Is the Pendulum Swinging Back

Or are Sephardim just more relaxed about this stuff?

We went to a wedding last night, Ashkenazic groom, Sephardic bride. Beautiful place, good food, lebedik dancing...

Oh, the dancing. The first round lasted an hour, and was the usual Jewish circle dancing, although oddly, some people came over the mechitza (potted tall plants) and found themselves dancing mixed, mostly the chassan & kallah, and their siblings.

During the second round, after the main course, the potted plants were cleared away, and the band (good band BTW, somewhat jazzy - trombone as well as the usual sax & cornet) played some slow-dance music. Debbie & I looked at the dance floor, the chassan & kallah were dancing together, some of the parents and aunts & uncles also started, so hesitantly, we did too.

And it was nice. It was the first time we had done so since the somewhat abortive mixed dancing at our own wedding 17 years ago (most people didn't get into it, so after a short bit, it switched over to the regular Jewish stuff, separate circles). After that we got ready to leave, but as we were passing the band, they broke into Numa Numa, and then another funny song, so I did a bad imitation of internet sensation Gary Brolsma, and we danced together for a bit, on the edge of tears it was so nice.

Is the pendulum swinging back? Or is Chaya's family weird? Or are Sephardim just more relaxed about this? As far as we could tell, it was just married couples, and some siblings, doing the mixed dancing - circles, or dancing together. I suppose most of us younger (premenopausal) people wouldn't want to, because it says "Hey! I'm Tahor!" which most women don't really want to advertise.

I once heard a shiur from R' Willig at Lincoln Square on mixed dancing, and his main objection was to men watching women dance, but I've never been to a wedding where anybody treated this as a real problem, aside from chasidim - men are always going over to the mechitza to watch the women who do structured group dances, and to wave at their wives. Even here, where there was the mixed dancing, the frummiest (guys who never took off their hats, and a few chasidim) didn't avoid watching.

We went to a bat-mitzva recently, Sephardic-modern family, from my shul. Towards the end, the little girls were all doing sorta sexy line dances, led by a woman who was with the band. I thought it was weird (this is little-girl time, this is not for me), and left; I think the rabbi also thought it was weird, and went outside for a while.

So is the pendulum swinging back, or are Sephardim and some families just more relaxed?

We have met the Rubashkin and he is us

(adapted from a sermon for Shabbos Ki Tetze, 5768)

R’ Sokol spoke this Shabbos, speaking of the commands to help someone’s overloaded donkey. One version is stated here, that one must help one’s friend’s donkey that has collapsed under its load, the other version is stated elsewhere, that one must help reload the donkey of someone whom you hate.

How can this other version even exist, when it is a sin to hate another person (Jew?) in one’s heart?

The Meshech Chochmah makes a distinction: this version is at the end of the wandering in the desert, the version about the donkey of one’s enemy was given before, back at or near Sinai. How does that make a difference?

What does it mean to hate? One shouldn’t hate the person, that’s the mitzvah. But one can hate the sin in a person. If someone is keeping uneven weights or otherwise behaving abhominably, one can, in theory, hate them for their sin, for the way their sin is dragging us all down. However, that only worked at the beginning of the Desert experience. By the end of the desert wanderings, the Jews have made themselves full of sin, through the Golden Calf, through all the complaints, through all the rebellions against G0d, the questioning of God and Moshe. At that point, everyone is burdened with sin equally. So from that point forward, until today, the permit to hate someone, is a dead letter. Because how can we hate the sinfulness of another when we ourselves are equally burdened with sin?

Hence the version expressed in today’s parsha: to help the donkey of our brother, because everyone is our brother in sin.

Throughout all this Rubashkin/Agriprocessors business, and while trying to maintain objectivity and separation, it’s hard to say there’s nothing happening, between the safety violations, the immigration charges, and now the child-labor charges, we have tried to say that there are no moral failings on the part of the Rubashkins. Now, it’s possible with these new charges that there may have been moral failings. But there have been those who say they hate Rubashkins for what they have done. And that crosses a line that, according to the Meshech Chochmah, we cannot cross.

Because we, as much as Rubashkins, are sunk in sin. Can all of us really say that we have never cut corners, never sinned with money, never manipulated people to do things? Much as their actions, and perhaps moral failings, are reprehensible, they are also ours. And the Rubashkins are also tremendous baalei Chesed, baalei Tzedaka. Do their moral failings erase that? Then our moral failings also erase the good we do.

We cannot hate the Rubashkins, because Rubashkin is us.

Chabad, the Rebbe and God – How they are seen

R’ Shmuel Yaakov Weinberg is quoted on the cover, and on p. 105, of R’ Dr. David Berger’s book about Chabad messianism, based on the testimony of the party of the second part, as follows:

"Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg, a rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Ner Yisroel, told an
enquiring student (even before the Rebbe's death) that he should pray
alone rather than in a Chabad synagogue because 'they pray to a
different deity [eloah]'.[82]"

This seems a remarkably dismissive remark, as well as astoundingly off-putting to any Chabadnik who might pick up Berger’s book. Berger himself didn’t want to believe it, until he saw some of the excesses of certain elements after the Rebbe’s passing.

It behooves us, knowing that R’ Weinberg was a major Talmid Chacham, to try to understand where he was coming from, and thus blunt the teeth of his assertion, if only to prevent Chabadniks from returning the dismissive favor.

In short – RSYW had a reasonable response to phenomena that he saw, but not being a devoted student of Chabad texts, did not fully understand.

I reviewed Berger's book. The quote was in context of a discussion of many activities and writings from Lubavitchers that look very much like avodah zarah (AZ).

Berger has an extended discussion of R' Avraham B. Pevzner's "Al Hatzaddikim", published in 1991 while the Rebbe was still alive and presumably compos, which attempts to explain the Rebbe's statement from 1951 that a rebbe is Divine Essence and Existence placed into a body. The line between that and avodah zarah is a very thin one, the distinction Pevzner tries to make is a very subtle one, and from a mainstream Torah perspective, is wrong and possibly heretical. I've tried to buy this book at the big seforim shop on Kingston, but couldn't find it.

It is fundamental to the Ari’s Kabbalah, that to allow Creation to take place, something happened called Tzimtzum, or Restriction. For some, the Tzimtzum is physical – that God’s Essence is Infinite, and for a finite universe to be created, a vacuole, a finite space free of God-stuff, was created within the Infinite Essence. Within that finite space, a finite universe could exist.

For the Chabad and most readers, the Tzimtzum is metaphorical – that rather than removing His Essence from some space, He concealed his essence by a series of veils, screens, conceptual barriers, so that those beings that are part of the created universe don’t see that they are actually entirely made of God-stuff. Everything in the physical universe is part of the unitary God, it’s only an illusion that we are separate intelligences, that the desk is a desk, the computer is a computer, etc. God remains One, Unchanged.

This concept arises out of the later strata of the Zohar, primarily the Tikkunei Zohar. The Ari himself is ambivalent, in two sentences on the same page saying that the Tzimtzum was in God’s Essence (the physical explanation), in another saying that the Tzimtzum was in God’s Light (the metaphorical explanation – the Essence remains unchanged). I don’t pretend to understand these in any kind of depth, but they are the two main positions on the Tzimtzum.

