, because of the consistent difference in perception between insiders, who say the Moshiach problem isn’t that widespread, and outsiders, who observe that most Lubavitchers they meet seem to be Messianists. I hadn’t actually encountered a concrete example of this disconnect between claim and reality until now, when a self-proclaimed Lubavitcher lied to my screen about a concept that is, while unfamiliar to many outside of Chabad, strongly rooted in Chabad and traditional [Chazal’s] texts. This concept, as we see below, is central to the concept of Rebbe as Moshiach of the generation, and has several counterintuitive implications for Jewish thought.

Lubavitcher:

Chareidi,

That is unfortuantely an absolute lie. Who would dare compare the Rebbe to the Baal Shem Tov or chas vchalila Moshe Rabbeinu himself? No one in their right mind would make that absurd jump. Naturally we feel the most intense closeness to Nasi Doreinu but again not to such an insane degree. We don't compare leaders. Period.

And later:

No Jew in their right mind would compare the Rebbe to either the Baal Shem Tov or Moshe Rabbeinu. Such a comparison has no basis in Torah. Period. We do not compare leaders. The Rebbe is the Nasi, with all the current implications of that word. No more and no less.

thanbo:

Of course you don't compare leaders. Because the Rebbe is the greatest leader that ever lived. [where most Orthodox Jews would hold that Moshe Rabbeinu was the greatest leader that ever lived, under the concept of Yeridas haDoros, “descent of the generations.” -jjb] It is not a lie to say that Chabad believes in an ascent of generations where everyone else in Orthodoxy believes in a descent of generations, because Chabad has this concept of "yechida klollis".

Yechida is the highest component of a human soul (narancha"i), and is possessed by great leaders. The nosi hador, the prince of the generation, has what is called a "yechida klollis", a collective soul, which encompasses the souls of every Jew in their generation. Moshe Rabbenu was the yechida klollis of the dor hamidbar. [generation of the Desert –jjb] Yehoshua was the next yechida klollis, and since he was alive when Moshe was alive, his soul encompassed Moshe's soul, and therefore was greater than Moshe's soul. This continued down the generations, such that the Mezritcher Maggid's soul encompassed the Baal Shem Tov's soul, etc., down to the last L. Rebbe, whose soul encompassed every Jew in our generation, as well as the souls of all the leaders who came before him.

So the Rebbe is the greatest single soul who ever lived. And in calling this "an absolute lie", you're if not actually lying yourself, at least engaging in the standard Chabad tactic of diverting attention from the issue at hand, by refuting a side question.

It's also sometimes called neshomo klolis, e.g
http://www.chabad.info/chabadpedia/index.php?title=%D7%90%D7%93%D7%9E%D7%95%22%D7%A8
See also the L Rebbe's sicha of Vayera 5752
A similar idea is present at Zohar II 47a, if not the actual term and its implications.

Lubavitcher:

On the off chance that you were actually being sincere, I followed up on the sicha you cited. Unsurprisingly there's no mention at all of any of this.

Why did I suspect you were being insincere, aside from your condescending tone? Because I've heard bfairush the exact opposite in shiurim on the history of the Rebbeim. We absolutely believe in yeridas hadoros.

I can't and am not interested in looking at Zohar. And if you're posting here, I would posit that neither can you. And I didn't bother looking at Chabad.info because frankly I don't care much for their opinion.

thanbo:

>Why did I suspect you were being insincere...?

Because if I were sincere, which I was, I would be pointing out a central idea in Lubavitch which is embarrassing to state in front of regular Orthodox Jews, inasmuch as it contradicts the standard idea of Yeridas haDoros. Which in fact I did.

But eppur si muove, [Galileo’s alleged last words – “and yet it moves”, referring to the Earth’s orbit around the Sun rather than vice versa –jjb] buddy boy, much as some Lubavitcher liars may like to distract us with falsehoods.

See section 14, footnote 127, in the sicha [Chassidic talk, less mystical/deep than a maamar –jjb] of Vayera 5752.

http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=15971&st=&pgnum=103

What's most impressive is how you can blatantly lie about the sichos of your own Rebbe, in order to deny principles of your own movement's belief system.

PS, I have two copies of the Zohar, one contemporary, one antique. And do read it on occasion. Not that I understand it all that well yet.

See here for an insider's view of neshomo klolis and its importance, with sources in the Zohar and Midrashim:

http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol07/v07n098.shtml#16

Here's the Zohar in question:

ויאמר משה אל העם אל תיראו התיצבו וראו את ישועת יהו"ה, אמר רבי שמעון, זכאה חולקיהון דישראל דהא רעיא כמשה אזיל בגווייהו, כתיב (שם סג יא) ויזכור ימי עולם משה עמו, ויזכור ימי עולם, דא קודשא בריך הוא, משה עמו, (מכאן אוליפנא) שקיל הוה משה ככל ישראל, ואוליפנא מהא, כי רעיא דעמא הוא ממש עמא כלהו, אי איהו זכי, עמא כלהו זכאין, ואי איהו לא זכי, עמא כלהו לא זכאן ואתענשו בגיניה, והא אוקמוה. התיצבו וראו, לית לכו לאגחא קרבא, דהא קודשא בריך הוא יגיח קרבא בגיניכון, כמה דאת אמר יהו"ה ילחם לכם ואתם תחרישון, תא חזי, ההוא ליליא כנש קודשא בריך הוא לפמליא דיליה ודאין דינייהו דישראל, ואלמלא דאקדימו אבהן עלייהו דישראל, לא אשתזיבו מן דינא, רבי יהודה אמר, זכותא דיעקב אגין עלייהו דישראל, הדא הוא דכתיב (תהלים קכד א) לולי יהו"ה שהיה לנו יאמר נא ישראל, ישראל סבא:

[bold text: For the shepherd of the nation is necessarily the entirety of the nation, if he is worthy, they are all worthy, and if he is not worthy, the whole nation is not worthy, and will be punished for his sake. -jjb]

For a Hebrew translation see here at the bottom:

http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=3116&st=&pgnum=44

Now who's the liar and insincere?

thanbo (conclusion from another thread):

[Harry Maryles wrote:]

What does all this mean? I think it means that Meshichism is still a problem despite all their protestations to the contrary – no matter what the breakdown is or what the percentages are of each.

I think you're right. Look at my argument with commenter "Lubavitcher" [above]. "Lubavitcher" apparently felt compelled to falsify the textual record of the Rebbe's own statements, and to dismiss the Zohar as a source, to cover up an idea that is clearly central to the Rebbe's concept of what a Rebbe/Moshiach is (the sichos of 5751/5752, the last year and a half of his compos life, focussed strongly on the idea of Moshiach), an idea which I learned about from a major Rav who is meyuchas to Lubavitch, and which is clearly sourced in the Midrashim and the Zohar.

So it would seem, that there is permission, if not an actual mandate, to hide the truth about Lubavitch messianism. IOW, you can't necessarily believe what they tell you about "Oh, I don't believe in that stuff". They may well, but because it's off-putting to other Jews, they may feel compelled to go so far as to lie about it. The Shi'i Muslims have a word for this: Taqiyya.

Kaplan, Cohen and the JC

2010-11-03T15:07:00.000-07:00

This I got from Jeffrey Gurock's book "A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community".

R Mordechai Menachem Kaplan (RMMK) graduated the Seminary in 1902, the last year it was Orthodox, along with my great-aunt's then-future brother-in-law, R Israel Goldfarb. Since the Seminary didn't ordain at the time, Kaplan went to Europe to get smicha from R YY Reines, the head of Mizrachi, and a friend of his father. He took a post as "minister" (upgrading to "rabbi" after he got smicha) at KJ on the East Side, later working with the Ramaz (for whom the school was named in 1937) as #2 rabbi. In 1910, Kaplan started writing in his diaries, and I think in some articles, his inklings of pantheism.

Kaplan and my great-grandfather's brother, coat manufacturer and philanthropist (20 years president of the Beth Israel Hospital) Joseph H. Cohen left KJ about 1916 to set up a shul for the growing contingent of West Siders who were shlepping across the park to KJ because there wasn't much else yet. They had this idea of a Jewish Center, a place where Jews would do their recreation in a Jewish context, rather than among non-Jews at the park or the Y, as a way of keeping Jews interested in Judaism (yes they were into Kiruv back then too). RMMK had been involved with an early Kiruv group for years, the Jewish Endeavour Society. Cohen didn't mind Kaplan's writings, as long as he didn't bring them to the pulpit. That synagogue was The Jewish Center on 86th Street in New York.

In 1918 Cohen's brother (my great-grandfather) Louis founded the Brooklyn Jewish Center, the second such "shul with a pool", which, unlike too many Brooklyn synagogues, is still a Jewish institution. It's now the Chabad yeshiva Oholei Torah/Oholei Menachem. The BJC was set up with the idea of having a school, a big Talmud Torah and later a day school, so they didn't have to do too much to convert it.

By 1922, Kaplan couldn't keep his ideas out of the pulpit, and Cohen turned on him. He called a vote of the board to toss him out, lost the vote by a narrow margin, but Kaplan didn't want to stay where he wasn't wanted, and left to set up his own shul up the street, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the Reconstructionist ur-Schule.

In 1927, the Reform financiers who were backing both JTS and RIETS started to wonder why they had to support two Orthodox institutions. They started to work for a merger of the two yeshivot. It came to a vote of boards of the institutions. Joseph H. Cohen was a member of the inner board at RIETS at the time, and he put his foot down - he knew Kaplan, and any institution which employs Kaplan cannot merge with the Yeshiva.

So there you have it. In a small, non-public way, my family made a major impact on the development of Orthodoxy in America.

Electoral Illogic

2010-11-03T04:34:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to the Republican Party for retaking the House of Representatives. And congratulations to the Obama Administration for halting, if not yet repairing, the downward slide in the nation's economy and reputation in the world.

The NY Times on challenges facing John Boehner as incoming Speaker of the House:

His promises on behalf of the new House majority — reducing the size of government, creating jobs and fundamentally altering the way the Congress conducts its business — are mostly as lofty as they are unspecific, and his efforts to legislate them into reality must be done with ambitious upstarts within his own party and a fresh crop of Tea Partiers, some of whom seem to believe that it is they, not he, now running the show.
The demands on Mr. Boehner from voters are many and not all consistent. There is a craving, polling shows, to see the current system upended, but preferably without gridlock or rancor. Voters want federal spending curtailed, but jealously guard costly entitlements. They angrily reject what is, but have no clearly articulated vision for what should be.
Indeed, Mr. Boehner and his party were delivered no clear mandate from voters, who, polls suggested, were rejecting a policy agenda more than they were rallying around one. One demand resonated loudly: the reduction of federal spending immediately, a daunting goal. Yet, among the first things that Mr. Boehner has said he will seek to accomplish are reversing cuts to the Medicare Bush-era tax cuts, steps that are hard to reconcile with a commitment to reining in the national debt.

But if you think about it, which evidently the voters did not in general, these are conflicting promises and desires. Cutting federal spending and reducing the size of government sound nice, until you realize that that means laying off government workers, thus ending government jobs, as well as reducing investment in private enterprise which would have created private-sector jobs. So if they live up to that promise, watch the jobs begin to disappear like they did in 2008 and early 2009. The current administration's spending stabilized unemployment at 9.6%, instead of continuing to fall to Great Depression levels.

Direct promises to increase Medicare reimbursments, and continue the Bush-era tax cuts (on top of the Obama tax cuts, which were real, if not sufficiently publicized - or don't you notice that your paycheck has you taking home more than you were a few years back, even though you might not have had a raise in several years?) mean greater spending and greater deficits - because you can't spend more money, and reduce tax revenue, without the money coming from somewhere, namely, loans to the gov't that make up the deficit.

Even if today's Republicans will be different than the Bush Republicans, with no requirement of personal loyalty to Bush/Cheney, and no wars of aggression being promoted from the White House, the Republicans will be forced into "business as usual". The same thing happens with every Israeli prime minister since Oslo. We watched candidate after candidate promote himself by opposing the Oslo accords and their aftermaths, but once in office, one could not actually stop the implementation of the Oslo accords.

Just as there wasn't a major change from "business as usual" when the Democrats took Congress in 2008, there won't be a major change now. The Democrats (Wussycrats in Harold Feld's term) still felt that any legislative change must be begged as a favor from the Republicans, even if the Republicans were the minority party. And now we'll continue that, as no party has the 60 votes to override threatened filibusters.

Change we can believe in, is pretty minor change.

Das Buch Bresith

2010-10-31T18:34:00.000-07:00

Here's something I've long found interesting. The Morgan Library has recently put its copy of the Gutenberg Bible, Old Testament, online. Here's the beginning of Genesis:

Beautiful illumination, the text beginning A principio creavit deus (note, no capital on Deus, much like German translations of machzorim that don't capitalize gott).

But it's the rubric (the handwritten introductory line in red ink - red in Latin is rub-, like ruby, or bilirubin - hence "rubrics" are written in red ink) that's really interesting. I first noticed this when in Washington I bought a facsimile (for a dollar) of the first page of the Library of Congress' Gutenberg Bible, mostly to get change for the Metro (no change without purchase, doncha know). Here's the rubric enlarged:

Translated, that's "Beginning of the book Breshith, which we call Genesis." So the bookmakers in Germany, printing in Latin, knew the Hebrew name and first word of the book of Genesis, and thought that its proper name.

Similarly here, at the beginning of Numbers, "Expl' liber levitice Incipit vaiedaber.i.ib' nui' ". End of the book of Leviticus, Beginning of Vayedaber or Book of Numbers.

And so on through the Bible.

Interesting, no? Hebrew survivals in the first German production of the Latin Vulgate, long before the rise of Christian Hebraism among Germans in the 1600s with Buxtorff, Leusden, Knorr von Rosenroth, and others. There was some Hebraism among the English in the 1500s; Henry VIII was rumored to have read the Talmud.

Newly scanned books

2010-10-27T16:37:00.000-07:00

Looking through the latest 730-book list from Hebrewbooks.org, a few caught my eye:

A 1510 Halichos Olam - I have a bit of a thing about klalim books, attempts to systematize the Gemara's internal rules.
The Kaufmann Codex of the Mishnah, apparently the oldest & best of the three known complete mss. of the Mishnah, dating from the 10th-11th century.
Another Klalim book, this one from the Mechaber, R' Joseph Caro: Kelalei HaTalmud, this one printed in Salonika in 1598.
The first edition of Rambam's "Milot haHigayon," Venice, 1550. I have a copy of the 2nd edition, Cremona 1566, which got me into the collecting of old seforim. I bought it at the first Kestenbaum auction; they just held their 49th today. I've occasionally thought about writing a translation of this extremely boring book. I have now several Hebrew editions, as well as copies of two mss. (thanks to the JNUL online exhibit of The Great Eagle), including R' Kafih's translation with the original Arabic (not that I can read Arabic). R' Kafih's edition includes several commentaries, including that of the un-expanded 'RM"D', which Kafih calls "the best commentary". RMD is, of course, R' Moshe of Dessau, called Mendelssohn. I'm sure he just didn't want to alienate frummer purchasers of his book.
Latin translations of Tractates Middoth and Rosh Hashanah from 1630 and 1645.
Two parts (vayikra & shmot) of the first edition of the Zohar, Mantua 1558. There are actually two First editions, both in the same year, one in plain quarto pages like our modern editions, one in folio in double columns, printed in Cremona. Yes, a century before Cremona became the greatest center of violin-making (Stradivari, Guarneri, etc.) it was a center of Jewish printing.. But the Jewish printers were chased out in the 1560s, just as Amati was setting up his first violin shop. I have a copy of the last double-column Zohar printed, from Sulzbach in 1685; it has marginal notes linking it to the by-then standard pagination of the 3-volume version.
The early editions of Shu"t haRema which contain the controversial Teshuvah 124, on whether we can trust someone who has a mistaken belief that wine of non-Jews is kosher.
A Soncino Tr. Megillah, printed at Pesaro, 1516. Note the woodcut frame on the title page. It was originally carved for Gershom Soncino's edition of Decachordum Christianum, printed 1507. He reused the frame pieces for many books, getting more and more worn over the years, finally being used in Constantinople in the 1548, by Moses Parnas. Gershom had moved to Constantinople in 1530, died in 1533 leaving the business to his son Eliezer, and on Eliezer's death in 1547, it passed to his partner Parnas. The woodcuts stayed in use for all those forty years. Gershom Soncino is responsible for the Tosfos that we have in our modern Talmuds - he claimed to have been related to the Tosfos of Touques, and used their collection in his Talmuds. Tosfos haRosh may be clearer, but Tosfos of Touques got in by nepotism, and standardized.

WotW: Reform women's group

2010-10-20T16:16:00.000-07:00

I received an announcement of the formation of "Rabbis in support of the Women of the Wall." It's supposedly interdenominational - including rabbis of Ortho, Cons, Reform and Recon.

Um, yeah. Looking up Rabbi David Kalb, the one O rabbi, his smicha is private not institutional (i.e. not sufficient to join the RCA - you need one recognized institution or two private smichas). He's also associated with the lefty-est institutions within Mod-O. How many O rabbis, even Mod-O rabbis, are going to want to join with an overwhelmingly Reform/Recon group to support a Reform women's group?

I think it reflects reality: WotW is not really interested in appealing to Orthodox women any more, or to Orthodox institutions. It's run by a Reform activist, after all. Its chair, Anat Hoffman, is the head of the Reform lobby in Israel.

A Carlebach Slichos?

2010-09-07T08:27:00.000-07:00

I went away with a nice group of people this past weekend to a retreat center, not for a retreat per se, but for a nice weekend in the country. The food was good, the davening good, the environment and cultural opportunities wide, and the people nice for the most part. We went to see a Shakespeare play an hour away. I might have liked to go see a chamber group nearby, but as I'm Mr Mourner this year, I can't go to concerts, or so it seems.

"Now, I don't want to go off onto a rant here" (tm), but the First Slichos was a miracle of mis~~under~~estimation.

The chazan announced it would be a mix of Carlebach and traditional. So far, so good. This group likes (a modicum of) Carlebach tunes, and the gabbai (who I think had planned this) is a big fan. The rabbi had concluded his speech at the campfire beforehand, with a wish that we all go with joy into the Selichos, which should be said out of joy. Huh? Pleas for forgiveness and an answer to our prayers are joyous? Um, OK.

The (kiruv-professional guest) rabbi's little talks until that point, during davening & whatnot, had been a bit puerile, as if he were talking to a kiruv shabbaton of teens & twenties, rather than a collection of 30s-50s adults, either singles or families, already established in O communities. But OK, he's out of his element, that's what he's used to saying, so that's how he conducts himself.

The first danger sign was in Ashrei, when the rabbi took out the guitar and started playing along with the group-sing of Ashrei. At which point Debbie stomped out of the guitar mass, as she called it (she taught in a Catholic school for a year). I was thinking - wait - there are 3-4 aveilim here among the men, and I don't know if any among the women, and you're... playing guitar? to be simchadig? at ... slichos? You're forcing us to choose between saying slichos with a minyan, and keeping to our mourning regulations. And there isn't another minyan for 40 miles, so there's no real choice. Sigh. OK.

Kaddish to another Carlebach tune, verses, concluding with more Carlebach for Haneshamah Lach, and we come to the first piyut. It's a cheery one, full of death and gloom, how they kill us in every generation, and the remnant left is full of sin, how can we carry on, when will You save us, etc. So of course, it gets a cheery Carlebach tune, I think one of the Lecha Dodi's. He tries for majestic, by slowing it down at the beginning, which sorta works, but speeds up after a couple of lines, and we're singing Yay, yay, gloom and doom, yippee. more or less. This leads to more grumbling. I start walking around, looking at the other people davening, is anyone else having this big negative reaction?

He does some Carlebach tunes for the Thirteen Attributes intro (You who taught us the covenant of Thirteen,...), but comes to some approximation of the traditional tune for the actual Attributes. Carlebach for some of the shorter verses passages, falling into the common Carlebach failing of the tune ends here, but it's the middle of a sentence or even of a phrase, but so what, this is when the tune ends and we have to start the next verse-tune in the middle of a sentence.

