Thoughts on Sefer Daniel, Qabala, Tehiat ha-Meitim - Are These Authentically Jewish?

Excerpt from an email I just sent someone:

I've discovered that I love my new yeshiva (Yeshivat Petah Tiqwa). One of my rabbis is giving a shiur based on Professor Haym Soloveitchik's "Rupture and Reconstruction" (about how the traditional Jewish mimetic tradition has been replaced by hyper-textualism, giving rise to Haredism and humra-ism), and after that, he wants to teach Professor Moshe Samet's writings on the sociology of Haredism and humra. That tells you a lot right there.

On three separate occasions, three different rabbis pulled me over privately to ask me about who I am, what makes me me, etc. Now, that right there is exceptional.

But furthermore, when one of the rabbis asked me about any religious struggles or difficulties I've had, I bared all. I told him how about six or so months after I first came to yeshiva three years ago (so I had been a baal teshuva for two-and-a-half years when the following started occurring), I started having some doubts about the prophetic character of Sefer Daniel. That is, the book bears unmistakable similarity to the early-Second-Temple era apocalyptic works, with the geula being an ahistorical rupture from the heavens, whereas the prophets usually depict geula as a historical process that concludes natural and ongoing evolutionary and historical and sociological human development of civilization. In fact, if you read Daniel simply, without inserting any inexplicable lapses in time, the book seems to depict the geula as dovetailing the Maccabean wars of Hanuka. Moreover, the imagery of Daniel - glimpses of heaven, etc. - bears striking resemblence to the Hazalic Heikhalot literature (think: four entered Pardes) and the Essenic/Qumran/Proto-Christian mysticism from which Qabala seems to have heavily borrowed. You see that in one fell swoop, I've umpugned the authenticity of Daniel, Qabala, and Hazalic Ma'aseh Merkavah/Bereshit.

Moreover, Daniel is the first unequivocal statement of tehiat ha-meitim in the Tanakh. Isaiah makes some vague references, but nothing truly substantive. In fact, if you read Tehillim, it seems that the Psalmist was not even sure whether dead results in anything but a dark shadowy Sheol, typical of Near-Eastern mythology in general. Surely, there was some afterlife - Avraham was gathered to his fathers even though they were buried in Babylonia but he in Makhpelah - but the Psalmist seems to be pitifully asking G-d if anything but the netherworld awaits him. And since I've impugned Daniel, its statement of tehiat ha-meitim is of no avail to me. In fact, critical scholars seem to consider Daniel part of the Hasmonean-era apocalyptic literature as found in the Apocrypha, and they regard tehiat ha-meitim as an innovation perhaps indebted to Zoroastrianism, but certainly dating to no sooner than the Babylonian exile in any case. As for the afterlife in general, they attribute the differences in Prophetic ( = Sheol) and Hazalic ( = Olam ha-Ba, Gan Eden for the tzadiqim, etc.) understanding to influence of Greek philosophy on the latter.

Indeed. Rabbi Dr. J. H. Hertz (of Hertz Pentateuch fame), in his Siddur, says, in his commentary on the 13 Principles, that Jews have believed in tehiat ha-meitim ever since the Maccabean period. In one of his shul sermons on Yom Kippur (printed in his Early and Late, collected sermons and writings), he says that according to scholars, Daniel was written during a period of martyrdom and gave inspiration to Jews to martyr themselves for the sake of Judaism. In his scholarly study of Qabala and Jewish mysticism (printed in his Sermons, Addresses, and Studies), he conflates Daniel with the Maccabean-era apocalyptic literature, contrasting them both togther at once with Prophetic literature. If we put all this together, it seems clear that Rabbi Hertz regarded both Daniel and tehiat ha-meitim as Maccabean-era innovations. Daniel was written during a period of martyrdom (the Maccabean period!), and Jews have believed in tehiat ha-meitim only since that period. (What is so amazing is that an Orthodox rabbi such as he was can feel comfortable saying all this!)

Regarding Daniel's authenticity, cf. what Rabbi Emanuel Rackman writes in One Man's Judaism, p. 276 in the 1970 Philosophical Library edition:

It may be heresy to deny the possibility of prophetic prediction, but it is not heresy to argue about authorship [of Biblical books] on the basis of objective historical and literary evidence.

 See further on this in my Scientific Developments that Contradict the Torah: Do Not Have a Kneejerk Reaction.

I vaguely remember in Professor Ephraim Urbach's Hazal/The Sages, he brings an example of one of the Hazalic rabbis buying some old scroll he found on apocalyptic topics, a scroll whose authorship the rabbi didn't even know, buying it from some non-Jewish Roman soldier who had himself found it only G-d-knows-where, and the rabbi started quoting it like the gospel. Professor Urbach says that save for some isolated examples - Rabbi Akiva's support of the naturalistic bar Kokhba rebellion, or the geula being like the slowly rising sun in Yerushalmi Berakhot 1:1 - Hazal tended to have a very apocalyptic understanding of geula not so different from that of the Essenes or the Proto-Christians or what have you, a very un-Prophetic understanding.

So for a few months, all of this greatly troubled me, and I lost no small number of hours of sleep, lying await troubled by all this. Eventually, I came to terms with it all, and convinced myself that I'm not a heretic, but for a few months, I was quite troubled. I told all this to the rabbi at Petah Tiqwa, and told him that I still believe everything I said above - albeit I'm in doubt, and not sure of anything one way or the other, whether Zoroastrianism and Hellenism influenced Jewish eschatology, whether Daniel is authentic, etc. - and he didn't bat an eye. He didn't seem the slightest bit surprised or perturbed. That comforted me.

I might remark briefly on how I finally became comfortable with all this: first, I had some discussions with Professor Yaakov Elman at YU, an expert in the intersection of the Talmud and Zoroastrianism in Persia. I asked him about all the preceding, and he replied that frankly, he didn't think I was ready for his answer. What he did say is that one must discard any romantic or comforting notions of Judaism being pristen and free of non-Jewish influence. But even though Elman gave me no answers, I took his stern statement to heart, that Judaism is not free of foreign influence. Furthermore, the fact that he knew all this that I've said up till now, and so much more, and yet he is still frum, comforted me. Even though I didn't yet know the answers, I was comforted that the answers were out there somewhere.

Later, I discovered some of those answers myself. I was helped by Professor Marc Shapiro's The Limits of Orthodox Theology. In the introduction, we see that according to everyone but Rambam, unintentional heresy (kefira b'shogeg) is not true heresy; only intentional heresy (b'meizid) is true heresy, when the person says, "I know the Torah/Judaism says this, but I disagree and say that". But I'm not doing this; I'm saying that I think that the original Sinaitic Judaism and Torah, in the form of Isaiah and Tehillim, might disagree with what later Judaism - such as Daniel and Hazal - said. That is, I'm not disagreeing with Judaism per se, but rather, I'm disagreeing with different understandings of what Judaism says. I don't say, "Judaism says Daniel and tehiat ha-meitim are authentic, and I disagree with Judaism"; rather, I say, "I'm not sure whether Judaism demands that I believe in Daniel and tehiat ha-meitim". Even if I'm wrong, my heresy is not intentional, for I believe what I honestly believe Judaism demands that I believe, and I am not consciously and deliberately disagreeing with Judaism per se. (I am, however, disagreeing with what some say that Judaism believes.)

In fact, thanks to my beloved and much-cherished former havruta, Yosef "Yosele" Vardakis (my love for him is like the guy-love between J. D. and Turk on Scrubs), I heard a corrobation of these thoughts of mine, from a shiur by Rabbi Dr. Nathan Lopes Cardozo, "A Great Jewish Idea" (January 2008), http://www.cardozoschool.org/audio.asp --> http://www.csstorage.org/audio/downloadaudio.php?audio=18 OR http://www.csstorage.org/audio/big.m3u. I haven't listened to the whole shiur, but only to the small section I about to refer to. This begins at 44:30, where Cardozo says, "Concerning the Yud-Gimel Ikkarim...". Cardozo there says that despite Perek Helek, it is not clear to him that the Prophets (chiefly Isaiah and Ezekiel) intended a literal (as opposed to allegorical) tehiat ha-meitim, and so he cannot say that one must believe in it literally. Moreover, he says, he doesn't see the issue as being important enough to make it a dogma in the first place, contra Hazal and Rambam. That is, even though Hazal and Rambam declare one a heretic for doubting tehiat ha-meitim, Cardozo is inclined to possibly disagree with them both, regarding what Judaism says. And even if tehiat ha-meitim is a dogma, he isn't sure whether he must believe in it literally (as per Hazal), or only allegorically (as per the doubtful reading in Isaiah and Ezekiel that can be read an an allegory and not as a literal prediction of what will happen).

Furthermore, as we see in Professor Shapiro's introduction to Limits, Rabbi Haim Hirschensohn held that heresy must be manifested in deed to be true heresy, and Rav Kook, following Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, says that only unequivocal declarations, not mere equivocal doubt and uncertainty, are heresy. According to either, I am not a heretic.

Moreover, in Shapiro's chapter in Limits on tehiat ha-meitim, we see that according to many of Rambam's contemporaries and those after him, Rambam himself did not believe in tehiat ha-meitim. Rambam in his letter on tehiat ha-meitim says that he does believe in it, but many held that Rambam was being disingenuous, and trying to hide his true views. And yet, while they sharply disagreed with Rambam (assuming they were understanding him correctly), they didn't consider him a heretic. Rambam perhaps thought that tehiat ha-meitim was meant allegorically, but even if he was wrong, he was not a heretic (according to the non-Rambamists, who hold that accidental heresy is not heresy). Shapiro also shows that Rabbi Hertz, and another recent Orthodox rabbi whose name escapes me at the moment, both held that tehiat ha-meitim was not literally meant. Both, in fact, hold tehiat ha-meitim to be a post-Sinaitic innovation (perhaps of the Persian era?), and yet both were Orthodox rabbis good standing!

