Samuel I, Chapter 18, 1
א וַיְהִי, כְּכַלֹּתוֹ לְדַבֵּר אֶל-שָׁאוּל, וְנֶפֶשׁ יְהוֹנָתָן, נִקְשְׁרָה בְּנֶפֶשׁ דָּוִד; ויאהבו (וַיֶּאֱהָבֵהוּ) יְהוֹנָתָן, כְּנַפְשׁוֹ.
1 And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.
This phraseology is similar to that describing the love of Jacob and Benjamin.
Genesis 44:30
ל וְעַתָּה, כְּבֹאִי אֶל-עַבְדְּךָ אָבִי, וְהַנַּעַר, אֵינֶנּוּ אִתָּנוּ; וְנַפְשׁוֹ, קְשׁוּרָה בְנַפְשׁוֹ.
30 Now therefore when I come to thy servant my father, and the lad is not with us; seeing that his soul is bound up with the lad's soul;
My father notes that this love is not reciprocated in this form by either party. David's soul is not described as "bound up" with Jonathan's, nor is Benjamin's soul "bound up" with Jacob's. This is because this love was unconditional and boundless, like the love that a parent has for a child, which is generally unable to be fully reciprocated.
Samuel I, Chapter 18: 3
ג וַיִּכְרֹת יְהוֹנָתָן וְדָוִד, בְּרִית, בְּאַהֲבָתוֹ אֹתוֹ, כְּנַפְשׁוֹ.3 Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul.
Samuel I, Chapter 19: 1
א וַיְדַבֵּר שָׁאוּל, אֶל-יוֹנָתָן בְּנוֹ וְאֶל-כָּל-עֲבָדָיו, לְהָמִית, אֶת-דָּוִד; וִיהוֹנָתָן, בֶּן-שָׁאוּל, חָפֵץ בְּדָוִד, מְאֹד.
1 And Saul spoke to Jonathan his son, and to all his servants, that they should slay David; but Jonathan Saul's son delighted much in David.
Samuel I, Chapter 20:3ג וַיִּשָּׁבַע עוֹד דָּוִד, וַיֹּאמֶר יָדֹעַ יָדַע אָבִיךָ כִּי-מָצָאתִי חֵן בְּעֵינֶיךָ, וַיֹּאמֶר אַל-יֵדַע-זֹאת יְהוֹנָתָן, פֶּן-יֵעָצֵב; וְאוּלָם, חַי-יְהוָה וְחֵי נַפְשֶׁךָ--כִּי כְפֶשַׂע, בֵּינִי וּבֵין הַמָּוֶת.3 And David swore moreover, and said: 'Thy father knoweth well that I have found favour in thine eyes; and he saith: Let not Jonathan know this, lest he be grieved; but truly as the LORD liveth, and as thy soul liveth, there is but a step between me and death.'
Samuel I, Chapter 20: 17
יז וַיּוֹסֶף יְהוֹנָתָן לְהַשְׁבִּיעַ אֶת-דָּוִד, בְּאַהֲבָתוֹ אֹתוֹ: כִּי-אַהֲבַת נַפְשׁוֹ, אֲהֵבוֹ. {ס}
17 And Jonathan caused David to swear again, for the love that he had to him; for he loved him as he loved his own soul. {S}
Samuel I, Chapter 20: 41
מא הַנַּעַר, בָּא, וְדָוִד קָם מֵאֵצֶל הַנֶּגֶב, וַיִּפֹּל לְאַפָּיו אַרְצָה וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ שָׁלֹשׁ פְּעָמִים; וַיִּשְּׁקוּ אִישׁ אֶת-רֵעֵהוּ, וַיִּבְכּוּ אִישׁ אֶת-רֵעֵהוּ, עַד-דָּוִד, הִגְדִּיל.
41 And as soon as the lad was gone, David arose out of a place toward the South, and fell on his face to the ground, and bowed down three times; and they kissed one another, and wept one with another, until David exceeded.
Samuel II, Chapter 1: 26כו צַר-לִי עָלֶיךָ, אָחִי יְהוֹנָתָן--נָעַמְתָּ לִּי, מְאֹד; נִפְלְאַתָה אַהֲבָתְךָ לִי, מֵאַהֲבַת נָשִׁים.
26 I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant hast thou been unto me; wonderful was thy love to me, passing the love of women.
~
David & Jonathan are often mentioned in the same breath, yet, if you analyze the verses, it seems as though the love that Jonathan showed to David was stronger. Jonathan's love is described, over and over again, as a love of the soul. Jonathan's soul is bound up with David's soul; he loves David as he loves his own soul. David's expressions are more subdued. David expresses himself by using a very formal expression to Jonathan; he states that King Saul knows that David has "found favor" in Jonathan's eyes (an expression echoed by Esther when she hopes to have found favor in King Ahaseurus' eyes). Perhaps this is because David does not wish to impose too much, and does not wish to state bluntly that King Saul is aware of the love that Jonathan bears toward David; he therefore uses a more formal expression. David later expresses his love for Jonathan by kissing him and weeping longer than Jonathan does before he must hide away from him. But once again, he does not use words to describe his feelings; they are there in his actions, in his tears. His last paeon and lament for Saul & Jonathan states that he is distressed for his "brother Jonathan." For Jonathan to be his brother, Jonathan still exists outside himself; this suggests that David's love for Jonathan was not a love where he loved him as he did his own soul. He also mentions "wonderful was thy love to me, passing the love of women," but says nothing of his own feelings, the love that he feels towards Jonathan.
Perhaps this relationship is the model for the one that Solomon described in Song of Songs. The love of the maiden in the Song of Songs is similar to that of Jonathan. In 3:1, she clearly describes that:
א עַל-מִשְׁכָּבִי, בַּלֵּילוֹת, בִּקַּשְׁתִּי, אֵת שֶׁאָהֲבָה נַפְשִׁי; בִּקַּשְׁתִּיו, וְלֹא מְצָאתִיו.
1 By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth; I sought him, but I found him not.
Her emphasis is on the soul and on the fact that she searches for the one whom her soul loves.
Note in contrast that the male speaker in the song, like David, describes the Shunamite maiden's love for him but does not discuss the feelings he has for her:
י מַה-יָּפוּ דֹדַיִךְ, אֲחֹתִי כַלָּה; מַה-טֹּבוּ דֹדַיִךְ מִיַּיִן, וְרֵיחַ שְׁמָנַיִךְ מִכָּל-בְּשָׂמִים.
10 How fair is thy love, my sister, my bride! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all manner of spices!
It is true that the male speaker in the Song of Songs calls his beloved by endearing names, but even so, it is clear that he is less expressive and certainly less soul-focused than she is. He focuses on her love for him or on how love itself is a delight, but does not describe his endless love for her. This is similar to David, who only expresses himself through his tears and his paeon. And even in his paeon, he is describing the way in which the love Jonathan bore him affected him, rather than speaking, in the first person, about the love he bore Jonathan.
Thus, if we are to be like one of these pair, it would seem to me that we would wish to be like Jonathan, whose love consumed his soul, and who loved with his whole being, for David was like his own soul, no outside relation- even one as close as "brother."
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Yair Has Been Published!
My beloved friend Yair of "Yair's List of Torah Links" fame, has been PUBLISHED in a freaking journal! He is a freaking celebrity! He is also amazingly talented and crazy brilliant and I am so goddamned happy for him! This is the best piece of news I have had all day because a) today has been miserable b) this is FANTASTIC NEWS.
Mazal Tov, Yair! May this be the first of many wonderful publications and may I be blessed to live to attend all your award dinners! And may you only go from strength to strength and continue on to be happy always.
Yair has been published in HaDor, formerly known as HaDoar. Check it out! Apparently you can pick it up in your local Hebrew bookstore, since it is published nationwide.