Walking around, and muttering to a neighbor from my home shul, this just doesn't seem right, it's falling into all the complaints I hear about Carlebach - it's shlepped out too long; if the words don't fit the tune phrasing, the words lose out; and the tune doesn't bear any relationship to the words.

By the time we got into the second piyut, I could see that almost none of the men were getting into this guitar mass, the other mourners were annoyed by the guitar, people weren't singing along (except for some of the women who were getting into it more). Several of us went stomping up to the gabbai, to make it clear that we found the Carlebach stuff distracting, and the gabbi, the chazan & the rabbi quickly tried to shift to traditional more-mumbly tunes. Of course, the chazan was flustered by the shift, he had clearly prepared hard for this, and had trouble reorienting his head and voice into the traditional tunes. If it were me, being forced to change gears like that, I probably would have thrown a fit, and stomped out. He handled it with remarkable grace.

We went along like that for a while, through the pizmon which got a Carlebach tune without guitar, but one which fit reasonably well. Zechor rachamecha, more mumbling through verses, then we come to Shma Koleinu. The rabbi introduced it as a time to be thankful for the good in our lives, for what God has given us in the past year. This further dented my impression of the rabbi's understanding of prayer. Shma Koleinu is a desperate cry for help, for Divine aid, mercy, energy. Do not send us away in old age, do not take away your Holy spirit, hear our cries. Long aneinu paragraphs, one with a tune and the guitar, leading into prostration and the end.

By the end, I was thinking of the two leaders as "the comedy duo of the rabbi and the chazan."

At least it was over about 2:00, having started about 12:45. A quick workmanlike version takes about 0:45, and our local baal tefillah still manages to inspire, by choosing appropriate tunes, and understanding what he's saying.

The next morning, I apologized to the chazan for the congregation's having pushed him into changing gears, forcing him to get flustered. He responded that "in Riverdale, you go, you expect the Carlebach slichos to take 2:15 hours, elsewhere it takes 1:15". Yes, but in Riverdale or most communities where you have the choice to go to a Carlebach minyan, you also have the choice to go elsewhere. Here, it was the only game in town. And musical accompaniment at an Orthodox service, while not forbidden by any means, is definitely out of the ordinary.

It seems to me, that Carlebach wrote hundreds if not thousands of tunes, most pretty simple, and in many different moods. It shouldn't be impossible to select tunes that actually follow the mood of the words, to find ways to incorporate uneven verses into a rhythmic tune, etc. The traditional tunes usually manage it.

On the other hand, if there is one part of the year whose moods are evoked by the use of traditional (Misinai, they are called, if not literally from much earlier than the 1300s) tunes, it is the High Holidays. There is a positive value to using (mostly) traditional tunes for the Yamim Nora'im. It's not just a default position.

I was just so furious during and after the service, that they had made a mockery out of the start of the liturgical teshuvah season. They seemed to ignore the principles of my teachers which guide my approach to leading prayers:

1) from Rabbi H. Lookstein from his father, "Interpret the words." The tune must amplify the meaning of the prayer, not ignore it.

2) from Cantor Goffin, "My guideline is MODE, MOOD, & MIN HAKODESH."

How am I led to greater teshuva by starting out mad at the liturgical leaders, who only thought they were doing a nice thing?

Child prodigy

2010-08-10T11:05:00.001-07:00

The Jerusalem Post reports that a 14-year-old was sitting for the Rabbinate exams, but his results would not be tallied or graded - IOW, they would not allow a potentially qualified minor to actually attain Smicha.

Where does this fear of a young rabbi come from? Well, I wonder. Who else in recent history was ordained young-ish? R' Moshe Cordovero, contemporary of the Ari, at 16 was given R' Yaakov Beirav's revived Mosaic Semicha. Rav Goren, at 16. yblcht"a R' David Weiss-Halivni, at 15 in Sighet before the War. That's all I can find/think of on a quick scan, and both are/were religio-politically, um, offbeat.

Although, being a prodigy is not the worst thing in the world. Take my late Dad, for one. He was admitted to Juilliard (the music conservatory) at age 15 in 1936, he went through the regular and graduate programs in 3 years (they didn't have the Pre-college Program yet), and became, at 19, the 20th century's youngest principal trumpet in a major orchestra. He also married twice, happily, raised children and grandchildren, had a long musical career, and died two months ago at 88, content with his life.

So the Rabbinate should have given this boy his chance to attain ordination at 14, and help him to grow while remaining on the straight and narrow.

Is Moshiach Always Shayech [relevant]?

2010-07-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

I've been davening in a Nusach-Sfard (chasidic-style) shtible lately, because it has a morning minyan at a convenient time (7:45) without another mourner competing for leading the prayers.

I was chatting with the gabbai about my confusion between the Nusach Ashkenaz and Nusach Sfard texts, that Nusach Sfard has a lot of extra words stuck in. He commented that he once said the extra phrase in Kaddish, "Vayatzmach Purkanei Vikareiv Meshicheih" (his redemption will flower and his Messiah will draw near) at a Nusach Ashkenaz place, and they came down on him hard for it*.

At any rate, the gabbai was puzzled, who wouldn't want to invoke the Final Redemption during Kaddish?

I just came up with an answer. Look at the Kaddish. Aside from the phrase in question, it's all about God's existence, kingship, praiseworthiness, and relationship with Israel. Basically, expanding on "Baruch atah H' Elokeinu melech haolam." It's said by mourners largely as a defiant expression of their continuing belief in God in the face of ultimate tragedy, the destruction of one of the pillars of their personal worldview - one's parent.

So my return question is - while we're proclaiming the greatness of God, how is mentioning an earthly king appropriate?

______
* They may have feared he was a Lubavitcher, many of whom practice what I call "cultural imperialism" - they will insist on praying their nusach when leading prayers in a non-Lubavitch synagogue. Actually, I find this is mostly the position of ignorant lay Lubavitchers, while trained Lubavitch cantors who know the halacha will use the local nusach.

JOFA and Anat Hoffman

2010-07-19T13:24:00.000-07:00

I know, people will come down on me for fomenting internecine strife on Erev Tisha B'Av, but something must be said.

I just received an email from the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, whose conferences I have attended, and which I have supported financially for many years (if only a small annual donation). Last week, Anat Hoffman, chairperson of the Women of the Wall, (hereinafter WotW) was arrested at the Kotel for carrying a Sefer Torah. It is hard to comprehend why she would be arrested, Except, of course, that visibly carrying a Sefer Torah is usually a precursor to leining from the Torah, an action from which WotW was enjoined in 2003 by Israel's High Court. Should they wish to lein, the Court designated other nearby areas of the Kotel for them, which they do not prefer, but have used for some years. Still, there is nothing technically illegal or un-halachic with a woman carrying a Sefer Torah, and she should not have been arrested for simply doing so.

However, what bothers me, is Ms Hoffman's involvement in Women of the Wall, and JOFA's continued support of them.

Why on earth should I, as an Orthodox Jew, want to support/stand in solidarity with someone whose prominence in WotW, undermines the entire enterprise of Orthodox Women's Tefillah Groups?

WotW is linked to the Women's Tefillah Movement in both the popular imagination and through direct support by numerous leaders of JOFA/WTN. That would be all well and good if the WotW were not chaired by Anat Hoffman, the director of the Israel lobbying arm of the Reform Movement, the Israel Religious Action Center.

JOFA decisively rejected Alice Shalvi when she defected to the Conservative movement, only days or weeks before she was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at one of the International JOFA Conferences. In doing so, they followed the principle laid down by the Rav YD Soloveitchik zt"l, that while cooperation with other denominations was OK for social/communal issues, cooperation on religious issues was impossible, because the different denominations don't speak the same language, don't assign the same meanings to key Torah words, do not speak in the same universe of discourse.

The email includes a quote from a supportive rabbi:

As Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, Rabbi of Ohev Sholom - The National Synagogue, wrote in an email to his congregants:

"Orthodox Jewish law does not prohibit women from carrying a Torah scroll and leading rabbis have endorsed the practice in the past, albeit in a different setting. (For example, in 1972 Rabbi Shlomo Riskin received support from both the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson and Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik when he allowed women in his congregation, Lincoln Square Synagogue, to dance with the Torah scroll on Simchat Torah.) Thus, Anat Hoffman was not in violation of Jewish law. We would not tolerate the arrest of a Jew, man or woman, for carrying a Torah (especially when seeking to participate in a prayer service) in any other country, so we should not stand silent when Israel does so."

R' Herzfeld, on the other hand, as quoted above, seems to cynically invoke the Rav, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and yblcht"a R' Riskin as justification to support Ms. Hoffman. Cynical, because neither the Rav nor the Rebbe would have stood for interdenominational religious cooperation, such as occurs in the WotW. I don't think R' Riskin would be in favor of WotW and Ms. Hoffman's involvement either.

I think it behooves the JOFA to ignore the whole incident, and to sever ties with Women of the Wall as long as their leadership includes activist members of heterodox denominations.

What's a Migrash? I can't tell you, ha ha ha...

2010-07-12T10:54:00.000-07:00

Mar Yaakov haMizrachi, Esq, gave a fascinating talk at Seudah Shlishit this week in Silver Spring, on the Migrash (open space) around the Levite cities, and what that tells us about the Torah's view of cities.

I also gave a talk about migrash at Shaleshudis, but it was not so involved, mostly explaining Shadal's (Samuel David Luzzatto, mid-19th century) attempt to understand what the Migrash was, somewhat textualist.

I recently acquired a Mendelssohn Bamidbar, pub. Wien, 1846, which came with Shadal in the back. So I was looking through it and came across his comments on 35:4-5, the migrash around the Levite cities - is it 1000 or 2000 amot?

He starts out with a long harangue about anyone who thinks it's an example of scribal error for lower criticism has rocks in their head (reikei moach).

Shadal even quotes from a "de Rossi" in Latin to demonstrate that editors tend to smooth out inconsistencies, rather than introduce them, although the online version doesn't have the Latin passage. Ah, this must the Christian Hebraist Bernardo de Rossi from the intro to his "Variae lectionis." He also quotes a couple of other Christian commentators who attempt to reconcile the 1000 vs. 2000 apparent contradiction.

To summarize,

Rashi said that it was a Migrash of 2000 cubits = 1000 empty + 1000 for crops. Based on a braita in B. Eruvin 56b.
Ramban, attempting to work out a pshat directly from the text, says the city is 1000 square and the migrash fills out to the edges of a 2000x2000 square, so the migrash itself is only 500 cubits wide.
Rambam says 2000+1000=3000, based on an alternate version of the braita quoted in M. Sota 26b.
Shadal says that his opinion is most like Rashi, in that the migrash was 2000 amot wide, with 1000 inside the city wall, and 1000 more outside, but none of it was to be used for crops, only for grazing and storage, based on historic Roman parallels in city planning. E.g. Romulus laid out a "Pomerium" surrounding Rome, partly inside and partly outside the city walls. (Is Pomerium an orchard?)

Shadal proceeds to critique all the other opinions - if the migrash is supposed to be 1000 outside the "kir" of the city, Ramban's solution doesn't work, it's only 500 wide. And are the cities really limited to 1000 cubits square? Included among the cities are the capitals of Sihon and Og, surely they were more than 5 Flatbush short blocks on a side?

Also, "kir" never means "center", only "wall" - so another interpretation which posits a square 2000 on a side centered on the center of the city, such that the migrash extends 1000 from the center to the limit, doesn't work either.

Rashi's doesn't work because it doesn't agree with historical parallels. Rambam's doesn't work because it's based on a literal reading of what is clearly an abbreviation (in the mishnah in Sota) of the longer baraita in Eruvin.

So, apparently for Shadal, textual criticism is dangerous when applied to Torah (although he himself applied it to Neviim and Ketuvim), but not historical consideration of realia.

A PDF of Rashi's, Mendelssohn's and Shadal's comments is here.

A Rav of Principle

2010-06-16T04:10:00.000-07:00

Note from a neighbor:

This morning at Rabbi ____'s Shul, at __address__, a man walked in for shacharis wearing a kippa with the words; 'yechi adoneinu...' on it. Being that it is 'gimmel Tammuz,' he may or may not have been making a statement. After all, there is a Chabad practically across the street. Rabbi ____ had him ESCORTED OUT OF THE SHUL! Then, after davening, the Rabbi made a statement. Seeing that there hadbeen a little tumult, he said the following; "I don't care if there are 10,000 of them or 1 of them." This is "my Beis Midrash" and i won't have them here. It's "APIKORES"! (HERESY) He then went on to quote a Rambam about not including apikorsim in a minyan.

I'm not offering an opinion, b/c I'm not sure what I think. I do know that another rav of my acquaintance, who used to run a Daf Yomi minyan in a Chabad shul in another city, would not give an aliyah to an adult with a Yechi yarmulke. Kids wearing them, it's what's "cool" or what their friends are doing. Adults wearing them are making a theological statement. He's no longer in that city, BTW.

Remarks on Dad, hareini kaparat mishcavo, 25 July 1921 – 8 June 2010

2010-06-13T11:14:00.000-07:00

What can I say? I’ve wondered for years what I would say when the time came, but this bit gave me a starting point. I’ve been participating in a Mussar group through the AishDas society, where we work as a group, on conference calls, on various behavioral issues. Recently, we have been reading some introductory material we should have done a year ago. The current bit tells us we should formulate an image of our ideal person, the goal towards which our behavioral improvements would grow.

The more I think about it, the qualities of my ideal person are Dad’s – what I always envied him for

I’ve been to plenty of hespedim which began with a disclaimer, such as “it’s isru chag, we don’t say hesped, but the family would like to say a few words.” So I’ll make a disclaimer – I know a mourner isn’t supposed to be involved in Torah learning, but this passage from Pirkei Avot really encapsulates what I admired about Dad.

Avos 4:1. I’m going to reshuffle this a bit, for rhetorical effect

Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? He who learns from all men. Dad’s formal education may have been a bit patchy, but he was brilliant, and always willing to learn new things. He taught himself the liberal arts education that he had missed, during long hours reading in the lulls in the orchestra pit. At 69 he learned to lein, and did his first haftarah (of many – he was the go-to guy for haftarot in their summer synagogue for 18 years). After a life as an atheist, be became a baal tefillah, which brought somewhat further along his spiritual journey.

Who is mighty? He who subdues his passions Dad is the “slow to anger” guy. It takes a lot to get him upset, but when it happens, you know he means it. But he was often happy. I never understood this. His equanimity is the biggest thing I’ve tried to acquire throughout life, since I’m the more excitable type, like Mom, or Dad’s parents. Maybe it was a survival tactic as a youngest child? I note that he really came into his own after his brothers were out of the house – he went to Juilliard at 15. I asked him once, since he was often telling me when I got upset and yelling over something trivial, or not so trivial, “you shouldn’t feel like that.” That was frustrating – what am I supposed to feel? How can I change what I feel about something? Took me a lot of therapy to get there, on some things. Anyway – how did he deal with his feelings, since he never showed much? Through his music. But he was an orchestra/ensemble musician? You have to play the same notes, over and over, day after day, as they were written decades or centuries ago? Even so, there’s room for expression, subtle shifts in timing or volume or emphasis. That was tremendous, it changed how I listen to music, and how I hear myself when playing.

Who is honored? He that honors his fellow He was always proud of us, whatever we did. It was always obvious that neither Mitch nor I had the zitsfleisch to follow in the family business – neither of us could bring ourselves to practice for hours a day, the way Laurie did. He may not have understood it, since math was not something he had picked up much of, and he never really grasped computers, but he was patient with my attempts to explain personal triumphs at work in terms relevant to him. And he always had good things to say about most people. Of course, on rare occasions he called someone a name, and you know he meant it – he couldn’t work with that person. So we worked to find things to do with him, and get that appreciation for a job well done. As Dad often said, anything worth doing is worth doing well. So it was with him – top-flight orchestra musician, self-taught (but also took classes) photographer, always aiming to improve – won prizes at the Delaware County Fair for his photography, even with amateur musical stuff, always the best you can.

Who is rich? He who rejoices in his portion, as it is written (Psalm 128:2) "You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be happy, and it shall go well with you." "You shall be" refers to this world; and "it shall be well with you" refers to the world to come.

Maimonides reads wealth as “possessing good ethical attributes.” And that’s really the sum of Dad. Even at the end, when he had to suffer little indignities just to deal with daily life, he didn’t complain, he put up with it, what choice is there? I asked him, how is it that you’re always happy? I wouldn’t say happy, rather, content with my life. He may not have reached for the flashy positions, but he did very well with everything he did, and enjoyed his life, even the hard work – his 2-3 jobs to provide for us. Happily married twice, raised three good people who all followed different paths and have done well with them, in three good marriages, with four growing (or grown) grandchildren with great memories of this “most happy fella.” May his merits that gave him a fulfilled life in this world carry him through eternity in the light of the knowledge of Hashem.

Kiruv Styles: Intellectual Depth or Simplicity

2010-05-30T05:20:00.000-07:00

A correspondent on Hirhurim blog claimed (paraphrased):

I think that if Torah Judaism is presented as having depth, profundity and having also survived the best and worst aspects of Jewish history, it can attract anyone. The real problem-the Charedi [and kiruv] world all work from this proposition as a given.

OTOH. many MO evince an inferiority complex by obsessive navel-gazing over the future of MO.

I responded, however: (somewhat expanded)

Actually, the Chareidi world just keeps its internal politics out of the UJA-distributed paper, so the non-O world knows little of it. Internal politics leading to fistfights and thuggery on top of the sexual and financial scandals would be just as damaging to the Chareidi image as MO obsession over its future portrays internal weakness – both indicate systemic problems.

MO depth/profundity is often indistinguishable from academia, hidden from the common man, whether through erudition, language or publication in expensive academic journals and books. Meanwhile the Charedim and other kiruv organizations provide predigested pap (I'm thinking of Aish Hatorah's 48 Ways, or NJOP's "Crash Courses") pretending it's profundity. But the real profundity, if any that isn't just rehashes of medieval ideas, is hidden, just as inaccessible behind the Beis Medrash doors - because in either case, the threshhold of knowledge is very high. Profundity is not just in hearing a simple answer to a complex issue, it's understanding why the issue is complex in the first place.

Face it, extremists are better at marketing than moderates. Having a simple message (not a profound message, but a simple, if extreme, message) is easier to explain than the life of tension between kodesh and chol that was the centerpiece of much of RYBS' writing. And, as one co-congregant in my old shul put it, "I like that the (L) rabbi has a plan, an idea. I may not agree with it, but I like that he has it." As opposed to the lack of focus other than politics in his previous C-nagogue.

Right there - the L are not presenting the profundity of chassidus. To really understand that takes years of study. They're presenting the beauty of the Orthodox lifestyle, and the simplicity of letting your will go, relinquishing much individual responsibility onto the rabbi's (or rebbe's) shoulders.

People join Orthodoxy because of emotional pull. They may need to intellectually justify some of the new ideas to themselves, as I did, but that’s a rationalization of the emotional tug. Yes, there are exceptions, like the fellow I know (through the Internet) who had been in a Christian seminary, then started learning Chumash/Rashi and Rashi’s answers made more sense to him than what he was getting in seminary, so he converted to Judaism. But I wonder if there was an emotional component as well – he was a child of intermarriage, his father was Jewish.

The Charedim are not selling profundity, they're selling simplicity, whether through existential* kiruv or intellectual. Really, so does NCSY, but the Charedim have embraced the kiruv concept much more than the MO.

*existential – through emotional appeals to the pintele Yid.

Single-Issue Blindness

2010-05-27T07:38:00.000-07:00

Honest Reporting, often a good criticism site, defending Jews against negative media portrayals, has really gone overboard. They have been congratulating themselves for convincing Comedy Central to remove an online video game based on the show "Drawn Together".

What they don't get is that Drawn Together is, if anything, a giant Jewish inside joke, while being offensive to all kinds of groups (blacks, fat people, white racists, Christian extremists, gays, children's programming, Asians, etc.) at least in part. Here are my comments to them:

Responding to this thread, where they defend themselves from critics:

You guys are just blind. You can't tell the difference between a philo-semitic parody of prejudice, and true prejudice.