Additionally, there in Limits, Shapiro notes that according to Rabbi Yosef Kafih, the renowned Yemenite expert on Rambam, and a conservative Maimonidean himself no less (i.e. Kafih himself holds by Rambam and believes only what he believes Rambam believed, and doesn't merely study abstractly and distinterestedly what he thinks Rambam held), tehiat ha-meitim means only that the body itself is resurrected, even as the soul remains in heaven. Now, Shapiro notes, this makes tehiat ha-meitim absolutely senseless and meaningless. If so, what is it? Shapiro suggests that the significance of tehiat ha-meitim is not that G-d will resurrect the dead, but that He can. Indeed, in Sanhedrin, most of the Hazalic polemics strive to show not that G-d will, but that He can. For example, one rabbi remarks that if G-d created you after you had never existed, surely He can recreate you after you've once existed already. Now, even if I personally doubt whether tehiat ha-meitim will occur, I certainly acknowledge that G-d can do it! According to Shapiro's expository departure (as opposed to simple interpretation of author's intention - see my Post-Modern Interpretation of Texts, especially s. v. "Recently, Rabbi David bar Hayim taught Rav Kook's hakdama to his Ein Ayah") from Kafih, I am not a heretic.

P. S. A Qaraite friend of mine, James Walker, said to me,

To your issues with immortality of the soul (which I actually sympathize and agree with), you might find it interesting that the popular appeal of accepting Pharisaic rulings was directly linked to their teachings about the soul and the spirit world, as Yosef ben Matithyah noted in Antiq. XVIII.1.3:

"...They [viz. the Pharisees] also believe that souls have an immortal rigor in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again; on account of which doctrines they are able greatly to persuade the body of the people...".

Just again, since you're the first Yeshivah Bachur I've ever spoken with on this level, what are your thoughts on this, given the apocalyptic millieu of the late 2nd Temple era? (Keep in mind the Bnei Tsadoq resisted this doctrine, as did pre-Rabbinic scholars like Ben Sira.)

Frankly, I don't know enough to answer the question.

Losing the Rat Race, Winning at LIfe: Overattachment to Our "Red Strings"

I just spent my vacation period reading Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis's Life is a Test and her The Committed Life, and Rabbi Marc Angel's Losing the Rat Race, Winning at Life.

Rebbetzin Jungreis, several times, tells a parable of one of the wise men of Chelm (a town renowned for its foolishness). A man was preparing to go to the bathhouse, whereupon he realized that without his clothing, he wouldn't be able to distinguish between himself and others. So he tied a red string about his toe, so as to be able to tell himself, and got in the water. When he got out, the red string was gone, and instead on someone else's toes. The man went up to the other man, and said, "I know who you are, but who am I?".

Rebbetzin Jungreis says, too many of us judge ourselves by our "strings" - our jobs, money, success, popularity, etc. A few times, she counseled people who came to her complaining about their depression over losing their jobs, etc., how they lost social popularity, etc. She always told them that they had to realize they were more than what they earned or where they work; everyone has a Divine core, a holy personality, that transcends his materialistic aspects.

Rabbi Angel's book, as one can tell from the title (Losing the Rat Race, Winning at Life), covers a lot of the same ground as Rebbetzin Jungreis does, vis a vis materialism and such. But he also finds a way to deal with some completely separate psychological and lifestyle issues, such as how immodest and/or flashy clothing makes ourselves into "it"s, how we should be comfortable being true to ourselves and not concerned with what others think (to an extent - we should have enough concern not to offend them). He says everyone should be a noncomformist - true to themselves, and not conforming to outside standards. People who dress unconventionally are actually noncomformists if they do so for attention; true noncomformists dress however they are comfortable, without regard for what others think (except for dressing neatly and presentably, etc.). People who display themselves based on their bodies or their wallets make themselves into objects, not humans. This is not so different than treating others impersonally as objects, to be utilized pragmatically and selfishly. Along the way, he also touches on racism, the cultural conflict between traditionalism and modernity (such as how immigrant generations cope and react), and other issues.

I think the two reviews hosted by Amazon.com (see other reviews here) summarize Rabbi Angel's book well:

Most of us live on a treadmill of sorts, rushing from home to work to kids' soccer practices and dance recitals to PTA meetings and somehow wedging in shopping, cooking, cleaning, walking the dog, working out, and when there's any time left over, pursuing hobbies. Whew. Amid our goals, or perhaps central to them, is getting ahead, financially and socially. A better job, a bigger raise, the latest fashions, a larger house in a better neighborhood. Not that there's anything wrong with all that except for the fact that we can easily lose our true selves in the rat race and forget the things that make our lives genuinely rich: being a more loving and sympathetic partner, promoting our values, pursuing inner serenity, striving for greater humility. In a somewhat rambling fashion, Rabbi Angel reminds us that we are placed on Earth to attain the transcendent treasures of wisdom, love, spiritual insight, and moral courage. By directing our lives according to these ideals, he says, it's easy to leave the self-centeredness and consumerism of the rat race in the dust. Angel is the author of 18 books on religion and faith. --Robin Levinson, Jewish Book World

and

R. Angel's Losing the Rat Race is an exemplar of contemporary Orthodox Judaism at its best. It is a triumph because it avoids triumphalism. R. Angel writes as a believing, practicing Jew and as a probing, sensitive citizen of the world. He affirms both his humanity and his ethnic, religious Jewish self. Unlike R. Harold Kushner's Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, who addressed the problem of suffering by presenting a God Who is less than all-powerful, R. Angel, like, R. Soloveitchik, affirms both the suffering person and the commanding reality of God. He lives with the tension in the human condition. Like the Talmudic passage that concedes that it might have been 'better' for humankind not to have been created, we were in fact created and must make the right moral choices. For R. Angel the mental effort to make the moral choice defines our humanity. Modesty is defined not by how much of one's body is covered, but what we reveal about our character. A morally authentic human being chooses to do right; the Orthodox Jew obeys God and, when necessary, must reject the social consensus that claims to speak on God's behalf. Citing Chancellor R. Norman Lamm of Yeshiva University, those who suffer from 'neophobia,' or fear of the new, reflect their culture, but not their Judaism.

Losing the Rat Race challenges the reader to re-orient oneself in order to Win at Life. We cannot be honest to God if we are dishonest to ourselves. In this modern morality tract, the learned, humane, gentle Rabbi Marc Angel is brutally frank and generously gentle. In this volume, the poles of justice and mercy are fused in beauty, the beauty of holiness. --Rabbi Alan J. Yuter, National Jewish Post and Opinion

Describing her own difficulties in finding a job, Naamah writes simiarly, saying,

Nonetheless, perhaps without reason, I have to hold onto some kind of hope that things are going to improve, and I think I have learned some things through my difficulties. One important insight that I think I have gained is that I am not what I do for a living, or what I study. I have a core being that transcends those things and people have a value beyond their worldly achievements. Unfortunately, even in the Jewish community, there seems to be an undue emphasis on occupations and material success. In seeming contrast to this lesson, I have also realized just how much money it takes to live and what an emotional toll financial struggle takes. It makes me wonder if I have made a horrible mistake, that I should have done something lucrative to provide for my and my children’s future. I have not yet figured out how to strike a balance between these two opposing ideas, but it’s nice to know that I have something that has remains intact despite my lack of a job.

The other thing that this period has afforded me is an opportunity to engage in some real spiritual self-reflection that might not be possible if I were occupied with other things. Without the security of a job, school, or a relationship, I’ve been stripped down to the essentials. What do I really want or need? What is actually good for me? Now as we’re in the month of Elul and approaching the High Holidays, I find myself in the perfect place to start over again and to implement real change in my life. Maybe I had to go through some difficulty to get here, and now I’m going to be the better for it. Maybe those jobs I didn’t get and those relationships that didn’t work out weren’t right for me anyway. My secular friends would probably think I’m crazy for saying all this, and I don’t expect G-d to hand me a miracle, but I feel there is a real opportunity here for things to go in a positive direction.

Shira Hadasha, New Yeshiva

So this past Shabbat, I davened at Shira Hadasha, the egalitarian shul in Emek Refaim (German Colony - Moshava ha-Germanit), Jerusalem. Basically, the women can read from the Torah, whether the berakha on the Torah (i.e. aliyah to say "barechu") or reading from the Torah (ba'al koreh --> ba'alah korah), as the individual case may be. Actually, every time a man got an aliyah, a woman read, and every time a woman got an aliyah, a man read.

The justification for this is that the Gemara forbids women to read based on kavod ha-tzibur, the honor of the congregation. The commentaries explain that if a woman reads from the Torah, it impugns the men as being illiterate, that they cannot read themselves. But firstly, the men can waive their honor if they so choose. Second, since olim to the Torah don't read themselves anyway, their literacy is not impugned by a woman's getting an aliyah. (Of course, if a woman actually reads from the Torah herself, as a ba'alah korah, then the men's literacy may very well be impugned. But firstly, Shira Hadasha has both men and women reading, so apparently, the men are no less literate than the women. Secondly, as I said, the men can waive their own honor anyway.)

Women can also lead certain parts of the service, such as Kabbalat Shabbat or Pesukei Dezimra, i.e. parts that men aren't hayav (obligated) in. The shaliah tzibur (hazan, cantor, prayer leader) fulfills the obligation of those who listen to him and say amen, and there is a law that one can fulfill another's obligation only if (s)he is him/her-self obligated in that same obligation. Thus, if a man is obligated to say the Amidah and a woman is not, then a woman cannot fulfill the man's obligation. This limits the roles the women can fill, but nevertheless, anywhere where men and women's obligations are equal, Shira Hadasha allows the women to fulfill that obligation for men.

I must say, it was quite pleasant davening there. The women could sing to Kabbalat Shabbat with their full voices, just as the men do, without getting stoned or having acid thrown at them. Similarly, during the Mourner's Kaddish, the women answered with their full voices without being thrown out the windows. I could tell that the female congregants were able to act like normal human beings. If I'm not mistaken, women actually are fully-fledged humans themselves.