How lucky I am to have such wonderfully brilliant friends!
Mazal Tov, Yair! May this be the first of many wonderful publications and may I be blessed to live to attend all your award dinners! And may you only go from strength to strength and continue on to be happy always.
Yair has been published in HaDor, formerly known as HaDoar. Check it out! Apparently you can pick it up in your local Hebrew bookstore, since it is published nationwide.
How lucky I am to have such wonderfully brilliant friends!
?!
Why I didn't know this before now is an excellent question, but let it be made clear: Sometimes Stern makes absolutely awful decisions when determining whom to let go from their school or faculty. It is a shame and an outrage that the one woman in this school who is more learned than all the others, who knows how to teach Torah in a clear and systematic way, who fascinates, captivates and otherwise offers others the thrill of truly learning should not be rehired. This one woman taught me more Torah than all my other Judaic studies teachers combined, and in their idiocy, the administration did not realize that they had possession of a gem, and they allowed her to slip through their fingers. They should have fired other people on the Judaic studies faculty before letting her go!
Angel of Death + Bas Kol + Elijah
Okay, two questions.
A) Where is the source for the fact that God will kill the Malach HaMaves? (Obviously we say that in Chad Gadya, but where is it originally from?)
B) Are there many places in which Bas Kol means Eliyahu in the Gemara (according to various commentaries?) Can anyone think of some places? Or other places where God and Eliyahu are interchangeable? As we saw in my Akiva post, per the nice Columbia Student, the Maharam Schiff states that the Bas Kol that happens by the Oven of Aknai is really Eliyahu coming to tell us the answer...
A) Where is the source for the fact that God will kill the Malach HaMaves? (Obviously we say that in Chad Gadya, but where is it originally from?)
B) Are there many places in which Bas Kol means Eliyahu in the Gemara (according to various commentaries?) Can anyone think of some places? Or other places where God and Eliyahu are interchangeable? As we saw in my Akiva post, per the nice Columbia Student, the Maharam Schiff states that the Bas Kol that happens by the Oven of Aknai is really Eliyahu coming to tell us the answer...
Monday, April 20, 2009
Could Tamar & Judah Have Been A Marriage?
So I had a question and I was wondering if anyone could answer it for me.
After reading Rabbi Kaplan's Made in Heaven (wrote about this here), I learned that there are three ways in which one can marry a woman:
1) Bi'ah (Sexual Relations)
2) Shtar (Document)
3) For the man to give an object worth the value of at least one prutah to the woman
But there is another idea, apparently rabbinic in nature.
4) To place the two people under one garment (this is like in Megillas Rut, where Rus asks for Boaz to place his garment over her)
If you look at the Tamar & Judah story, it seems awfully like a marriage in those terms.
To begin with, Tamar is veiled, as a bride would be at her wedding:
יד וַתָּסַר בִּגְדֵי אַלְמְנוּתָהּ מֵעָלֶיהָ, וַתְּכַס בַּצָּעִיף וַתִּתְעַלָּף, וַתֵּשֶׁב בְּפֶתַח עֵינַיִם, אֲשֶׁר עַל-דֶּרֶךְ תִּמְנָתָה: כִּי רָאֲתָה, כִּי-גָדַל שֵׁלָה, וְהִוא, לֹא-נִתְּנָה לוֹ לְאִשָּׁה.
14 And she put off from her the garments of her widowhood, and covered herself with her veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in the entrance of Enaim, which is by the way to Timnah; for she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she was not given unto him to wife.
In the verse, it even specifies that the reason Tamar goes out in this way is because she was not given to Shelah as a wife, which suggests she wishes to be someone else's wife.
Obviously the bi'ah portion of this is taken care of, because later we find out Tamar is pregnant by Judah.
Judah gives her his signet ring, wrap and staff. The signet ring and staff would be worth at least a prutah, whereas the wrap is the garment that we see at the wedding (either as a tallis over both bride and groom or the actual chupah itself).
יח וַיֹּאמֶר, מָה הָעֵרָבוֹן אֲשֶׁר אֶתֶּן-לָךְ, וַתֹּאמֶר חֹתָמְךָ וּפְתִילֶךָ, וּמַטְּךָ אֲשֶׁר בְּיָדֶךָ; וַיִּתֶּן-לָהּ וַיָּבֹא אֵלֶיהָ, וַתַּהַר לוֹ.
18 And he said: 'What pledge shall I give thee?' And she said: 'Thy signet and thy cord, and thy staff that is in thy hand.' And he gave them to her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him.
Obviously this was only in lieu of the kid goat he planned on giving her later, but is it possible that there is a relationship between the narrative and the law? I know Simcha has done research into various relationships between narrative stories and halakha before. Could it be that due to the fact that Judah gave the woman his ring, wrap and staff and slept with her, we begin the tradition of marrying through a ring, saying we must have the two under one garment, and also using bi'ah as an indicator? (Or at least, that these two ideas are linked?) The only part lacking here is the official shtar.
Before you protest that we would not learn anything out of such an untraditional relationship, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan himself brings down that the source for Sheva Brachos comes from Shimshon's marriage, where he had days of feasting. If Shimshon's marriage to a gentile woman can be considered a forerunner for our own Sheva Brachos, it seems likely that the relationship between Tamar and Judah could possibly be a forerunner to something...
After reading Rabbi Kaplan's Made in Heaven (wrote about this here), I learned that there are three ways in which one can marry a woman:
1) Bi'ah (Sexual Relations)
2) Shtar (Document)
3) For the man to give an object worth the value of at least one prutah to the woman
But there is another idea, apparently rabbinic in nature.
4) To place the two people under one garment (this is like in Megillas Rut, where Rus asks for Boaz to place his garment over her)
If you look at the Tamar & Judah story, it seems awfully like a marriage in those terms.
To begin with, Tamar is veiled, as a bride would be at her wedding:
יד וַתָּסַר בִּגְדֵי אַלְמְנוּתָהּ מֵעָלֶיהָ, וַתְּכַס בַּצָּעִיף וַתִּתְעַלָּף, וַתֵּשֶׁב בְּפֶתַח עֵינַיִם, אֲשֶׁר עַל-דֶּרֶךְ תִּמְנָתָה: כִּי רָאֲתָה, כִּי-גָדַל שֵׁלָה, וְהִוא, לֹא-נִתְּנָה לוֹ לְאִשָּׁה.
14 And she put off from her the garments of her widowhood, and covered herself with her veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in the entrance of Enaim, which is by the way to Timnah; for she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she was not given unto him to wife.
In the verse, it even specifies that the reason Tamar goes out in this way is because she was not given to Shelah as a wife, which suggests she wishes to be someone else's wife.
Obviously the bi'ah portion of this is taken care of, because later we find out Tamar is pregnant by Judah.
Judah gives her his signet ring, wrap and staff. The signet ring and staff would be worth at least a prutah, whereas the wrap is the garment that we see at the wedding (either as a tallis over both bride and groom or the actual chupah itself).
יח וַיֹּאמֶר, מָה הָעֵרָבוֹן אֲשֶׁר אֶתֶּן-לָךְ, וַתֹּאמֶר חֹתָמְךָ וּפְתִילֶךָ, וּמַטְּךָ אֲשֶׁר בְּיָדֶךָ; וַיִּתֶּן-לָהּ וַיָּבֹא אֵלֶיהָ, וַתַּהַר לוֹ.
18 And he said: 'What pledge shall I give thee?' And she said: 'Thy signet and thy cord, and thy staff that is in thy hand.' And he gave them to her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him.