Yes, philosemitic - between Captain Hero's being traditionally ritually observant, even if a sexual deviant (and the juxtaposition pokes fun at the sex scandals among the Orthodox); and Wooldoor Sockbat being a victim who kills when he has to, who poses as a nice guy, like everyone's favorite tame Palestinian, Walid Shoebat (note the similarity of names), they are parodying issues generally considered internal to the Jewish community.

To quote from the Drawn Together Wiki:

Though never stated explicitly, it is strongly implied that he and his parents are Jewish, as he calls his mother "Ima" (אִמָא), Hebrew for "mommy" (also used in its plural form, "Imahot" (אִמָהוֹת) in "Little Orphan Hero") and has been seen to observe Sabbath rituals; this is part of a running gag of Jewish in-jokes throughout the series (creators Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein are both Jewish). Since Captain Hero is a parody of Superman, these jokes may also be references to similar hints of Judaism in Superman's background; like Jeser and Silverstein, Superman creators Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel were both Jewish. Captain Hero's homeworld is also called Zebulon which may be a reference to one of the ten lost tribes of the Israelites.

[end quote]

And:

In "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II" it is revealed that most of his people, the Sockbats, were murdered in a Holocaust perpetrated by the Sweetcake people (themselves parodies of Strawberry Shortcake), who turned to eating the Sockbats as a remedy for an economic crisis.

[end quote]

The Sockbat thing parodies the ambivalent position of Israel in the world, and the parallel to the Palestinians, given the poor hasbara in Israel these days - the Pal-Arabs have become the new Jew-victims, while the Jews have become the new oppressors, in far too much of popular culture. So too, Wooldor is both a victim and an occasional killer, as well as a Christian who poses as a Jew. He is also said to have been born in 5753, and holds a Bar Mitzvah as a fundraiser. So he's portrayed as Jewish, Holocaust survivor, but with the name derived from the tame Palestinian. Shoebat is a Christian as well, not Muslim Sockbat occasionally commits cowardly terrorist acts: stealing an old man's car then shooting him as he runs away, etc.

So much of it is an inside joke, and you just don't get it, because you can't or won't look past the surface of the skin of the covering of the concept.

Good, pat yourselves on the back for stopping a bunch of JEWS from writing SELF-PARODY. Whoopee.

The Maharats

2010-05-21T14:18:00.000-07:00

I finally read the thread on Gil's blog starting from R' Kenny Brander's "clarification" of R' Herschel Schachter's lecture at the RCA convention. And I agree with it, for the most part - the issue regarding women's ordination is socio-historical, not halachic. But I have some problems with the shiur as described, and with the thread in general.

First off, many people made the main issue into one of reportage. There had been rumors that RHS had used terminology like "Yehareg v'al yaavor" in his lecture, that this was a situation where one should accept martyrdom in preference to ordaining women. IOW, that women's ordination is comparably serious to idolatry, incest or murder - the Big Three sins for which one must always allow oneself to be killed rather that be forced to violate.

RKB's report did not use such extreme language, although it did use an apparently rare Hebrew term, harisas hadas, the destruction of the religion. Gil had similarly used a rare/late term, "chikui haminim", giving strength the the heretics' cause, in earlier critiques of women's ordination. Harisas hadas, according to a Bar-Ilan search, only appears in the 19th century, and only in the 20th century is it used to describe heterodox inroads on Orthodox society.

Many commentators thus called for a tape or transcript of RHS' original speech be released, so that it could be compared to RKB's precis. I suspect, though, that given the rumors, what privately excited this call was a desire to see how RHS had put his foot into his mouth this time. After all, in a TorahWeb post, he had compared women to "parrots and monkeys". And he has had other choice words for women who wanted to expand their communal contributions within Orthodoxy. So I'm dismissing that call. Let's just deal with RKB's precis.

RKB/RHS apparently dismisses serarah, the Rambam's concern that women not be placed in any position of power, as insignificant (and R' Steg Belsky points out that in an earlier shiur, RHS had noted that serarah was not a real impediment to women's ordination) compared to the change to the fabric of Orthodoxy.

It is not just an issue of a particular halakhic issur; it is the challenge to the fabric of what defines Orthodoxy in contrast to other movements. Therefore it requires a response which is reflective of more than dealing with a particular issur.

And that's the heart of the argument for me. While RHS, who has been moving in more RWMO/Daas Torah circles, chose to frame the argument around a quasi-halachic term, so as to give it some of the trappings of Daas Torah, I feel that this is not the proper mode to convince people who are not already convinced. The Moderns characterize themselves in contrast to the Chareidim by disbelief in Daas Torah, the mystical authority granted to Torah sages to pronounce decrees on non-legal subjects for which they have no direct training.

Rather, since it is a non-halachic argument (and there really are no insurmountable halachic obstacles to women's ordination as yoreh yoreh, while there are a few rishonim/acharonim who actually support it), it should be made in non-pseudo-halachic terms.

We see this issue arising in American Protestant society in the late 19th century. As women move into leadership positions in the churches, men come to regard church as a women's realm, and stop going. Mark C. Carnes (Secret Rituals and Manhood in Victorian America) has noted that men seem to have an innate need for ritual; this male exodus from the churches fueled a rise in highly ritualistic fraternal orders, such as the Masons. For Catholics, this began to happen in the 13th-14th century, as church rituals shifted to a "bride mysticism", portraying the man/church relationship as bride/groom. Men didn't want to be cast in the role of the bride, so they left, while women's orders were on the rise.

My wife has argued that she does not like the idea of women's ordination for a similar reason to her dislike of partnership minyanim and, to a lesser extent, women's tefillah groups - it's a distortion of Judaism, in that it demeans the women's role, and promotes the men's role as the only proper role and goal for women. I'm aware of Simone de Beauvoir's critique, where there are women's roles and people's roles, and when women try to take on people's roles, they are accused of wanting to be men. But to flip that on its head, in traditional Judaism, which is largely predicated on the existence of different classes of people with complementary responsibilities to the community, to promote only the men's role, demeans and dismisses the women's role, which distorts the whole fabric of Judaism.

This shift has already happened in the heterodox movements - as women are admitted to the rabbinate and cantorate, male applications and admissions to the rabbinic and cantorial schools diminished, until in some cases, there are more women than men training for these positions. (See some statistics for JTSA - now majority women) In part this can be attributed to the general shift in perception of "women's work." As various job categories shift from men to "equal opportunity", they become "women's work," and thus not a suitable career for a man. Take bank tellers - they used to be all men, and a fairly high-status job with a lot of responsibility and trust. Then they let women become bank tellers, and today they are almost all women, and the job has become a low-status job. This is already happening in the heterodox movements.

Experience shows that such shifts will happen. Admitting women to the rabbinate will, willy nilly, disrupt the fabric and society of Orthodox Judaism. Whether this is a good or a bad thing can be debated, on halachic or social bases. But if it happens, history will probably repeat itself. And I'm not comfortable with that happening to Mod-O, the type of Judaism to which I have aspired and worked on myself to accept.

My wife thinks that this will continue the trend towards a total realignment of the Jewish movements. Mod-O will split between the Left and the Right; UTJ has fizzled, Conservative is becoming less halachic and more Reform, the right wing of C will join with an "egalitarian" LWMO under R' Avi Weiss or his successors, and the black hats will continue to grow. The Chasidim have become more Misnagdish, after all, who really follows the path of the Baal Shem Tov any more? while the Yeshivish have become more Chasidish, imbuing their leaders with a Chasidic infallibility and intimacy with God. And the melting pot of Judaism will continue to stir, queasily.

On an individual level, I can't say anything. The program exists, if someone believes that this is the right thing for them to do, and it follows from their principles, then more power to them. People should certainly maximize their opportunities and abilities. But I worry about what it will do to us as a community.

The First Notated Jewish Music

2010-04-30T11:58:00.000-07:00

MUSICAL NOTE by Cantor Sherwood Goffin

The First Notated Jewish Music

Historically, Jews have had musical symbols for Torah reading since the time of Ezra, and according to some, from Moshe at Mt. Sinai. Nevertheless, we didn't have Jewish musicians who knew how to notate music until the late 17th century. Except for a 30 year period in 15th century Italy (Solomon Rossi), music was a closed book to all communities outside of the Church. Any Jewish music we have from before that time was notated by non-Jews.

The earliest notated Jewish music ever found was discovered in the Cairo Geniza by Solomon Shechter at the turn of the 20th century. These were two compositions written out by Ovadia HaGer, Obadiah the Norman Proselyte of the early 12th century. A monk from a noble Norman family of Southern Italy, he converted to Judaism in 1102, emigrated to the Near East, and finally settled in Cairo.

He learned Gregorian neume notation as a clergyman of the Church, and was able to compose and notate for various Jewish occasions. The two pieces discovered (actually, three -jjb) include his famed "Mi Al Har Chorev," a eulogy of Moses that was sung on Simchas Torah. Its character is typically ancient Gregorian, and is a fascinating glimpse into the world of the Jews of that period. It is also the first synagogue music ever to be notated!

DAVEN WELL, DON'T TALK, BUT SING ALONG!

(links found by JJB)

Twelve Names for the Chazzan

2010-04-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

Twelve Names for the Chazzan
Musical Note, by Cantor Sherwood Goffin

Tazria, 5770

My teacher, Chazzan Macy Nulman, has written that the one who leads the tefillah" has been known throughout history by twelve different names in three different languages." This fascinating insight into the nomenclature of the Chazzan over the centuries reinforces the historical and liturgical importance of this vocation to many generations of Jewish communities throughout Israel and the Diaspora.

"In English he is called cantor, precentor and reader. In Hebrew he is known as Chazzan, Sheliah Tzibbur, Baal Tefillah, and kerobah. In Germany he was called obercantor,vorbeter, vorsinger, schulsinger, and sangmeister." For the position of assistant to the Chazzan, or for those who conducted the lesser important services, Chazzan Nulman cites the names of "ba'al Shacharit, hazzan -sheni (untercantor) and matchil."

Two final names for the Chazzan, which he refers to as "subtitles" are "baal musaf and hazzan-rishon (hazzan elyon)."Whatever name one chooses to use, I am proud to be your Chazzan and hope to daven with you for many more years!

The Necessity of Oral Law

2010-04-08T15:52:00.000-07:00

So a Reform correspondent and I are talking about the nature of Oral Law. Beyond our grundnorms of Divine-originated vs. human-originated Oral Law, I got into some discussion of how I have come to understand the different types of Oral Law.

S____:
> I understand that people have to interpret a document. I understand that
> specifics have to be laid down for some laws. However, how is something
> like "don't eat shellfish" need any further explanation? How is that
> "irrelevant [another commentator's characterization of our correspondent's
> argument]", You say that "oral Torah" begins at Sinai. We disagree

Well, from what I can see of the Oral Torah process, a lot of it has to do with places where we [including Our Sages in that "we", since they're the main body of people who actually worked out the derivations] know there's a rule, but it's not entirely clear how it fits with the Torah text. We know they have to be related, that's part of the definition of the system, but the exact relationship is unclear, whether through loss of tradition, or linguistic shift, or whatever.

Take the shellfish, [please].

First the Biblical passage:

9 These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath snapir and kaskeset in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat.

10 And all that have not snapir and kaskeset in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:

11 They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.

12 Whatsoever hath no snapir nor kaskeset in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

We know, for instance, a rule, as you say, "don't eat shellfish". Our ancestors presumably knew this rule too. But there's no actual verse that says "don't eat shellfish." There is a verse that says "whatsoever hath snapir and kaskeset in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat".

Then ensues a whole discussion on what do those two words mean. Once it's decided that it means "fins & scales", which word means which, etc., then we look at the fish, and find there are 4 kinds of scales. And that's where we get into rabbinically legislated details: Which kinds of scales are kosher (there are 4, of which 2 are kosher)? The Talmud itself says that "everything with kaskeset also has snapir", impying that they knew about the different types of scales, and only the 2 kosher varieties were called kaskeset. What about species where the scales are only present at one stage of the life cycle, but not at the stage where the fish is harvested? etc.?

But establishing the Torah's meaning in relation to known rules, this is also part of Oral Torah, and is presumed to have originated at Sinai. There's no way to prove it, of course, but rules that are universally (pre-1800) accepted, and are general rules, and are known to be based on verses, rather than explicit rabbinic legislation, are treated as if they originated at Sinai, because at that point, there's really no difference - universal ratification being equivalent in force to Divine transmission.

I've been thinking of it as a 2x2 matrix. Say, Written/Oral along one axis and Biblical/Rabbinic along the other

Written Torah is the Five Books of Moses, that's it.

Oral Torah is practically everything else, from the Prophets and Writings, down through the implications of the 4QMMT in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Fast Scroll (both being Hasmonean-period documents), through the Mishnah, Midrashim, Talmuds, and all their further interpretations and elaborations.

Within that, you have Biblical and Rabbinic Law. Biblical Law is rules that can be derived from verses using the 13 Hermeneutical Rules of Rabbi Ishmael (plus possibly some others). Now, we don't know which (or whether any) of those derivations are actually Sinaitic, but we assume that if they can be derived from verses, and were not otherwise legislated, they are treated AS IF they had come down from Sinai. [Yes, I know we say that certain of the rules require a Sinaitic component, but that's a different discussion, and one which is also hard to prove to someone who simply denies Divine origin to Talmudic law.] Because they're part of the interpretive system that began at Sinai.

Rules that are legislated similarly should have some tenuous connection to a verse, to demonstrate that they're within the Torah's system, and not total inventions, but there the textual derivation can be much weaker, because there's no need to prove a strong connection to the Divine.

So yes, even a simple rule like "don't eat shellfish" requires the Talmud, requires an Oral Torah, wherever that tradition is sourced, to turn it into practical law. AND to link it to the correct verse and phrases in the Written Torah to demonstrate the rule's Biblical nature.

The Rambam (Maimonides) further breaks down the Oral Law into different degrees of relatedness to the posited Divine origin, but that's another post.

Go'al Yisra'el Quandary

2010-03-12T11:18:00.000-08:00

A special 4-part series (combined) from Cantor Sherwood Goffin:

MUSICAL NOTE by Cantor Sherwood Goffin
THE GO’AL YISRAEL QUANDARY

It is common to hear a Shliach Tsibbur ending the bracha of Go’al Yisrael in a whisper. Yet, as your Chazzan, I do not do so. What is the rule and why are there different ways to recite this? The practice of whispering is a relatively recent innovation. Prior to modern times, every chazzan would always recite the entire Bracha of Go’al Yisrael out loud. In fact, there is NO valid custom of not audibly finishing a bracha. Where did this custom originate and why?

In the next few ~~Notes~~ paragraphs we will examine this phenomenon.

To begin with: In the Talmud (Brachot 42a) and reinforced in the Shulchan Aruch, there is a concept of “Semichat Geulah L’Tefillah.” That is, to link “redemption/Geulah” to tefillah/Amida – and to not interrupt the connection of the blessing of Go’al Yisrael to the Amida. The Talmud seems to treat this as simply a “nice thing” to do.

Rashi and Rabbeinu Yonah give varied philosophical reasons. I prefer the explanation of Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg (1884-1966) of Montreux, the “Seridei Aish,” who explains that Go’al Yisrael relates to the past, and that the Amidah is a prayer for the future Redemption. He further states that “a future that is not rooted in the past is unsustainable.” Linking the two, however, seems to present a quandary, since we are required to answer Amen to every blessing that we hear, and saying Amen would constitute a problematic interruption. What are we to do?

[Two] The Mechaber of the Shulchan Aruch (Sfardic minhag) says, based on the Zohar, that one should NOT answer Amen to the blessing of Go’al Yisroel. At that point, the Rama (Ashkenazic minhag) states that Amen is part of the tefilla and MUST be recited. It is therefore apparent that in their day (early 16th century) the Chazzan always said the bracha out loud. Rabbi Ari Zivitofsky, who thoroughly researched this topic, could not find ANY early authorities who suggest that it is to be said silently, or in a whisper.

To further complicate matters, the Aruch Hashulchan (1829-1908) says, that while it is PERMISSABLE to answer Amen there, “the common practice is NOT to.” In Hungary and the Ukraine in the early 1800s, leading rabbis first began to write that the bracha should be said silently. In our times, the great American Lower East Side posek, Rabbi Yosef Henkin (d.1973), strongly condemned “this new custom” of reciting it silently.

Rabbi S. Neuberger, Menahel of Yeshivat Ner Israel, told me that Rav Henkin wrote in the journal “Pardes” that, if the chazzan neglects to say the beginning and end of EVERY bracha in the Birchot Kriat Shma, “he has failed to fulfill Tefillat Hatsibbur (The obligation of communal prayer).” The quandary remains: There those who still recite it softly, and others – such as your Chazzan - who recite it out loud. Which is correct?

[Three] Many contemporary poskim, such as Rav Aharon Lichtenstein and Rav Wosner have written in favor of saying it out loud, saying that even if the bracha is said inaudibly, one must answer amen. Rav Wosner opposes ending it silently because "it is a slight against the honor of the bracha." Some famous recent halachic giants all insisted on saying the bracha out loud. These include Rav Joseph Soloveitchik, the Satmar Rebbe, Rav Yaakov Weinberg and Rabbi Dushinsky of Jerusalem. Other authorities have defended the practice of saying it silently - a practice "standard in the Lithuanian Yeshiva world."

Rabbi Ari Zivitofsky, writing in Jewish Action says, "All of these opinions indicate that throughout most of Jewish History, the chazzan recited the entire bracha of Go'al Yisroel aloud. Apparently, at some point in recent years, the practice of ... concluding Go'al Yisroel in a whisper came about. This practice appeals to many because it allows one to satisfy most halachic opinions." [Next], dear readers, I will give you the final opinion concerning this issue.

[Four] [At least half a dozen recent Ashkenazic authorities thus] insisted that the bracha of Go'al Yisroel be said out loud. It is also true that some Lithuanian authorities have defended the practice of saying it silently - a practice "standard in the Lithuanian Yeshiva world." It comes down to this: Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach writes (Halichot Shlomo) that the practice in the Gra Shul in Jerusalem was to end the bracha out loud. Since it is the minhag of Lincoln Square Synagogue generally to follow the customs of the Gra (The Vilna Gaon), it therefore appears to be very clear that this should be our LSS custom.

The only thing that we have to deal with is the opinion of the Rama - whose opinion we follow - that one should say "Amein" after hearing the bracha. Since that still seems to be controversial, let me make the following suggestion, if I may: The chazzan should say the last paragraph somewhat slower than the rest of the davening, so that the congregants can 1) catch up to him and say the bracha of Go'al Yisroel with him, or 2) start the Amida a bit ahead of his finishing the bracha. In both cases it would obviate saying "Amein," and thereby accommodate all opinions. However, if one is elsewhere in the prayers, and hears the bracha, if he is able to, he should answer "Amein," softly. This should please all viewpoints, and give LSS one custom to follow. Try it - and see how it works for you!

DAVEN WELL, DON'T TALK, BUT SING ALONG!

(c) Sherwood Goffin and Lincoln Square Synagogue, 2010

Part Three was dedicated "in loving memory of [Cantor Goffin's] student, Jonathan Spanbock."

Some paragraph transitions adjusted with square brackets.

Perception and Reality

2010-03-04T07:20:00.000-08:00

My interlocutor (R Micha Berger) in the last thread was disappointed that I could not rise to the level of Beis Hillel, and understand where the other side is coming from, while still maintaining my position.

He seems further to want me to understand this without negative value judgments, such as "ignorant of science", "fool", "charlatan", "unwilling to admit the they're out of their depth", etc.

As it is, we only discussed one figure, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, for whom I had actually given a reasonable excuse for maintaining an idea, largely because the Rebbe's position is out in public for all to see, in English, and can thus be easily critiqued.

The Lubavitcher lays out his position in a letter from 1962, included in Carmell and Domb's book on the interaction of Torah & Science, "Challenge."

That letter was critiqued for flaws in logic and superficial readings of science, by Mark Perakh, here.

There is a reference to an earlier exchange on this topic from 1963, with a Dr. Velvl Greene, a biologist in Minnesota, who was in process of becoming a Lubavitcher, in which the Rebbe refutes the critique, but I don't know if or where the letters were published. Dr Greene himself does not appear to subscribe to the ideas in the Rebbe's 1962 letter, preferring an allegorical/mythological approach.