Pevzner discusses the idea of the Rebbe as a "joining intermediary", a tzaddik who has so nullified his individuality that the Divinity which makes up everything and everyone, whose essence is normally hidden by the veils of the Tzimtzum, is revealed, so that if one prays to the Rebbe, one IS praying to God. He adduces evidence from a Kedushas Levi (R’ Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev), which an objective examination reveals to be a distortion of the Kedushas Levi, and from a 16^th-century work called Nishmas Chaim.

Now, that idea is problematic on its face, but let's set that aside and assume that a Lubavitcher thinks that it's OK. After all, it was advanced originally by the late Rebbe, in an address during the interregnum year of mourning for his late father-in-law, the Previous Rebbe. Behaviorally, though, four things are prohibited as avodah-zarah when not directed to the Eibishter: prostration, incense, libation, and sacrifice. Bowing towards a person out of honor is OK, but bowing because of regarding that person as Divinity is a problem. Pevzner, however, spends a considerable effort justifying bowing towards the Rebbe.

Suppose an outsider sees this Lubavitcher bowing to the Rebbe, or to his picture. This outsider doesn't know the idea of atzmus umahus areingeshtelt in a guf, (the Yiddish form of the italicized description of a Rebbe above), it was not even that well known in Lubavitch until recently. And it's the Rebbe's own feeling, unprecedented in Torah, as the Rebbe says in his footnote on LS 2 p. 511. The outsider sees the Lubavitcher bowing to a person as Divinity. [This sicha is translated in the book Proceeding Together vol. I] How is the person not supposed to take that as "they're praying to a different deity"?

The Catholic, lehavdil elef havdolos, believes his cracker and wine are the body & blood of his god. The Catholic bows to them, because of that belief. Are we to take their word for it, or are we as outsiders bound to regard them as ovdei AZ, because behaviorally, they are, and we do not, as a matter of principle, accept their beliefs?

So too here, lehavdil, most of Torah Jewry does not accept these beliefs of a section of Chabad. And is it really just a section? Or is it the whole, given that it's based on a cryptic statement of the Rebbe himself from early in his tenure? The whole do at least tolerate this behavior, presumably because they know that it's not being done as AZ.

But this idea was clearly implicit in the Chassidic system from Day One, as it is the basis of the Gra's letter that worries that if they go on the way they are, they will be worshipping the trees & stones. Perhaps not the trees & stones, but some of them do effectively worship a person.

It's clear that there is some philosophical difference between this behavior towards the Rebbe and actually saying Boreinu, or else the central organizations would never have condemned the Boreinu-niks, from R' Marlow on down. There is a difference between a memutza hamechabeir, which seems to be analogous to a [closed?] glass window, and saying that the Rebbe actually is God.

See here and less seriously here for my earlier thoughts on this sort of stuff.

Given that RSYW was a Rosh Yeshiva, a major Talmid Chacham, but to Chabad an outsider, and a) could not accept the Chabad belief system, and b) of necessity regarded the issue behaviorally, was there any other position he could have reached?

Poskim and Styles of Psak

Listening to R' Jeremy Wieder's introductory shiur to teaching Yoreh Deah and Chullin this year. He was talking about supplementary materials one might learn in addition to Tur, Beis Yosef, Shulchan Aruch, Shach and Taz. Here's a paraphrase:

You can learn the Aruch haShulchan, you'll get a great review of the material, and a strong grasp of minhag. Many people think the Aruch haShulchan is meikil, compared to the Mishneh Brurah, but as Rabbi Broyde has shown, he's a defender of minhag, the way we do things. The Mishneh Brurah is full of his own chumras, contrary to minhag, phrased as "baal nefesh yachmir", the master of his soul should be strict here.

R' Schachter tells of R' Amital, who said that when he was a kid in yeshiva, learning Mishnah Brurah, he would come across stuff for the baal nefesh, and say "I'm no baal nefesh, that's not for me." Nowadays, everybody thinks they're a baal nefesh, and has to be machmir.

There was a late lamented Left-Wing Modern Orthodox group, part of whose mission was to translate the Aruch haShulchan, believing that that was the ideal halacha book for the Modern Orthodox. You know, I agree with that - if all of the Modern Orthodox behaved according to the laws in the Aruch haShulchan, Moshiach would come.

There are two kinds of poskim, you'll find - those that respond to the sho'el (asker) and those that respond to the sh'eilah (question). R' Moshe Feinstein was the first kind. You look at his responsa on hearing aids and microphones on Shabbat - the halachic principles are the same - and you see what he says about the hearing aids, it's clear he's trying to help the sho'el. R' Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, on the other hand, in Minchas Shlomo, his arguments are so clear, so lucid.

A hundred years from now, I don't think anyone will be learning the Igros Moshe. You all, well, were at best toddlers when R' Moshe died. I was a teenager, I never met him, but people around me treated him as this giant. Any talmid chacham in the beit midrash can poke holes in a lot of his arguments. But he was responding to the sho'el. RSZ Auerbach was responding to the question. I think, 2-300 years down the line, Igros Moshe may have vanished, but people will still refer to the Minchas Shlomo.

Us, God and Elul

Been a long time, eh?

A thought for Elul, adapted from Rabbi Paltiel* Jr. (InsideChassidus):

He was addressing yeshiva high school girls, who wouldn’t have a lot of big aveiros to worry about yet, in terms of teshuvah during Elul and the High Holidays. So what should they work on? Two things:

1) Think about God. You went to shul this morning, said a bunch of words on a bunch of pages, same words you said yesterday, same words you’ll say tomorrow, a little different on Shabbos, but when was the last time you thought about the Eibishter while doing so? Try to think about the Eibeshter while you’re praying – you’re praying To Him, after all. And you’ll see how it means more. And don’t worry if you can’t finish everything. I counted, Slichos is about 17 pages, and we say it in 35-40 minutes. If you only say 5 pages in that time, great. Think about what you’re saying and to Whom it is directed.

2) Ask God. He wants you to ask for things. Sure, he can sometimes say no, but if you don’t ask, he certainly won’t answer. And you can look for the answer in your life, but you have to ask. This echoes what R’ Yaakov Feldman has said at numerous AishDas events – get in the habit of talking to God, talk to Him a little every day, so that when you need something, you’re asking a friend, Someone with whom you’re already comfortable.

___
* Paltiel Jr. - There are two Rabbis Paltiel who have MP3 lectures on Chabad chassidus online, this one, and an older one, R' Abba Paltiel at YeshivaLive. So I think of this one as R' Paltiel Jr., not knowing if they actually are father & son, or cousins, or what.

Nouns

A brief observation.

These Three Weeks between 17 Tammuz and 9 Av, which commemorate the destruction of the Temple, in this leap year, has contained three parashiyot: Matot, Mas'ei and Devarim.

What is a noun? A word for a 1) person, 2) place, or 3) thing.

What are these three parsha titles?
1) addressed to Roshei haMatot, the heads of the tribes, or Persons
2) a catalogue of Places where the Israelites camped
3) and Devarim means Things (well, in context, it means spoken things, but in general Davar is Thing)

Who is the ultimate Person? Hashem, even not anthropomorphized, He has various attributes of personhood - individuality, uniqueness, intelligence, etc.

What Place is the center of the [Jewish] world? Jerusalem, of course.

What is the ultimate Thing? The Holy Temple, or perhaps, some of the Things contained in it, such as the Ark and the Tablets. The Temple is the place where (normal, non-prophetic) Man and God interact in their closest manner.

So it is fitting that the parshiyot read during this time have titles that correspond to the three subjects of nouns.