Obviously this was only in lieu of the kid goat he planned on giving her later, but is it possible that there is a relationship between the narrative and the law? I know Simcha has done research into various relationships between narrative stories and halakha before. Could it be that due to the fact that Judah gave the woman his ring, wrap and staff and slept with her, we begin the tradition of marrying through a ring, saying we must have the two under one garment, and also using bi'ah as an indicator? (Or at least, that these two ideas are linked?) The only part lacking here is the official shtar.
Before you protest that we would not learn anything out of such an untraditional relationship, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan himself brings down that the source for Sheva Brachos comes from Shimshon's marriage, where he had days of feasting. If Shimshon's marriage to a gentile woman can be considered a forerunner for our own Sheva Brachos, it seems likely that the relationship between Tamar and Judah could possibly be a forerunner to something...
Sunday, April 19, 2009
The Silence of Giving
I heard a beautiful mashal recently; I wanted to tell it over to all of you. After all, this is the parsha in which we learn vayidom Aharon- and Aaron was silent.
~
Once upon a time there was a King. He ruled his land justly and well and wisely and acted with compassion toward all. His kingdom was made up of many city-states, and in each city state there were rulers who were his vassals. They pledged allegiance to him, but were able to create many laws and rule their lands so long as they did not impugn upon his authority.
One of these city-state kings had a daughter. She was a beautiful princess, clever and quick-witted, always interested in learning about the world. She was taught to reign in her kingdom, taught the ways of her people, their customs and culture, and she absorbed it all with pleasure and enjoyment.
A different city-state king had a son. He was a handsome prince who was also taught to rule. He used to walk through the streets and accustom himself with the people and their ways, learning about them and their habits, in order to ensure that he would rule well.
It was the custom that at different periods during their training, the respective princes and princesses would go on a tour of the realm in order to learn about different people and their particular cultures. It was on one such tour that the prince and the princess met, and fascinated by each others' differences and similarities, they became friends. They learned much from one another, and enjoyed one another's company.
The King of the entire realm watched this with approval. He even brought the two to his court, where he ensured that they would have access to the royal scrolls and treasury, allowing them a rare honor. However, after a time, he summoned the prince to himself and informed him, "On pain of death- her death, not yours-, you are not permitted to speak to the princess anymore."
The prince wished to object but the King explained, "You were raised for different purposes, to rule different lands. You have learned what you could from one another, now you must return to your respective kingdoms and rule them individually. Should you try to annex them, you would fail, as their ways are too different, their cultures too far apart. You have a duty to your kingdom, and she to hers."
The prince did not want to immediately sever all ties with the princess. He thought that this would be unkind, and likely to be misinterpreted as cruel. He therefore was very careful to wait until she had returned to her home kingdom, where she would be near her family and friends, before initiating an unusual silence, where he did not speak with her nor communicate with her. It was very painful for him, but he wanted to give her the chance to sever contact with him rather than do so himself. Thus she need not feel rejected.
Unbeknownst to the prince, the King had issued the same directive regarding silence to the princess. When the prince did not speak with her or otherwise send a messenger to her, she took it as a good omen. And so she penned a missive which she sent to the prince explaining that she too must keep silence from now on, as it was the only way to spare him.
Such a silence is considered the silence of giving. Each thought only for the other; therefore, their silence is precious before God.
~
To explain: The King is God. The prince and the princess might be any two people who converse with one another on a regular basis. But there are certain laws that God creates where he forbids conversation on certain topics; for example, there are the laws of lashon hara. When it comes to such situations, there is a penalty for both the one speaking and the one listening. But there are other times where there are simple ideas that one person may be ready to hear and another person will not; it will throw the other person into immense doubt and confusion. In such a case, when someone keeps silent despite desiring to speak, it is considered a silence of giving, because they care more for the other person's well-being than they do their own need to be heard.
In the case of Aharon, he did not need to be silent necessarily. But his silence indicated that he took the Divine decree and accepted it; he would not fight it. In this case, it is a silence of giving, because it would have been understandable for him to mourn or cry or fight against God, but he chose instead to allow the honor of God to prevail. He cared more for God's honor than for his own need to be heard; thus, he was silent. Thus, in a way, he gave to God; he gave himself and dedicated himself as His servant.
Thus it is said, in Proverbs 29:11:
יא כָּל-רוּחוֹ, יוֹצִיא כְסִיל; וְחָכָם, בְּאָחוֹר יְשַׁבְּחֶנָּה.
11 A fool spendeth all his spirit; but a wise man stilleth it within him.
There are times when to be silent is to give to someone; this is the highest form of love as described by Rabbi Dessler.
~
Once upon a time there was a King. He ruled his land justly and well and wisely and acted with compassion toward all. His kingdom was made up of many city-states, and in each city state there were rulers who were his vassals. They pledged allegiance to him, but were able to create many laws and rule their lands so long as they did not impugn upon his authority.
One of these city-state kings had a daughter. She was a beautiful princess, clever and quick-witted, always interested in learning about the world. She was taught to reign in her kingdom, taught the ways of her people, their customs and culture, and she absorbed it all with pleasure and enjoyment.
A different city-state king had a son. He was a handsome prince who was also taught to rule. He used to walk through the streets and accustom himself with the people and their ways, learning about them and their habits, in order to ensure that he would rule well.
It was the custom that at different periods during their training, the respective princes and princesses would go on a tour of the realm in order to learn about different people and their particular cultures. It was on one such tour that the prince and the princess met, and fascinated by each others' differences and similarities, they became friends. They learned much from one another, and enjoyed one another's company.
The King of the entire realm watched this with approval. He even brought the two to his court, where he ensured that they would have access to the royal scrolls and treasury, allowing them a rare honor. However, after a time, he summoned the prince to himself and informed him, "On pain of death- her death, not yours-, you are not permitted to speak to the princess anymore."
The prince wished to object but the King explained, "You were raised for different purposes, to rule different lands. You have learned what you could from one another, now you must return to your respective kingdoms and rule them individually. Should you try to annex them, you would fail, as their ways are too different, their cultures too far apart. You have a duty to your kingdom, and she to hers."
The prince did not want to immediately sever all ties with the princess. He thought that this would be unkind, and likely to be misinterpreted as cruel. He therefore was very careful to wait until she had returned to her home kingdom, where she would be near her family and friends, before initiating an unusual silence, where he did not speak with her nor communicate with her. It was very painful for him, but he wanted to give her the chance to sever contact with him rather than do so himself. Thus she need not feel rejected.
Unbeknownst to the prince, the King had issued the same directive regarding silence to the princess. When the prince did not speak with her or otherwise send a messenger to her, she took it as a good omen. And so she penned a missive which she sent to the prince explaining that she too must keep silence from now on, as it was the only way to spare him.
Such a silence is considered the silence of giving. Each thought only for the other; therefore, their silence is precious before God.
~
To explain: The King is God. The prince and the princess might be any two people who converse with one another on a regular basis. But there are certain laws that God creates where he forbids conversation on certain topics; for example, there are the laws of lashon hara. When it comes to such situations, there is a penalty for both the one speaking and the one listening. But there are other times where there are simple ideas that one person may be ready to hear and another person will not; it will throw the other person into immense doubt and confusion. In such a case, when someone keeps silent despite desiring to speak, it is considered a silence of giving, because they care more for the other person's well-being than they do their own need to be heard.
In the case of Aharon, he did not need to be silent necessarily. But his silence indicated that he took the Divine decree and accepted it; he would not fight it. In this case, it is a silence of giving, because it would have been understandable for him to mourn or cry or fight against God, but he chose instead to allow the honor of God to prevail. He cared more for God's honor than for his own need to be heard; thus, he was silent. Thus, in a way, he gave to God; he gave himself and dedicated himself as His servant.
Thus it is said, in Proverbs 29:11:
יא כָּל-רוּחוֹ, יוֹצִיא כְסִיל; וְחָכָם, בְּאָחוֹר יְשַׁבְּחֶנָּה.