-----

Besides that, I've moved into my new yeshiva, Yeshivat Petah Tiqwa. I'm still settling in, and feeling a bit homesick, but things are going generally well.

Faith in God, Inheriting the Land of Israel

"Anonymous Muslim" told me,

See Surah 2 verse 260: the Quran does not encourage blind faith; faith/trust (in G-d) should come not only through the use of intellect and reason, but also through the "heart"/conviction in order to be true. One has to be convinced in both the head and heart. For that reason,the Quran encourages people to follow the example of Prophet Abraham(pbuh). (That does not mean one has to go around cutting up birds --- that would be simplistic thinking!!!!)

To quote Quran 2:260, from here:

YUSUFALI: When Abraham said: "Show me, Lord, how You will raise the dead, " He replied: "Have you no faith?" He said "Yes, but just to reassure my heart." Allah said, "Take four birds, draw them to you, and cut their bodies to pieces. Scatter them over the mountain-tops, then call them back. They will come swiftly to you. Know that Allah is Mighty, Wise."

PICKTHAL: And when Abraham said (unto his Lord): My Lord! Show me how Thou givest life to the dead, He said: Dost thou not believe? Abraham said: Yea, but (I ask) in order that my heart may be at ease. (His Lord) said: Take four of the birds and cause them to incline unto thee, then place a part of them on each hill, then call them, they will come to thee in haste, and know that Allah is Mighty, Wise.

SHAKIR: And when Ibrahim said: My Lord! show me how Thou givest life to the dead, He said: What! and do you not believe? He said: Yes, but that my heart may be at ease. He said: Then take four of the birds, then train them to follow you, then place on every mountain a part of them, then call them, they will come to you flying; and know that Allah is Mighty, Wise.

My reply there:

In Genesis 15:7, God tells Avraham,

I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.

Avraham replies (verse 8),

O Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?

God then prescribes a whole ritual (verses 9-12, involving the splitting of a few cows and birds in half), and tells Avraham (verses 13-14),

Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge; and afterward shall they come out with great substance.

So the question is, exactly what just happened? I believe the splitting of the cows and birds and half was a common method of making a covenant back then. Indeed, the Hebrew word for "covenant", brit, literally means a cutting. That ritual in verses 9-12 is known in Hebrew as the brit bein ha-betarim, which is usually translated as "the covenant (brit) between (bein) the (ha-) pieces (betarim), but which most literally would translate as "the cutting between the cut-pieces". So to cut the animals in half, etc., was the common way then of making a covenant.

But what is verses 13-14, God's informing Avraham of the upcoming slavery in Egypt?

Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge; and afterward shall they come out with great substance.

How does this answer verse 8, Avraham's question as to how he'd know that God's promise would come true?

O Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?

There are a few answers:

(1) The Rabbis say that Avraham displayed little faith in asking this question of God, that he should have simply trusted God's promise and let it rest. (This would be diametrically opposed to Quran 2:260.) The slavery in Egypt was then a punishment for Avraham's little faith. (I'm not sure how this would be a fitting punishment. I'd have to study this whole interpretation more thoroughly in the original literature.)

I should note that Jews are never considered bound to trust in the words of the Rabbis. Their laws are binding, as the words of any legal authority are binding on their subjects, but the Rabbis' philosophical and theological beliefs are not considered binding. Now, one may (or may not be) be an idiot for doubting their words, but he is most unequivocally not a heretic for disagreeing with them. Therefore, a different explanation...

(2) I have heard it suggested by some that Avraham's question was quite proper. Humans need to have visceral manifestations of things, to believe in them; we only truly believe what our eyes see. "Seeing is believing". Surely Avraham cognitively believed and trusted God that his children would inherit the land, but this is only with one's mind, one's reason. If one wishes to truly believe something in his innards, in his bowels, in his heart, he needs something visual or tangible to trust in. (This would be very similar then to what you [viz "Anonymous Muslim"] showed from Quran 2:260.) Indeed, with Noah, God didn't merely promise He'd never said another flood; He also showed a rainbow as something visual. So the ritual of cutting the animals was something visual and tangible. Also, God told about the upcoming slavery, as something that is definite and empirical; to vaguely promise Avraham that his children would inherit the land is one thing, but to provide concrete and definite details of the history strengthened Avraham's confidence.

There's another interpretation I like.

In verse 8, Avraham asked, "O Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?". So far, we've taken this simply as a request for reassurance. But one rabbi suggested to me that what Avraham was really saying was, "God, you've promised me the land of Israel for me and my descendants. Wonderful, thank you. But what about the people who already live here?"

In Genesis 13:7, we read, "And there was a strife between the herdmen of Abram's cattle and the herdmen of Lot's cattle." The Torah doesn't tell us what the dispute was, but the Rabbis tell us that Lot was pasturing his flock on other people's land; Avraham accused him of theft. But hadn't God already promised all of the land to Avraham? Indeed, Lot claimed that for just this reason, he wasn't stealing. But Avraham wasn't content to rely on the strict letter of the law. Yes, technically, the land all belonged to him, but he wasn't going to rely on this in practice to pasture his flocks on other people's property. There's a story in the Talmud of a group of porters who broke the barrels they were paid to carry. The employer wanted to deny them pay, but the rabbis forced him to pay the porters, saying that the porters were poor and needed the money. Yes, technically, the porters were at fault and technically didn't deserve pay, but this isn't how decent moral people behave with poor porters. "You shall do what is good and right in the eyes of the Lord". (Deuteronomy 6:18.) Avraham exemplified this teaching.

And witness Avraham's dispute with God over Sodom and Gomorrah! One suspects that if inheriting Israel meant the expulsion or death of the Canaanites, Avraham would have rejected God's offer.

We quoted verses 13-14,

And He said unto Abram: 'Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge; and afterward shall they come out with great substance.

But God doesn't stop there. He adds, in verse 16,

And in the fourth generation they shall come back hither; for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full.

What does this have to do with anything? Avraham asked God how he'd know his inhabitants would inherit the land, really intending to ask what would happen to the native inhabitants, and God answered that the Jews would come from Egypt only when the natives of the land deserved to be expelled, and not a moment sooner. This conforted Avraham.

Indeed, God repeats precisely this message to the Jewish people themselves in Deuteronomy 9:4-6:

4. "Speak not thou in thy heart, after that the Lord thy God hath thrust them out from before thee, saying: 'For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to possess this land'; whereas for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before thee."

5. "Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thy heart, dost thou go in to possess their land; but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that He may establish the word which the Lord swore unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob."

6. "Know therefore that it is not for thy righteousness that the Lord thy God giveth thee this good land to possess it; for thou art a stiffnecked people."

For God to say the same thing three times in a row shows He's really trying to make a point!

Why Heschel Isn't Studied by the Orthodox: Human Responsibility and Use of One's Rational Critical Faculties

In Man In Search Of Heschel, Rabbi Barry Gelman asks why more Orthodox Jews don't study Heschel. He shows that despite teaching at JTS, many of Heschel's beliefs were quite frum. He suggests that being at JTS alone is what turns would-be Orthodox readers away.

But reader-comments there note that Rabbi Saul Lieberman, also of JTS, has had his commentaries on the Tosefta (published by JTS itself, no less!) avidly studied even by Haredim! So the readers suggest that whereas Lieberman's works are indispensable, and so scholars overlook his ties to JTS, Heschel's theological orientation and Hassidc mystical tendencies make him irrelevant to Lithuanian-style Talmudists.

I'm wondering if perhaps a key factor is that Heschel's theology of "G-d in search of man" sounds far too much like Rav Hirsch's teaching that the Torah is an anthropology and not a theology. (Heschel is certainly indebted to Hirsch; see the translator's appendix to Rabbi Dr. Leo Adler's The Biblical View of Man, Urim Publications.) Having G-d seek man implies too many expectations of man by G-d, too much responsibility on man's part. It is much too humanistic, too perspicacious and audacious. It is simply too controversial to put so much power and responsibility in man's hands; it is much more comfortable to let spirituality and mysticism be a salve for the conscience; do a few theurgic mitzvot, engage in some theosophical speculation, and you're good by G-d.

Indeed, Gelman quotes Heschel as saying,

The Bible is an answer to the question, What does God require of Man? But to modern man, this question is surpassed by another one, namely, What does man demand of God? ... Absorbed in the struggle for emancipation of the individual we have concentrated our attention upon the idea of human rights and overlooked the importance of human obligations. [Emphasis added - M. M.]

If G-d is in search of man, it means He is seeking out man to give him responsibility, expecting something meaningful of him. By contrast, if man searches for G-d, then man is seeking to satisfy his own needs and desires, and he accepts religion insofar as it suits and satisfies his base sensual desires. Compare Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, describing Rabbi Soloveitchik, quoting from here:

Soloveitchik regards as altogether too simple the popular notion of religious experience as one preeminently pleasing and soothing-a stream of delight and relaxation and an asylum from the frustrations of life. This conception of religion Rabbi Soloveichik deems a fraud, the result of a surrender on the part of religious thinkers to the desire of the mass of men to lose themselves in states of bliss. It also echoes Rousseau in his flight from reason, and much subsequent romanticist thought. Religion's invitation has been misinterpreted to say: "If thou cravest peace, if thou cravest integration, make the leap of faith." In the flight from reason and the rejection of objective truth, Rabbi Soloveichik sees the cause of the moral deterioration of contemporary man. He would prefer to see religion wedded to a cold objectivity and rationality, even though faith and reason may at times appear to conflict with one another, rather than derive religion from man's instinctual longings.