What about a non-leap year, when Pinchas is the first, and Matot-Mas'ei is the second parasha? We can still k'neitch it to fit. Pinchas is a person, a Kohen, through whom the whole descent of Kohanim is established beyond his father Elazar. And where do Kohanim work? Why, the Temple of course. It all fits!

Ah, the joy of free association in a Torah-dic vein.

Gut voch, or Shavu'ah tov, if that suits better.

Chazal Made Them Evil

For those of you who take issue with a supposed "fault-finding school" in Biblical interpretation, here's one for the other side - a "merit-finding" post for people whom Chazal uniformly portray as evil. So I won't disagree with Chazal, but I don't understand them, either.

So what is it with Chazal and various non-chosen people in the Torah? Esav, Bilaam – both are painted by the text in very different terms than they are painted by Chazal. The text makes them out to be neutral or even mostly good, but Chazal turn them into the embodiments of true evil.

Esav, for instance comes across as a simple guy, very straightforward, not a bearer of grudges, not vengeful. Yaakov treats him as if he were these things, because Yaakov’s whole being is infused with deception and guile, so he is convinced that everyone around him must be the same (and Lavan’s example, and his mother’s, do tend to support that belief). But we are also given the text, which tells a very different story.

What do we know of Esav?

1) Born first, hairy and red.

2) Lives in the moment – sells his birthright for a snack.

3) Lives a life of Kibud Ov – honors his father, does what his father wants, and his father loves him for it.

4) Is a “mighty hunter” like his ancestor Nimrod.

5) On doing his father’s bidding in return for a blessing, has that blessing stolen by deceitful Yaakov and Rivkah; contemplates revenge.

6) Follows his father’s advice in choosing a wife

7) The next time we see him, Yaakov treats him as if he bears grudges, because we all know Yaakov himself would.

8) Esav himself is “Hey, Jack, long time no see! Is this your family? Glad to see you’re doing so well! I’ve done well too!” And that’s it. None of the revenge that Yaakov dreaded for 22 years. No “Hey, forget about that blessing business – you can see I’ve been blessed too.” The whole thing is gone. Esav just lives in the moment.

9) Esav and Yaakov bury Yitzchak together. Again, honoring his father.

But Chazal treat Esav like the root of all evil. Esav becomes a stand-in for Rome, which really was the source of all evil in the times of Chazal, pagan, democratic, conquering, destroying the Temple and Jerusalem, reducing Beitar and the rest of the North, and by the time of the Amoraim, adopting that religion that started as a Jewish heresy, that has at its core, Judenhass for the Christ-killers. This is the ultimate bearing of a grudge – against the Jews for allegedly killing their god, we are their victims for all time.

Rome, Christian Rome, is so much not like Esav it’s not funny, but for some reason, Chazal use Edom and Esav as a stand-in for Rome in their literature. Is it only that they’re a closely-related sect that no longer exists, so they’re free to reuse the name Edom? But then they cast all their hatred for Rome back onto Esav the character. Why not use Moav, another nation with common ancestry that had by then ceased to exist, and which had actively opposed Israel during the Exodus? Edom just said “go away, go around”, while Moav hired Bilaam to curse Israel, and actually fought them.

Bilaam, too, seems to get a bum rap.

He repeatedly warns Balak “I can only do what God wants.” Balak hires him anyway. When he does what God wants, he’s scolded and punished for it. Here’s a non-Jew with real mesiras nefesh for God, but what do we get in the Talmud? He’s the anti-Moshe, he’s the great Rasha each of whose blessings reflects a curse he intended to hurl at the Jews, his curses mostly came true except for his alleged curse of Israel’s batei midrash and synagogues. See Sanhedrin 105a.

OK, the donkey incident somehow displays God’s displeasure with Bilaam, but it’s hard to understand – God told him to go with the men, he did what God told him to, then God gets angry and tries to stop him. Why is God portrayed as fickle and moody? At any rate, Bilaam learns his lesson, and from then on only does what God wants. God has no more criticism of him.

Whatever God’s motivations, Bilaam is portrayed textually as the great prophet of God, who doesn’t even argue with God as much as Moshe does. But Chazal bring him out as this great embodiment of evil.

Sleeping like a Baby

My brother Mitch and his lovely wife Jocelyn had a baby girl, their first, on Monday, 23 June, or 20 Sivan. 6 lbs 8 oz, everyone healthy. They not being particularly religious, and not wanting to get involved in some synagogue they don't go to (and thus don't know a lot of people in), we organized a Simhat Bat for them last Wednesday, at which

Winifred Celia Baker got her Hebrew name, צביה בת מלך ברוך.

It was held in my parents' apartment, right there in the living room where my brother & I had our brisses. Mom was all excited to clear off the desk on which Mitch and I had had the surgery, despite my reminding her that there's no surgery here, it's not a bris-parallel, etc.

But she's very excited, as this is her first genetic grandchild. Well, you see, my sister is from Dad's first marriage, and she has two kids (one just out of the army, one just out of Tel Aviv University), and Jocelyn came into the relationship with a daughter, Zoe. So it's my parents' fourth grandchild, but the first that is genetically descended from both of them [rather than 0 or 1 of them].

I put together a service using the resources linked from JOFA's web site, particularly the narrative of Joseph Kaplan's semachot bat, and the prayers and suggestions on R' Seth Farber's Itim.org site. You can find the service here, in PDF.

Winifred is from an aunt, Winifred L. Wisan, an academic, who studied Galileo. She had great battles with the eminence grise of Galileo studies, Stillman Drake, in the footnotes of her papers. Took us for long hikes over the local mountains in Oneonta. Inspired both of us in our academic endeavors - I minored in history of science because of the interest she helped kindle. She passed away 17 years ago last Pesach.

Celia is our mother's mother, Celia Cohen Wisan, much loved, very American (born on the Lower East Side, grew up in Bed Stuy and Crown Heights, attended Adelphi College when it was in Brooklyn), married Grandpa on Lag Ba'Omer 1926, long life raising Mom & Uncle Dick, and volunteering at Vacation Camp for the Blind. Endlessly busy with her roses and rock garden, when they had the country house. Great hostess for yom tov, went sometimes to Spanish/Portuguese, as it was around the corner and her sister was a member. Very close with her sisters, life of the party, amateur painter and sculptor. Full of life, until a few years before her passing in 1989.

Tzivia as a name does double duty - it's Grandma Wisan's name above, but Grandpa was also Tzvi Hirsh, so Tzivia encompasses both grandparents, husband and wife.

May she grow into a life filled with joy, learning, love, and good deeds.

Reading like the Netziv

A fascinating video of a lecture by R' Dr. Gil Perl. Best viewed as streaming video, the download is 339 MB. Hat tip: Areivim List.

Summary and one critique below:

R’ Dr. Gil Perl:

What was the Rosh Yeshiva Reading?

Netziv R’ Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, the last Rosh Yeshiva of Volozhin – went as a child to Volozhin, spent entire life (1830-1892) there as student and RY. His commentaries exhibit broad knowledge. How was it gained?

A story in Mekor Boruch (by the Torah Temimah, parts of which eventually became “My Uncle the Netziv”). Joseph Steinberg, maskil, grammarian, asks how did the Netziv learn grammar? He responds with a parable about merchants – one gets belts for free with expensive fabric, one has to pay for belts alone – grammar comes with Torah learning, vs grammar being learned with difficulty on its own.

Is the story true? Probably not, not as written.

There is an early commentary on Sifri by the Netziv, never completed, published only 50 years after his death, where he cites sources for things. Now we can know what he read.