11 A fool spendeth all his spirit; but a wise man stilleth it within him.
There are times when to be silent is to give to someone; this is the highest form of love as described by Rabbi Dessler.
Homeland: The Best History of the State of Israel Possible
Well do I remember my father bringing home a grey hardcover book about Israel with a bunch of smiling kids on the cover and attempting to make me read it.Me, the kid who reads everything. I was about 13 or so at the time. And yet I could not get through this book.
I tried, in order to please him. But I could not. It was absolutely impossible. That's because the book was deeply boring, exceedingly uninteresting. There was nothing to capture the imagination, nothing to allow me to visualize the growth of the State. And from that point onward, my illiteracy about the State of Israel grew.
Oh, I vaguely knew that there was this man named Theodor Herzl who was somewhat important, and Chaim Weizmann figured into things somewhere, and I had read enough of the Rav's works to know his view on Zionism, but I really didn't understand how this had all happened, how the rise to create a Jewish state began, how one event followed the next.
And then came an amazing book entitled Homeland: The Illustrated History of the State of Israel.
This is a book published by Nachshon Press in 2007. It is good. By this, I mean really, really good, like fantastically good, like I read-the-whole-book-in-one-sitting-and-did-not-move-from-the-chair good. And I now have an excellent working knowledge of how one event followed the next and how the state of Israel was formed. I could not give it higher praise if I tried.
To begin with, the book starts all the way back at the beginning of the Creation of the World, then follows the biblical account of how the land of Israel was given to Abraham, and works from there all the way up to a modern-day version of how the State of Israel was created. The style is that of a professor speaking to students, so that relevant questions are "asked" by students and "answered" by the professor. The book is exceedingly objective, citing facts where possible, and different versions of events when necessary. To top it all off, both the author and illustrator were exceedingly familiar with Medrish, which comes through in the exquisite, bright and fascinating drawings (which you can see if you click the link!) The book is easy-to-read because it is written almost in comic style, with the bright, lifelike pictures attracting most of the attention and the comic font adding relevant details. The best part about this book is how well it puts everything in order; all the stories flow from one another. There were so many places where I thought, "Oh, that's how it fits together," while reading this.
To give you an idea of how clear and easy this book makes things, let me produce for you their explanation of the different forms of Zionism on page 40, something which finally clarified terms for me.
RELIGIOUS ZIONISM: Although some traditional Jews oppose Zionism, rabbis are also among the movement's early activists. In 1834, Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai argues that a Jewish return to the land would help bring the Messiah. In 1862, Rabbi Zvi-Hirsch Kalischer writes Seeking Zion suggesting similar ideas.
SOCIALIST ZIONISM: Moses Hess publishes Rome and Jerusalem in 1862. A colleague of Marx, Hess is persuaded by Jew-hatred in Germany to embrace the concept of a Jewish state. Like him, many Zionist leaders want to fuse living in Palestine with socialist ideals.
CULTURAL ZIONISM: Some hope to revitalize Palestine as a center of Jewish culture. Ahad Ha'Am (One of the People), the pen name of Asher Ginzberg (B. 1856), along with H.N. Bialik (B. 1873), the great Hebrew poet, represent this effort to create a new national Jewish life.
LABOR ZIONISM: A.D. Gordon (B. 1856) promotes Hebrew labor, the idea that working the land will transform the Jewish people. Gordon thinks of a relationship with nature in spiritual terms. When Jews rebuild the land, the land rebuilds the Jews.
POLITICAL ZIONISM: In 1881, Leon Pinsker, an assimilated Russian Jew, is alarmed by the outbreak of pogroms, officially sanctioned violent attacks against Jews. He calls for Jewish self-emancipation. A similar story begins at the 1894 trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a French-Jewish army captain falsely accused of spying for Germany. Theodor Herzl covers the trial as an Austrian Journalist. Shocked at the animosity the trial provokes against Jews, he begins to campaign intensively for a Jewish territory.
Another amazing example of how well this book was made is the fact that when the illustrator drew Moshe on Mount Nebo looking out onto the land, he drew the faint outline of skyscrapers, as Israel is in modern-day society. This is obviously taken from the Midrash that Moshe saw far into the future and knew all that Israel would become.
This Yom Ha'Atzmaut, if you are looking for an avenue of educating your children (or if you are looking to educate yourself), purchase a copy of Homeland. It is probably one of the best books you will ever read in your life.
The Jewish Wedding Ceremony
Today I read an exquisite book entitled Made in Heaven by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan. It is a Jewish Wedding Guide. The reason I read it is because many of my friends are engaged and/or soon to be married, please God (shoutout to Malka and Batya!), and I wanted to have a better understanding of all the different rites and customs that each person chooses to observe at their wedding. Also, I think the entire marriage and wedding ceremony is fascinating.
Here are some of the things I learned (but by no means a comprehensive guide. If you want the guide, I highly recommend purchasing Made in Heaven; it is wonderfully informative.) I am going to quote directly from the book unless otherwise indicated.
~
1. Many difficult problems arise when tenaim are broken, and in the confusion following the war [World War II], such broken engagements became a common occurrence. Therefore, the tenaim ceremony was shifted to just before the wedding so that there would be no chance that it would be broken.
In circles where formal tenaim are not made, it is customary to have a "word" (vort in Yiddish). While this is considered a formal engagement, it is not as immutable as tenaim. The custom at a vort is to make a meal, and to have the rabbi or another officiant make a kinyan with the bride, groom, and their parents.
A kinyan is a formal acceptance of obligation. The act of acceptance is usually done by taking the corner of a handkerchief, napkin, or other object that the officiant is holding. According to Jewish law, taking the object is a formal acceptance of an obligation. The practice is mentioned in the Bible: "This was the ancient practice in Israel...to confirm all things: a man would take off his shoe and give it to the other party. This, among the Israelites, would create an obligation" (Ruth 4:7). While the Biblical custom may have involved a shoe, a handkerchief or other article can also be used. (Pages 28-29)
2. The main part of the ceremony is the groom giving something of value to the bride. In theory, then, the marriage could be contracted with a potato or an article of clothing. The requirement that the article used in the ceremony belong to the groom is a clear point of law.
In order to understand this, one must understand what is accomplished when something of value is given. There are two ways of purchasing something in Jewish law: by cash (kesef) or by barter (chaliphin). When something is purchased by barter, what has transpired is simply an exchange of property. However, when a transaction is made for cash, the transaction can also effect a change of status.
Therefore, when the groom gives the bride something of value, he is not "buying her." Rather, he is changing her status from that of a single woman to that of a married one. Obviously, a woman is not a chattel, and cannot be purchased for money. The money is merely a legal consideration that makes the woman's new status binding. The Talmud states emphatically that a woman cannot be married through a barter transaction, because this would imply a change in ownership, and would give the woman the status of a chattel. (45-46)
My brother Taran has informed me he plans on giving me a potato at my wedding to remind me of the way in which I gleefully taught him this (today at Havdalah I decided everyone needed to know you could marry people with potatoes.)