As I said in the previous post, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe may be excused for dismissing the evidence of an old universe, because part of the Lubavitch theology, is that the universe has no real existence separate from God, because God's infiinitude nullifies the finite universe next to it. They call this the "upper unity". They also maintain a "lower unity", which says that the universe is perceived to have real existence, but we know intellectually that it is all part of God.

To quote R' Norman Lamm, in "The Religious Thought of Hasidism," p. 50:

click on picture for larger image

That idea, it seems to me, undoes creation ex nihilo - if the physical universe is made of "God-stuff" rather than Sagan's "star-stuff", then the matter of which the universe is composed, even if it's "spiritual" matter, is as old and eternal as the rest of the Divine Essence. It's only the form of the Universe which was applied to this pre-existent "matter", to bring the Universe into existence. In view of this complete reordering of the understanding of the Universe, the question of old vs. young earth is battel, since both space and time, which Kant demonstrated had to really exist, don't really exist for Lubavitchers. We may experience them, and be commanded in certain behaviors while "existing", but space and time have no real existence.

This seems further related to the question of whether the "tzimtzum" was real or metaphorical. The major source discussing it, the Etz Chaim by R' Chaim Vital, which presents the teachings of the Arizal, is ambivalent. The Tzimtzum was the moment where God withdrew from the space in which the physical universe would be created, since two things (God and not-God) cannot occupy the same space.

From Etz Chaim, Shaar 1 section 2:

דע כי טרם שנאצלו הנאצלים ונבראו הנבראים היה אור עליון פשוט ממלא כל המציאות ולא היה שום מקום פנוי בבחי' אויר ריקני וחלל אלא הכל היה ממולא מן אור א"ס פשוט ההוא ולא היה לו בחי' ראש ולא בחי' סוף אלא הכל היה אור א' פשוט שוה בהשוואה א' והוא הנק' אור א"ס. וכאשר עלה ברצונו הפשוט לברוא העולמות ולהאציל הנאצלים להוציא לאור שלימות פעולותיו ושמותיו וכנוייו אשר זאת היה סיבה בריאת העולמות כמבואר אצלינו בענף הא' בחקירה הראשונה. והנה אז צמצם את עצמו א"ס בנקודה האמצעית אשר בו באמצע אורו ממש (אמר מאיר בערכינו אמר הרב זה וק"ל) וצמצם האור ההוא ונתרחק אל צדדי סביבות הנקודה האמצעית ואז נשאר מקום פנוי ואויר וחלל רקני מנקודה אמצעית ממש כזה

Is the tzimtzum in "atzmo" or in "oro"? Does it really create a "hollow, empty air/space"? Ambivalent.

The Lubavitchers believe the tzimtzum was metaphorical, that God did not remove Himself, because He is unchanging, but rather designated this space as a space of veils, where whatever bits of Himself were there, would not perceive that they were bits of God. Further, the Lubavitchers maintain that physical Tzimtzum is heretical.

The more common view is that the tzimtzum was real, that God created, as it were, a vacuole in Himself of finite size, in which the Universe could be created, presumably out of bits of God-stuff that were now separated from Him.

What troubles me more, is the apparently bad logic and poorly understood science, masquerading as a real response, that makes up the Rebbe's letter in 1962. That, and his position on geocentrism, which seems to be based on a confusion between perception and reality. That is, in reality the earth and sun revolve around a common center, with perturbations from the other planets. An exact formula may be hard to construct, because of the intractability of the n-body problem. Whereas relativity in terms of frames of reference, as the Rebbe cites it, is only about perception. Given the relative sizes and distances of the bodies, it is still approximately correct, within perhaps 1%, to say that the Earth revolves around the Sun in reality.

Evidently it bothers many people who read the 1962 letter, including the aforementioned Dr. Greene and Mr. Perakh. Now, perhaps the Rebbe felt it was useful in the case of his correspondent, I have no idea to whom he was writing. Perhaps it was better to write a letter which impressed the correspondent, even if a close reading reveals it to have serious problems, than to try to explain very high level spiritual concepts, ideas which, after years of (occasional) study, I'm just barely beginning to grasp. Perhaps this was the "Hashem's secret" that R' Berger referred to.

Perhaps I should just rest assured that others made the critique during the Rebbe's lifetime, and he had answers for the problems, which satisfied Dr Greene.

Theological Absurdities

2010-03-02T05:28:00.000-08:00

In a private group communication, I had expressed my rejection of R' Avigdor Miller on the basis of having read a few pages of his book "Rejoice O Youth," at the recommendation of a Chasidic friend. R' Miller sets out to explain the young-earth anti-Darwin perspective as being the proper position for a Jew to hold. To do that, he says that you have to start from ground zero, assuming that scientists are insincere and lying.

Being related to many scientists, whose good-faith I take for granted regardless of their theology, and having some (minimal) science training, I was ready to throw the book across the room. But I just put it down (it not being mine), and decided I wasn't going to try R' Miller any more.

Someone responded that, to be fair, I should try to understand such positions, given that various major Talmidei Chachamim held them, such as R' Miller or the last Lubavitcher Rebbe.

I disagree. If Talmidei Chachomim held such positions, I have to believe it was based on one form or another of ignorance. Knowledge of Torah does not automatically confer expertise in non-Torah areas, nor does it confer the ability to judge among extra-Torah ideas. It does, however, confer a bias in favor of opinions expressed by other Torah scholars that may disagree with scholars in other fields, even where those opinions and fields may be orthogonal to Torah.

But a lot of these positions are absurd. They are logically inconsistent, and theologically difficult. We Jews don't say, Credo quia absurdum est, but we do say, the seal of God is Truth, which idea is derived from the final letters of bara Elokim et, the beginning of Creation. What God communicates to us, through Torah or the physical world, is Truth. And, as the Meiri and Rashi and other Rishonim say, if it's clear that the text cannot be literally true, there's still an allegorical Truth to it. Textual interpretation is malleable (up to a point); physical reality is real truth.

Young earth, the idea that the Universe is no more than 5770 (+162) years old, requires one to posit that not only are all scientists anti-religious liars, but that all science is wrong - even that which produces the life-saving medicine that cures your cellulitis infection, or strep infection, or metal poisoning, or which allows surgeons to stop your heart for some hours while they repair it, etc. It requires one to believe that God is lying to us through physical reality - that the Universe, that behaves as if it were older than 5800 years in factor after factor after factor, from radioisotopes to erosion to fossilization to species diversity, is a all a sham.

Now, for people who believe that the entire universe is just a figment of God's imagination, I can see that. One such system is the Lubavitch "upper unity", where all physical reality is just as much "God-stuff" as the soul or the Infinite Nothingness, but is masked (by itself) from being perceived by us (who are itself). But that way leads to logical absurdities too, in terms of "how do I know the universe wasn't created 5 minutes ago?" Answer: there's no way to tell, therefore, there's no evidence the Torah was ever given to us, and therefore Judaism is false from page one.

So I guess, to be charitable, we can attribute the Lubavitcher Rebbe's young-earthism to

1) a lack of scientific training (his engineering trade school, ESTP, today requires only one semester of physics, even less than I got and a lot less theologically problematic, at the undergrad level, than say biology or geology). I don't imagine he had even the equivalent of high-school biology in preparing himself for secular university studies.

2) a belief that the universe does not have real existence

3) faith in certain earlier sages, who knew even less about science than he did, but who adopted, unfortunately, an obscurantist approach to the new biology and geology of the 19th century. As opposed to, say, the Tiferes Yisroel, who managed to incorporate physical reality into his worldview.

Similarly, I had an encounter with R' Dr. J. Immanuel Schochet once, when he came to speak as a scholar-in-residence at my old synagogue in Park Slope. At the time, I was still trying to convince myself of the plausibility of a Divinely-originated (rather than human-originated) Oral Torah; I felt it was the last hurdle keeping me from calling myself "Orthodox."

I had been bothered by the argument that "the Oral Torah supports the authenticity of the Written Torah; the Written Torah supports the authenticity of the Oral Torah," and found an excuse to find out if he held that position. He did, and he and I argued fruitlessly for a while, my trying to get him to see that it was a circular argument, and in fact, he was just basing his belief on, well, belief. He could not see past his religious biases; his philosophic training (and philosophy almost always begins with Logic, be it from Aristotle or Quine) fell by the wayside in the face of a challenge to dogmatic Truth.

I'm not trying to davka pick on Lubavitch here, it's just that they put themselves and their beliefs up for public view and argumentation, in English, more than other groups.

So, like it or not, my most charitable, caf-zchus explanation for major Rabbinic figures believing things that seem absurd to me, is that they just don't know any better, and their priority being Torah, aren't actually all that interested, nor do they really have the time, to learn enough to know better.

R' Dr. Alan Brill, in one of his YU course tapes, notes that until the mid-19th century, when it became an issue for young-earth Christians, Torah scholars did not insist on a literal interpretation of Genesis 1-2. In fact, he gave a whole catalogue of allegorical explanations, by various Rishonim and Acharonim, and noted that (following Rashi) NOBODY took it literally until then. So in effect, it seems to me, insistence on a young Earth might be chukos hagoyim, and inconsistent with our Mesorah. Similarly, R' Hershel Billet has no problem with the various modern reconciliations of physical reality and Genesis on the age of the Universe.

Now, science is not without its dogmas, its paradigms, its blind spots either, as Thomas Kuhn explained so well in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. But as evidence builds up for new theories, it is not totally inflexible. Given sufficient evidence, scientists will change their minds to fit the better perception of reality. And scientists do have their biases for or against religion, which will affect the way they think.

An evolutionary biologist of long acquaintance, who is inclined towards atheism, while admitting that current theories of evolution do not adequately explain the diversity of species, is willing to wait for a naturalistic answer to be found, while I might take a God-of-the-gaps position, and say that God is directing evolution to produce Man and sufficient biota to support him, at this particular moment in geologic time.

For me, the Grand Canyon is evidence of God's hand in an old Earth - that the Canyon, and humanity, each exist in an eyeblink of geologic time; but He placed both of us on the Earth at the same time, giving us the sense of beauty and awe to appreciate His handiwork on the large scale.

Freilichen Shoeshine Pirim

2010-02-28T16:55:00.000-08:00

This year for shalech mones, we gave out fruit, hamentashen and home-baked noodle kugels, with an ingredient list and disclaimer. Debbie is now a chef, so why shouldn't she make something nice?

We printed up little cards with a 17th-century painting, Esther and Ahasuerus by Bernardo Cavallino and the disclaimer for the kugel.

For Purim Torah, I handed around flyers of Gershon Rosenzweig's Midrash Esther, from his Talmud Yankee. Rosenzweig wrote a whole series of short Talmud parodies around the turn of the 20th century, many/most of which reflected the immigrant experience. E.g., Masechet America, Ch 2 Mishna 1: All are green[horns]. Whether a doctor or a tradesman, doesn't matter if you changed your name, your clothes, your language - you're still green.

Many of Rosenzweig's tractates are short, only 3-4 pages, which leads me to wonder if they were written to be handed out as Purim torahs with mishloach manot.

For more on Talmud parodies, see Parody in Jewish Literature, for extensive discussion of these and the various Purim tractates linked to by R' Brill.

And then we went to the City for the family Chanukah party. Well, for most of the last 80 years it was a Chanukah party, but for various reasons the last two years it has fallen on or near Purim.

Smiling through the tears

2010-02-26T13:35:00.000-08:00

MUSICAL NOTE by Cantor Sherwood Goffin
MEGILLAT ESTHER - SMILING THROUGH OUR TEARS

The startling truth about about the music of the Purim Megillah is that almost half of its musical notes (tropes) are exactly the same as those of "Eicha" (Lamentations) that we read on Tisha B'Av!

This is not at all illogical when you consider that the story of Purim is the only book in the Bible canon that takes place exclusively in the Diaspora. As a Diaspora memoir, it speaks of Jews who have forgotten their religion and their Torah. It begins as they run with alacrity to eat non-Kosher food at the table of the king served in the very Holy Vessels that were stolen from the First Temple by Nebuchadnezzar. At this point, the melody changes to "Eicha" to indicate the history of those vessels.

This is only one of the numerous diversions from the music of the text, frequently using the "Eicha" melody or a joyous march-like chant. These diversions are just a reflection of the nature of Purim itself, where to be happy we have to drink significantly and wear masks, because it is difficult for a Jew to feel truly happy and free outside of Israel. However, we can still enjoy the melody and the variations in the Megillah as we rejoice in the salvation of the Jews of Shushan.

DAVEN WELL, DON'T TALK, BUT SING ALONG!

Yisborach in Kaddish

2010-02-19T11:33:00.000-08:00

MUSICAL NOTE
by Cantor Sherwood Goffin
SAYING "YISBORACH' AFTER "Y'HEI SHMEI.." IN KADDISH

When the Chazzan recites the Kaddish, the primary goal of saying Kaddish is to "Sanctify the Name of G-d." This is accomplished by the congregation responding "Y'hei Shmei Rabbo M'vorach L'olam Ul'olmei Olmayo - May His Great Name be blessed forever and ever." This is called "Kiddush Hashem", "Sanctification of G-d's Name", and is the very reason why Kaddish is said in public by the Chazzan. The question often asked is: We know that there are some individuals who add "...Yisborach" in their response. Is this proper?

The Shulchan Aruch does suggest that "Yisborach" be added (O.C. 56:3). However, keeping in mind that the author of the Shulchan Aruch, Rabbi Yosef Caro (1488-1575 CE), was a Sfardi, it is understood that many of his customs quoted are those of Spain and the North African Jewish communities. Our communal Halachic guidelines stem from the Rama (Rabbi Moshe Isserles - 1520-1572 CE) who posits the customs of European Jewry in his glosses on the Shulchan Aruch. In this case, the East European community (of which we are the descendents) follows the later opinion of the Vilna Gaon (Gr"a) NOT to add the word "Yisborach." However, for those Ashkenazim that do say it, they do have a source on which they can rely - that of Rabbi Yosef Caro.

Whatever custom you follow, be aware that your recitation of "Y"hei shmei Rabbo...", in response to the Chazzan, is one of the most important obligations of every Jew - that of sanctifying G-d's name in every aspect and in every action of our lives as a Jew.

DAVEN WELL, DON'T TALK, BUT SING ALONG!

[From ThanBook: I've been to the Karlin-Stoliner shul in Boro Park, where they actually say from "Amen yehei shmeih..." all the way to "d'amiran b'alma", leaving the chazan to repeat everything and say "v'imru amein". To which they respond "Amein." Which to my ears sounds a bit odd, in that they just said it themselves, so what's the benefit in agreeing with themselves?]

Kavvanah - short talk

2010-02-08T08:31:00.000-08:00

The Yavneh Minyan of Flatbush honored me [again? That trick never works!] (among 8 other baalei tefillah) at the shul dinner last night, so I gave the one-minute speech at the end of this. I had wanted to give the 3-minute version below:

What is Kavvanah:

Rambam:

ד,טו כוונת הלב כיצד: כל תפילה שאינה בכוונה, אינה תפילה; ואם התפלל בלא כוונה, חוזר ומתפלל בכוונה. מצא דעתו משובשת וליבו טרוד--אסור לו להתפלל, עד שתתיישב דעתו. לפיכך הבא מן הדרך, והוא עייף או מצר--אסור לו להתפלל, עד שתתיישב דעתו: אמרו חכמים, שלושה ימים, עד שינוח ותתקרר דעתו, ואחר כך יתפלל.

ד,טז כיצד היא הכוונה--שיפנה ליבו מכל המחשבות, ויראה עצמו כאילו הוא עומד לפני השכינה; לפיכך צריך לישב מעט קודם התפילה, כדי לכוון את ליבו, ואחר כך יתפלל, בנחת ובתחנונים. ולא יעשה תפילתו כמי שהיה נושא משאוי, משליכו והולך לו; לפיכך צריך לישב מעט אחר התפילה, ואחר כך ייפטר. חסידים הראשונים היו שוהין שעה קודם התפילה, ושעה אחר התפילה, ומאריכין בתפילה שעה.

Intention of the heart – how is it done? Every prayer without intent is not prayer, and if he prayed without intent, he repeats it with intent.

How does one intend? That he frees his heart from all [other] thoughts, and sees himself as if he were standing before the Divine Presence.

The problem of kavvanah: Nobody has it: Ymi Ber 2:4:

Rabbi Hiyya said, "I have never concentrated during prayer! Once, when I wanted to concentrate, I instead thought about who will meet the king first: the Arkafta [a Persian high official] or the Exilarch [the head of the Jewish community in Persia]?"

Shemuel said, "I count clouds [during prayer]".

Rabbi Bun bar Hiyya said, "I count the layers of stones in the wall [while I pray]."

Rabbi Matnaya said, "I am grateful to my head, because it bows by itself when I reach 'Modim'!"

The responsibility of the Shaliach Tzibur: Sherwood Goffin:

[W]hen [my rabbinic students] daven as the shaliach tzibbur, they have a very serious responsibility: Kavannah [Rambam Hilchot Tefillah 4:15] - the intense concentration and efficacy of the prayers of the congregation, coupled with the transmission of the timehonored and halachically-mandated musical nusach ha’tefillah handed down to us from generation to generation. Each individual sitting in shul is a direct responsibility of the shaliach tzibur (sha’tz) /chazan. “The way you daven”, I tell them, “is the way the tzibur will daven. If you daven with proper kavannah, and as correctly and beautifully as you are capable, the congregation will mirror your enthusiasm and daven with equal kavannah. If, God forbid, you daven with disinterest, with mumbling, with a lack of beauty and melody and a lack of nusach ha’tefillah, you will be responsible for the repercussions to the tzibur - their disinterest, their talking during davening (except for the incorrigible few) and their lack of kavannah.”

The answer: Seth Kadish, wrote a 600-page book on the subject, and, according to his brother, repudiated all the theories of Kavvanah in it. Kavvanah means, for him, that you concentrate on the meaning of what you’re saying, the words and the sentences and the paragraphs.. R’ Baruch Witkin is quoted online saying, "It doesn't matter so much whether you daven fast or slow, as long as it's not the same every single day."

The shaliach tzibur helps you see things differently than you might. The shatz also has to be sure to put himself into it, differently each time. Because you all pick up on that, and we live to serve. That’s why I’m glad to be a part of this company of shlichei tzibur, part of our shul’s deep pool of talent.

As given:

Kavvanah is prayer with intent. We all strive for it, we have trouble achieving it. The Sages of the Talmud had trouble achieving it, as it says in the Yerushalmi, this one counted the tiles on the ceiling, that one thought about the stock market (loosely). The job of a shaliach tzibur, in addition to repeating the prayers for those who don’t know them, is to musically interpret the words of the prayers, to inspire the tzibur to think about their prayers, to work with the tzibur such that he and they pray with kavvanah. It’s a cooperative effort. Intent grows through familiarity with the traditional modes of prayer, and through being wakened from repetitiveness, with Carlebach and contemporary tunes.

I am grateful that you have chosen to honor the shlichei tzibur of this synagogue. I feel humbled to be included among our deep pool of cantorial talent, men who know the ancient nusach hatefillah, as well as current tunes and modes of prayer. I thank my parents, who raised me with everpresent music, in the traditions of my father’s family, the Philharmonic Fishbergs, and even my father became an amateur cantor in his 60s. I thank my wife, who has always encouraged me to grow. And I thank you.

I was tempted to say, but good sense prevailed:

ככה יעשה לאיש אשר הציבור חפץ ביקרו

in the spirit of the forthcoming holiday.

Post-Orthodox: Th(ree) Visions

2010-01-31T11:21:00.001-08:00

Post-Orthodoxy seems to be the hot buzzword of the moment, in Modern Orthodox blogger circles. There are now three rabbis online trying to define "Post-Orthodoxy" as a parallel to Post-Evangelicalism.