1. Kuzari and Otzar Nechmad – O”N was by R’ Israel Zamosc, an early Maskil.
2. Grammar of Eshkol haKofer – a 12^th-century Karaite. Now we know how the Netziv learned grammar, the same as the Maskil – by learning grammatical works.
3. Intro to Chumash BES”V and T”A – T”A is Targum Onkelos usually, but BESV if you slightly redraw the Beit as a Dalet, becomes Dessau, and Targum Ashkenaz – the Mendelssohn Chumash. And the issue being talked about here is in fact what Mendelssohn talks about in the intro. The descendents probably euphemized it to BESV; Perl found ms. in possession of family, but family only allowed him to read page by page, because they didn’t want him to see questionable stuff. He had to ask for something a bit earlier, so as to hit the right page without tipping them off, and in fact it was DESV, underlined in pink (probably indicating a change to be made in printing).
4. Elijah Levita (Bachur) Mesoret haMesoret – suggests that vowels and trup were in fact a later addition.
5. Azariah de Rosse, Me’or Einayim. Mishmosh. Jewish history non-traditional. Refers to aggadic literature, narratives, as not necessarily intended to be taken literally, but as teaching of Truths based on their then understanding of the world. This got him into cherem, works banned by the Mechaber. Maharal spends pages denouncing de Rossi. Netziv tells us to read the absolute worst areas in the book (by that standard). E.g.,
1. Netziv talks about different types of exegesis, midrash. He cites parenthetically, (See M”E IV[II]:9) à where de Rossi suggests that the midrash uses verses as a support or mnemonic for story, not story as interpretation of verse. We don’t have to take everything literally.
2. same section in De Rossi – aggadot mere conjecture on the part of their inventor – this idea was regarded as heretical, if the stories are not based in Mesorah. This is what Netziv wanted us to see.
3. another midrash: “let us go up to conquer Israel” means that Israel must be higher than all other lands. Netziv comments – this seems to be against geography, so see de Rossi. De Rossi says don’t take it literally.
4. another midrash: “Kartignin place”. Netziv: Carthage, that Josephus has made famous, also see de Rossi, who says it’s in Africa. How did de Rossi know? Because “Jerome, who was also wise, translates this ref in Ezekiel as Carthage”.
5. Text of cherem against Slifkin compares Slifkin’s writings to Me’or Einayim, which was banished by Maharal: “Cursed be the day that such things were brought to our vision; How could one who can’t understand the words of our sages at all, talk about the sages as if they were his own friends, criticizing them like his own colleagues?” – still controversial today.

Next question – what brought him to read such heretical things? Turns out he wasn’t alone.

1. The Maggid of Slonim, RYL Edel, “Afikei Yehuda”, cites Meor Einayim.
2. R’ Avraham ben haGra cites Meor Einayim, as a great collection of Jewish and non-Jewish sources.
3. RaDa”L – David Luria, of Obichov, Lita. Comments on Midrash Rabbah, referring to scientific literature, describing change in salinity of ocean at the Pillars of Hercules between Atlantic and Mediterranean.
4. Kenaf Renanim, by Hanoch Zundel Luria, Maggid of Novardok: cites [German] Letters of Mendelssohn [reads out Moshe ben Maimon – maybe he really meant Rambam?] – read his German works on philosophy.
5. Yoel Dovber haKohen in Volozhin: Commentary on Yalkut Shimoni. Less-known, that he translated the French political work “Adventures of Telemachus” and the “Fables of Aesop.”
6. Yitzchak Eliyahu Landau, Maggid of Vilna: “Even if we were all wise and learned in the law” – understood as “Even if we were all scientists, masters of biology and astronomy”

So what happened? Why did the Netziv not cite them in his later Torah commentary? Times change. Reform reached Eastern Europe by the middle of the 19^th century. Haskalah and Reform and Mendelssohn become equated, so the RY of Volozhin is not going to tell a student to read De Rossi.

Kenaf Renanim: Later printings remove references to [Moshe ben Maimon].

What does this mean for today? I’ll leave that to you.

Q&A:

• Q. Where did they have access to this literature? A. Coincides with boom in E. European boom in Hebrew printing. Lots of stuff available. Glut in traditional texts, so new printers want to go find other texts that hadn’t been printed in centuries. Get copies right off the press.
• Q Did the Netziv know that these texts were put into cherem? A. Can’t say for sure, but cites Maharal elsewhere, albeit not a big Maharal fan, so probably knew. Certainly he would have known how people reacted to Mendelssohn.
• Q. Maharal and others also talk about exaggerations in midrashim? A. How dare you go beyond what was already identified as non-literal?
• Q. Self-censorship? A. ha-Amek Davar has a bit of it, also the fact that he never published the commentary on Sifri. Different to self-censor than for others to censor.
• Q. Hatam Sofer denounced Mendelssohn, A. Pressburg and Lita were very different. Pressburg had no reform movement, but Hatam Sofer comes from Germany so he feels he must oppose Reform.
• Q. Lita was more liberal towards Haskalah? A. Developed differently in E. Europe, because no Reform movement ever developed out of it.
• Q. Did it flourish in Volozhin? A. No, just some were reading it. Maybe it was flourishing more in Vilna.
• Q. Dating of these things? A. He started reading them in his late twenties. The commentary was repeatedly edited and changed throughout his life, but these marginalia were only in the earliest stratum, age 25-30.
• Q. What do I think of the situation today with all the current controversies? A. As my advisor said, it’s great to be a historian because people are dead and can’t talk back, so I will not speculate.
• Q. Have the relatives of the Netziv ever read my thesis? A. No, but my relations with them soured, and I can’t go back to look at the mss.
• Q. Wasn’t the Torah Temimah his brother-in-law? A. Some of the family connections: Netziv’s first wife was the daughter of R’ Itzele of Volozhin, he was 14, she 12. Born 1816, became RY in 1853. Torah Temimah’s mother was Netziv’s sister. Netziv remarries a sister of the Torah Temimah, his own niece, so Netziv was TT’s uncle and brother-in-law. From first marriage came R’ Chaim Berlin, and from 2^nd marriage comes R’ Meir Bar-Ilan. Two different people going in two very different directions.

(Applause).

My one issue with this is his citation of Kenaf Renanim, as noted above. He read out in Hebrew, “Moshe ben Maimon”. But Mendelssohn was “Moshe ben Menachem Mendel”, sometimes abbreviated as “Rambeman” to distinguish him from Rambam. What did Kenaf Renanim say? Rambam? “Moshe ben Maimon”? Rambeman? If the issue were Rambam, that puts an entirely different spin on the relationship to philosophy. It wouldn’t be the philosophy of the Enlightenment, but the metaphysical system based in Aristotle which had also lost favor, more significantly foreshadowing today’s Slifkin debate – were these ideas OK for the medievals but not for us?

Thinking Like the Rambam

Dixie Yid recently posted an article purporting to demonstrate that the Rambam agrees with the Baal Shem Tov on the nature of Hashgacha Pratit (individual providence). I’ve looked over his sources, and it seems to me impossible to read the Rambam to say what he wants.

Rambam is not like other Jewish thinkers. His ideas are not the standard Kabbalah-based ones that have dominated Jewish theology since. Moshe Idel and Menachem Kellner would argue that, in fact, Zoharic Kabbalah developed as a response to Rambam’s philosophic theology, but that’s another post (or three). Be that as it may, to read Rambam accurately, you have to read him on his own terms, not as a source of quotes to prove someone else’s point.