3. The giving of a ring also symbolized the giving over of authority. Thus, when Pharoah transferred authority to Joseph, he gave him his ring (Genesis 41:42). Similarly, Achashverosh gave his ring of authority first to Haman (Esther 3:10), and later to Esther (Esther 8:2). In giving his new wife a ring, the husband is symbolically giving her authority over his household and everything else that is his. From that moment on, everything in their lives will be shared. (49)
4. When a man puts on tefillin, he winds the strap three times around his left middle finger and says, "I will betroth you to Me forever. I will betroth you to Me in justice, love and kindness. I will betroth you to Me in faith, and you shall know God" (Hosea 2:21, 22). The strap is thus a renewal of the "marriage" between God and Israel, and it is therefore wound around the finger just like a wedding ring. Then, just as the strap binds man to God, the wedding ring binds the bridegroom to his bride. (50)
5. On only using a smooth gold ring, without any engraving: There are also kabbalistic reasons for this. The perfectly smooth ring represents the perfectly smooth, untroubled cycle of life. In some circles, the custom is that the ring not have any design or pattern on it, neither on the inside nor on the outside. (53)
Rav Harold Shusterman of Bnei Reuven here in Chicago refused to marry my parents unless they used a plain gold band. "Bella'leh," he told my mother, "do you want your marriage to be smooth and untroubled?" He did tell her that she could add designs or engraving after the wedding. I see in this book using a smooth band is cited as being a Lubavitch custom from Sefer HaMinhagim; Rav Shusterman was Lubavitch. As an aside, he also forbade them to use white wine; my parents were married with rich red wine under the chupah.
5. On the Sabbath before the wedding, it is the custom for the groom to be called to the reading of the Torah. This is called an Aufruf, which literally means calling up.
The source of this custom is the Midrashic teaching that when King Solomon built the Temple, he made two special gates, one for mourners, and one for bridegrooms, so that mourners would be consoled and bridegrooms would be blessed. When a bridegroom would enter, the people near the gate would say, "May He who dwells in this Temple bless you with good children." Later, when Solomon's Temple was destroyed, it became the custom to have the bridegroom come to the synagogue so that the people would be able to bless him. (68)
6. By the Aufruf: The nuts that are thrown are alluded to in the verse, "I went down to the nut garden..." (Song of Songs 6:11) Before one can enjoy the kernel of a nut, one must first break away the shell. Similarly, before two people can know one another intimately, they must break away the shells that surround them. In marriage, the barriers between husband and wife gradually disappear.
It is also taught that the Hebrew word for nut, egoz, has a numerical value of 17. This is the same as the numerical value for tov, meaning good. This indicates that the bridegroom is forgiven all his sins, and has been transformed from a state of sin to a state of good. (72)
But if this is the case, why is it that on Rosh Hashana we are forbidden to serve nuts or nut cake because it equals the gematria of cheit without an aleph?
7. Another possible reason why the couple fasts is that the first sin involved eating- eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Therefore, on the day that the bride and groom are seeking forgiveness from sin, they refrain from eating. It is almost a statement that they want nothing to do with the sinful eating of the Tree of Knowledge. (83)
8. However, the Midrash teaches that man is like glass- if glass is broken, it can be remelted and reblown. Similarly, even when a man dies, his life is not over. We believe in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the dead; just as glass can be restored, so can a person after he dies.
That is why we break glass, as opposed to pottery. The breaking of glass recalls our mortality, but it also recalls the divine promise of immortality.
Another allusion to the breaking of the glass is that just as glass can be remelted and restored, so can man, even after his soul has been shattered and blemished by sin. No matter what sins a person may have committed, if he repents, God forgives him. It is thus taught, "Nothing can stand up before repentance." The bridal couple have all their sins forgiven on their wedding day; therefore, this is a particularly appropriate time to break the glass. It indicates that no matter how broken they are spiritually, they can be restored just as the glass can.
Another reason that a glass vessel in particular is broken is because of the tradition that King Solomon built a special gate for bridegrooms. According to one tradition, this gate was made of glass. The glass is broken to recall that with the destruction of the Temple, the glass gate was also shattered. (204)
9. It is a very beautiful custom in many circles to set aside a special table for the poor, where any poor person can come in and partake of the wedding meal. When the poor are invited to a meal, the table becomes like an altar, atoning for all the host's sins. It is considered very auspicious for the newlywed couple that their wedding is open to the poor. (210)
10. The practice of a cake-cutting "ceremony" has no place in Jewish tradition (211)
Now, what does that mean? Is there a problem with a wedding cake in Jewish tradition? I love wedding cakes.
Here are some of the things I learned (but by no means a comprehensive guide. If you want the guide, I highly recommend purchasing Made in Heaven; it is wonderfully informative.) I am going to quote directly from the book unless otherwise indicated.
~
1. Many difficult problems arise when tenaim are broken, and in the confusion following the war [World War II], such broken engagements became a common occurrence. Therefore, the tenaim ceremony was shifted to just before the wedding so that there would be no chance that it would be broken.
In circles where formal tenaim are not made, it is customary to have a "word" (vort in Yiddish). While this is considered a formal engagement, it is not as immutable as tenaim. The custom at a vort is to make a meal, and to have the rabbi or another officiant make a kinyan with the bride, groom, and their parents.
A kinyan is a formal acceptance of obligation. The act of acceptance is usually done by taking the corner of a handkerchief, napkin, or other object that the officiant is holding. According to Jewish law, taking the object is a formal acceptance of an obligation. The practice is mentioned in the Bible: "This was the ancient practice in Israel...to confirm all things: a man would take off his shoe and give it to the other party. This, among the Israelites, would create an obligation" (Ruth 4:7). While the Biblical custom may have involved a shoe, a handkerchief or other article can also be used. (Pages 28-29)
2. The main part of the ceremony is the groom giving something of value to the bride. In theory, then, the marriage could be contracted with a potato or an article of clothing. The requirement that the article used in the ceremony belong to the groom is a clear point of law.
In order to understand this, one must understand what is accomplished when something of value is given. There are two ways of purchasing something in Jewish law: by cash (kesef) or by barter (chaliphin). When something is purchased by barter, what has transpired is simply an exchange of property. However, when a transaction is made for cash, the transaction can also effect a change of status.
Therefore, when the groom gives the bride something of value, he is not "buying her." Rather, he is changing her status from that of a single woman to that of a married one. Obviously, a woman is not a chattel, and cannot be purchased for money. The money is merely a legal consideration that makes the woman's new status binding. The Talmud states emphatically that a woman cannot be married through a barter transaction, because this would imply a change in ownership, and would give the woman the status of a chattel. (45-46)
My brother Taran has informed me he plans on giving me a potato at my wedding to remind me of the way in which I gleefully taught him this (today at Havdalah I decided everyone needed to know you could marry people with potatoes.)
3. The giving of a ring also symbolized the giving over of authority. Thus, when Pharoah transferred authority to Joseph, he gave him his ring (Genesis 41:42). Similarly, Achashverosh gave his ring of authority first to Haman (Esther 3:10), and later to Esther (Esther 8:2). In giving his new wife a ring, the husband is symbolically giving her authority over his household and everything else that is his. From that moment on, everything in their lives will be shared. (49)
4. When a man puts on tefillin, he winds the strap three times around his left middle finger and says, "I will betroth you to Me forever. I will betroth you to Me in justice, love and kindness. I will betroth you to Me in faith, and you shall know God" (Hosea 2:21, 22). The strap is thus a renewal of the "marriage" between God and Israel, and it is therefore wound around the finger just like a wedding ring. Then, just as the strap binds man to God, the wedding ring binds the bridegroom to his bride. (50)
5. On only using a smooth gold ring, without any engraving: There are also kabbalistic reasons for this. The perfectly smooth ring represents the perfectly smooth, untroubled cycle of life. In some circles, the custom is that the ring not have any design or pattern on it, neither on the inside nor on the outside. (53)
Rav Harold Shusterman of Bnei Reuven here in Chicago refused to marry my parents unless they used a plain gold band. "Bella'leh," he told my mother, "do you want your marriage to be smooth and untroubled?" He did tell her that she could add designs or engraving after the wedding. I see in this book using a smooth band is cited as being a Lubavitch custom from Sefer HaMinhagim; Rav Shusterman was Lubavitch. As an aside, he also forbade them to use white wine; my parents were married with rich red wine under the chupah.