It is highly significant that Rabbi Soloveitchik prefers a cold rational empiricism to a warm spiritual narcissism. But this is contrary to our natural inclination, in which we wish to turn to G-d and authority figures for satisfaction of our desires, even as we abdicate our own free choice and critical faculties into their trust, to free ourselves of that burden. Thus, we pay only mere lip-service to Rambam's teaching in Hilkhot Avodah Zara that Avraham Avinu found G-d via reason and intellect; as Rabbi Yom Tov Schwarz (in Eyes to See, Urim) and Professor Menachem Kellner (cf. here) both point out, Rambam's explanation implies Avraham found G-d by going against authority and tradition, and instead using his critical reasoning faculties, accepting only that which was empirically evident. This is not a message Orthodoxy is comfortable with.

Strict and Searching Investigation of Conversion Candidates

Oftentimes, converts are rejected (or worse, retroactively annulled!) based on their not being observant.

When people claim someone is a ממזר (mamzer) or a נואף (adulterer) or a רוצח (murderer), we often ignore the evidence and let it slide. Indeed, Hazal say that if someone brings evidence of murder, the judges should so thoroughly cross-examine everyone that the evidence is cut to ribbons and invalidated, effectively wiping the Biblical death penalty out of existence. (See my Using Halakhic Methodology Creatively to Wipe Old Laws Out of Existence, discussing halakhah being used creatively to effectively deactive old laws even as they technically remain on the books.)

Why not do the same with גרים (converts)? There's no mitzvah to love the ממזר (mamzer) or the נואף (adulterer) or the רוצח (murderer), but there is a mitzvah to love the גר (convert)! So let's just be lax on investigating the גיור (conversion) candidate's commitment to the mitzvot!

And as "Zev" points out, just as Rabbenu Tam pronounced a herem (excommunication) on anyone who investigated or questioned the kashrut of a get (writ of divorce), since such aspersions could retroactively make the divorcee into an (unintentional) adulterer, so too today, we could pronounce a herem on anyone daring to investigate or question a giyur.

Save a JEWISH (?!) Life, Save a Whole World

In the Talmud, Sanhedrin 37a, we read:

כל הבאבד נפש אחת מישראל - מעלה עליו הכתוב כאילו איבד עולם מלא, רכל המקיים נפש אחת מישראל - מעלה הכתוב כאילו קיים עולם מלא

Whoever destroys a soul from Israel, the Scripture considers it as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life from Israel, the Scripture considers it as if he saved an entire world.

The Gemara's reasoning there is based on the fact that Adam was created as a single human and yet propagated the entire human race; similarly, any human alive today could potentially be the ancestor of all of humanity for the future, and to destroy or save his life is likewise to destroy or save all of humanity. But if so, why should it matter whether the subject saved is a Jew? I say, is this not a non-sequitor?

Indeed.

The Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:1 (22a) omits מישראל "from Israel", reading only נפת אחת "a soul". And according to Rabbi Gil Student, here, the same reading is found in Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer ch. 47, Tanna debe Eliyahu Rabbah 11, and Yalkut Shimoni on Exodus 166.

According to Amitai Halevi (cf. here), Rambam in Hilkhot Sanhedrin 12:3 follows the Yerushalmi's reading. To quote Mechon Mamre's text (there it is 12:7):

לפיכך נברא אדם יחידי בעולם--ללמד שכל המאבד נפש אחת, מעלין עליו כאילו איבד עולם מלא, וכל המקיים נפש אחת, מעלין עליו כאילו קיים עולם מלא.

Therefore man was created individual and unique in the world: to teach that anyone who destroys a single soul, it is considered as if he has destroyed an entire world, and anyone who saves a single soul, it is considered as if he has saved an entire world.

Halevi there also says

Hameiri too bases his commentary on the Yerushalmi version, illustrating "the destruction of a whole world" by pointing out that Cain's murder of Abel eliminated all of his victm's descendents at one fell swoop. Abel, like Adam was not Jewish; he was not even the ancestor of Jews.

And note what Professor Menachem Kellner says (Farteitcht un Farbessert (On “Correcting” Maimonides)), note 16:

Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5 [...] states “accordingly, only one man was created, to teach that one who destroys a single [Jewish] person is regarded by Scripture as if he had destroyed the entire world and one who saves a single [Jewish] person is regarded by Scripture as if he had saved the entire world.” As Ephraim Elimelekh Urbach has shown, the word mi-yisra’el (“Jewish”) is a relatively late insertion into the text of the mishnah. See E. E. Urbach, Mei-olamam shel hakhamim: Qovez mehqarim [World of the Sages] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1988), pp. 561-577. Through a series of coincidences, I discovered what is apparently the earliest textual witness to the correct text: Koran 5, 27-32! See my note on the subject, Tarbiz, 75 (2006): 565-566.

I decided to check the Koran's reading. The context of Koran 5:27-32 is Cain's killing Abel (very much like Meiri!); according to the Holy E-Books English translation of 5:32:

On that account: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them Our apostles with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land.

(R' Micha Berger, here, points out that the Koran speaks of "as if he slew the whole people", with "the" apparently referring to the Jewish people, like the particularist version of Sanhedrin 4:5. However, it seems to me that given that the Koran is basing itself on Cain's killing Abel, presumably it, like Meiri, universalistically views the victim's Jewishness as inconsequential, since Abel was neither Jewish nor the progenator of Jews. R' Simon Montagu confirmed my guess from the original Arabic: he says alnas `aljamia should be translated as "all of humanity", and adds that this whole passage has been variously translated as "he who saveth a life shall be as though he had saved all mankind alive" (J. M. Rodwell, 1909) and "hamehhaye [nefesh] ke'ilu hehhya et kol ha'adam yahhdav" (Hebrew for "one who saves a life is as if he saved all of humanity collectively", Y. Y. Rivlin 1987).)

Judgmentalism in Orthodoxy - The Shiddukh Crisis - Part 2

Based on Naamah's helpful and enlightening comments to my Judgmentalism in Orthodoxy - The Shiddukh Crisis, I wrote the following Letter to the Editor to YU's Commentator:

-------------

Hello.

I am concerned with a possible nuanced ramification of From the SOY President: Josh Goldman, 4/10/03.

That article quite correctly criticizes laxity of observance by certain liberal elements of Modern Orthodoxy.

Unfortunately, in doing so, the article speaks of "MO Liberal" and "MO Machmir". Quite simply, the terminology is extremely unfortunate and misguided.

I can see two possible ways to read Mr. Goldman's thesis:

Either...

(1) He is not concerned here with hashkafah (weltanschauung) at all. Practice is the concern and the only concern, and it's simply that we have some unfortunate nomenclature: "liberal" really means "lax", and "mahmir" (מחמיר) (strict) really means "maqpid" (מקפיד) (punctilious). If so, then practice and level of commitment, not belief, is what we are to be concerned with. The nomenclature is inaccurate, but once one figures out what it really means, one is set.

(2) Alternatively, he is concerned with hashkafah as well. Everything I just said in (1) above is true, but additionally, practice is mistakenly conflated with belief. In other words, people wrongly assume that those who are "liberal" in belief are also "lax" in practice, and that those who are "mahmir" (or more accurately, maqpid) in practice are also conservative in belief. If so, then these people are of course completely wrong, but other people are the ones who will be hurt in the cross-fire.

If (2) is correct then, like Christians, we are judging based on creed, not deed. Must we do so? Must we assume that those with liberal hashkafot are also lax, and that those with conservative hashkafot are also punctilious? Must I - a punctiliously observant frum Jew with a liberal German Neo-Orthodox and Balkan Judeo-Spanish Sephardi hashkafah - be impugned? Why must following Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits and Rabbi Benzion Uziel be conflated with such questionable things as tefillin dates? Rabbi Berkovits is about the most liberal Orthodox rabbi who's ever lived (many accuse him of not even being Orthodox!), and yet Rabbi Shalom Carmy says that his "A Jewish Sexual Ethics" (printed in Crisis and Faith and in Essential Essays on Judaism) is the best essay ever written about infusing sexuality with qedushah in marriage!

Things did not used to be this way; we did not used to be Christological dogmatists; Judaism used to be a Hebraic religion of deed. See the Introduction to Rabbi Benjamin Blech's Understanding Judaism: The Basics of Deed and Creed; Professor Marc Shapiro's The Limits of Orthodox Theology (especially his citation of Rabbi Haim Hirschensohn in the Introduction), Professor Menachem Kellner's review thereof; and what Professor Daniel Elazar says about Balkan Judeo-Spanish Sephardism (1 and 2).

Thank you, and sincerely,
Michael Makovi

Using Halakhic Methodology Creatively to Wipe Old Laws Out of Existence

The following post assumes some knowledge of the halakhic philosophies of Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner, Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits, and Rabbi Dr. Isidore Epstein. For introduction, see here, both the texts quoted there, and the texts cited (but not quoted) there. Then, and only then, after reading all that, will the following post make any sense.

In [Avodah] inconceivable-- Ben Sorer uMoreh, I say (with some slight editing I have added here)

Regarding Rabbi Yehonatan's testimony in the Gemara of having seen the grave of a ben sorer u'moreh (rebellious child) and the ruins of an apostasized city:

[To explain: One opinion in the Talmud argues that the rebellious child and the apostasized city never have and never will exist, due to their outlandish requirements. For example, the mother and father must look and sound exactly alike, and the city cannot have even one mezuzah. If these requirements are not met, then the laws cannot be executed. Obviously, these requirements are absurd, and so the laws exist only for us to learn from them theoretically, about the theoretical ramifications of a child being rapaciously insubordinate, etc. If the mother and father must appear and sound alike, this means they must be united in their pedagogy, and only then may they claim innocence for their son's behavior. But Rabbi Yehonatan argues there; he says that he actually said on the grave of such a child and the ruins of such a city.]

My understanding, based on someone's (I forget whose) explanation, is that Rabbi Yehonatan was speaking hyperbolically. Rabbi Yehonatan did not spend his days searching for graves and city ruins. Rather, Rabbi Yehonatan objected strenuously to this attempt to exegetically use midrash halakhah to wipe these mitzvot out of existence, and his principled philosophical objection to this sort of exegesis was an exasperated outcry, as if to say, "These laws are so surely still feasible, that I may as well have sat on the grave and the ruins."

If Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits holds that midrash halakhah can be used to creatively by Hazal to effectively write a law out of existence, Rabbi Yehonatan, according to this interpretation, strenuously disagreed with such exegetical methods.

Rabbi Rich Wolpoe responded,

Two laws that are currently ignored [i.e. that have been written off the books] come to mind:

Burial of suicide - we consider all of them now as not having da'as [knowledge - i.e., despite the prohbition of giving an honorable burial to a suicide (since he has murdered himself), we nowadays use a legal fiction by which we assume all suicides were mentally incompetent due to mental illness and anguish, and therefore innocent of the charge of self-murder].

No hespedim [eulogies] on certain [holi]days; except maybe some Yekkes [German Jews] and our own REMT [one of the members of Aishdas-Avodah], the no hesped [eulogy] rule is almost always waved.

Rabbi Wolpoe's point is that even today, we use legal fictions and the like to creatively write certain laws effectively out of existence. So why couldn't Hazal have done the same? I replied,

I'd add saving a nicht Jude on yom ha-shevi'i. Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein and Rabbi Yehuda Amital posed the following question: you're on a desert island, and so mishum eiva doesn't apply. What do you do? Honestly, how many of us would follow what the halakhah says in this case? (Rabbi Dr. David Berger, in Egalitarian Ethos, says that this is the one halakhah that he says completely frum and pious Jews have told him that they'll ignore the explicit halakhah and violate it b'meizid (brazenly and deliberately) if they have to.

By the way, Rabbi Lichtenstein said he'd save the nicht jude and do teshuva (teshuva, since the formal law is still on the books and binding), while Rabbi Amital said he'd save the nicht jude and not do teshuva, since it was G-d's will to save the nicht jude (following Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner that natural law can override d'oraita formal law; Rabbi Glasner's own example is choosing between treif meat and human flesh, or choosing to go naked or wear clothing of the opposite sex - he says to choose treif and opposite-sex clothing, even though the formal law lacks prohibitions of nakedness and consumption of human flesh, would say to go naked and eat human flesh rather than violate the laws against eating treif and wearing the clothing of the opposite sex). Rabbi David Bigman of Maale Gilboa, in relating this story, said, "I wouldn't violate Shabbat to save him...[audible pause]...I'd find a heter [lenient permissive minority opinion]."

(For elaboration on the philosophies of Rabbis Amital and Lichtenstein, see Worlds Destroyed, Worlds Rebuilt: The Religious Thought of Rabbi Yehudah Amital, by Rabbi Dr. Alan Brill, Edah 5:2. For elaboration on Rabbi Glasner's remarks on treifot and nakedness and natural morality, see here, s. v. "In his opposition to halakho-centrism, Amital finds a kindred spirit in R. Moses Samuel Glasner...", and here, s. v. "His belief that rational principles are as authoritative as the Torah itself...".

Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm (here) and Professor Marc Shapiro (here) both cite this case of the nicht jude on yom ha-shevi'i as an example of how halakhah can evolve over time, with the law on the books remaining technically unchanged, even as its actual application and underlying ethos radically reverses. To quote Rabbi Lamm:

Surely you, as a distinguished academic lawyer, must have come across instances in which a precedent that was once valid has, in the course of time, proved morally objectionable, as a result of which it was amended, so that the law remains “on the books” as a juridical foundation, while it becomes effectively inoperative through legal analysis and moral argument. Why, then, can you not be as generous to Jewish law, and appreciate that certain biblical laws are unenforceable in practical terms, because all legal systems — including Jewish law — do not simply dump their axiomatic bases but develop them. Why not admire scholars of Jewish law who use various legal technicalities to preserve the text of the original law in its essence, and yet make sure that appropriate changes would be made in accordance with new moral sensitivities? Plato — as well as Maimonides — taught us that every law must leave some who are thereby disadvantaged, that it is in the nature of law to serve the community even when individuals are injured. We then must seek ways to ameliorate the situation as best we can. This is a legitimate way for the Talmudic and post-Talmudic rabbis to protect the sacred Shabbat laws, and by appropriate halachic legislation enable us to live without violating our moral conscience.

And to quote Professor Shapiro:

My point was that all legal systems have to operate in a legal fashion. That doesn’t mean there aren’t moral considerations pushing you, but those are not in themselves enough to get to the result you want. You have to go through the system, the halakhic rules. When you get to the utilitarian factor, that’s the rule. That’s the way to get to where you want to go. That no more means you are ignoring ethical factors than when a rabbi tries to free an agunah whose husband is missing [and cannot divorce her and allow her to remarry]. He’s certainly motivated by ethical factors, by great concern for the suffering of the woman, but that’s not enough. You need to work within the system.

Rabbi Dr. Immanuel Jakobovits (A Modern Blood Libel – L'Affaire Shahak, Tradition, 8:2 1966) explains mishum darkei shalom ("for the sake of the ways of peace") in a manner extremely similar to how Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits does, viz. that the laws of the Torah all exist for the sake of peace, and that the Torah itself avers that the formal law, however logical in itself, must be put aside if it violates morality. (I covered up Rabbi Jakobovits's name and asked my ra"m [Gemara teacher] to read the article and guess its author, and he was sure it was Rabbi Berkovits.)

(For more on all the sources regarding saving a nicht jude on yom ha-shevi'i, see here.)

The point: both in the past, during Hazalic times (ben sorer u-moreh, apostasized city) and today (hespedim on holidays, burial of suicide, saving nicht judes on yom ha-shevi'i), we use creative ways to override the law, to preserve the letter of the law on the books, to keep the law technically active and relevant, even as in truth, the law is killed for all practical purposes, or modified in ways that previously never could have been envisioned.

Hirschians on the Meaning of the State of Israel

Often the Satmar and Neturai Karta types like to quote Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch as part of their propaganda. So for completeness, let us see what Rabbi Hirsch's descendants and students say:

Quoting Rabbi Rich Wolpoe at the Nishma Blog, Mendel Hirsch on the Jewish State:

Sobering thoughts about the condition of the SPIRITUAL State of Israel Today.

The following is from Dr. Mendel Hirsch's commentary on the Haftoroth. Dr. Hirsch was the eldest son of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. The selection below comes from his commentary of the Haftorah for Shabbos Chol Moed Pesach pages 592 - 593. (Written in 1896 I.L. (Isidore Levy, the translator and editor).)

So that even if to-day, through some miraculous chain of events, Palestine were to be placed at the unconditional disposal of the Jews, and they could return to the "Land of their Fathers" and found an independent state there: nothing, nothing at all, would be gained as long as the causes have not disappeared which once brought about the downfall of the state and the destruction of the Temple, yea which made that downfall unavoidably necessary for the preservation of Judaism and thereby Jewry.

A Jewish National body without Jewish spirit would be, and remain, dead; a Jewish State, that does not, in making the laws of the Torah a reality, present a picture of the realisation of the eternal laws of justice and love of one's neighbour based on the sound foundation of purity of morals, would be a still-born creation, and irretrievably doomed, to dissolution, even as it was thousands of years ago. But this is just by way of parenthesis!

(End quote of Rabbi Wolpoe; the following is my own addition.)

Rav Joseph Breuer (one of Rabbi Hirsch's descendants) spoke similarly, here:

The number of Torah-true people who follow the Torah im Derech Eretz approach on the holy soil is not large. In general, those who are Torah-true in the Holy Land are in the minority and they are forced to wage a hard fight to protect their life's sacred treasures. It was the will of God to let His people experience the great miracle of the Six Day War. If the many yeshivos of the country would have prepared young men gifted in leadership and with the will to lead in the spirit of Torah im Derech Eretz, and if, in that hour of victory, they would have brought the message of Torah im Derech Eretz to their brothers and sisters, perhaps they too would have been granted a victory to win over the masses to build teh Torah state. But, the great opportunity was lost.

Rav Breuer is quoted (ibid.) as elsewhere having said the following:

The creation of the Jewish state in Eretz Yisroel is a world historic event deeply affecting our people in all its parts as well as the nations of the world. What is the atttitude that we, as Torah-true Yehudim, are to take in relation to these event? We have expressed it repeatedly in all clarity and intensity: this State will have a future only if an as long as it is organized as a Jewish state; i.e., a State of God rising on sacred soil. It will be a State of God if it proclaims the Torah as the fundamental law of its constitution and propagates its practical realization in the life of our people.

Rabbi Yehiel Weinberg (renowned as one of the greatest Hirschians of all time) there is quoted as having said the following regarding Israeli youth:

It is possible at this decisive hour to build a bridge to establish contact with the perplexed and confused of our people. Religious youth must stand in the breach and show the way, and my advice to them is to imbibe the teaching of a great master who faced a similar task and succeeded brilliantly. [Viz. Rabbi S. R. Hirsch] He rescued his own generation and his methods and ideas can serve as an anchor for our own and future generations.

Or, as Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits put it in his Crisis and Faith (both the book and the Tradition 14:4 essay):

The question, of course, is: what is our function, the function of the Jewish people, in such a [Messianic] scheme of history? It would seem to us that no matter what our reaction to the scheme may be, we shall remain the witnesses [of G-d to the world]. What God has started with us he will complete. Too much remains unfinished; too much awaits its justification; too much waits for its redemption. God will not die in his exile. As far as we are concerned the question is: shall we just endure our destiny or willingly embrace it? We shall not escape it. This is probably the most important conclusion that we ought to derive from the Jewish meaning of the Yom Kippur War. The State of Israel has been forced back into Jewish history.