If “academics” are the only ones to read Rambam on his own terms, rather than through the filter of Kabbalistic Judaism, then so be it. Our LOR, who is also an academic philosopher, has been teaching Hilchot Teshuvah and Hilchot Melachim in his weekly shiur for the past couple of years, and it is almost like pulling teeth to get most of us to take off our Kabbalah/East-European folk religion glasses, and read the Rambam on his own terms. I won’t say that my understanding is based on his, since we didn’t cover these chapters, but I do try to separate the Rambam from our cultural filters.

To the substance of my critique:

I submit that Reb Yid has taken the Rambam out of context, repeatedly, selectively quoting opinions that the Rambam himself rejects, if read in context.

From Hilchot Teshuvah 6:2 (Yemenite paragraph numbering): "When one person or the people of a nation sin, the sinner sins of his own will, and as I have said, it is appropriate for him to be punished. And Hashem knows how to punish [him]."

Reb Yid takes this to mean that God’s Providence lies upon that individual or that nation directly. What the passage says, however, is that while individuals or nations can sin, God knows how they will be punished. This is talking about reward and punishment, not about Providence. We must distinguish between three things: Providence, Knowledge, and Consequences.

· Providence is necessarily first – it is God’s will that something should happen, and the application of His Will to make it happen.

· Knowledge is, or is about, the happening itself. As Rambam says, God is the Knower, the Knowledge and the Known – the purest infinite Intellect. He knows that something will happen, He knows that it is happening, He is the Happening itself. But Knowledge is not Direction. For instance, my parents know, that absent changes in circumstances beyond our control, that we will be in Parsippany this weekend. (changes could include illness, God forbid, or my sister-in-law giving birth, IY”H, etc. – God is not limited by these circumstances, He Knows what will happen). But that doesn’t mean that my parents are exerting their Will to ensure that I will be in Parsippany. Knowledge, even foreknowledge, is not Direction, is not Causation.

· Consequences are what happens as a result of one’s actions. For our purposes, Reward and Punishment.

We should note that in his 13 Foundational Principles, the Rambam states as axioms of the Torah system, that God Knows all (10^th Principle) and that God dispenses reward and punishment as appropriate (11^th Principle). The Rambam does not regard it as a necessary belief that God directs every action in the world.

So all this statement says is an affirmation of the 10^th and 11^th Principles – that God knows what individuals or nations do in this world, and punishes or rewards them appropriately. It says nothing about God’s direction of action in this world.

This would clearly fall outside the scope of the superficial meaning of what he said in Moreh Nevuchim.

As shown above, not at all. It says nothing to contradict what the Rambam said in the Guide. Knowledge of sin, and Consequences of sin, are not Divine Direction to sin.

Reb Yid then gives the example of God imposing His Will upon Paroh, in impeding Paroh’s ability to do teshuvah, as an example of Rambam admitting to individual Divine Providence upon a non-Jew. This is in fact exactly the opposite of what the Rambam is demonstrating. Rambam says: "Since [Par'oh] sinned on his own first and harmed the Jewish people... Hashem judged him by withholding Teshuva from him." It was solely as a Consequence of Paroh’s individual Action that Hashem imposed a punishment on him, to prevent him from repenting. It was solely because Paroh willed to sin, that Hashem then imposed a greater punishment on him. But make no mistake – for Rambam, Paroh, not God, initiated the sequence of events.

Actually, Rambam himself openly states that Hashgacha Pratis (Divine Providence) applies to every detail of creation! In laying out the contradiction between Divine knowledge and the existance of free will, the Rambam says "You should know that everything is done according to [Hashem's] will, and nevertheless our actions are in our hands." (Rambam Hilchos Teshuva 5:7) The Rambam identifies the source of the apparant Knowledge/Choice contradiction in terms of nothing happening except through His will one one hand, and our free choice on the other hand.

No, that’s only one side of the paradox, that’s not his final word on how things are. One way to resolve it is to say that it is His Will that we have free will. He created us with free will, and thus anything we do is by His Will, but not directly. It’s like a teacher, who says “you can write your term paper on any subject you choose within the subject matter of the class.” The teacher didn’t will that Zev should write about the origins of the steam engine, but Zev’s choice to write about the origins of the steam engine is a consequence of, and consonant with, the teacher’s will.

Further, Reb Yid says, the doctrine of individual guidance of every blade of grass follows from the Rambam’s continuation of that paragraph. In fact, that’s not the case. He states the paradox, but does not solve it.

Reb Yid notes that there are several solutions to the apparent stira between the Rambam and himself, or between the Rambam and the Baal Shem Tov. One such solution, that he does not note, is to read the Rambam on his own terms, rather than as a source of quotes to support your predetermined conclusion.

For the proposed solutions:

1) I don’t have a Mei haShiloach to see what the Izbitzer says in context, so I can’t speak to it.

2) The late Lubavitcher Rebbe leaves it a paradox – of course the Besht is true, but we can’t dismiss the Rambam, so we live with the paradox. Paradox is central to Chabad theology (see Rachel Elior’s The Paradoxical Ascent to the Divine), so this works for him.

3) Reb Yid’s rebbe simply denies the Rambam’s own position, and replaces it with the Besht’s, then adding a third type of Providence to the equation.

The Rambam, in the Guide III:17-18, talks about Divine Providence. He explicitly rejects the “every blade of grass has its angel” theory in III:17. Now, there is a whole academic literature on “secrets of the Guide”, where the Rambam says one thing but secretly means another, in accord with his introduction that states that there are hidden things in the Guide. But where the same idea is backed up by the Mishneh Torah? It seems pretty clear that Rambam rejects total providence in the Guide as “absurdity”, says nothing about Providence in the 13 Foundations, and nowhere in the MT states the theory of total providence as a necessity, only as a question that the non-enlightened would ask.

In essence, Reb Yid begs the question. He presumes his answer, that “everyone believes in the Beshtian view of Hashgacha Pratit”, and then has to k’neitch the Rambam, by pulling quotes out of context, by reading them through a filter of “of course Kabbalah is true”, to force the Rambam to agree. In this, he joins a long tradition of Kabbalists who, not wanting to leave the Rambam out in the cold as the greatest mind of the Rishonim, finds ways to pretend the Rambam accepted Kabbalah. In fact, though, the Rambam had his own intellectual mysticism, totally unrelated to the neo-Platonic sephirotic emanationism of the [then proto-]Kabbalah. His concept of Divine Providence flows from that, while the Besht’s flows from Kabbalistic antecedents.

R Hirsch and the Zohar

R Samson b. Raphael Hirsch is not the first name that springs to mind when the subject of Kabbalah comes up. In fact, in his Nineteen Letters #18, he bemoans his lack of initiation into the Kabbalistic mysteries, and remarks upon the danger of Kabbalah, far from the possibility of its informing Mitzvah observance with soul, rather changing mitzvah observance into a "magical mechanism".

However, his entire approach of symbolism, is in essence the same route as kabbalah. His path makes mitzvah observance symbolize ethical and thelogical truths, rather than theosophic and cosmogonic truths, as things which are "shaveh lechol nefesh" - equally approachable by all. Not everyone has a mind to deal with Kabbalah, but every Jew must develop a Torah ethic and approach to God.

Further, it is known that R Hirsch used the Zohar in preparing his monumental Horeb, the philosophy of mitzvot and their symbolism. R' Joseph Breuer wrote of finding a manuscript with notes on the Zohar used for Horeb.