5. On the Sabbath before the wedding, it is the custom for the groom to be called to the reading of the Torah. This is called an Aufruf, which literally means calling up.
The source of this custom is the Midrashic teaching that when King Solomon built the Temple, he made two special gates, one for mourners, and one for bridegrooms, so that mourners would be consoled and bridegrooms would be blessed. When a bridegroom would enter, the people near the gate would say, "May He who dwells in this Temple bless you with good children." Later, when Solomon's Temple was destroyed, it became the custom to have the bridegroom come to the synagogue so that the people would be able to bless him. (68)
6. By the Aufruf: The nuts that are thrown are alluded to in the verse, "I went down to the nut garden..." (Song of Songs 6:11) Before one can enjoy the kernel of a nut, one must first break away the shell. Similarly, before two people can know one another intimately, they must break away the shells that surround them. In marriage, the barriers between husband and wife gradually disappear.
It is also taught that the Hebrew word for nut, egoz, has a numerical value of 17. This is the same as the numerical value for tov, meaning good. This indicates that the bridegroom is forgiven all his sins, and has been transformed from a state of sin to a state of good. (72)
But if this is the case, why is it that on Rosh Hashana we are forbidden to serve nuts or nut cake because it equals the gematria of cheit without an aleph?
7. Another possible reason why the couple fasts is that the first sin involved eating- eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Therefore, on the day that the bride and groom are seeking forgiveness from sin, they refrain from eating. It is almost a statement that they want nothing to do with the sinful eating of the Tree of Knowledge. (83)
8. However, the Midrash teaches that man is like glass- if glass is broken, it can be remelted and reblown. Similarly, even when a man dies, his life is not over. We believe in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the dead; just as glass can be restored, so can a person after he dies.
That is why we break glass, as opposed to pottery. The breaking of glass recalls our mortality, but it also recalls the divine promise of immortality.
Another allusion to the breaking of the glass is that just as glass can be remelted and restored, so can man, even after his soul has been shattered and blemished by sin. No matter what sins a person may have committed, if he repents, God forgives him. It is thus taught, "Nothing can stand up before repentance." The bridal couple have all their sins forgiven on their wedding day; therefore, this is a particularly appropriate time to break the glass. It indicates that no matter how broken they are spiritually, they can be restored just as the glass can.
Another reason that a glass vessel in particular is broken is because of the tradition that King Solomon built a special gate for bridegrooms. According to one tradition, this gate was made of glass. The glass is broken to recall that with the destruction of the Temple, the glass gate was also shattered. (204)
9. It is a very beautiful custom in many circles to set aside a special table for the poor, where any poor person can come in and partake of the wedding meal. When the poor are invited to a meal, the table becomes like an altar, atoning for all the host's sins. It is considered very auspicious for the newlywed couple that their wedding is open to the poor. (210)
10. The practice of a cake-cutting "ceremony" has no place in Jewish tradition (211)
Now, what does that mean? Is there a problem with a wedding cake in Jewish tradition? I love wedding cakes.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Aliza Shull ע"ה
I didn't know Aliza Shull. But I did know of her. That's because my friends Ezzie and Moshe both knew her.
I know that she is a woman of extraordinary courage who has suffered a battle against a cruel illness that has finally taken her from us. I know that Moshe marvelled at the way that she was, the way that she acted, even in the depths of that illness.
I know something else. It is that anyone who passes away during this week, during which we read the parsha of Shemini, is someone who is specifically chosen. That is because this week we read of the passing of Nadav and Avihu. And although many know the common interpretation that they passed away because they sinned, there is a much more beautiful explanation which states that they were chosen by God, that their very deaths were the way in which God chose to sanctify and inaugurate His Temple.
This is the way in which Moshe comforts Aharon. He speaks aloud and says: הוּא אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְ־הֹוָ־ה לֵאמֹר בִּקְרֹבַי אֶקָּדֵשׁ וְעַל פְּנֵי כָל הָעָם אֶכָּבֵד
Rashi explains this as follows:
הוא אשר דבר וגו': היכן דבר ונועדתי שמה לבני ישראל ונקדש בכבודי (שמות כט מג). אל תקרי בכבודי אלא במכובדי. אמר לו משה לאהרן אהרן אחי יודע הייתי שיתקדש הבית במיודעיו של מקום והייתי סבור או בי או בך, עכשיו רואה אני שהם גדולים ממני וממך:
This is what the Lord spoke: But when did He speak? [It was when He said], “And I will meet with the children of Israel, and it will be sanctified through My glory (בִּכְבוֹדִי) ” (Exod. 29:43). Do not read בִּכְבוֹדִי, “through My glory,” but בִּמְכֻבָּדַי, “through My honorable ones.” Moses said to Aaron, “Aaron, my brother! I knew that this House was to be sanctified through the beloved ones of the Omnipresent, but I thought it would be either through me or through you. Now I see that they [Nadab and Abihu] were greater than I or you!”- [Vayikra Rabbah 12:2]
Moshe believed that the House was to be sanctified through himself or Aharon, but in fact Nadav and Avihu were greater than he or his brother! And it was specifically because they were so close to God, so precious, that they were chosen by God to sanctify his Temple.
And so it seems to me that the fact that Aliza Shull has left us on this Shabbat is no coincidence. Aliza Shull was called away from us to join God- why? Because she was chosen, because she was one who was close to Him, and in this way she returned to Him; she passed away today, when God gathered the ones who were closest to Him in order to sanctify his House, and she too was gathered today...she too was chosen.
I do not suggest that this will comfort us, that this provides a reason, or an answer. But I believe it provides us with an understanding of this woman, who suffered so much, and like Aharon, was often silent despite that suffering, and who was chosen by God today to rejoin Him within his realm. It is a special person who merits to be taken by God because of his closeness to Him; Aliza Shull was such a person.
I know that she is a woman of extraordinary courage who has suffered a battle against a cruel illness that has finally taken her from us. I know that Moshe marvelled at the way that she was, the way that she acted, even in the depths of that illness.
I know something else. It is that anyone who passes away during this week, during which we read the parsha of Shemini, is someone who is specifically chosen. That is because this week we read of the passing of Nadav and Avihu. And although many know the common interpretation that they passed away because they sinned, there is a much more beautiful explanation which states that they were chosen by God, that their very deaths were the way in which God chose to sanctify and inaugurate His Temple.
This is the way in which Moshe comforts Aharon. He speaks aloud and says: הוּא אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְ־הֹוָ־ה לֵאמֹר בִּקְרֹבַי אֶקָּדֵשׁ וְעַל פְּנֵי כָל הָעָם אֶכָּבֵד
Rashi explains this as follows:
הוא אשר דבר וגו': היכן דבר ונועדתי שמה לבני ישראל ונקדש בכבודי (שמות כט מג). אל תקרי בכבודי אלא במכובדי. אמר לו משה לאהרן אהרן אחי יודע הייתי שיתקדש הבית במיודעיו של מקום והייתי סבור או בי או בך, עכשיו רואה אני שהם גדולים ממני וממך:
This is what the Lord spoke: But when did He speak? [It was when He said], “And I will meet with the children of Israel, and it will be sanctified through My glory (בִּכְבוֹדִי) ” (Exod. 29:43). Do not read בִּכְבוֹדִי, “through My glory,” but בִּמְכֻבָּדַי, “through My honorable ones.” Moses said to Aaron, “Aaron, my brother! I knew that this House was to be sanctified through the beloved ones of the Omnipresent, but I thought it would be either through me or through you. Now I see that they [Nadab and Abihu] were greater than I or you!”- [Vayikra Rabbah 12:2]
Moshe believed that the House was to be sanctified through himself or Aharon, but in fact Nadav and Avihu were greater than he or his brother! And it was specifically because they were so close to God, so precious, that they were chosen by God to sanctify his Temple.