1) R' Gil Student, who started the effort to define it, plays the disingenuous card, claiming that it's just a sociological observation, Post Orthodox does not necessarily imply Non Orthodox, but here are a number of ideas which, if you hold a lot of them, would make you Post-Orthodox. Note that a lot of the ideas are themselves non-Orthodox, while others are themselves are perfectly normal ideas in Talmudic study (see my previous post); what unites them is Gil's unstated-but-real attempt to define a class of people who are no longer Orthodox because of the collection of ideas they hold. That is, it's an attempt to disenfranchise part of the left wing of modern Orthodoxy.

2) R' Jeffrey Woolf has been inching towards trying to define Post-Orthodox as a theological narrowness of vision, turning Judaism into soulless practices that may be solidly based on texts, but do not reflect the weight of Jewish tradition or a concern with using one's ritual observance as a tool with which to build a relationship with God. He thus applies it equally to Right and Left.

The Left creates practices that were never seen before, or at least not in recorded history, that are based in classic texts, that may feed the zeitgeist, but little thought is given to how they will increase people's attachment to Hashem and to traditional practice.

The Right, with its concentration on humra, also increases the punctilio of observance, but in so doing, they don't really pay attention to the classical vision of humra as a personal practice that increases one's attachment to Hashem and His Torah; and by drawing their theological boundaries ever narrower, their new text-based humra culture excludes many Rishonim and Acharonim from the pale of Orthodox belief.

3) R' Brill, who initially posted on Post-Evangelicalism, and speculated on whether there might be a Post-Orthodoxy parallel to it, strongly rejects Gil's idea that it should be the basis for creating a schism, and driving the out fringe of LWMO out of Orthodoxy. Not that he says so directly, of course. Rather, he defines Post-Orthodox narrowly, as a parallel to Post-Evangelicals, of people who self-defined as Orthodox, many of whom were in fact raised Orthodox, but chose it in adulthood as well, mostly in the 1970s through early 1980s, and then regretted their decision. So they left Orthodoxy, consciously, for whatever personal reasons, but continued to struggle with finding a religious identity.

R' Brill's primary example is Rebecca Goldstein, PhD, who wrote an autobiographical novel and a book about Spinoza. She chose Orthodoxy, lived in Orthodox towns (Teaneck and Highland Park), and then left. Her writing seethes with her continuing obsession with Orthodoxy, though.

So for R' Student, it's a way to disenfranchise a subgroup of Modern Orthodoxy, while claiming that Post-O is not necessarily Non-O. For R' Woolf, it's a symptom of the rise of textualism over mimeticism, and a drawing away from a concern with avodat Hashem. R' Woolf's Post-O are, apparently, still Orthodox, but not in modes based on tradition. R' Brill's Post-O are individuals, not a sociological subgroup, who have consciously left Orthodoxy after choosing to enter it. So for him, Jews can be Post-O only by virtue of having become Non-O.

Whose Vision Reigns Supreme?

Post-Orthodox or Pre-Orthodox?

2010-01-08T11:06:00.000-08:00

Gil has a cute post (after Jeff Foxworthy) on "You might be Post-Orthodox if..." I suppose it's an attempt to answer his critics that find his use of the term "Post-Orthodox" dismissive (as in the PO are beyond the LWMO, and beyond the pale) yet vague (he doesn't really define what he means as "Post Orthodox" except in terms of "I know it when I see it."). But even this attempt at definition has its problems:

By Gil's standard, CHAZAL are Post-Orthodox.

I mean, look at how many of his statements don't agree with the Gemara:

1) they never heard of the Rambam's Thirteen Principles, certainly not as a standard by which to define heresy, and anyway, they have no problem with lots of ideas that Rambam objected to, like astrology, demons, amulets, etc. Not to mention the author of Yigdal, who leaves out the Fifth Ikkar. OK, that's post-Maimonidean, not Chazal, but still - he must have had a reason. Oh, right, Kallir - Machnisei Rachamim etc.

2) The Gemara itself posits that the last 8 or 12 verses were added by Yehoshua. One day post-Mosaic, a thousand years post-Mosaic, it seems all the same to you.

3) The Amoraim certainly distorted the views of the Tannaim - or why was there so much confusion what the Tannaim said that half the Gemara seems to be trying to work out what the Tannaim said and what they meant. What is "chasurei mechsera vehachi katani" in many cases but an addition of assumptions to the text that may not have been what the Tannaim meant?

4) The gemara itself disagrees with statements like "hilcheta gemiri leih" and "halacha ke-R' XXX". Despite later theorists like Rambam trying to put them up as undisputed conclusions.

As for other issues:

5-6 are part of "Open Orthodoxy" - why persist in using a pejorative term instead of the term they themselves use?

7) I don't know anybody who says that. Unless the professor is himself a rabbi, like R' Sperber, I suppose - in which case, it's a rabbi with an expanded education, like, I dunno, could be, THE RAV (YBS)??!!?

8) What is "accepted"? The whole EJF vs. Rabbi Angel thing shows that standards are changing and have changed in the not-so-distant past.

9) So do all the poskim who talk about "minhag shtus", or the Rav who talked about "stupidity".

10) This is not Post-Orthodoxy, it's naivete. I don't think even RAWeiss, who does talk about interfaith work, believes in it being "complete, unbounded."

11) They already are, in some shuls, with definitely non-"post-orthodox" rabbis. In many cases, the rabbis just don't know who they are. And there are different degrees of "out-ness" - to one's family, to one's friends, walking into shul carrying a sign that says "Ich bin ein Poofter". And what does "equal members" mean? Count for a minyan? Allowed to run for the board? Allowed to lead davening on weekdays? shabbos/yom tov? yamim noraim? lein"

I see here a lot of problems with definitions. And definitions that depend on undefined qualities are still pretty vague/subjective. I start to see what Russell/Wittgenstein were after.

12) "Practices"? "Some practices"? "All practices"? Again we return to Chazal, who did what they could to minimize discriminatory practices, between men & women, but like all of us, they were limited by the grundnorms of halacha. Which is exactly the bind that Orthodox Feminists find themselves in. So the feminism has to give, or else you're out of the system and out of the fold.

13) Again this is naivete, not post-Orthodoxy. If someone knows more, and has more followers, he's more authoritative. But if you feel you have good reason to follow someone who is rejected by others, like, say, the Lub Rebbe or RYBS or R' Kook, is that necessarily Post-Orthodox?

Judaism rises & falls on distinctions. The author is handicapping himself, and maybe consciously so to raise discussions, by being vague about what seem to be critical distinctions.

R' Dr. Jeff Woolf has a similar point-by-point response.

Ki Shem Hashem Ekra

2010-01-01T08:45:00.000-08:00

MUSICAL NOTE

by Cantor Sherwood Goffin
Ki Shem Hashem Ekra

I have been asked why “Ki Shem Hashem Ekra” (Devarim 32:3) appears before “Hashem S’fatai Tiftach” at the start of the Amida only for Mincha and Musaf, but is not said for Shacharit or Ma'ariv. The simple answer is that it is because, in Shacharit and Ma'ariv, the blessing of “Gaal Yisrael” is said before the Amida. Since “Ki Shem” is not an integral part of the Amida as “Hashem S’fatai” is, to say “Ki Shem” would be an invalid interruption between “Gaal Yisrael“ and the Amida. However, in Musaf and Mincha, “Gaal Yisrael” is not present (Kaddish is said before the Amida). Therefore it is acceptable to say “Ki Shem” there.

The recitation of “Ki Shem” is found in the Machzor Vitri, the most influential predecessor to our siddur, but not in the siddurim of Rav Amram Gaon or Saadia Gaon. The Rambam omits both “Ki Shem” and “Hashem Sfatai.” Rambam is, however, the Sfardi Minhag, whereas Machzor Vitri is our Ashkenazic precursor, therefore we follow the latter. The words are a meaningful preamble to our tefillot: “When I call out the name of G-d, ascribe greatness to (Him)” – i.e.: acknowledge that His ways are just, His word is true and His prophesies of Redemption will come true. From this the Talmud decides that we should make a blessing before Torah study; the “Rabbosai N’vorech” before Bentching and “Baruch Shem Kavod” to be said after the utterance of G-d’s name in the Holy Temple.

DAVEN WELL, DON’T TALK, BUT SING ALONG!

Fast in Translation

2009-12-26T19:43:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the 10^th of Tevet, which is a fast day. But did you know that yesterday, the 8^th of Tevet, was also a fast day? The oldest document of Chazal the Megillat Taanit (fast scroll), notes:

On the 8th of Tevet, the Torah was rendered into Greek during the days of King Ptolemy, and darkness descended upon the world for three days.'

The story is recounted in a couple of places, once in Megillah and once as a Braita in the minor tractate Soferim.

'King Ptolemy once gathered 72 Elders. He placed them in 72 chambers, each of them in a separate one, without revealing to them why they were summoned. He entered each one's room and said: 'Write for me the Torah of Moshe, your teacher.' God put it in the heart of each one to translate identically as all the others did' (Tractate Megillah 9[also Soferim 1:8 –jjb]).

(previous two translations from here)

The story is told of five elders who wrote the Torah in Greek for Ptolemy the king and the day was as bad for Israel as the day on which the Golden Calf was made because the Torah could not be accurately translated. (tr. mine; Sofrim 1:7)

We might suspect that these are two successive stories, that Ptolemy hired five sages to translate the Torah, but he suspected that they might be intentionally fooling him by mistranslating passages, so he then hired 72 more, and told them individually, out of hearing of the others, “Translate the Torah for me,” and by a miracle, all 72 came up with exactly the same set of 13 intentional mistranslations. What were the mistranslations? Clarifications, mostly: instead of “In the beginning created God __ the heavens and __ the earth”, they wrote “God created in the beginning…” lest the Greeks believe that there is another deity named “Bereshit” that created “Elokim.” Instead of “Let us make man in Our image”, they rendered it in the singular, lest Ptolemy think the Torah supported polytheism. [I used __ in place of the word "et", which is a particle indicating that the next word is a direct object -jjb]

We should consider the nature of translations.

First, every translation is an interpretation. Rabbi Sokol, when composing his brief dvar torah for the synagogue newsletter, was faced with the word “nivhalu”, describing the state of mind of the brothers when Yosef announced himself. How to translate it? Well, let’s look at how some popular translations render it.

Aryeh Kaplan Living Torah: His brothers were so startled, they could not respond.
Artscroll Stone Chumash: But his brothers could not answer him because they were left disconcerted before him.
Old JPS: And his brethren could not answer him; for they were affrighted at his presence
R’ Sokol: the brothers were so agitated, that they couldn't even respond.

Each of these has a different emotional content. Agitation is not quite the same as startlement, or fright. Not that any one is necessarily better or worse, but it may well depend on the writer. For more, see later.

2) Every translation is written for some audience and/or purpose. It may be written for a king, to keep Judaism tolerable in his eyes. It may be written for other Jews, to explain the Torah to a populace that has lost familiarity with Hebrew, or for introducing them to the local language. Letters may be translated to show the inner emotional states of a famous figure. And that agenda affects the way the ideas are rendered in the target language.

3) Every translation is written by people, who are affected by their personal experiences, and by their surrounding cultures, to have certain prejudices and biases. R’ Sokol recounts a conversation he had with Dr. David Berger, the noted historian and polemicist. R’ Berger had written a piece for an academic journal, and the editor asked him to revise the translations, such that some of the masculine words would become feminine. “But that’s the way the text is! That’s the way they wrote!” Dr Berger complained to R’ Sokol. Nevertheless, the politically correct editor insisted on changing the translation. The biases of a writer and an editor may be at loggerheads – is the text to be rendered accurately, or in tune with the zeitgeist?

4) Every translation limits the understanding of the text. We speak of the Torah as having 70 facets, but the translation locks it down to having one facet for the population who will be reading it. And that may be the reason for the three days of darkness. If the Torah is light, as the verse says, we were closing down the light, in limiting the reading to one perspective out of 70.

So the translation of the Torah was indeed a calamity for Israel, as not only foreigners, but Jews too would be reading it, and having their understanding of Torah shaped by it, rather than being allowed to roam through the breadth of rabbinic interpretation. It was a calamity indeed, if only because it raised one interpretation to an authoritative level.

(I forget how R’ Sokol concluded it – if LoZ or someone wants to fill in, please do).

This was R’ Sokol’s sermon for Vayigash, 26 Dec 09

Maoz Tzur Origins

2009-12-20T06:50:00.000-08:00

Musical Note
by Cantor Sherwood Goffin
MAOZ TZUR ORIGINS

Each year we sing Maoz Tzur on Chanukah, but have little idea of its origins. The words were written by the 13th Century German "paytan" (poet), Mordechai ben Yitzchak Halevi. It was not originally written for Chanukah. The poem is an historical overview, originally in five paragraphs (the sixth is a later addition), referring to Pesach, Exile, Purim, and only the last mentions Chanukah.

The melody, which became popular among German Jewry in the 16th Century, is written in the German chorale style of the 15th/16th Century. It is first recorded as an old German folk song, "So Weiss ich", and was used as Martin Luther's first Protestant hymn, "Nun Freut Euch" in 1523. This is the origin of the suspicion that this is a "Christian" song. The middle section is thought to come from one of two old German songs, the 1504 "Benzenauer", or an earlier "Narrenweise" melody. "So Weiss ich" was already known to the Jews in Germany in 1450 and, therefore, may even have been composed by a Jew! In any case, we are still singing it and Lutherans are not. So enjoy the melody with your children, as tens of generations have done before you!

[Note: I used to sing Adon Olam to Greensleeves on occasion, but there was one Lubavitcher in the old shul who used to complain that I shouldn't use "that Christmas song." Except, well, Greensleeves was a secular song written by King Henry VIII (who was something of a Talmud scholar). The Christmas words to the same old tune were written in the 1890s. So using it for Adon Olam is just as [il-]legitimate. -jjb]

Hellenism in Jewish Palestine

2009-12-19T18:42:00.000-08:00

(yes, I know it's the title of a book by Saul Lieberman. I only have the other one, "Greek in Jewish Palestine". I'd love to see what he says about this.)

Commenter Joseph ~~Anonymous~~ Kaplan wrote:

Chanuka now..how long did it take for greek philosophy to become part of "orthodox" Rabbinic Judaism?

Oh, that was very fast. The entire Talmud bears witness to the absorption of Greek philosophy and culture. The Seder is "how rich people ate"? It's modeled after a Greek Symposium, a dinner and educated debate, with all the forms - heseiba, bringing in the food on tabellach (as my gemara teacher called it in 12th grade when we did Arvei Psachim), discussion around the table on a set theme, heavy drinking (arba kosos), etc. Here's a picture that (except for the nakedness) perfectly illustrates the sort of meal described in the Gemara:

Second, the Socratic method, of picking at a concept to uncover the hidden bases and assumptions - this is the basis of Rabbinic debate in the Talmud, as well as of most legal education in America.

Third, while this took somewhat longer to come into Judaism, we have neo-Platonic emanationism which is parallel to, if not the source of (scholars are divided on this) the whole Kabbalistic creation and structure: the ten emanations that fill the pleroma or fullness, the space between God and the physical world, the totality of Divine powers. And in the war between Aristotelian rationalism and Platonic emanationism, it's quite clear - the emanationists, the neo-Platonists, have won.

The division in Kabbala between the unchanging Infinite, and the shifting and changing Sefiros which are the tools by which the universe was created, formed, emanated, made - this parallels Gnosticism, which was a Greek religion which was more or less created to be antisemitic, from what I can tell - where the transcendent Good God does not communicate with the world, but the world was created by the evil Demiurge, a lesser divine being, who actually communicates with the world.

No, there wasn't any widespread adoption of Greek philosophy per se, but of their methods, yes.

Although Rabbi Akiva does seem to speak of man created after an archetype, which is a central Platonic idea - that of abstract forms, the ideal Man vs. the real.

And (shades of the R' Svei zt"l and yblcht"a R' Lamm argument years ago) there does seem to be some parallel between Plato's parable of the cave, and R' Shimon's and R' Eliezer's behavior on coming out of the cave after 12 years - that having been inside the cave, they no longer know how to deal with reality. In fact, it seems so similar that it may be a re-telling, with some remapping of the concepts to fit Judaism and the reputation of Rashb"i.

Quite likely, Euclid's mathematics was relevant to "sod ha'ibbur" calendrical calculations; certainly the unnamed Peirush on Rambam's Hil. Kiddush haChodesh depends on geometry to explain the relative geocentric motions of Earth, Moon and Sun.

Other influences of Greek culture include the Greek bible; Rabban Gamliel's opinion that one can lein Megillah in Greek because the Greek language is equally holy as Hebrew; the adoption of Greek names into Hebrew (any number of people in the Talmud, such as Sumchus); etc.

Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald says, in his Chanukah lecture, "we are all Hellenists" in that we all benefit from, and incorporate ourselves in, modern society, in various ways and to various degrees. None of us reject modern secular American or European society totally.

You can take the boy out of the Bible Belt...

2009-12-16T12:50:00.000-08:00

Commenting on the previous post, Mississippi Fred McDowell wrote:

The same tale is told all over the world, where modern European civilization collided with traditional cultures. Indeed, the fact that you are now typing and probably thinking in English means that some form of compromise with modernity was eventually achieved, but not without much growing pains and casualties along the way. The idea that in Germany it could have been resisted entirely by not giving in to any of modernity's temptations is nice, but it would have resulted in a handful of hardline rabbis without a flock, as such a position would not have taken into account the realities and tempermants of German Jews, who were indeed ready for and on the cusp of speaking in German and the like. They were, in fact, chaleshing for it, and it would have happened with or without Mendelssohn, only perhaps without him it would have taken on the form of total apostasy. Or not; I could be wrong. But the point is that modernity itself was a powerful force seducing away from traditional religion.

Could a Lubavitcher have the perspective to sit back and realize, "it wasn't Mendelssohn it was modernity?" For them, the Rebbe said it, no matter how based in polemical distortions of a century earlier, therefore it's gospel truth. Literally. Because their Rebbes are Tzaddikim as described by the Tanya, and thus embody God's will in this world.

The anonymous commenter in the previous post cannot admit the Rebbe was wrong in attributing "Jew in the home, man in the street" to a man who lived his life as "Jew in the home, Jew in the street, Jew in the courts of kings and scholars." There is a letter where Mendelssohn notes that he had to refuse the wine of a nobleman because of stam yeinam. He wrote "Jerusalem" to defend the Jews in the public sphere. He wrote peirushim on the Chumash and the Rambam to make Judaism remain palatable to those affected by modernity.

(Well, there's some debate as to what extent that was the motivation for the German translation, and to what extent he wanted the Jews to be able to speak clear German, as they were already moving into outer society. There are two letters with contradictory ideas: that he wanted to make the Torah palatable to Germanized Jews, and that he wanted to make German palatable to Torah Jews. In either case, he did want to make sure that Torah remained compatible with Germanized Judaism.)

There is a commenter on some of the J-blogs, whom I know IRL. He lives entirely in the modern world, doesn't consider himself a chasid Chabad, but cannot escape the attitudes and ideas about history and relationships among Jewish groups inculcated by his Lubavitch upbringing.

This is hardly an issue limited to Lubavitchers, of course. I took a course on Islam in college, taught by a Muslim academic. He had no end of frustration with the orthodox Muslim students in his class (he was one himself). He required the students to step back and be able to look at Islam and its history as an outsider, without the prejudices of the believer. The students should be able to step out of themselves, but these students, for the most part, could not.

It may be easier for me, having been an outsider all my life. I was raised non0bservant, although my parents have since grown in observance as well. But they sent me to Ramaz, and we went to Lincoln Square Synagogue, because R' Riskin was more accepting of children than R' Miller at the SAJ, where we had been until 1973 or so. So wherever I go in the Jewish world, it's with the experience of not having come to it natively.

Mendelssohn in Lubavitch eyes

2009-12-15T14:07:00.000-08:00

An evil star has risen in Germany: Moses [Mendelsohn] of Desau, may his name be obliterated. A man of Torah filled with bitter, rotten grapes. He mixed a batter combining apostasy and Torah, spoiled and rotten. He made a honey-cake (Tzelil Devash, the name of his book) and he fed it to his friends and students. As on the wings of the wind, his students fanned out across the land, making a tumult for the approach “Be a Jew at home, and a citizen in the street.” In a short time, Germany was poisoned, ruined by Mendelsohn and his colleagues. Like a pillar of fire eats through straw, the Rabbis of Germany were devoured right and left. Mendelsohn created a crater in Germany; he ran off with Jewish skulls. He stole the children of Jacob, and he broke the leaders of Jewry; he placed them all in the burning fireplace of the sciences.