More recent scholarship apparently has started to look into unstated kabbalistic influences on RSRH's writings.

And now R' Hirsch's copy of the Zohar is for sale. It was in his family since his grandfather's day, in the late 18th century (printed Amsterdam 1715, by Proops). It came down to R' Joseph Breuer, then his descendants, and is now for some reason for sale at the upcoming Kestenbaum auction (#40, on 26 June 2008). It was given to RSRH by his father, R' Raphael Hirsch, as a wedding present. The catalogue description doesn't mention any marginal notes, though.

Sources:
Kestenbaum Catalogue #40, p. 41
Dayan Grunfeld's introduction to Hirsch' Horeb, pp. cxx-cxxix.

Clue by four

So I was leining Ruth the other day in shul, and the same question occurred to me that does every year, and every year I forget the various good answers that people offer - so maybe they don't impress me so much.

I asked D___ my lovely wife, who has also learned it in depth, and she came up with a good answer.

The problem is, what was so great about Boaz and Ruth in the barn?

I mean, they get to Bethlehem, and Ruth goes out to glean barley in the fields. Naomi already thinks Boaz would be a good guy for her, in both the field-redemption and husband categories, but doesn't say anything, although she does let him know through the rumor-mill.

Ruth goes out gathering, and meets Boaz, and they hit it off right away.

Naomi tells her "OK, now you have to force him to marry you - sneak into the barn under cover of darkness, and fall asleep on his legs [family jewels? I don't know if that was a biblical usage]."

She does so, Boaz wakes up to find this nice girl in his lap, then gives her instructions how things will be arranged so they can get married. Which they do.

So why does Ruth have to force him to redeem the field and marry her, if they hit it off anyway? Is it a class thing? She puts him in a deliberately embarrassing situation - yichud, isolation together for more than 20 minutes, forcing him to marry her, although he takes care to make sure she isn't seen leaving (Wake up little Ruthie!)

D__'s answer: because some guys, even if they like you, you have to hit them over the head with a two-by-four to get them to do something about it. As it was with us. And even more extremely with her Uncle Charlie and Aunt Rose - they had been dating, but he hadn't done anything towards marriage, so she arranged the wedding and sent him an invitation. And out of that family came several children, including two rabbis, most of whom had good marriages themselves.

So Ruth/Naomi had to hit Boaz over the head with a clue-by-four to convince him to actually marry Ruth and redeem the field and increase in both happiness and wealth.

Chaz Celebrates Goldfarb

Musical Note By Cantor Sherwood Goffin
Rabbi Goldfarb: Cantor/Composer

What do the melodies for "V'neemar" (Alenu), "Sholom Aleichem" (the version that just about everyone sings) and the Blessings for the Chanukah Candles have in common? They were all composed by Rabbi-Cantor Israel Goldfarb (1879-1956), who was the rabbi of the Kane Street Synagogue in Brooklyn from 1905-1956. In 1920 he was appointed to the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary as an instructor in liturgical Music, a post he held until 1942. Rabbi Goldfarb was the first officially designated teacher of synagogue music of any institution in New York. His classes were the predecessors to the Cantorial Institute founded by the seminary in 1952.

Together with his brother Samuel, many popular melodies for Zemirot and the synagogue were composed and widely disseminated. Rabbi Goldfarb's greatest claim to fame, of course, is his "Sholom Aleichem" (c. 1917), which is still sung in almost every home in America today. I know that this will come as a surprise to all of you who were certain that your European great-grandfather always sang this melody!

Daven well and sing along!

Note:

The Goldfarbs are my great-aunt's family. Samuel and Israel had a brother Joseph, who was my great-uncle, who I think died before I was born. Joseph was a cantor in Cong. Kol Israel in Prospect Heights, which still exists but has a more Lubavitch influence under R' Ari Kirschenbaum; Samuel went out West, where he had a major influence on Reform liturgical music (aside from composing "I Have a Little Dreidl"); and Israel, as noted above, taught generations of Conservative cantors.

Israel was also a member of the last rabbinic class at the Seminary under more-or-less Orthodox auspices, in 1902, along with classmate (and fellow JTS faculty member) Mordechai Kaplan. They went rather different ways, religiously, even if part of the same institutions.

I went to my cousin's bar-mitzvah recently, and Jo-Mack seems to have inherited some of his great-grandfather Joseph's liturgical ability - he leined and led part of the service quite comfortably and ably.

Jonathan[book]

Just History or Living History

Haven't written in a while, fiendishly busy with Pesach and the shul dinner, but this story about a woman whose experience goes agaisnt the common opinion of historians about goings-on at Auschwitz, caught my wife's eye, and mine.

My comment thereto as well, about a family member's experience in a death camp (as part of the US Army) that goes against the common wisdom, and the wishes of deniers that it not have happened.

campaign elitism flap

So which is more elitist:

an urban activist candidate, Harvard educated, noting that rural folks are embittered because of the loss of jobs, and take comfort in the comfortable, which is fed to them by the government.

or

a 20-year First Lady and high-powered corporate lawyer candidate, Yale educated, telling rural folks that they don't know how to feel - they should feel offended at the first candidate's remarks?

Most of the responses from rural Pennsylvania and other depressed-small-town areas to Obama's remark seem to be "yes, that's an accurate assessment, we are pretty bitter over loss of jobs and government's inaction other than to feed us comfort food for guns and religion." But the other candidates, desperate to find something, anything to use against the first candidate, jump on this, and the Yale lawyer and the scion of the Navy dynasty tell the rural people that they don't know enough how they feel, that they should feel offended so as to serve their ends.

Who are the real elitists?

R' Wieder Factlet II

The mishnah is wrong.

Or at least, the Vilna Shas’ version has problems.

I’ve occasionally tried to learn Ketuvot on my own, and tend to get bogged down by the middle of the first page which already has me branching out into this that and the other, even unto Shev Shmatetha (Shmaitza?) to explain Sfeik Sfeika.

I found some notes from R’ Wieder’s fall 2002 shiur on Ketuvot at SwapNotes.com (the successor to YUMesorah), which cleared up something that had always bugged me about that mishnah. The first phrase: “A besulah is married up to the fourth day.” But the subsequent discussion in the Gemara treats it as “is married ON the fourth day”, so that he can run the next morning to Beis Din if he has a claim that she wasn’t a virgin, and wants the marriage annulled for false advertising.

R’ Wieder notes that ALL the Mishnah manuscripts have bayom revi’i, ON the fourth day. Only Tosefta has layom, TO the fourth day. I checked both Yerushalmis I have at home (facsimiles, of course) the Venice and Vilna editions, and both had bayom, contra the reading in the Vilna Bavli.

Bavli (Vilna)

Yerushalmi (Venice)

Although in all honesty, the Venice editio princeps of the Bavli also has layom.

Still, those woodcut initial words are lovely, aren’t they? Makes the mass-produced ornament type for the Vilna shas look cheesy. That sort of ornament is often done with movable lead type just as the words are.

Evidently, Bomberg just recycled the same blocks cut for the Bavli (1521-23) into his Yerushalmi edition of 1523.

An Acceptable Man

Musical Note By Cantor Sherwood Goffin
Shliach Tsibbur Democracy

Did you know that the “democratic process” rules in the selection of a Shliach Tsibbur?