One of the fundamental mistakes of Zionism has been - and this was clear to some of us long before now - that it sets for its goal the normalization of the Jewish people. We shall return to our land; we shall have a state; our own government, judiciary, police, army. Jews will again be farmers, workers; they will be in all trades and professions. We shall speak Hebrew again and create a new Hebrew literature. In short, we shall be the same as all other nations. Zionism was trying to emancipate us from the Jewish destiny of the ages. It was attempting something new, to wean us of our involvement with a Divine plan with man and to seek salvation solely for our national exile. [As opposed for the universalistic exile of God in the history of mankind.] The State of Israel was attempting to break out of Jewish history and to start an Israeli history. The attempt to escape Jewish destiny by way of Zionism has undermined the moral security of the people that dwells in IsraeL. Wide sections of Israeli youth, alienated from the historic continuity of Jewish people, have become unsure of the moral validity of our claim to the land of our fathers. And indeed, there is no Israeli claim to the land; there can only be a Jewish claim. Where there is no continuity, there can be no return. Only in the uninterrupted chain of all Jewish generations is the certainty to be found that this has been our land all through our exile, and has been taken from us by force. Our faith in G'ula, in the coming Redemption, has been our eternal protest against anyone who held possession of the land of our fathers. But this faith is inseparable from the historic destiny of our Jewishness. The moment we reject identification with it, our claim to the land of Israel can only be based on the barbaric right of conquest. We either return to the Holy Land or there is no land for us to return to.

Even more serious than the moral uncertainty of the claim, if it is to be based on Israeli history, is the puzzlement and the loss of bearing that has overtaken Israeli society in the wake of the Yom Kippur War. Much more serious than the political uncertainty regarding the future is the spiritual uncertainty concerning the historic destiny of this little nation in the arena of violence of "normal" nations. All this struggle, blood letting, sacrifice, endless hardships, what are they all for? Where is the end to it all? Is it worthwhile? The hidden cause of the traumatic shock of the war has been the sensing of the loss of historic purpose, the loss of a transcending national destiny. Zionism has attempted to replace Messianism. The vision of the future has been replaced by the desire for the immediacy of the present. A new national purpose was to be forged for this ancient people. What we got is manufactured national reality, trying desperately to cut its roots from the soil of past history. But no nation can live with a borrowed national destiny, nor can it survive by a plastic national identity. Zionism has its justification only as an instrument of Jewish Messianism. It did have this character in the early days of the Jewish resettlement in Eretz Yisrael. The idealism of the pioneers was a secularized manifestation of the Messianic hunger of the Jewish people of history. That is why it could withstand all the trials and tribulations and triumph. Now that it has spent its inherited resources, large segments of Israeli society are left with a rootless secularism, which, as it is without memories, so has it no expectations either. It is altogether of today and all its future can be nothing but an eternal repetition of today. What it holds for man, it must deliver now; its only rewards are the fruits of the passing hour. A nation cannot live by that. It drags a society down to the level of the crudest forms of a demoralizing materialism. Therein lie the causes of the most serious internal problems of Israeli society. If the tragedy of the Yom Kippur War wil bring home to us the futility of our desire to become a "normal people and will induce us to recover the ethos of the Jewish stance in history in the context of Galut and G'ulah, it may yet be turned into a triumph of our struggle for survival within the messianic wave of world history. Only in that context can it be said that the State of Israel has come to stay. Of course, it is going to stay. The attempt to break out of that context has failed. It is going to fail again and again. The God of history will not let us go. We are not being asked. There is no escape for Israel from the historic destiny of IsraeL. The question is: shall we only endure it or find the ultimate meaning of our human existence in it by embracing it with resolute determination and dedication.

Rabbi Berkovits was one of the foremost students of Rabbi Weinberg. What is most fascinating I think, however, is that unlike the rest of the rabbis quoted, Rabbi Berkovits did not believe that the galut was a punishment. In Crisis and Faith, he puts forth an explanation that Rome and Jerusalem cannot exist in one world at the same time (based on a Midrash that says that if someone tells you that both or neither Jerusalem and Caesaria are standing, don't believe him; whenever one is standing, the other is in ruins), and so the Jewish people had to choose either galut or to Romanize, and that we sacrificed our statehood for G-dliness, choosing to be stateless observant Jews rather than G-dless Hellenized Jews with a state. In Between Yesterday and Tomorrow, his pulpit sermons from the WWII period, during the middle of the Holocaust, we learn Rabbi Berkovits reason for this: he says that frankly, no one - his family, his relatives, his friends, his rabbis, his congregants - deserved to die in the Holocaust (that was occurring at that very moment!), and that by extension, no Jew in the galut period of 2000 years deserved the galut treatment. Rabbi Berkovits is forced to reinterpret the galut not as a punishment, but as a self-conscious choice by the Jewish people, to put God above statehood.

I'll never forget the dedication to Rabbi Berkovits's book With God in Hell: Judaism in the Ghettos and Death Camps. It runs something along the lines of, "Dedicated to my mother X and my sisters X and X, who died in the moral depravity of the collapse of Western civilization."

Avraham's Tent Open On All Four Sides: Intellectual Broadness in Kiruv

Mr. Neil Harris said to me

Avraham's greatness was, in part, due to the fact that his tent opened on all four sides. As explained to me by a, now retired, former head of a major kiruv org in Long Island, this means that those who came to see Avraham felt comfortable speaking with him about many things besides religion.

I really think that reading is awesome.

In this connection, I'd like to cite previous posts of mine:
Mesorah Project V
Judaism as a Religious Civilization

Those two posts are two parts of one series, and they naturally complement each other. Both are concerned with Judaism relating to all worldly knowledge and civilization, but while "Mesorah Project V" deals more with pedagogy, "Judaism as a Religious Civilization" deals more with the theoretical philosophic (hashkafic) underpinnings.

The First Hispanic Supreme Court Justice: Cardozo or Sotomayer?

Aliza Hausman (Memoirs of a Jewminicana) has weighed in on the whole debate as to whether Benjamin Cardozo, not Sotomayer, was the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice.

When I first heard this whole Cardozo-Sotomayer brouhaha, I thought the whole thing was ridiculous, and I didn't even bother to open my mouth, because the whole affair seemed so ludicrous. But I guess I may as well now say what was then on my mind.

I remember when I was in high school, I had to argue with people often about whether Jews were white or not. I argued on two counts:

(1) Avoiding the discussion of how much racial (read: genetic) commonality does or not exist between Jews from different communities, the fact remains that at least within any one given Jewish community (let's say, Ashkenazi) to the exclusion of all other Jewish communities, within that one community, intermarriage was traditionally low, and so the Jews of a given locale would be racially distinct from the gentiles of that same locale.

(2) Quite aside from anything genetic, "race" also includes such factors as culture. Whatever a Jew's race may be, the fact is that he is quite culturally distinct from his non-Jewish neighbors. I noted that whatever the color of my skin, I am not a "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant". Culturally-speaking, I am far more similar to a Yemenite or Moroccan or Indian Jew, or even a convert with no genetic Jewish ancestry at all, than I am to any WASP. Diana Muir Appelbaum and Paul S. Appelbaum, in The Gene Wars (Azure/Techelet Winter 5767 / 2007, no. 27), make the point that not only do the Palestinians not have Jewish ancestry, but that even if they did, they lack the cultural link to the Biblical people of Israel that would grant them legitimate claim to land of Israel. (This is my personal answer to the claim that the Ashkenazim are descended from the Kuzar Turks; first, I say, scientific evidence disputes this claim; second, I say, even if this claim were true, a convert is as Jewish as a born-Jew, so what difference does it make if all Ashkenazim are descendants of converts? Cultural identification trumps the genetic.)

Regarding this second factor, viz. the preeminence of the cultural and the genetic: it is precisely based on this that it was clear to me that Cardozo was not the first Hispanic judge. I don't know much about Cardozo, so perhaps I'm wrong, but as far as I know, he was predominately a Jew and an NYC American. As far as I know, he did not consider himself a Hispanic and identify with Hispanic culture.

I think the whole debate evinces a pathetic greed. These Jews who are calling for Cardozo to be considered the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice, they are displaying jealousy, play and simple. It is not enough for them to let the Hispanic community have their candidate, have their pride. The Jews must begrudge them even that, must steal even this honor. Cannot we let the Hispanics have their own glory, even as the Jews have ours? The Arabs and the Spanish try to steal Maimonides as their own; must we do the same, and try to steal Hispanicity from the Hispanics?

One random tidbit about Cardozo, that I found absolutely fascinating: Rabbi Angel at Congregation Shearith Israel (S&P)on the Upper West Side - I forget whether the father, Marc, or the son, Haim - tells the story of when Shearith Israel was considering becoming Conservative. Cardozo, then a young man of some twenty-odd years, stood up and delivered an impassioned speech about how, observant or not, every Jew must preserve authentic Judaism so that his children receive the "real deal" unabridged. Cardozo's speech won the congregation over, Rabbi Angel said, and it is solely due to Cardozo that Shearith Israel is an Orthodox congregation to this day.

See also my followup to this post, regarding whether it is of any significance that Cardozo's family was Portuguese, not Spanish: The First Hispanic Supreme Court Justice: On the History of Spain, Portugal, and the Sephardim.

Positive Historical Judaism Exhausted - R' Dr. Daniel Gordis

"Anonymous" pointed me to Rabbi Dr. Daniel Gordis's Positive Historical Judaism Exhausted: Reflections on a Movement's Future.

I found this article quite helpful. Now, I spent quite some time writing a rather long letter to Dr. Gordis - a letter which he acknowledged and said he enjoyed (adding that he thinks he and I generally agree on most matters) - and I figured that I may as well post the letter on my blog.

I have not edited the letter, however, as I don't have the time, but I think it should read well.

-------------------------------------

Dr. Gordis,

I much enjoyed your article "Positive Historical Judaism Exhausted".