This passage appears on a Lubavitch website, I think written by the previous Lubavitcher rebbe, who is known for partisan distortions of history to advance a Chabad agenda.

A tendentious distortion of history. Mendelssohn a"h did not, h"v, say, or maintain in his personal life, that one should be a Jew in the home and a man in the street. That was YL Gordon, a hundred years later. The ones who encouraged the sciences were the Gra and his disciple Boruch Shick of Shklov - the Gra being another person whom Lubavitch writers distort. He was not "under the influence of maskilim" when he critiqued Chassidus, nor did he believe in "tzimtzum kipeshuto", he held his positions out of true knowledge and belief, and believed in the same tzimtzum in the ohr as Chassidim.

Furthermore, all of this was the ORTHODOX haskalah of the first few generations. Reform was something else, a formalization of the wholesale abandonment of Judaism. Many gedolim of the 19th century honored Mendelssohn's commentary, the Biur, and used it themselves. R' Aryeh Kaplan used it for his commentary in the 20th century. The Netziv used it for the Ha'amek Davar. And while the Chasam Sofer banned it, his own children and grandchildren held the Biur in high esteem. This is the historical truth, not distortions meant to keep chasidim uneducated in the ways of the world away from non-chasidic ideas.

Mendelssohn was not the Hitlerish caricature that the writer of this passage uses. Mendelssohn was closest to, I think, the Rav YB Soloveitchik, except that the world was not ready for him. His own children, some stayed Jewish some did not. Why? Because there was no support structure yet for Jews who lived with one foot in the yeshiva, one foot in the secular academy, and one foot in the courts of the mighty. And his children did not have his strength of character, so trying to live his way failed. Because Reform took advantage of the open German society, to become non-religious, is no reason to blame Mendelssohn. Better to blame Napoleon, Voltaire, Rousseau, etc. who preached the open society.

I couldn't really say that over there for fear my userid would be suspended.

Happy Chanukah

2009-12-13T08:45:00.000-08:00

from the Ramaz Upper School Chorus, under the direction of [classmate's brother] Daniel Henkin, a fascinating setting of Maoz Tzur - is it Rossi or is it Memorex?

iiiiIiiii :-)

Providence, if not the City

2009-12-12T19:41:00.000-08:00

(R' Moshe Sokol's sermon for Vayeshev 5770 at the Yavneh Minyan of Flatbush, with my additions/comments)

The Sfas Emes, in his meditation for 5661, notes that Chanukah commemorates our victory over the Greeks. But it was not just a physical victory, it was a moral victory. What moral goal was served? The Seleucids were trying to make the Jews give up on the God idea. The Sfas Emes claims that the Greeks, through their expertise in astrology (Yavan, Ionia, Greece, is numerologically equivalent to Galgal, celestial sphere), saw the world as a completely natural world, where once we understood physical law and the celestial motions, there would be no more need to have a God to explain why things happened in the world. We would know that everything is just an effect of other things acting on it.

In other words, the Seleucid Greeks were trying force us to give up on the idea of Divine Providence, that God controls the world and history. Rabbi Sokol then summarized three major schools of thought about the nature of Divine providence. Apparently, a world that follows physical law, and a world where history is driven by Divine Will, are not as incompatible as the Hellenistic Syrians thought.

First is the Sfas Emes' idea - that the world is indeed mechanistic, following physical laws. However, God reserves the right to intervene when necessary, for His plan to work out. No need for fancy explanations - God has His will, and exerts it when necessary.

Second is Maimonides' idea as expressed in the Guide. There is "general providence" on most of the world, which nations will rise and fall, which species will arise or go extinct. "Individual providence" only extends to Jews, as we are the instrument for implementing His Will, the Torah, in this world.

Third is what I and some other scientifically-minded people in the shul believe, but for which I haven't seen an "authoritative" Jewish source, except that today, R' Sokol, whom I trust, spoke about it. Well, given the opposition to, or ignorance of, modern science among many Torah specialists today, who could talk about it?

That is the idea that God intervenes through manipulating probabilities. There is a lot of uncertainty in the physical universe, from micro effects like quantum uncertainty (the electron is somewhere in the cloud around the nucleus, but we can't locate its position or velocity at any givent moment; or the electron is in several potential states simultaneously, until some event forces the state vector to collapse on one of the possibilities), to macro effects like chaotic and/or complex systems, which can also only be described statistically (such as weather systems, the behavior of crowds, fluid flows, etc.) So, if there's a statistically improbable event, but one which is in the realm of possibility, God may nudge that event to happen such that people recognize it as His will at work.

(this is from me, not R' Sokol:) For example, in Charles Pellegrino's book "Return to Sodom and Gomorrah", he describes Joshua's crossing the Jordan River. He explains it in terms of periodic (once a century, more or less) rockslides in the Jordan Valley, which will block up the river's flow for a period of hours, before the rock-dam breaks and flow returns. Clearly this happened for Joshua and Bnai Israel, and thus they could cross on dry land. He takes this as evidence that there is no God, because there exists a naturalistic explanation. However, look at it from a probablistic standpoint. This event happens perhaps once a century for a period of hours. That state of crossability exists 1:14700 of the time, say. What are the odds that Joshua and the Israelites should reach the Jordan river at just the right time to take advantage of this rare event? Clearly, God brought them to the right place at the right time to cross safely. It was a possible, not probable event, and it worked out just right. I believe that this is Biblical evidence of God manipulating the probabilities to make sure that the improbable event happened correctly.

To sum up, then, the Sfas Emes provides an answer that works for the Chasid who prides himself on his Emunah Peshutah, his simple faith - that God reserves the right to act when necessary. The Rambam provides a philosophically satisfying answer that still enables Jewish pride: that God extends individual providence to the Jews alone. Many moderns would accept this happily. And the statistical answer, which works for scientifically-minded moderns, but which seems to be unsourced in the tradition, which worries me a bit. Although, it sorta answers a different question than the Rambam's: it's not "who gets DP" but "how does DP not come into conflict with the concept of physical law?" Some people claim to have "seen it somewhere", but I'd like to know where.

Onomastic Bubbleplastic

2009-11-26T06:21:00.000-08:00

The blogger known as Mississippi Fred MacDowell comments to "Using the Title Rabbi" on Hirhurim blog:

That's true across the board. Almost no one in Europe with a kinnui used their Hebrew name except when they were called to the Torah. The Netziv was known as "Reb Hersh Leib."

But I wonder. Is it just "kinnui", or is there an avoidance of first names? The Netziv's full name was "Naftali Tzvi Yehuda", while "Hersh Leib" only translates the last two names. Yes, I know, the animal associated with the tribe of Naftali is a Tzvi (deer). Still, people used a Yiddish pronunciation of Naftali for people who didn't have other names, e.g. Naftali Brandwein, one of the top klezmer clarinetists in America between the wars. My father played with him once in the late 1930s, when Dad was in the house orchestra in a Catskills hotel. After the show, they all went out to the deli in Monticello, and when Brandwein started playing, windows popped open all over town, people shouting "Naftulle's back! Naftulle's back!"

Anyway, back to the main point. I was thinking about my mother's (Litvish - Kovno and Suvalk, mostly) family, many of whom had double names, whether Hebrew/Yiddish or Hebrew/Hebrew, and in almost all cases, the second name was the one they used. Particularly where they or their parents were the immigrants. Those whose parents grew up here, used first names.

Grandpa (Tzvi Hersh on his ketubba) known as Heshke when young, Harold as an adult. (Lawyer)
His brother Uncle Joe (Yosef Ezra) Ezzie as a kid, Joe in college and later. (CCNY history professor)
Great-grandpa Louis Cohen (Yitzchak Eliezer) - used the name Louis (founded Brooklyn Jewish Center)
His brother Joseph H. Cohen (Yechizkiyahu Yosef) - used Joseph (founded The Jewish Center)

And beyond them, what does Shulamith Soloveitchik Meiselman say her brother Yosef Dov was called by his family? Berel - again the second name, not Yossel.

Thinking about your (particularly Litvish) older relatives with two names, who would have followed European speechways rather than American, does anyone else notice a similar pattern?

What does it mean? Debbie (Mrs. Thanbo) speculates that since everybody is named for an older relative, perhaps the older relatives were known by their first names as adults, so children are called by the second name to differentiate. That sounds possible. I, for instance, Jonathan Jay, was named for an uncle who died in childhood. He was called "Jonny" by his parents (my grandparents). But my grandparents called me "Jay" or "JJ", because I was NOT Jonny. Actually, my brother has more his personality. But then, what about Reb Hersh Leib, who was apparently known as such as an adult?

Happy Turkey, everybody. Thanksgiving has some bittersweet memories, as it was the end of shiva for my grandpa (Harold, mentioned above) in 1980. That was the one year we didn't have a Thanksgiving dinner, of course - Grandma used to make it, and she certainly wasn't about to, nor was Mom, both aveilot. So we went out to Fine and Schapiro (the local kosher deli) and had turkey sandwiches for lunch.

But most Thanksgiving memories are fun - we lived on the Upper West Side, so went to the parade every year. Except 5th grade, when it was pouring*. When I got older, I would go to the Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue for shacharit and Tgvg breakfast, and watch the parade from their porch. My grandparents lived around the corner from the synagogue, so Mitch & I would go right over to them after the parade and have some just-us time without our parents at Grandma & Grandpa's.

This year, we're hosting my family. Debbie's mother has remarried, and doesn't keep kosher, so she's going to Tgiv with her husband's children.

So Happy Thanksgiving, for those who celebrate it.

____
* Why do I remember the weather in 5th grade? We stayed home and watched the parade on TV. We were watching band after band march past, with rank upon rank of clarinets, which are the violins of a marching band - the main instrument, if not the flashiest. Mom suggested "would you like to play clarinet, like your grandpa Beckerman (Dad's father)?" "OK, I'll give it a try." And I played all through high school. My fingers still know where to go, if I have no lip any more. But it was good training, and I still play recorder. The upper register on the clarinet has the same fingerings as the C recorders (soprano, tenor), while the lower register has the same fingerings as the F recorders (sopranino, alto, bass)

Chassidic Idiom in English

2009-11-16T07:39:00.000-08:00

I've been reading Elliot Wolfson's latest work, "Open Secret", on Chabad and its messianism (not just recently, but as an underlying thread throughout its history). Dr Wolfson (no relation to Harry Austryn Wolfson, AFAIK) has, in recent years, taken to writing in a flowery style affected by contemporary literary theory. This style seems to adapt itself well to the flowery style of the Chasidic maamar, which in essence is the model for his prose.

At times he uses Hebrew terms for Hasidic concepts, since they are the best way to express them. Sometimes, however, he attempts to (re)cover Hasidic concepts using English terms. For instance, the following passage, which struck me:

The forms of contemplation are aligned with two philosophical approaches with respect to the question of the relationship of God to the world. The former and less theologically dangerous orientation, which corresponds to what is usually called by historians of religion panentheism, considers the one reality to be unified in and yet distinct from all matters of the world, and hence everything in the chain of becoming is part of the evolving whole that is the divine source, and the latter is the far more challenging view -- what is referred to as acosmism - that there is no independent ontic status to the world, that God is the only substance in reality and thus the world in all of its multiplicity and differentiation is negated, since it is but a manifestation of the divine essence.

First off, I had never actually seen a differentiation between panentheism, the concept that everything in the universe is part of God, and acosmism, the idea that everything in the universe is nullified as part of God as is the finite against the infinite. I had thought them two different words for essentially the same idea. Wolfson here does draw a distinction, but is it really a distinction that others would draw?

It seems to me that Wolfson is actually trying to fit English words to the Hasidic concepts of yichuda ila'a and yichuda tata'ah, the upper and lower unities. The upper unity, more or less how the universe appears from God's perspective, is what Wolfson calls acosmism, while the lower unity, or how we can perceive the world, is what Wolfson calls panentheism. For the Alter Rebbe's own understanding of these Unities, see Tanya, Shaar Hayichud VeHa'Emunah (second part of the book), chapters 4-7. Much of the book Kuntress Eitz haChaim by the Fifth Rebbe, particularly chapters 6-9, explain how the two different Unities affect us in our lives.

Another example of Wolfson's elliptic prose that reveals as it conceals, as does the prose of the Rebbes in their Maamarim, extended mystical discourses:

(p.27) To be exposed, the Infinite must be camouflaged; to be forthcoming, it must be withheld. Envisionin gthe essence in Habad tradition may be cast as apprehending the "absolute nonbeing of the event,"[134] which "results from an excess of one, an ultra-one,"[135] the oneness beyond the distinction of one and many. The unicity consigned to the end is a visual attunement to the void of all being, the void of all things fully void, the breach of unity by which the unity of the breach (dis)appears in and through the cleft of consciousness. In this temporal crevice and spatial hiatus, the symbolic is imagined as real, the real as symbolic.

134. Yitzchak Eizik Epstein, Maamar yetziat mitzrayim. Vilna 1877
135. Alain Badiou, Being and Event, 2005

This looping repetitive prose, reflecting in and on itself, echoes another writer trained in Hasidic idiom, R' Abraham Joshua Heschel.

So too Chasidic writings reveal as they conceal. My wife tried reading Wolfson and didn't make much headway, despite (or because of) being a fiction writer and former English & History teacher. Sometimes you have to read through the text to (un)read the text.

Philosophy and Torah

2009-11-15T16:30:00.001-08:00

Just listened to the first lecture by R' Eliezer Brodt of the Seforim blog, in the eTIM series on "Rare Minhagim Books and Controversies". The subject was the book Malmad haTalmidim, by R' Jacob b. Abba Mari Anatoli. He claimed it was the first book of drashot arranged by parsha, but I wondered, what about the She'iltot of R' Ahai Gaon? Surely a Geonic work predates a late 13th century collection of sermons. Or were the She'iltot more theoretical constructs, rather than records of actual sermons?

The book is in the philosophical mode, being a series of moral/ethical essays based on verses from Proverbs. The author was a big fan of Rambam, naturally. Starting around 1300 there was a big backlash against philosophical writers and works; R' Brodt surveyed R' Anatoli's defenders and detractors. The book languished virtually unknown for centuries, until published from manuscript by Mekitzei Nirdamim in 1866, and once more a century later. Recordings should be available for a nominal fee in the near future.

It seems to me that affinity for philosophy among the Torah world has come and gone in waves, perhaps following trends in the outside world. Here we have a Jewish flowering of philosophy, in the same period that the Muslims were experiencing their Golden Age and engaging in philosophical speculation, whether as the Kalam, or as Sufism, or as Alfarabi'an Aristotelian, which affected Maimonides so strongly. As dar al-Islam began to lose ground to the Christians in Spain and the Holy Land, Jewish affinity for philosophy began to fall off as well.

In the Renaissance, as Christendom began to open itself up to philosophy, Judaism experienced another round of philosophical speculation, peaking in the 1500s with figures such as Azariah dei Rossi and David Gans, who wrote books on natural philosophy and history; until the 1600s when some (such as Spinoza) went too far. But it continued underground for a little while, until the Sabbatean revolution, and later the publication of the works of the Ari, replaced it with Kabbalistic theosophy. "Preachers of the Italian Ghetto," ed. Ruderman, surveys a number of 17th-century figures who supported or opposed philosophy, in much the same way as the sources surveyed (many drawn from Marc Saperstein's "Jewish Preaching") by R' Brodt did in the 14th century. Some of the open opponents of philosophy reveal that they themselves knew the philosophical idiom even as they openly reject it, which makes for somewhat entertaining reading, extracting layers of meaning.

And in the modern period, philosophy has made various attempts to rear its head, particularly as kabbalah had gone into abeyance in the Western non-Chasidic world. Mendelssohn and his circle engaged in it, just as their contemporaries in the German and French Enlightenment brought philosophy out of the middle ages (Kant, Leibniz, Hegel, Rousseau, Diderot, etc). With its association with Haskalah, and Haskalah's association with Reform, it went somewhat more underground for a time, before re-emerging in interwar Europe, when many who were to become the post-WW2 Gedolim, went to Berlin to study philosophy and secular culture (Heschel, Soloveitchik, Hutner, possibly Schneerson). It carried forth to become the underlying rationale for much of modern Orthodoxy. But as Kabbalah returns to Western sensibilities, it too is fading away.

The Solo Restaurant Experience

2009-11-06T07:03:00.000-08:00

Debbie & I went to Solo for her (mhm)th birthday, whose executive chef is Hung Huynh, a winner of the Top Chef program. We hadn't been since their merger with Prime Grill, and it is now an amazing experience, instead of just pointlessly expensive.

This post is composed of Debbie's Livejournal description, coupled with my long addition in the comments section.

Debbie's post:

Tonight, jonbaker took me to Solo, which is a fine-dining kosher restaurant on 5th Avenue, with Hung from Top Chef at the helm.

It was LOVELY. The bread came with a humous spread - sun-dried tomatoes, paprika and garlic mixed in. We both had appetizers - Jonathan had grilled eggplant salad with microgreens and tiny tomatoes. I had salmon carpaccio dressed with soy and wasabi, with microgreens in a nice vinaigrette including jalopenos and avocado, plus parsnip chips. It was perfectly balanced between the spicy and the creamy, the smooth and the crunchy.

For mains, Jonathan had a chicken rice clay pot with yu choy (a green) and enoki (a vegetable). It was rich and gingery with caramelized soy sauce. I had short ribs braised in plum and beer with mashed potatoes and turnip puree, and crispy shallots. It was rich and sweet and falling-apart tender. And then we had dessert. I normally do NOT get dessert, but this time - well, on the dessert menu was a list of ice creams and sorbets, and one of the sorbets was papaya-szechuan pepper. There was no way I could resist. It came as three scoops, which could be taken all in one flavor or mixed. I decided to mix - the papaya-szechan pepper, mango-lime and vanilla. That last was an ice "cream." The waiter approved. And then my silly husband told him it was my birthday. So not only did we get the nice dish of ice cream and our espressos, but also a tiny pice of cake with a lit candle and a cookie (a nice, crisp delicate toile) with happy birthday in chocolate syrup.

The ice creams were so amazingly yummy - the vanilla was intense and I couldn't tell it was non-dairy, the mango-lime was nicely balanced, and the papaya-pepper was AMAZING. Sweet, cold, hot and spicy at the same time - it made my mouth very happy. It also went well with the vanilla and the mango.

It was the best meal out ever.

My addition:

The chicken/rice was not the usual Chinese dish, but interesting.

The waiters show up with the pot on a plate (small covered casserole), warns "extremely hot, don't touch", and takes the cover off with a napkin. Second waiter pours a measured amount of sauce (mostly soy) over the chicken and rice, then stirs the whole thing.

First bite of chicken, an explosion of ginger. But the ginger didn't permeate the rice. The remaining pieces of chicken were gingery, and felt like they were covered with a chinese white ginger sauce.

The rice was for the most part wetter/creamier than I think of Chinese rice, and had these things like vermicelli noodles mixed in. But the noodles were the finely julienned "enoki". Not much flavor, but texture felt like vermicelli - sorta rubbery noodles, but when you bite down, you feel the longitudinal plant fibers. Yu choy was somewhere between broccoli rabe and bok choy. Broccoli-shaped pieces with leafy, not flowery ends, with a bok-choy-like flavor.

As I got towards the bottom, I noticed a thin burned layer on the bottom, which was full of flavor from the soy sauce, and didn't actually taste burnt. I think the pot was so hot, that when they poured in the sauce, it ran to the bottom and caramelized on the hot surface.

I encouraged Debbie to have some dessert, so I could have an excuse to ask the waiters to do the birthday thing. Debbie was modestly saying she didn't want the minor birthday fuss, but secretly she did want it, so getting the dessert made an excuse. You can get warm chocolate cake or apple crisp at all these places. She had her eye on some house special dessert, but I thought it looked way sweetsier than she would like. So she looked at the sorbets - she likes sour, and hot mixed with sweet, so the papaya-sichuan-pepper thing called to her. I had the sorbets as well, we both kept taking tiny spoon-dips, and they were terrific. Mixing the fruit flavors with the vanilla made for the most terrific Creamsicle-like flavor.