And so it seems to me that the fact that Aliza Shull has left us on this Shabbat is no coincidence. Aliza Shull was called away from us to join God- why? Because she was chosen, because she was one who was close to Him, and in this way she returned to Him; she passed away today, when God gathered the ones who were closest to Him in order to sanctify his House, and she too was gathered today...she too was chosen.
I do not suggest that this will comfort us, that this provides a reason, or an answer. But I believe it provides us with an understanding of this woman, who suffered so much, and like Aharon, was often silent despite that suffering, and who was chosen by God today to rejoin Him within his realm. It is a special person who merits to be taken by God because of his closeness to Him; Aliza Shull was such a person.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Biblical Tanur (Oven)
While we are on the subject of ovens (the oven of Aknai, for instance), let's discuss the Tanur, which is a biblical oven referenced in the Gemara. Tanur is also called tandur or tandoor. My mother is from Margilan in Uzbekistan; she's a Bukharian Sephardi Jew. She found an amazing youtube video which shows a woman using a modern version of the biblical Tanur (located in her backyard). My mother used to have a Tanur like that. You can see the video below. (If you don't want to hear the background music because of Sefirah, just mute it; you won't miss anything.)
In her house in Uzbekistan, my mother had a special area as part of her kitchen, with a partition, in which she had four Kirot and one big Tanur. Those who wanted to separate the meat from parve had two Tanurs, the smaller one for meat-baking and the larger one for parve-baking (my mother's family only made parve predominantly, which is why they did not bother with having two.) Her Tanur had steps leading up to it, but exactly as is shown here, it is an opening in one's wall, and one only begins to cook once the flame has died down (and you see in the video that the fire has died down; it is all grey.) The woman who is baking in this video begins by kneading and rolling individual portions of nan (bread), creating patterns using a tool called parak (which is a tool that creates floral patterns in the middle of the bread.) Before baking the bread, the woman puts droplets of water on each portion in order to ensure that it will stick to the sides of the oven but won't burn, then she uses a special mitt to put the bread on the side of the walls. My mother used that mitt starting from the age of 7, although she was not tall enough to reach inside the oven; she could only put her nan at the periphery. After the woman baker in the video has stuck her bread to the walls, she puts a wicker basket on top of the opening to the Tanur in order to ensure that it creates an environment that allows the bread to cook evenly, but will not allow it to burn. You wait 25 minutes and hurrah, you have your bread.
In her house in Uzbekistan, my mother had a special area as part of her kitchen, with a partition, in which she had four Kirot and one big Tanur. Those who wanted to separate the meat from parve had two Tanurs, the smaller one for meat-baking and the larger one for parve-baking (my mother's family only made parve predominantly, which is why they did not bother with having two.) Her Tanur had steps leading up to it, but exactly as is shown here, it is an opening in one's wall, and one only begins to cook once the flame has died down (and you see in the video that the fire has died down; it is all grey.) The woman who is baking in this video begins by kneading and rolling individual portions of nan (bread), creating patterns using a tool called parak (which is a tool that creates floral patterns in the middle of the bread.) Before baking the bread, the woman puts droplets of water on each portion in order to ensure that it will stick to the sides of the oven but won't burn, then she uses a special mitt to put the bread on the side of the walls. My mother used that mitt starting from the age of 7, although she was not tall enough to reach inside the oven; she could only put her nan at the periphery. After the woman baker in the video has stuck her bread to the walls, she puts a wicker basket on top of the opening to the Tanur in order to ensure that it creates an environment that allows the bread to cook evenly, but will not allow it to burn. You wait 25 minutes and hurrah, you have your bread.
The Oven of Aknai
Over Pesach I read Akiva by Dr. Marcus Lehmann. The book is amazing, both because it is so accessible to everyone, and more importantly for me, because I had known all these stories before, but had not understood how one flowed from the next. The book allowed me a context which enabled me to make sense of the stories.
One of the scenes referenced in the book is that of the Oven of Aknai. One thing I found interesting was that I had always thought that the actual miracles that occurred (the walls of the Beit Midrash caving in, for instance) had literally happened, but Lehmann cited a different understanding of these events (surely from a different source.) This excerpt I reproduce below.
~
There was a certain oven- called Achnai's oven- that these Sages differed about. Rabbi Eliezer considered that oven to be like a building, and held the halachic opinion that it was not susceptible to impurity. His colleagues however, considered it to be like an earthenware vessel, and thus they believed that it could become impure. It was a heated discussion, and although Rabbi Eliezer supported his view with a wealth of arguments and proofs, the other Rabbis refused to change their minds. At this point Rabbi Eliezer said, "If my authority is not enough for you, then let 'the Charuv' ('the Carob Tree') decide!"
"The Charuv" was a name which people used for Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, who was one of the most renowned men of his time. He was so poor that he lived solely off the fruit of his carob tree (carob trees were quite common in Eretz Yisrael). He too had been a disciple of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai. He was a great tzaddik, and God had often answered his prayers in a miraculous manner. So highly esteemed was he that even his teacher, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, once asked him to pray for is son, who was very ill at the time. And God answered his prayer and RAbban Yochanan ben Zakkai's son recovered.
Now Rabbi Eliezer called for him, so that he should voice his opinion on the disputed matter. And the result was that the great and celebrated Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa agreed with Rabbi Eliezer! But Rabbi Eliezer's colleagues still held firmly to their view.
So Rabbi Eliezer said, "If our authority is insufficient, then let 'the Brook' decide!"
"The Brook" was the nickname of Rabbi Elazar ben Arach, one of the most distinguished Sages of his time. His teacher, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, had compared him to a powerful spring that gathers force and turns into a strong, flowing brook. He favored his sayings over those of all his other students. He also said of him, "If all of Israel's Sages were measured in greatness against Elazar ben Arach (even if Rabbi Eliezer ben Hurkanos would be counted among them), he would take first place over all of them."
When Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai died, Rabbi Elazar had moved to Emmaus. He expected all his companions to follow him there, but they did not. Then he thought of moving to Yavneh, but his wife, who was very proud of him, felt that it was beneath his dignity to do so if the other scholars had not followed him to Emmaus. Because they remained in Emmaus Rabbi Elazar hadn't participated in the study sessions in Yavneh for many years. Now Rabbi Eliezer called for him, and he too decided like Rabbi Eliezer. But the Sages still refused to accept Rabbi Eliezer's decision.
Rabbi Eliezer then proposed the following challenge: "If you really insist on the rule of the majority, then let 'the walls of the beis midrash decide!"
Who are "the walls of the beis midrash?" They are the pupils (the future teachers), who lend purpose and structure to the house of learning. So the pupils who were present stood up and they too confirmed Rabbi Eliezer's view. In reaction to this, Rabbi Yehoshua told them sharply, "My dear pupils, you are still too young and immature to join this debate!" So they remained silent. They no longer dared to take part in their elders' controversy.
Rabbi Eliezer now stood up and said, "So let it be decided from Above!"
And God accepted his appeal. Without delay He sent the Prophet Eliyahu, who said to the Sages: "Why are you fighting against Rabbi Eliezer? He is always right in his rulings!"
Rabbi Yehoshua stood up and replied, "It says in the Torah: 'The Torah is not in Heaven.' The Torah was given to us by God at Mount Sinai, and in it we find the precept that decisions shall be made according to majority rule!"
One of the scenes referenced in the book is that of the Oven of Aknai. One thing I found interesting was that I had always thought that the actual miracles that occurred (the walls of the Beit Midrash caving in, for instance) had literally happened, but Lehmann cited a different understanding of these events (surely from a different source.) This excerpt I reproduce below.