The one who is chosen to lead the service- anytime, at any minyan in the Shul - must be chosen with the approval of all (certainly most) of the members of that minyan. The Shulchan Aruch says clearly that the Chazzan (appointed or voluntary) must be “M’rutseh L’kohol” - he must be “desired by the congregation.”

No one is allowed to conduct any service without the approval of the congregation. This is the strength of the title “Shliach Tsibbur”- “messenger of the congregation.” He must represent his minyan to the degree that they all approve of his serving as their representative before the almighty.

Daven well and sing along!

Rabbi Wieder Factlet I

I’ve been listening to the shiurim of R’ Jeremy Wieder on Brochos, this year’s tractate being studied at RIETS of Yeshiva University. R’ Weider has a somewhat academic approach, which appeals to me – in addition to the traditional lerning of the text through rishonim and acharonim, R’ Wieder encourages his students to do what the Rishonim and Amoraim themselves did – check parallel texts, in Tosefta, Yerushalmi and halachic midrashim, to see how alternate versions of the sugya at hand shed light on the various issues being discussed.

Along the way, he brings up interesting factlets reflecting the academic approach to Talmud, which may not have much to do with the text at hand. Everybody goes off on occasional tangents, no?

Today’s factlet (less connotation of “spurious” than “factoid”) concerns the opening of the Shev Shmateta, a popular book in yeshivos, exploring the origin and meaning of various rabbinic decision principles, such as safek (doubt), rov (majority), chazakah (presumption), etc. Written in the early 19^th century by the author of the Ketzos haChoshen, its attempts to quantify rabbinic principles of doubt-resolution in terms of probability, decades before mathematicians formalized it, are fascinating. Printed alone, it’s one slim volume, but with a good commentary, such as the “Shmateta Mevueret”, it can take up multiple volumes … but I digress.

Apparently, because the Shev Shmateta didn’t have all the texts that we have today, he brings a lot of complicated solutions to the following question:

Rambam postulates that from the Torah’s own perspective, without later Rabbinic accretions, all situations where the nature of the incident, or the ruling to apply to the incident, is in doubt, should be treated leniently, even where the law in question is from the Torah. We have a later idea, a rabbinic principle, that situations of doubt in a Torah law are treated stringency, but that rule is itself a Rabbinic stringency. Treated on its own terms, the bare Torah principle for dealing with situations of doubt, is to rule leniently. Safek deoraita lekula – a doubt in a Torah law is ruled leniently.

With that principle as a groundrule, then, the case of a mamzer (child of incestuous or extramarital birth) whose status is in doubt (perhaps he was from the husband, perhaps from the paramour, we don’t know), should be permitted to marry a regular Jew who is not hirself a mamzer. The Torah law is that a mamzer is not allowed to “enter the congregation of Israel”, marry a regular Jew; in a case of doubtful mamzer status, then, the above principle should tell us that s/he is permitted to marry anyone. Why, then, does the Rambam feel that it’s necessary to prove this case, that a doubtful mamzer may marry anyone, from a verse? If you have a clear rule, you shouldn’t need a verse to prove a specific case.

The Shev Shmateta notes this contradiction, and brings a lot of attempted Rabbinic solutions to solve this conundrum. The most convincing ones, apparently, maintain that Rambam really believed that a doubt in a Torah situation should be ruled stringently, like the usual principle dictates, and that the texts made a mistake in claiming that he believed that from the Torah’s own perspective, doubtful cases should be ruled leniently.

However, the Shev Shmateta didn’t have a lost teshuvah of the Rambam, that clears up the whole conundrum. In a manuscript of the Rashba, discovered after the composition of Shev Shmateta, the Rashba quotes a lost responsum of the Rambam that says that the Rambam’s source for his principle that “from the Torah, safek d’oraita lekula” IS this verse, the one that tells us that a doubtful mamzer is permitted to marry by Torah law. The Rambam really held that the verse proved that from the Torah’s own perspective, doubtful cases should be ruled leniently, because this case is ruled leniently (although in reality, since we follow the Rabbinic principle that safek d’oraita lechumra, a doubt in Torah law is ruled stringently, we don’t actually permit the mamzer to marry).

So the whole conundrum was caused because we didn’t know that the Rambam linked the doubtful mamzer case causally to the principle.

Let’s review:

Rabbinic principle: safek d’oraita lechumra

Rambam:

. For the bare Torah: safek d’oraita lekula.

. Mamzer case: needs a verse to prove the Torah is lekula

Conundrum:

. if the Rambam had the principle, why use the verse?

Solution, from lost Teshuvah:

. The verse proves the leniency in the Mamzer case, which implies that the bare-Torah rule generally is lenient in cases of doubt.

Fascinating, no? I hope you could follow all that.

Reb Nachman Weighs In on Lipa

Musical Note By Cantor Sherwood Goffin
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov on Secular Music

For those of us who are perplexed by the recent rabbinical ban on concerts of Jewish Music here and in Israel, we can attain a small insight into the general attitude of the "frum" world to music that sounds too much like contemporary popular music, through this excerpt from "Likutei Maharan," the words of this great Chassidic leader who lived in Bratzlav, Ukraine, from 1772-1810: "A holy melody gives strength to the forces of holiness. But the music of the "sitra achra," the "other side," damages these forces and lengthens the exile. It makes people stumble and traps them like birds in a snare. Be very careful never to listen to this kind of music at all. The musicians and singers who produce it have no religious intentions whatsoever. On the contrary, they only want to make money or become famous. Listening to this kind of music can seriously weaken your devotion to G-d. But the melodies played by a truly religious, G-d-fearing musician can be very inspiring. They can strengthen your devotion immensely."

DAVEN WELL AND SING ALONG!

Spirituality - Pfui!

This week’s parsha, Shmini, opens with the dedication of the Kohanim. At the end of the ceremony, two of Aaron’s sons, Nadav & Avihu, in an excess of religious zeal, caught up in the excitement of the moment, brought two shovels-full of burning incense as an offering, and were struck dead by God for the favor.

Why? Seems pretty harsh. And the Torah doesn’t even explain exactly what went wrong until three parshiyot later, in Acharei Mot, where it gives the proper procedure for entering the Holy of Holies – the Yom Kippur Divine Service. If one wants to enter the Holy of Holies, a kohen has to do the whole Yom Kippur service, with 10 washings and immersions and changes of clothing, goats, bulls, confessions, Azazel, the whole shebang. It’s so involved that I doubt anyone ever did it other than on Yom Kippur when it was ordained as proper.

So why wait so long? We noted that the end of the parsha was about kashrut, permitted and forbidden animals, prefaced with instructions how the priests are to eat different types of sacrifices, characterized over and over again as “choq”, arbitrary rules. The whole set of laws dealing with the Temple are basically chuqim, arbitrary. We aren’t expected to understand them, we probably can’t understand their rationales (even if in many cases we can ascribe hermeneutical meanings after-the fact). And in fact, every law in the Torah has an aspect of choq – we are to follow them, even if we don’t personally understand them. God is laying the ground rules for dealing with law and life – you gotta do what you gotta do (to quote Toranga Leela).

The following parshiyot cover a wide range of tumah-taharah issues: childbirth, metzorah (leprosy), metzorah of the house (mildew), zav zavah and niddah (discharges from the organs of generation) –all of which are not just bodily functions that occur in or out of normal time, but also convey tumah, a condition of unfitness to enter the Temple, and the prescribed arbitrary rituals for purification from same, and restoration of taharah, fitness ot enter the Templ.