(Just to put the following remarks of mine into context, I generally subscribe to a left-wing Modern Orthodoxy, perhaps similar to what Conservative Judaism once one, as represented today by Rabbi Avi Weiss's YCT and Open Orthodoxy, Rabbi Marc Angel, etc. My chief influences include Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits, Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner, Rabbi Benzion Uziel, and Rabbi Haim David Halevi. I often say that I'm somewhere between a German or British Neo-Orthodox and a Balkan Judeo-Spanish Sephardi. I grew up ritually non-observant, but my mother (a Conservative convert)'s Jewish teachings to me were pervaded by a weltanschauung very similar to Rabbi Hirsch's, and so my background would probably be best simplified as similar to that of a non-observant but traditionally-reverent Sephardi. I became a baal teshuva five years ago, halfway through high school, have spent the past three years learning in Machon Meir in Jerusalem (my Gemara ra"m there notes it is perhaps by a miracle that I have survived its Hardal atmosphere so long without being eaten alive), and now I am about to commence a year in Rabbi Yuval Cherlow's Yeshivat Petah Tiqwa - it was a toss-up for me between Petah Tiqwa and Rabbi David Bigman's Maale Gilboa.)

The thought that repeatedly struck me as I read your essay is that which Rabbi Dr. Emanuel Rackman writes in One Man's Judaism: while it is certainly true that history plays a large role in halakhah, this is not the same as saying that history fully encompasses or explains halakhah. While social and human need certainly do play a large role in halakhah (Rabbis Benzion Uziel and Haim David Halevi - I am indebted to Rabbi Marc Angel for pointing these to me), and while morality too has its role to play (Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits), and while human reason also has played a key role in halakhic development in the course of history (Rabbis Moshe Shmuel Glasner and Zadok ha-Kohen of Lublin - I am indebted to Professor Yaakov Elman), nevertheless, these sources do not exhaust the sources of halakhic development. As Rabbi Rackman points out, Seder Kodashim is far less influenced by human and social need than Seder Nezikin.

Furthermore, I think the issue is that as true as it may be that the majority defeated G-d with the tanur akhnai, and as true as it may be that Moshe could not understand Rabbi Akiva's lecture, and as true as it may be that the prozbul and ben sorer u'moreh evince rational, moral, historical, and sociology forces and influences, these do not provide reasons to be Jewish. Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits has greatly influenced my conception of the halakhic process, but it is Rabbi S. R. Hirsch's Nineteen Letters that gives me a reason to be Jewish in the first place. If I'm not committed to Judaism, then the historial forces in halakhah are at best an antiquarian interest, very similar to a study I might conceivably undertake of any other nation's laws and culture. It might all be completely true, and it might be fascinating, but it won't make me light Shabbat candles and abstain from pork, any more than studying sharia as an academic discipline in university will make me an observant Muslim.

(I'm quite aware that Rabbi Hirsch's conception of halakhah is quite different from Rabbi Berkovits's! I cannot be both a Hirschian and a Berkovits-ian without accounting for what Rabbi Hirsch said about Frankel. For a long time, in my ignorance, I had no choice but to throw up my hands and say that with all due respect to Rav Hirsch, I had to disagree with him regarding the nature of the Oral Law. Dr. Elliot Bondi told me that in truth, my disagreement with Rav Hirsch was very small, and that notwithstanding my support for Rabbi Berkovits, I still mostly agreed with Rav Hirsch as well, but I failed to understand how Dr. Bondi could be correct. But later I came to understand: my personal answer now is based on footnote 42 in Rationality and Halacha: The Halacha L’Moshe MiSinai of Treifos, by Rabbi Asher Benzion Buchman. There, Rabbi Buchman says that the difference between Rambam and Rashba in tereifot is not such much a different conception of how halakhah works, and it's not even primarily due to their radical and far-reaching disagreement regarding naturalism and supernaturalism (for that, see David Guttmann's Avodah Zarah as Falsehood - Denial of Reality and Rejection of Science and Rabbi Buchman's U-Madua Lo Yeresem); rather, there's is a difference in how much (quantitatively) of halakhah was revealed at Sinai. For Rambam, Sinai revealed a few general principles that were left for humans to expand upon; for Rashba, revelation revealed far many more details, leaving less for humans. I'd say that my disagreement with Rav Hirsch is the same; both of us agree with Frankel that new hiddushim can be made and new facets of halakhah revealed over time, etc., but the question is one of quantity, of how much of halakhah, how much (quantitatively) of the Talmud and Shulhan Arukh can be explained by tanur akhnai and Moshe seeing Rabbi Akiva's lecture. According to this, Hirsch, Frankel, and I are all mostly on the same page, and have merely a quantitative disagreement. If so, wherefore Rabbi Hirsch's vehement denunciation of Frankel as a heretic? I once said, in a private conversation with Rabbi Alan Yuter, that I thought it was simply an issue of polemic knee-jerk reaction; Rabbi Hirsch, quite simply, with all due respect to him, was on edge and was hypersensitive, due to the time in which he lived. (I'm being overly simplistic and bombastic, but I trust I don't need to elaborate for you what I mean, as I'm sure you know more about what I just said than I myself do.) I later saw the exact same explanation by Professor Marc Shapiro in “Review Essay: Sociology and Halakha”, Tradition 27:1, Fall 1992. I'm not an adequate enough scholar to determine if my explanation here is completely historically correct, but it personally satisfies me, at least as a theoretical paradigm, even if ahistorical. It is certainly close enough to the historical truth, and conforms closely enough to the respective positions of the various authorities in question, for it to be valid in the world of theology, even if it wouldn't pass muster in the world of objective academic historical scholarship. For my own personal purposes, I have reconciled Rabbi Hirsch with the historical school sufficiently for me to be a Hirschian Berkovits-ian. Perhaps a bit of post-modern critical literary method is called for - Post-Modern Interpretation of Texts.)

And as you point out, the question is thus one of audience. If our audience is an observant one, then we may emphasize the tanur akhnai, to stress the point that notwithstanding torah misinai, nevertheless the Torah is flexible and evolutionary. Indeed, when I discuss the Oral Law with other Orthodox Jews, Rabbis Glasner and Berkovits are among my most often cited authorities. But if our audience is not observant, this is exactly the wrong message to send, for first we must establish for them that halakhah and Judaism are Sinaitic and sacrosanct, and we will instead cite Rabbi Hirsch's remarks in Parshat Mishpatim about the Written Law being brief lecture notes, and how there is not enough material written in Parshat Mishpatim for Moshe Rabenu to be judging all day and all night. Similarly, when I am talking to other Orthodox Jews about midrash aggadah, I will emphasize the words of the Gaonim and Rishonim that all aggadah is umdena, speculative wisdom that we may accept or reject based on a passing whim. However, when I am talking to non-Orthodox Jews, I will rather emphasize the fact that Hazal were the wise and learned exemplars of Sinaitic Jewish wisdom, whose words are of inestimable worth. (Incidentally, Rabbi Hirsch's wonderful teshuva on aggadah plays both sides of this issue equally adeptly.) Rabbi Haim David Halevy, according to Rabbi Marc Angel, would often answer the exact same question in diametrically opposite ways, depending on the attitude of his interlocutor. I learned this lesson myself most viscerally, when I gave a devar torah at the home of Rabbi Mordechai Machlis in Ma'alot Dafna. (Rabbi Machlis is famous for his hospitality, having perhaps one-hundred guests on Shabbat.) For parshat Noah, I gave a devar torah based largely on Rabbi S. R. Hirsch's concept of Mensch-Yisroel, how Jew and gentile were not so different (Rav Hirsch on Shemot 19:6). Rabbi Machlis afterwards stood up and gave a devar torah of his own, about "Bernie and Bridget". I asked him afterwards what I had done wrong, and he told me that while everything I had said was completely true, nevertheless, he said, one cannot give such a devar torah as I did to a group of people which he had only just rounded up at the Kotel and who hadn't yet ever eaten a Shabbat meal in their lives; for these people, Jewish particularity, not universalism, was needed, and to stress universalism as I did was to encourage intermarriage. So to this this day, I will emphasize tanur akhnai and Rav Hirsch's Mensch-Yisroel when speaking to Orthodox Jews, but when I'm speaking to non-Orthodox Jews, I'll take an entirely distinct tack, and emphasize the revelation at Sinai and the particularist Jewish mission. Rabbi Yehiel Weinberg held that perhaps, Reform conversions were halakhically valid, but he, as a matter of principle, chose not to tell the Reformers this. Similarly, I have recently conceded (Thoughts on Kashruth Certification Policies - this article is an eight-page published abridgment of a forty-page still-unpublished essay I wrote) that the Conservative ruling on driving on Shabbat might have some halakhical validity, but I said this publicly only to an Orthodox audience; I'd never admit this publicly to non-Orthodox Jews.

You quote Schorsch that the study of history will lead to reverence for Judaism. I think the pitfall here is that while a reverence for Jewish history can inspire initial interest in Jewish observance, it cannot inspire enduring long-term commitment. Many are the Orthodox baalei teshuva who were first inspired by the realization of their ignorance of Jewish tradition and identity, but rest assured, they either soon discovered something more than history, or they didn't become baalei teshuva. A man might ask a woman on a date due to her physical attractiveness, but hopefully, by the time his wedding day comes, he's since then discovered something more in her. As your quotation of Meyerhoff indicates, what is ultimately indispensable is not knowledge of history, but connection with that history. A baal teshuva might initially be motivated by his realization of his ignorance of Jewish history, but ultimately, it is not a newfound technical knowledge of Jewish history that will retain his interest, but rather, a newfound intimate identification with that history. And the two are of course not the same; I personally have been thinking a lot recently of the Tanzimat Reforms and the Meiji Restoration, but I'm not moving to Turkey or Japan anytime soon!