Dinner that's a sensory delight as well as delicious and nutritious, waiter service that's heavy without being overbearing (lots of guys, but not pestering us too much, and in the case of the chicken dish, having two guys to prepare it at the table made it that much more impressive), and a mostly pleasant ambience (a bit loud, and there was some annoying percussion coming through the PA, and they seated us near the kitchen/service area - but even that was fascinating for Debbie the budding chef), made for a lovely evening, and one of our top three restaurant experiences.

Chatan Torah - Ateret Kehillah

2009-10-14T13:03:00.001-07:00

Lincoln Square Synagogue started a "new tradition" this year at Simchat Torah. After decades of having three chatanim chosen from the men of the community, and several more or less feminist rabbis, they finally decided to find a way to honor women of the community on Simchat Torah. Their solution: Ateret HaKehillah / Ateret Torah, two new "honors" bestowed on women of the community at the nighttime Simchat Torah service.

My mother, Wendy Baker, (naturally) was one of the first women so chosen, to be Ateret HaKehillah, as she has been "the chesed lady" since Rabbi Berman's tenure in the mid-1980s. She has run weekly food recycling efforts, three food drives and two clothing drives each year, recycling tons of food and clothing each year, recruiting volunteers from the synagogue and its teens (who need chesed-work credits for school), drivers and shleppers two evenings a week, etc. She was also one of the founding members of the LSS Women's Davening Group, the first ongoing WTG ever, and has served on both its board and the shul board. She spends several hours a week learning at Drisha and at the shul's classes. At her summer C-nagogue, she has taught parsha and pirke avot classes, served on the board, and has done as much as possible to encourage halachic observance and traditional prayer. All in all someone who has really done what she can for herself, her communities and God.

For the occasion, she stood up while the rabbi explained her accomplishments. Cantor Goffin composed a poem, in the spirit of the Reshuyot (flowery summons to the Torah) for the Chatanim, based on verses and Rabbinic statements. He sang it to the traditional tune for the Reshuyot, a "Missinai" tune that we also use for the Holiday evening kiddush. The poem for the event was also presented (framed, on nice paper) to my mother as a plaque. The honorees then co-sponsored a kiddush/lunch for the congregation, as is also traditional for the chatanim.

My mother was thrilled, despite my ill-considered attempts to harsh her squee (as my wife might say). I mean, it's a new thing, and interesting to honor women in parallel with the chatanim, but she was using terms like "historic" and "groundbreaking" to describe it, and I just don't see it that way. Shuls honor women at dinners, in newsletters, etc. all the time. But putting it in as part of the service, with a (homemade) liturgy, I think before the Atah Horeisas, makes it more than just yet another announcement, or something done outside the context of the sanctuary.

I posted my mother's part with her permission, but didn't post the other woman's part. If there's interest, I'll scan and post that as well.

Authentic Pnimiyus Hatorah - not

2009-10-01T12:20:00.000-07:00

This started as a response to the ongoing thread on parshablog reacting to my earlier post. It got a bit long for a comment box, so I'm moving it here.

In terms of pnimiyus (inwardness, secret meaning of) haTorah - we don't have any of it authentically, it has been reconstituted several times through history, and who are you to decide it's avoda zara?

As another poster noted, we don't have the Biblical nister, it wasn't written down. What other nistarot (hidden wisdoms) have we had?

The postbiblical period had something like occultism - see the books of Enoch or Jubilees or whatever. That morphed into:
Heichalot mysticism, loosely based on Ezek. 1. Heichalot mysticism ceased to work around the time of the Churban, and was finally given up in the early middle ages. Rambam in Guide III says that the old nister is lost, so he'll create a new:
philosophical nister, based on what he learned from his teachers. Meanwhile, in France and northern Spain,
Kabbalah was developing, in the sense of 10x4 or 5 mysticisms. (sefirot, olamot, partzufim).
Then it was resystematized/remapped in the 1500s by the Ari and his circle.
Then it was redigested/remapped by the Chasidim in the late 1700s.

We are so far removed from anything "authentic" that we have nothing.

So if something a) fits the facts of halacha, with only minor k'neitching, and b) fits the basics of Jewish belief, why shouldn't it work? be allowed?

It seems that people want there to be a pnimiyus haTorah, even if the hoi polloi don't grasp all the details. They have their folk religion to fill in the gaps between practice and law, between life and ideals. Angels and demons fill in the gaps between the ineffable God and the mundane world.

Superstition may be distasteful to those of us raised on Mod-O philosophism, but it was real to many of our grandparents and great-grandparents, not to mention the Chasidim (see Lis Harris' book) and my non-religious sister (raised in large part by a semi-traditionalist superstitious grandmother).

People need something to put meat on the bones of halacha. I think midrash tried to do that, and worked for a long time, but by the middle ages it faded, or morphed (via late midrashim like TDBE) into kabbalism.

I've got a lot of inchoate thoughts on spirituality and religion, and need some work to put them into order.

Catholics and Jews and Freemasons, oh my

2009-09-29T07:58:00.000-07:00

R' Gil Student has long had friendly relations with the Catholic magazine "First Things," which discusses a lot of general religious issues in a fairly open way. He recently published an essay with them, which appeared in a column called "On the Square."

I find it interesting that a Catholic magazine uses "On the Square" as the title of a regular column. "On the square," like "on the level," is a Masonic expression, meaning someone who is trustworthy. But the Catholics have always been opposed to the Freemasons, not least because of their secrecy - who knows what antireligious, especially antiCatholic, things are going in their lodges?

ObJewish: OTOH, I know plenty of Jewish, even some Orthodox, Freemasons, some having been so for several generations. My father amu"sh was raised (admitted to the third degree) by his father a"h, although my father more or less dropped out after the 1950s.

Yom Kippur Kiddush

2009-09-27T04:26:00.000-07:00

(N.B., I am not a rabbi, this is a theoretical construct, since odds are, it's not even said even in extremis, for which see below):

Never heard of such a thing? Well, good. Please God, we won’t have to use such a thing ad bias hagoel. The question only really comes up in context of extreme illness, where one really has to eat a normal diet (for those who even approve of this; most say you have to eat funny small amounts, widely spaced, rather than regular meals), or as in the famous story of R’ Yisrael Salanter, where the city is under threat of a plague and the local rabbi orders people to eat, so as to keep their strength up and not succumb to the plague. Only in such circumstances, it seems to me, would there even be a question of “do I say Kiddush over a Yom Kippur meal?”

Is there even an obligation of Kiddush in such a situation? Probably not. It depends whether the “takkanah of Kiddush” extends to Yom Kippur. On the one hand, it’s a holiday, and partakes of the holiness of Shabbat, so perhaps the Shabbat/Yom Tov obligation of Kiddush extends over to Yom Kippur. On the other hand, the takkanah, rabbinic decree, to say Kiddush only applies in situations where it is normal to eat a meal, i.e., not Yom Kippur. Perhas the doubt whether or not it’s even relevant to Yom Kippur creates a situation where “doubt in a rabbinic matter (which most blessings are) leads to a lenient ruling”, i.e., don’t say Kiddush, being lenient in the laws of blessings.

However, if one really were to say a Yom Kippur Kiddush, what would it look like? I’d like to present a possible reconstruction, based on the structure of the Yom Tov Kiddush, and based on the difference between Yom Tov and Rosh Hashanah kiddushes, and how they reflect the Amidahs of their respective days.

The opening would be the same, as it is always drawn from the first two paragraphs of the central blessing of the Yom Tov or Rosh Hashanah amidah, with suitable change for Yom Kippur:

Baruch attah H’ elokeinu melech ha-olam [standard blessing form]

Asher bachar banu micol am, vermomamtanu micol lashon, vekidshanu bemitzvotav.

Vatiten lanu H’ Elokenu b’ahavah, moadim lesimchah chagim uzmanim lesasson

Et yom hakipurim hazeh. [so far, like Yom Tov and Rosh Hashanah, based on the Amidah]

[long attempt to derive a conclusion to Vatiten Lanu deleted]

(facepalm) as soon as I started davening, I realized the obvious, I should just transplant Vatiten Lanu directly into the kiddush, with the long characterization of Yom Kippur intact. So:

L'selicha vel'mechila ul'kapara, velimchol vo et col avonoteinu,

Mikra kodesh, zeicher liytziat mitzraim.

Ki vanu vacharta v’otanu kidashta, micol ha’amim [standard in all Yom Tov kiddushes]

Now we come to the interesting question – the next phrase.

Here is Yom Tov Amidah from Vetaher Libeinu:

. וְטַהֵר לִבֵּנוּ לְעָבְדְּךָ בֶּאֱמֶת. וְהַנְחִילֵנוּ יְדוָד אֱלֹהֵינוּ. בְּשִׂמְחָה וּבְשָׂשׂוֹן. מוֹעֲדֵי קָדְשֶׁךָ וְיִשְׂמְחוּ בְּךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל מְקַדְּשֵׁי שְׁמֶךָ:

And Kiddush:

וּמוֹעֲדֵי קָדְשֶׁךָ בְּשִׂמְחָה וּבְשָׂשׂוֹן הִנְחַלְתָּנוּ:

Rosh Hashanah Amidah:

וְטַהֵר לִבֵּנוּ לְעָבְדְּךָ בֶּאֱמֶת, כִּי אַתָּה אֱלֹהִים אֱמֶת וּדְבָרְךָ אֱמֶת וְקַיָּם לָעַד

And Rosh Hashanah Kiddush:

וּדְבָרְךָ אֱמֶת וְקַיָּם לָעַד

Yom Kippur Amidah:

וְטַהֵר לִבֵּנוּ לְעָבְדְּךָ בֶּאֱמֶת, כִּי אַתָּה סָלְחָן לְיִשְׂרָאֵל וּמָחֳלָן לְשִׁבְטֵי יְשֻׁרוּן בְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר וּמִבַּלְעָדֶיךָ אֵין לָנוּ מֶלֶךְ מוֹחֵל וְסוֹלֵחַ

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְדוָד מֶלֶךְ מוֹחֵל וְסוֹלֵחַ לַעֲוֹנוֹתֵינוּ וְלַעֲוֹנוֹת עַמּוֹ בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל וּמַעֲבִיר אַשְׁמוֹתֵינוּ בְּכָל שָׁנָה וְשָׁנָה, מֶלֶךְ עַל כָּל הָאָרֶץ מְקַדֵּשׁ יִשְׂרָאֵל וְיוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים:

I brought in the closing beracha, because that will become necessary – the closing beracha is similar in the Amidah and Kiddush for each of Yom Tov and Rosh Hashanah.

What pattern do we notice? After Vetaher libeinu l’avdecha b’emet, there are two clauses introducing the final Beracha, joined with “u”. In Yom Tov, the whole phrase is somewhat shuffled and shortened for Kiddush, while on Rosh Hashanah, the second clause is taken verbatim. Rosh Hashanah matches most closely, in that the first clause begins with “ki” and the second with “u” for both it and Yom Kippur. So let’s take that as our paradigm, and use the second clause from Yom Kippur:

Mibal’adecha ein lanu melech mocheil vesolei’ach

Which nicely captures the essence of what we’re praying for all day on Yom Kippur.

Finally, the closing beracha, taken from the closing phrase of the bracha in the Amidah:

Baruch atah H’, mekadesh yisra’el v’yom hakipurim.

So, to bring it all together,

Baruch attah H’ elokeinu melech ha-olam

Asher bachar banu micol am, vermomamtanu micol lashon, vekidshanu bemitzvotav.

Vatiten lanu H’ Elokenu b’ahavah, moadim lesimchah chagim uzmanim lesasson

Et yom hakipurim hazeh.

L'selicha vel'mechila ul'kapara, velimchol vo et col avonoteinu,

Mikra kodesh, zeicher liytziat mitzraim.

Ki vanu vacharta v’otanu kidashta, micol ha’amim

Mibal’adecha ein lanu melech mocheil vesolei’ach

Baruch atah H’, mekadesh yisra’el v’yom hakipurim.

Has anyone actually seen a Yom Kippur Kiddush, and would they know its provenance?

Gemar chatimah tovah, and may next (well, there isn’t time to train and isolate a Kohen Gadol for this one) Yom haKippurim truly be a Yom Ke’Purim, attending with Moshiach (well, he won’t be a kohen, will he? He’ll be attending like the rest of us) at the Beit haMikdash in the final redemption, bb”a.

_____

Updated motzi Yom Tov: corrected Vatiten Lanu.

Where's the 'Snag Kabbalah?

2009-09-24T14:49:00.000-07:00

I went into my neighborhood seforim shop (in Flatbush, we have neighborhood seforim shops, it's the B&N that necessitates a big trip "out of town") to peruse the new translation (by R' Avraham Yaakov Finkel, noted translator of short books for school fundraisers) of the Nefesh haChaim, the central expression of Misnagdish Torah philosophy by the founder of the Lithuanian Yeshiva Movement, R' Chaim Volozhin.

It looked rather small for a book whose modern editions tend to be fairly large and thick. I started flipping through the back and saw that the entire text was included in Hebrew in the back. Whoops - filler! How much actual English text is there? Not a lot, and the print isn't even that small.

Why is that? There was a note from the author at the beginning, that he had not translated the kabbalistic material. Huh?

One of the big strengths of the Nefesh haChaim is that it speaks in the same kabbalistic idiom as the Chassidic books. It was addressing the same early-19th-century audience, and making a case for the primacy of Torah study over other non-prayer activities. I've even seen some of the same imagery in both R' Chaim's writings and in the writings of the last Lubavitcher Rebbe - that the mitzvos are a rope between ourselves and God, strands being severed by sins. By cutting out the Kabbalah, R' Finkel has cut the meat off the bones of the Father of Yeshivos, leaving his work a poor meal indeed.

Note, I haven't extensively studied the Nefesh haChaim, so it will wait for someone more knowledgeable to write a proper review. I'm just talking about the form; the substance needs deeper appreciation.

But what about Kabbalah for Misnagdim? Following the publication of the works of the Ari, Kabbalah spread throughout the Jewish world, supplanting the pure intellectualism of post-Maimonidean philosophy. This led to the Sabbatean disaster, and in an effort to root out secret conventicles of Sabbateans, different communities had different approaches. The Sephardim, I don't know, there was some strong opposition, but did secret Sabbateans continue much among them? The Ashkenazim were plagued with them throughout the 18th century. Two distinct approaches developed:

The Chasidim gave a quasi-messianic role to their Tzaddikim, their Rebbes. Not that "every Chasid thinks his Rebbe is Moshiach", which is a canard put forth by some Lubavitchers to justify their continuing belief that their late Rebbe is/was [a suitable candidate for] Moshiach. Rather, they believe (see, e.g., Beis Aharon by R' Aharon of Karlin) that the soul of Moshiach is distributed among all Jews, with Tzaddikim having a somewhat higher proportion of that soul.

The Misnagdim outlawed Kabbalah. This continues to this day. Until the end of the 18th century, the major rabbinic figures in the Ashkenazic world were almost all Kabbalists, and thought of their Judaism to some extent through its filters. Some of the greatest wrote amulets for the common folk, who believed wholeheartedly in the Kabbalah. It's clear that the general run of educated Jews in that time knew Kabbalah, because the Chasidic writings for them are all written in Kabbalistic idiom. But after the founding of the yeshiva at Volozhin, Kabbalah was taken out of the yeshiva curriculum. So today, Misnagdim don't know Kabbalah. And there are no more Misnagdish Sabbateans, nor are there messianic obsessions such as arose over the last Lubavitcher Rebbe.

However, the Chasidim and Sephardim still deal in Kabbalah. Only kooks and entrepreneurs (such as the Bergs and lehavdil R' Aryeh bar Tzadok) seem to be truly involved in Kabbalah in the yeshivish and modernish world. More and more kabbalah is becoming available, even in English, but it's still frowned upon. The closest one gets is an underground shiur in Tanya at major yeshivos, such as Philadelphia or Ner Israel. Even at YU, the "intro to Kabbalah" is taught in the college and the graduate school, not in the yeshiva.

Hence this edition of the Nefesh haChaim, and both English translations of the Ramban's commentary on the Torah, have excised all Kabbalistic material, even though that's a lot of the meat of the writers' material.

The Sabbateans have been gone for 200 years in western Orthodoxy. Is it perhaps time for the yeshivish world to rejoin the rest of Judaism, and expose its practitioners to Kabbalah in some organized, controlled way?

12x Authentic Judaism

2009-09-14T20:53:00.000-07:00

R' Sokol this week (Nitzavim/Vayelech) explored some of the midrashim about the death of Moshe Rabbeinu. One that stood out for me was the idea that Moshe, before he died, wrote 13 sifrei Torah, one to be deposited in the Mishkan as a textual reference of last resort, and 12 to be distributed to the 12 tribes. He reads this as giving two messages.

1) Writing a final reference Torah indicates the closing of the Pentateuchal canon. This is it, this is the Law, there will never be another, it will not be replaced, added to or deleted from. There will be no new Testament of God's Revelation and Will. [Hear that, kabbalists, chasidim and other adherents of Continuous Revelation? -jjb].

On the other hand,

2) Giving each tribe its own Torah acknowledges that each tribe reads the Torah in its own way. There are at least 12 ways to understand the Torah, and to develop an authentic Judaism therefrom.

So we have two almost contradictory positions, but since they are the act of one man, they are connected. There is room for different communities within the Torah world: Ashkenazic and Sephardic and Edot Hamizrach, Modern and Yeshivish and Chareidi, German and Eastern European. They are all Authentic Judaisms. But in the end, there is still the reference Torah in the Mishkan or Temple, the one that sets limits for what constitutes an Authentic Judaism.

I asked R' Sokol if he had been reading the JBlogosphere, since this idea sounds like a direct reaction to the flap that was reflected on Hirhurim and elsewhere, in reaction to a blog reflecting a particularly nasty, derogatory-of-the-Other strain of yeshivish though. He said he hadn't. Still, it's quite timely.

High Holidays Tunes and Tradition

2009-09-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

MUSICAL NOTE by Cantor Sherwood Goffin
The Musical Liturgy of the High Holidays

This Saturday night we begin to say Selichot, the Penitential Prayers that will be recited every weekday morning until Yom Kippur, the day that is in itself based on the Selichot liturgy. Every Selichot service begins with the quintessential Kaddish that we will hear once again before the recitation of Musaf, both on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

This Kaddish is one of more than 53 sanctified melodies known as "MiSinai" melodies, the majority of which have existed since before the time of the Maharil, Chief Rabbi of the Rhineland (1360-1427 CE), who declared them Holy and unchangeably fixed. These melodies of the High Holiday period set the tone for our prayers and infuse them with the ethereal and inspirational atmosphere that raises the emotional level of our Tefilla to the "high" to which we look forward each year. It is on the wings of these songs that our prayers for a good year are carried on high to Avinu Shebashamayim.

For those in the Main Synagogue who are davening with me, I pray that I will be worthy to be your messenger to plead for G-d's blessings of a good and healthy year for all of us and our families. I look forward to davening with you.

Batya and I wish all of our LSS family a Shana Tova!

DAVEN WELL, DON’T TALK, BUT SING ALONG

Two classic albums, on one double CD!

Neshomo (1972) & Mimkomo (1974)

Only $14.95 (free shipping)!

Available through LSS Office, or directly from the Chaz

To hear sample clips, visit www.mostlymusic.com

Home for Serious Jews

2009-08-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

[Modern] Orthodoxy.

So many of the children and descendants of the leaders of the heterodox movements have found a home in Modern Orthodoxy. Is it that they've become Baalei Teshuvah, or is it that Conservative and Reform have become inhospitable places for people serious about their Judaism?

In 18th-century Germany, intellectual rabbis watched their children leave the faith, possibly becoming Reform etc., but today the pendulum swings back, and we see some children of Conservative and Reform rabbis moving into Modern Orthodoxy.