Only after two parshiyot of all this do we get the third parsha, of Acharei Mot (After the death of these saints, the sons of Aaron). Here we are given the rules for entering the Holy of Holies, id est, the entire Yom Kippur Avodah. Only afterward do we get more rules about sanctity, such as how to shecht (slaughter), which sexual relations are acceptable or not, and finally in the next parsha, Kedoshim, what R’ Ed Feld calls “the Holiness Code”, a set of ethical rules to govern our interpersonal relations, to set us apart socially and ethically from the other nations that do not have the Halacha, the Divine Law. Why the interlude? Why only then can we be given the rules about personal probity?

What was the flaw in Nadav and Avihu’s actions? Lawlessness. They acted out of pure personal will, with no aspect of Divine will. They were swept up by the spirit of the moment, and in an expression of their personal spirituality, they did for themselves what they saw Papa and Uncle Moshe doing, figuring that this was the Right Way to Go. But they had missed a crucial detail: everything Moshe and Aaron did in the dedication of the Kohanim was By The Express Command Of God. Why was this personal expression of spirituality then forbidden, if it was just a copy of what Moshe and Aaron were doing? Why was it answered with death?

We have to reenact the learning process of Bnei Yisrael to get to the answer. Look at the ensuing material. Permitted and forbidden animals (described as tahor and tamei, parallel to fitness for Temple service). Purity and impurity for Temple service. Distinctions between the usable and the unusable. Judaism is all about distinctions. They had to be educated about distinctions in food. They had to be educated about distinctions in fitness and unfitness of their own bodies. Then fitness or unfitness based on outside factors, in the home. Basic bodily processes related to life (childbirth) and potential life and its loss (menstruation and zav/zavah). Only then, once they understood the breadth of distinctions necessary to comprehend the arbitrary distinctions in the Temple, could Bnei Yisrael understand that Religion and Law Walk Hand in Hand. That extensive procedures, based on emphasizing distinctions between sin and righteousness, life and death, exaltation and commonality, were necessary to approach God, the ultimate distinction, between the supernal Unity of God and the multiplicity of the physical universe.

Spirituality, the inchoate yearning for Something Higher, can be a good thing, if it leads to Torah and Mitzvos, which in turn bring us closer to God. But unfettered Spirituality, the inchoate yearning made flesh in totally self-willed acts of trying to get close to God, ultimately denies God and elevates the personal will to a pseudo-Divinity. That is why Nadav and Avihu lost their lives. In their self-willed drive to approach God, they lost sight of the most important thing – that only God can tell us how to approach Him. Without the two-way relationship, we are running into a brick wall, and can lose our way and our lives. It is a cautionary tale, that while all people may approach God, they may only do so in the way He prescribes, through Torah and Mitzvot. Any other path elevates our will above His Will, and misses the mark.

This talk was delivered by my beautiful brilliant wife Debbie Baker to her parsha group here in Flatbush. We worked it out together last night, and she gave it over (this is my understanding; I expect her presentation was somewhat different) this afternoon.

Purim links

The Jewish Week, often good

A Kol Korei against learning Na"ch (hat tip, Tzipiyah.com)

The Jewish Press

Nonsense is nonsense, but the history of nonsense is scholarship (hat tip Saul Lieberman z"l)

Shushan Purim Missive chez Chaz

Musical Note By Cantor Sherwood Goffin

SHUSHAN PURIM MISSIVE

Today I am writing about the freedom that all of those who lead the daily and Shabbat services really have - here and throughout the Western World. There is truly no necessity to worry about utilizing proper Nusach Hatefillah. After all, if one looks around - according to the dictum of "Minhag Yisroel K'din Hu"- since no one else is doing it, I declare that it is fully legal to disregard the "so-called rules" of davening, regardless of anything I have written previously.

It is therefore also acceptable to throw in any melody that comes to mind into the davening - from Les Miserables to Bon Jovi - as long as the congregation recognizes it and is willing to stand up and call out: "Daven Well and Sing Along" while doing "The Wave." The Wave must however be done from Right to Left as is prescribed in the Holy Book of "Minhagei Chelm V'hoAsoro HaBatlonim". Shachris, Musaf, Yom Tov - what's the difference! "As long as it feels good", is the mantra to follow.

Dikduk, Beiur Tefillah, all that stuff is really unnecessary, as long as when we get up to dance before saying the Amida, the rhythm tickles our toes and gets the feet moving. Kavana is no longer a requirement, since most of us already talk to each other more about Spitzer and Bear-Stearns than we talk to God in the Siddur.

This is the World of Hefkervelt, and if we like it, it will inspire us to come back again and again. What better way to get new members and keep the old ones glued bug-eyed to their seats! And if I don't stop right now, I'll have a hemorrhage!

SHUSHAN PURIM SAMEACH!

And may you go from Splinter to Splinter

In the early part of this century, the RCA (Rabbinical Council of America) was formed as a YU/RIETS alumni rabbinical group, because the European-trained rabbis of Agudas Horabbonim looked down on American musmachim, even though in many cases they themselves had granted that smicha. Today, the RCA, and its affiliates the Orthodox Union (congregational) and Cantorial Council, are the strongest Orthodox groups in America.

But when a group becomes dominant, it can often stagnate, and lose sight of the reasons it was founded. Today, we have a new Modern Orthodox rabbinical school, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. It has a consciously Modern program, ordains its own rabbis, and sends them to pulpits and schools across the country. It has a strong service component, training rabbis for community work rather than simply for Torah’s sake. While this might not be an ideal, it is necessary as fewer Modern Orthodox rabbis have been going into pulpit and school work, weakening the Modern Orthodox movement in America, as the best live up to their Zionist ideals and move to Israel, while the relative paucity of Modern Orthodox teachers and rabbis allows the larger number of Black Hat rabbis to fill schools and pulpits, where they influence the next generation to reject modernity and openness to society.

Just as the Black Hat Torah-Only (see R. E.E. Dessler, Michtav M’Elyahu, III:353) model was less than ideal, but perceived as necessary to rebuild Orthodoxy after the War, so too, Modern Orthodoxy needs to rebuild itself after becoming unwitting victims in a culture war not of its own making.

[From R’ Chaim Brown’s Divrei Chaim blog: R’ Dessler (Michtav vol III p 353) wrote that the Lithuanian yeshivos follow a different path than those of Frankfurt; it is better to sacrifice 999 bachurim who won’t make it through the system in order to produce one gadol b’yisrael through torah-only immersion.]

Just as they fear for (or welcome?) incursions from the Right, RIETS and the RCA have closed ranks against the upstart Chovevei, and have refused membership to rabbis ordained by Chovevei. Too, in the recent conversion controversy, the RCA basically knuckled under to the Israeli Chief Rabbinate (increasingly dominated by Black Hats who themselves are non-Zionist) in limiting the number of Modern courts empowered to do conversions without requiring similar stringent standards from Black Hat conversion mills, both in Israel and abroad.

Therefore, Left Wing Modern Orthodox rabbis from Chovevei, who need a rabbinic support organization for their future work, and more Modern-oriented rabbis from the RCA who want to set up conversion courts not dominated by anti-Modern forces in Israel, are joining forces to create the Rabbinic Fellowship (an unfortunate name; while Chevrah is a good Jewish word, in English it connotes Christian groups). As there have been similar rumblings in Israel about Black Hat domination of local and national official rabbinates, perhaps this group will join up with the more left-leaning Israeli National-Religious rabbinate to create a truly worldwide united Orthodox rabbinate.