On the other hand, perhaps for some, history alone is in fact enough. Rabbi Angel - I forget whether Marc or his son Haim - tells the story of when Congregation Shearith Israel was considering becoming Conservative. Benjamin Cardozo, as a young man of some twenty or so years, stood up and delivered an impassioned speech to the congregation, imploring them to remain officially Orthodox, for the sake of retaining the true historical Judaism of their ancestors. (This would echo the observation that the Torah, as a morashah, is a heritage that must be transmitted to the descendants, as opposed to a yerushah, an inheritance which the inheritor may dispose of as he wills.) But I'd suspect that Cardozo was influenced, to no small degree, by the traditional Sephardic non-denominationalism/sectarianism, in which, as Daniel Elazar points out, a man might eat every treif abomination and then write out a check to Shas. But while it would be wonderful if American Jewry were even on this meager level, the fact is that they are not; they are rather post-Emancipation Ashkenazim, not Sephardim, and we cannot rely on American Jewry being as inspired as Cardozo was by morashah and Sephardic non-denominationalism. Moreover, I don't know that Cardozo himself ever became more observant; his shul became Orthodox, but he himself didn't (as far as I know - I've never read much of anything about him), so even for Sephardim, this traditionalist non-denominationalism is insufficient, and all the more so for sectarian Ashkenazim. As you point out, today's American Jews simply are not motivated by reverence for history and tradition as 19th century Germans were (or as Sephardim still are).

[Update: Rabbi Dr. Seth (Avi) Kadish provided the following passage which fits well with Rabbi Dr. Gordis's point, from Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks's Crisis and Covenant, pp. 160ff:

Indeed neither of these thinkers offers a criterion for determining the parameters of halakhic change. Gordis invokes sociology, Jacobs appeals to history. But if these views were to be taken seriously then virtually the whole of the halakhah would have to be dismantled since, as we noted earlier, the majority of Jews today no longer regard themselves as bound by it [emphasis added - Michael Makovi]. They would counter this objection by saying that halakhah is not answerable to the majority of Jews but to 'the consensus of the concerned' or the majority of 'Jews who basically accept the authority of Jewish law'. But it is by means clear even in America, and certainly world-wide, that this majority is [not?] Conservative. Almost certainly it is Orthodox. The fundamental incoherence of Gordis's and Jacobs's view of halakhah is its failure to distinguish description from prescription. No description of what Jews do can of itself enlighten us as to what they ought to do. Neither 'life' nor 'historical experience' determines law, though law must respond to both.

End update. Now to return to what I originally wrote to Rabbi Dr. Gordis.]

Also, you point out that because Conservative Judaism made halakhah into history, it turned halakhah into something non-contemporary, something dead for the present. I think this brings us right back to Rackman; while history certainly plays a vital role in halakhah, a role that is tragically ignored by most Orthodox Jews, nevertheless, history fails to fully encapsulate Judaism. If we eliminate the Divine, if we eliminate Sinai from Judaism, and describe Judaism fully in terms of what historically happened due to sociological and historical forces and factors, then Judaism becomes something which man and history made, and which therefore man and history can break. Only if there is something beyond history, something sacrosanct in halakhah and Judaism, perhaps influenced by history but still not created solely by history, is Judaism something beyond man's ability to reshape at his whim. As Rackman points out, if Orthodoxy has erred in eliminating the human and the historical from halakhah, the historical school has erred in eliminating the Divine, in limiting halakhah to the human and historical exclusively; the true approach is between the two extremes, between those who eliminate G-d and those who eliminate man.

I must take issue with you on one point, however: with all respect, I find your analysis surrounding Rava and the mountain wanting. Your reading is an interesting one, and I cannot criticize you on textual or exegetical grounds. However, I fail to understand what difference your analysis makes practically. If the problem is that the concept of Catholic Israel gives all authority to the laity, how does your position rectify this? Teaching Judaism based on spiritual relevance and the experiental rather than historical authority may indeed be pedagogically superior - and on that account alone your position has great merit - but in the end of the day, it still puts all the power in the hands of the people. Perhaps, based on your tack, they will find Judaism more relevant and adopt greater observance. But all the same, perhaps they will choose to not renew the covenant, rejecting the relevance. What if the laity chooses to renew the entire Torah in toto, with the exception of kashrut and shemirat ha-shabbat? I'm reminded of what Rabbi Berkovits says: Kant showed it is logical to be moral, but only G-d's command provides an obligation, a categorical imperative, to be logical and thus moral; if a man believes that it is logical to be moral, Kant still has not provided him with a prohibition of doing the illogical. If your tack successfully convinces the laity that Judaism is relevant, wonderful. But if they disagree, and decide Judaism (or any specific particular law therein) is not relevant, are we not brought right back to the doorstep of Catholic Israel, giving the laity the power to abrogate that which does not suit their fancy? We cannot forget that which Rabbi Hirsch writes in "Judaism Up to Date", that Judaism never was in keeping in the spirit of the times, and that Jewish history is naught but the people slowly coming to be more and more in keeping with the law; were it up to the people themselves, Judaism would have been rejected already with the giving of the second of the Ten Commandments. Perhaps I am wrong, but I am skeptical of whether we can convince Jewry that Judaism is worth keeping, without some degree of obligation and authoritarianism. To be sure, I believe - as Rambam says - that Judaism is the best system for the perfect way of life, since it was given by a G-d who knows man best, as His creator; I further believe that harut leads to herut. But all the same, Rabbi Saadia Gaon says that there are commandments that make rational sense only after the fact, only after they are explained; whereas prohibitions of murder and theft are self-evident even without a command, other laws of the Torah are explicable only after the fact, and were it up to us, we'd never have instituted them in the first place ourselves. Similarly, I think that many of the laws of the Torah surely are to man's benefit, but that nevertheless, a binding Divine commandment is necessary to ensure their complete observance. The Greeks believed that knowledge alone is sufficient to make a man moral, but Judaism disagrees; a man can know what is good for him, and nevertheless violate what he knows to be reasonable, due to his yetzer hara. As Rabbi Micha Berger of AishDas puts it, echoing Rabbi Dr. Leo Adler's The Biblical View of Man, "The mind is a wonderful tool for justifying that which the heart has already arrived at." Your argument might make for a tremendously superior pedagogy, and in the end, it may actually work out successfully. But these holes I have pointed out in the argument, even if they are never manifested in reality, nevertheless tremendously worry me, in that they could even hypothetically exist. Rabbi Meir Kahane used to ask what the Left what they'd do if the Arabs became a majority in Israel. The Left would dodge the question, replying that this would never happen in the future. Perhaps the Left was even correct, but the fact that they had no answer to the hypothetical possibility of an Arab majority in a democratic Israel is deeply disturbing and evinces no small amount of cowardice on their part; they disingenuously dodged the question rather than confront it. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Rabbi Kahane, one must respect him for having the courage to confront the possibility with perspicacity. Even if one disagrees with his conclusion (deporting the Arabs), at least he had a conclusion; the Left simply avoided the problem in cowardice. Perhaps in note 44 you answer my objection, but you raise "command qua command" only very suddenly and unexpectedly, whereas the rest of your analysis had been based on spiritual fulfillment and experiential satisfaction as opposed to authority, so I'm not sure exactly what role G-d's authoritarian and apodictic command plays in your philosophy. Indeed, the top of page 17 ("...submission to the will and the tradition of a community.") and note 45 both concern me, both bearing striking resemblance to that which is most pernicious in the concept of Catholic Israel.

One minor point: I don't know anything about the following, but it was my understanding that the Ishtar-Esther etymology is untenable, because Ishtar has a shin and Esther has a samekh, making the two entirely unrelated linguistically. Do you know anything in particular about this? Moreover, your mention there of assimilation demands that you depart from Rava's own views, since presumably, Rava held that Mordechai was the head of the Sanhedrin and that Esther had halakhic justification for her sleeping with Ahasueros, etc. You yourself note that you might be using Rava as a springboard and that you might not be being completely faithful to him, that you might be pushing the sugya further than Rava himself would - this could bring us right back to post-modernism - and so in the end, your thesis is not severely affected; just a curiosity.

Generally, I much enjoyed your essay. Now, I am not Conservative myself; my loyalties lie with Orthodoxy, particularly a left-wing Modern Orthodoxy with heavy influence from German and British Neo-Orthodoxy and Balkan Sephardism; my loyalties are with YCT and Bar-Ilan, not JTS. By now, Conservative Judaism, whatever its original roots, has left the trunk of historical Judaism, and in my opposition to denominationalism and sectarianism, I'm not interested even in a Conservative Judaism that returns to the trunk. (For the record, I see Haredism as illegitimate as Reformism and Conservatism; if, as Rabbi Yehiel Weinberg says based on Rav Hirsch, Torah is the form and derekh eretz is the matter, then a Haredism that has rejected derekh eretz is as illegitimate as a Reformism that has rejected Torah; one without the other is zero, either which way. Moreover, Professor Menachem Friedman has shown that Haredism fails to represent authentic prewar Ashkenazi Eastern European Orthodoxy. So rest assured, if I reject Conservatism, I reject Haredism no less. Actually, given that the Torah and Nevi'im emphasize bein adam l'havero more than bein adam la-makom, I'd wager that from an Orthodox perspective, non-Orthodox movements keep the Torah more faithfully than Haredism does.) Nevertheless, if other Conservative authorities choose to take your tack, I might have sympathy for their position and be willing to ally on occasion; right-wing Conservatism (Conservadoxy?) has much overlap with left-wing Modern Orthodoxy, after all. If other Conservative rabbis follow your lead here, I might find more people like a certain friend of mine: she converted Conservative, but since her Conservate rabbis are personally observant, and since her mikvah was kosher, I see no reason to doubt the validity of her conversion from an Orthodox perspective - the eidim and mikvah are all kosher, and G-d, like the Sephardim, is non-denominational. (You might have noticed that I said nothing about whether she herself is observant. The fact is, she personally is observant, but this is of precious little import, given what Professor Zvi Zohar has shown about the pre-Rabbi-Shmelkes meaning of qabalat ha-mitzvot. Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits's wonderful proposal for Orthodox rabbis to oversee all non-Orthodox conversions, in Crisis and Faith and Essential Essays on Judaism, evinces an identical conception of conversion. Imagine how quickly the controversy around the Law of Return could be solved if the Orthodox rabbis pulled their heads out of their nether regions!)

Thank you for that article of yours; it certainly gave me much food for thought.

Sincerely,
Michael Makovi