Mind you, I'm not talking about BTs, who will generally move into whatever variety of Orthodoxy made them more religious. I'm talking about Jews who are Serious Jews, which to my mind, coming from a heterodox thinker like Prager, means Jews who are serious about halacha and hashkafa who come from within the heterodox movements, and want to live up to the more observant varieties of the movements.

One can be Conservative and fully observant; in fact, it is a Conservative ideal - to follow the Shulchan Aruch as modified by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards. 99.99% the same as Orthodox observance. One can be Reform and fully observant - if one's autonomous position is that full observance is necessary to one's Judaism. It goes without saying that Jews raised Orthodox and continuing so, are Serious (leaving aside the phenomena of MO-Lite and Charedi-Lite).

So why move to Modern Orthodoxy?

Perhaps it's because, as both Reform and Conservative move to more and more liberal positions, the only place for Serious Jews is Modern Orthodoxy. Dennis Prager coined the term over 20 years ago. He summarizes it in "Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism:" "A serious Jew takes Jewish law seriously. It, along with ethical monotheism, is Judaism's greatest achievement, and its observance is the only insurance of Jewish survival." The children of even heterodox rabbis tend to be serious Jews. By the same token, though, they tend to be college-educated, perhaps professionals, certainly involved in the secular work world. So Modern Orthodoxy would be the most likely fit.

- An old childhood friend, whose father was a Reform ordinee with a Conservative synagogue, found himself in Modern Orthodoxy, at LSS and now in Westchester.

- A daughter of the former head of JTSA, davened with us regularly at the Orthodox synagogue in Park Slope.

- A great-grandson of R' Mordechai Kaplan went to Ramaz and davened at LSS, and is still modern Orthodox in his new home (where he has been since college).

- And in Sunday's NY Times, the daughter of R' Eric Yoffie, head of the Union for Reform Judaism for the past several years, married another Jewish fellow, with an Orthodox rabbi, in West Orange NJ, a Modern Orthodox stronghold. They're solidly in the world - Yale, Harvard and Princeton, he a lawyer, she a professor to be.

These people were all raised as Serious Jews in the heterodox movements, but can no longer find a home as a Serious Jew in them, outside the rabbinate. So they come to Modern Orthodoxy. My cousin & his wife, she a Conservative rabbi - they're completely shomer mitzvot, AFAIK, she dresses modestly, they keep Shabbos, don't travel on Shabbos, etc. But they go to a modern Orthodox synagogue, because Conservative isn't really a good fit for a Serious Jew any more. Sad, but true.

UPDATED: clarify who I class as "Serious Jews".

Wherefore art thou, Yerushalayim?

2009-07-30T18:55:00.001-07:00

R' Alan asked*, wherefore do we say Yerushalayim? Is it not spelled Yerushaleim?

Mr' Jonathan responded, hie thee to Google, and ye shall find.

In summary, Urusalim is attested as far back as the 19th century BCE, and repeatedly in the El-Amarna letters in the 14th century BCE. For reference, Avraham Avinu was born in the 18th century BCE, encountered Malchitzedek King of Shaleim (which is today called Jerusalem) in the 17th century, and the Exodus was in the 13th century.

Why the dual form Yerushalayim? In short, nobody knows. It was a choice of the Masoretes, so it was comparatively late (early Middle Ages), and we don't know why they did it. Perhaps it was a reference to the two cities: the old one below Har haMoriah, and the new one built to the north and west, approximately where the current "Old City" is today on Har Tzion.

___
* on another list.

Alternate Nacheims

2009-07-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

For those who might feel motivated to use an "alternate Nacheim" this afternoon, on the grounds that talking about a desolate Jerusalem and Israel are no longer appropriate after 1948 and 1967, here are the two main options.

תפילת נחם

רחם ה' אלוהינו ברחמיך הרבים ובחסדיך הנאמנים

עלינו ועל עמך ישראל

ועל ירושלים עירך, הנבנית מחורבנה,

המקוממת מהריסותיה והמיושבת משוממותה.

על חסידי עליון שנהרגו בזדון

ועל עמך ישראל שהוטל לחרב.

ועל בניה אשר מסרו נפשם ושפכו דמם עליה

ציון במר תבכה וירושלים תתן קולה,

לבי לבי על חלליהם מעי מעי על חלליהם.

והעיר אשר פדית מידי עריצים ולגיונות

ולישראל עמך נתת נחלה ולזרע ישורון ירשה הורשת

נטה עליה סכת שלומך כנהר שלום

לקים מה שנאמר : ואני אהיה לה נאם ה'

חומת אש סביב ולכבוד בתוכה,

ברוך אתה ה' מנחם ציון ובונה ירושלים.

(פרופ' אפרים אלימלך אורבך:)

נוסח של הרב שלמה גורן לאחר מלחמת ו’ הימים

נחם, ד' אלוקינו, את אבלי ציון ואת אבלי ירושלים ואת העיר האבלה, החרבה וההרוסה. ציון במר תבכה, וירושלים תתן קולה. לבי לבי על חלליהם, מעיי, מעיי על הרוגיהם. ולישראל עמך נתתה נחלה, ולזרע ישורון הורשתה. נערה, ד' אלוקינו, מעפרה, והקיצה מארץ דוויה, נטה אליה נהר שלום וכנחל שוטף כבוד גויים. כי אתה ד' באש הצתה ובאש אתה עתיד לבנותה, כאמור: "ואני אהיה לה נאום ד', חומת אש סביב ולכבוד אהיה בתוכה". (זכריה ב', ט(

[ברוך אתה ה' מנחם ציון ובונה ירושלים.]

Note that R' Yosef Ber Soloveitchik zt"l and yblcht"a R' Ovadia Yosef are both opposed to changing the nusach, on the basis of it being written by the Men of the Great Assembly and thus inspired, and on the basis of Jerusalem still being largely not occupied by Jews, and the Temple Mount still home to two large mosques. Against the first argument, one could say that there are several different nuscha'ot already, so what's wrong with adapting to changed circumstances, as long as the main elements remain? Against the second argument, not much can be said.

R' Chaim David Halevi proposes a compromise: just add "שהיתה" before the words of destruction: העיר שהיתה אבילה...

See Hirhurim from a couple of years ago for halachic references. R' Goren's Nachem was originally published in the IDF Siddur, and Prof. Urbach's was promulgated by Kvutzat Yavneh.

The Altar: Before and After

2009-07-20T19:16:00.000-07:00

On the one hand, we have Deuteronomy promising us that the Altar (and thus the Temple) will be "in the place that will be chosen [by God]". On the other hand, the Rambam tells us, in the Laws of the Temple 2:1, that the location of the Altar is very intentional (mechaven beyoter), and that it never changes, for which the prooftext is that the Akeidah (Binding of Isaac) was performed in the land of Moriah, and that the Temple was built on Mount Moriah. So which is it? Is Moriah no more or less important than any other location that could have been chosen (which is the simple meaning of the verses), or is it predestined to be the location of the Altar, as seems to be implied by the Binding of Isaac, and countless other stories of offerings made there: Adam, and Cain and Abel, and Jacob's dream, etc.?

The late Lubavitcher Rebbe makes a diyuk (close reading) in the Rambam that resolves the question. When Rambam says "it never changes location," he's literally saying "we never change its location". That is, as long as it was not chosen, it wasn't special, but once God chose it, it became permanently holy and its location cannot change from then on. So what about all the ancestors who used the location for offerings? They knew, through prophecy, that this location would be chosen for the Altar, so they figured it was a propitious location for themselves. Thus, causality is preserved.

This demonstrates an important theological point, one that the late Rebbe probably would not have agreed with, as it doesn't proceed from a Lubavitch panentheism.

This understanding of Rambam demonstrates that God is outside of time (and space). For God, all of Time is an instant, simultaneous. For us, time is linear. We experience events one after the other, and only memory (for most of us) and prophecy (for the very rare few) allow us to see beyond the now.

Consider God as a line, and the universe as a circle. God chooses the place of the Altar in His timeless moment, the eternal Now. The universe is a wheel rolling along the line. C. some date around 970 BCE, God chooses Mt Moriah as the site of the Temple and Altar. At that point in time, some point on the wheel is tangent to the line of timeless time. That point of tangent contact is what we experience as the moment of choice. But that choice reverberates up and down the circumference of the wheel, enabling prophets to pick up on it.

So yes, the Place is chosen once in Time. But prophets, attuned to the vibrations of the Universe and God's effect thereon, pick up on that moment of choice ahead of time, and realize that this is an auspicious place to make offerings. God, outside of Time, affects all of us in Time by His choice, and His Prophets up and down the line. Causality, from our perspective is preserved, yet the prooftexts are also true - that the place was used in the past for offerings, yet that fact did not cause the place to be chosen.

May the chosen moment of our final Redemption be felt speedily in our days.

(P.S.: pls excuse the railfan metaphor)

Shomer Shabbos Skip

2009-07-13T15:16:00.000-07:00

Seen on 32nd St. between 6th and 7th Avenues, in Manhattan, end of June 2009

This dumpster collects trash, but never on Shabbos!

The Enemy Within

2009-05-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the new Star Trek movie, I've been watching some of the old series episodes, available through CBS' website. Yesterday I saw "The Enemy Within", where a transporter accident causes Kirk to split into a "good Kirk" and "bad Kirk".

Well, they start out talking about the good Kirk and bad Kirk, but further qualify it as the intellect vs. the emotions, or perhaps the superego vs. the id. Neither side can exist long-term without the other. The intellectual, compassionate side cannot command a starship without the drive, the ambition, the will to do what must be done even if it will cause pain or difficulty. Much of the show is devoted to showing the two sides, and trying to find a way to reintegrate them before the two split halves die.

Debbie sees it as the Yetzer haTov (will to do good for others) and the Yetzer ha-Ra, (will to do evil by gratifying selfish urges) both of which are necessary for a person to live. She further believes that all have an exact balance of Yetzer haTov and Yetzer ha-Ra. We talk of one yetzer or another being stronger, but if you look at the totality of Jewish literature, it seems that the two are in exact balance. Those who are great personalities, such as Yaakov or David or Shlomo, certainly have great Yetzer haTov, given how they live their lives devoted to greatness in God's name. However, they all are tested by an equally huge Yetzer ha-Ra.

David, with Batsheva, Shlomo with his wives and idolatry, Yaakov with Lavan and Esav, and all are found wanting in Rabbinic literature in the way they meet these challenges. While we are to say that "they did not sin", still, as David told his prophet Nathan, their actions are not uncensured or uncensurable. David did not technically sin, but he was greatly tempted and gave in to temptation.

Yaakov in dealing with Esav has to descend to trickery to ensure he gets the proper blessing, but is in turn tricked by Lavan repeatedly, and his life is made miserable as he is tricked by Lavan, tricked by his children, etc. He was blessed in that all his children, unlike his father and grandfather before him, went in the way of Torah - he was the only sole father of our nation. But he was also punished for his negative acts.

If one is granted a great Yetzer ha-Tov, internal drive to do good, one is also tested by a massive Yetzer-haRa, internal drive to slip up, do the wrong thing. In this, as in many things, there is and must be a perfect balance for the person to be a true servant of God, to have the power to choose rightly, and be rewarded by greatness, even if that is accompanied by the power to choose wrongly.

(updated: changed translation of YhT and YhR)

One for the Diqduq Geeqs

2009-05-15T15:51:00.000-07:00

MUSICAL NOTE
by Cantor Sherwood Goffin

Kamatz Katan in
Reading the Siddur and Chumash

For those of us who pronounce our Hebrew with the Sephardic pronunciation, that is : "..NoTain Hatorah," rather than the Ashkenazic "..NoSain Hatoraw," we have to be very careful to correctly read the kamatz katan. This is especially true when serving as the Shaliach Tzibbur or when reading the Torah in public. If it is read incorrectly, your reading may be invalid! This rule of grammar changes the kamatz (T-shaped vowel) from the sephardic "Ah" to "aw." The most obvious example is the word "Kol," that if read carefully might seem to be "Kawl." This word, however, most people know intuitively: "Asher bachar banu miKAWL..."even though it looks like it should be pronouced "Kal." The rule for Kamatz Katan is complicated and I will not therefore burden you with most of the rules, but there are three rules that are easier to identify:

1) When two kamatzes are together, and the second has a chataf (:), the second one is pronounced as an "aw," as in "tsahoraim".(Some do this for both).

2) When a word originally had a cholam ("oh") such as Kodesh, and is now written with a kamatz ("ah"), it is pronounced "kawdshecha," even though it looks like "Kadshecha."

3) Kamatz katan never appears on an accented syllable.

Other examples are: "Ug'dol" in Ashrei, "Ozi" in Az Yashir, "Uv'shochb'cha" in Sh'ma, "Choneinu" and "V'Onyeinu" in the Shmoneh Esray, and many, many others. The only cure (besides learning all the rules) is to get a Rinat Yisrael Siddur, where all the kamatz katans are highlighted in bold. A reader in Sephardit who doesn't know the rules MUST daven from this siddur - minimally when serving as Shaliach Tsibbur (Chazzan). The same is true, of course for Torah Readers who should refer to the "Simanim" tikkun or the new "Kestenbaum" tikkun by Artscroll when preparing a reading. It's not easy, but you show respect for Davening and Laining when you are careful about this rule. It is clearly wrong to do otherwise.

DAVEN WELL, DON’T TALK, BUT SING ALONG!

3M of Chazanuth

2009-05-03T11:06:00.001-07:00

MUSICAL NOTE
by Cantor Sherwood Goffin

My “Three M” Guideline System of using Niggunim for Tefillah

Whenever we hear a beautiful melody being sung in shul, it inspires us and gives us an incredible sense of unity as the entire shul erupts in song and harmony. The question begs whether or not we can use ANY melody ANYWHERE we wish. My guideline is MODE, MOOD, & MIN HAKODESH.

The Sefer HaChassidim of Rabbi Yehuda HaChassid (1150-1217) states (paraphrase): “Choose the melody that attracts you and comes from your heart and use it as you sing your prayers.” This was the guideline BEFORE the Maharil (1365-1425) declared his psak accepted by the Shulchan Aruch as Halacha, that one may not “change the minhag of a community even as to its melodies that are traditional there.” The Maharil, Chief Rabbi of the Rhineland, standardized the corpus of sacred melodies that cannot be changed. This also applies to the musical format for each paragraph of tefillah that has no set tune!

I do realize that it is difficult for laymen to know what melody is “Major, Minor, Phreigish,” etc., but this is one of the halachic guidelines that the Maharil insisted must be observed.

For example, we all know that there is set musical “form” for the Amidah, or for Birchot Kriat Shma. Each one is in a specific musical mode. If we use a melody there (or in Kedusha), the melody must conform to the mode that is given for that paragraph. If you cannot determine what the correct mode is, ask your musical neighbor or your local musically-trained chazzan to tell you if the modes match for the melody you wish to sing. Again, my guideline is MODE, MOOD, & MIN HAKODESH (self-explanatory).

I am, of course, always happily available for consultation whenever you choose to ask me. Don’t be bashful! The Maharil will be proud of you!

DAVEN WELL, DON’T TALK, BUT SING ALONG!

On Ezra, whom I didn't know that well...

2009-05-02T19:59:00.000-07:00

...having moved away from Da Slope just after 9/11, when he was still just a bright, sweet, but quiet 8-year-old, but I was reading a commentary on the parsha, and trying to come up with a connection. So here's a strained connection, which I hope will provide some comfort, if you're not turned off by my fake-o gematria.

So at the beginning of the parsha, Aharon the High Priest is given instructions on how to enter the Holy of Holies, after two of his sons died in an excess of religious zeal. And he is told to enter "with this", ba-zot. The whole verse being, "With this shall Aaron enter the Holy: with a young bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering." Why the extra "with this"? It would have sufficed to say that Aaron shall enter the Holy [Area] with this offering and that offering. With "this" must signify something else, something extra.

Menachem Recanati, the 13th-century Italian Kabbalist, suggests that it's a question of allusion, in the midrashic style, quoting Vayikra Rabbah. He looks for other verses, other contexts, in which "Bazot" seems extraneous, and he finds that it seems to indicate a whole series of merits that a Kohen Gadol, a high priest, would have upon assuming the office.

He would have merit from learning the Torah "This is the Torah...", indicating the Oral Torah; he would have merit from his circumcision (the first mitzva any Jewish boy is involved in), "This is My Covenant", indicating he can rely on the covenant of circumcision; from the Sabbath, as "Happy is the man who does This Shabbat", because the Sabbath Queen is all-welcoming, all-including; in the merit of the Jerusalem of Heaven, "This is Jerusalem"; in the merit of the Sons of Jacob, because Jacob had told them "this is your merit, that you live together;" in the merit of Judah, who fights for all of us; in the merit of all of Israel, "for your height is compared to the date palm," because the date palm includes both male and female gendered flowers;

Further, his merits for acts as a priest: for tithes, for wave-offerings, for daily offerings -- with all of these, he holds them together in his mind as one solid edifice on which he can rely, so that he need not enter the Holy Area alone. As the Song of Songs says, "where does your beloved turn? she turns to seek you." So too the High Priest enters the Holy on Yom Kippur with his merits supporting him, consciously bringing them together in his mind to strengthen himself for his encounter with Chapel Perilous.

The gematria of "bazot" is 408. Factorize that, you have 24 x 17. (I don't know to what extent traditional gematralators used factorization, but I do - that's what makes it fake-o) Ezra was in his 17th year, and he left us in the 2nd month (Iyar) on the 4th day of the month. But he did not go alone, quiet, into that good night.

From everything I've seen on the blogs of his friends (see links in previous post), he was that good person, sensitive, talented, loving of his family and friends, striving in Torah and art and music and life. He brought the edifice of his merits along to support him. I only wish he could have seen the edifice, perhaps it might have brought him comfort - but most of us never perceive our own merits, only our own faults.

Incomplete

2009-04-29T15:54:00.000-07:00

לעילוי נשמת

Ezra Shlomo Weidenfeld
1992-2009

ת נ צ ב ה

Incomplete and Complete

2009-04-28T05:50:00.000-07:00

R' Micha Berger bemoans his lack of desire for the restoration of sacrifices:

standing here after two millenia of exile, I no longer feel driven by a need to give to Him. There is something incomplete in my ahavas Hashem, love of G-d.

I for one do look forward to the restoration of sacrifices, and my job as janitor (or, if I'm lucky, singer). Perhaps not on a daily basis, as it's a bit hard to conjure up the whole imagery while dragging my eyes over the same old words yet again, but on Erev Pesach and on Yom Kippur, yes. I try to imagine myself there, involved in the service, in the audience, whatever. Sometimes it even works.

Micha speaks about it in terms of humans being innately generous, wanting to give to the One whom they love. I don't see much of it like that, except for korbanot nedavah, free-will offerings, which seem to be purely emotion-driven. Most of the sacrificial service that we see in the daily liturgy is mandatory, be it communal (in which case my emotions have little to do with it), or individual (in which case giving is, and should be, a hardship, a deterrent against further transgressions).

I see it rather as the complete fulfillment of the Torah, over half of whose mitzvot have to do with the Holy Temple and its service. Perhaps we feel incomplete if we don't have the emotional link, but our Geonim already seem to have recognized this and have adapted the service to recognize this, in partially distancing us from the reality of Temple observance.

I think Nusach Ashkenaz has lost some of its richness by switching from "ot'cha beyirah naavod" to "hamachazir shechinato letziyon" - it makes us far more passive observers, than active participants. Which is kind of ironic, in that most people, in the time of the Beit haMikdash, were just that, passive observers, usually not even there at all. But "returning His Presence to Zion" puts us entirely in the position of receivers, not active participants in Divine Worship.

What I'm not looking forward to, is being bankrupted by having to offer all those sin-offerings for all my sins, and then being executed by the court* for not having always been shomer shabbos.

R' Micha feels incomplete for not feeling sufficiently incomplete, whereas I look forward to the complete observance of the Torah, in chesed and din and rachamim, bimheirah beyameinu.

___
* Woo-hoo! Mass executions of all of us who were not Frum From Birth! At least if those elements who don't consider most modern Jews to be tinokot shenishbu gain control of the Sanhedrins. Given how the Israeli Government Rabbinate has been slowly taken over by hareidim, it's not inconceivable.