~
There was a certain oven- called Achnai's oven- that these Sages differed about. Rabbi Eliezer considered that oven to be like a building, and held the halachic opinion that it was not susceptible to impurity. His colleagues however, considered it to be like an earthenware vessel, and thus they believed that it could become impure. It was a heated discussion, and although Rabbi Eliezer supported his view with a wealth of arguments and proofs, the other Rabbis refused to change their minds. At this point Rabbi Eliezer said, "If my authority is not enough for you, then let 'the Charuv' ('the Carob Tree') decide!"
"The Charuv" was a name which people used for Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, who was one of the most renowned men of his time. He was so poor that he lived solely off the fruit of his carob tree (carob trees were quite common in Eretz Yisrael). He too had been a disciple of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai. He was a great tzaddik, and God had often answered his prayers in a miraculous manner. So highly esteemed was he that even his teacher, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, once asked him to pray for is son, who was very ill at the time. And God answered his prayer and RAbban Yochanan ben Zakkai's son recovered.
Now Rabbi Eliezer called for him, so that he should voice his opinion on the disputed matter. And the result was that the great and celebrated Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa agreed with Rabbi Eliezer! But Rabbi Eliezer's colleagues still held firmly to their view.
So Rabbi Eliezer said, "If our authority is insufficient, then let 'the Brook' decide!"
"The Brook" was the nickname of Rabbi Elazar ben Arach, one of the most distinguished Sages of his time. His teacher, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, had compared him to a powerful spring that gathers force and turns into a strong, flowing brook. He favored his sayings over those of all his other students. He also said of him, "If all of Israel's Sages were measured in greatness against Elazar ben Arach (even if Rabbi Eliezer ben Hurkanos would be counted among them), he would take first place over all of them."
When Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai died, Rabbi Elazar had moved to Emmaus. He expected all his companions to follow him there, but they did not. Then he thought of moving to Yavneh, but his wife, who was very proud of him, felt that it was beneath his dignity to do so if the other scholars had not followed him to Emmaus. Because they remained in Emmaus Rabbi Elazar hadn't participated in the study sessions in Yavneh for many years. Now Rabbi Eliezer called for him, and he too decided like Rabbi Eliezer. But the Sages still refused to accept Rabbi Eliezer's decision.
Rabbi Eliezer then proposed the following challenge: "If you really insist on the rule of the majority, then let 'the walls of the beis midrash decide!"
Who are "the walls of the beis midrash?" They are the pupils (the future teachers), who lend purpose and structure to the house of learning. So the pupils who were present stood up and they too confirmed Rabbi Eliezer's view. In reaction to this, Rabbi Yehoshua told them sharply, "My dear pupils, you are still too young and immature to join this debate!" So they remained silent. They no longer dared to take part in their elders' controversy.
Rabbi Eliezer now stood up and said, "So let it be decided from Above!"
And God accepted his appeal. Without delay He sent the Prophet Eliyahu, who said to the Sages: "Why are you fighting against Rabbi Eliezer? He is always right in his rulings!"
Rabbi Yehoshua stood up and replied, "It says in the Torah: 'The Torah is not in Heaven.' The Torah was given to us by God at Mount Sinai, and in it we find the precept that decisions shall be made according to majority rule!"
~131-133
*
Even though I once had this story explained to me (regarding truth and how we derive truth and rules and suchlike, with the Ran and the Maharal), I still don't completely understand it. But I thought it was pretty interesting that the nature in the story (the brook, the carob tree, the walls) are actually titles for people, and symbolic in nature.
O Jerusalem!
Today I read the masterpiece O Jerusalem!, written by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. O Jerusalem! shocked me out of my complacency regarding the state of Israel. I believe that the idea of the state and the profound meaning behind Yom Ha'Atzmaut was not taught to me appropriately. In the schools I have attended, Yom Ha'Atzmaut was always regarded as a cultural celebration in which we were served blue-and-white donuts, got to ride on camels, made sand-art and ate falafel. The terrible price that was paid for the land, the men and women who fought for the country and held on to it with the skin of their teeth...this was never presented to me as vividly as it was today. There is one excerpt of the book that to me, symbolizes the entire idea behind the Jewish people and Jewish nationalism. I reproduce it below.
~
Two Haganah veterans of the British Army, Harry Jaffe and Bronislav Bar-Shemer, were assigned the job of organizing the convoys that would carry Joseph's supplies to Jerusalem. The Canadian told them they would need a minimum of three hundred trucks. After two days of scouring Tel Aviv's trucking firms, Bar-Shemer had managed to assemble barely sixty vehicles. To get the rest, he chose a simple expedient. He decided to hijack them.
"I took the Haganah boys from their training camps and sent them to the busy intersections," he later recalled. "They started stopping every truck that came along. I don't know who was more scared, the drivers or the soldiers pointing their guns at them, telling them to drive to a big empty field at Kiryat Meir."
Every time a score of trucks had collected in his playing field, Bar-Shemer formed their loudly protesting drivers into a convoy and, under the command of his teenage soldiers and their Sten guns, packed them off to the assembly point for the Nachshon convoys, an abandoned British Army camp called Kfar Bilu. The drivers were the most disgruntled group of human beings Bar-Shemer had ever seen. "They hated our guts," he remembered. "None of them had any idea of what was happening." Some of them, Bar-Shemer knew, "had wives who were giving birth and here we'd kidnapped them at high noon or in the middle of the night." Fortunately for Bar-Shemer, most of those drivers owned their trucks, and the vehicles represented their livelihood. They were not inclined to abandon them to Bar-Shemer, not even for a wife in childbirth.
Feeding his group of captive drivers soon became a serious problem. A firm believer in direct action, Bar-Shemer walked into one of the Tel Aviv's most popular restaurants, Chaskal's. "The Jewish nation needs you," he told its owner, Yecheskel Weinstein. In about three minutes' time Bar-Shemer explained what he required and placed a truck and a squad of soldiers at Weinstein's disposition. It was eleven o'clock in the morning. At five o'clock in the afternoon Weinstein was ladling out a hot meal to four hundred men at Kfar Bilu.
[...]
The former British Army camp of Kfar Bilu swarmed with Bronislav Bar-Shemer's kidnapped truck drivers, mechanics, Haganah men, all milling around the stocks of goods commandeered on Dov Joseph's orders from Tel Aviv's warehouses. To load them onto the waiting trucks, the Haganah had rounded up a team of Salonikan stevedores from the port of Tel Aviv. Squat, heavily muscled men whose leaders had ordered them a special diet of sardines, rice, apples and cheese, they set to work by the flickering glare of torches.
"It was like an automatic chain belt," the wondering Tel Aviv restaurateur Yecheskel Weinstein recalled. "Every five minutes they loaded a truck. Two young boys stood beside them playing a guitar while they worked. Greek music filled the night and those stevedores kept heaving crates and sacks of food to one another without a break in their rhythm."
Standing by the side of the road in the darkness, Bar-Shemer watched the trucks set off. There was an incredible variety of vehicles in that line passing before his eyes. There were vans from the Tnuvah dairy, Bedfords, Fords, factory trucks, delivery vans, heavy Mack dump trucks, open kibbutz farm trucks, White semitrailers, Rio hay wagons. They came in every size, shape and color imaginable, many of them splashed with posters advertising soap, baby food, a kosher butcher in Haifa, a brick kiln in Ramat Gan or a shoe factory in Tel Aviv. The light ones came first. The heavier, slower vehicles brought up the rear, each rigged out with a steel cable to take in tow the trucks that faltered along the way.
None of them had its lights on. Bar-Shemer had seen to that. His men had meticulously removed the bulbs from every headlight in the convoy so that no panicky flick of a light switch would illuminate the column for Arab snipers. Their escorts swung on board as they rolled past the kibbutz of Hulda. Iska Shadmi landed in a load of potatoes and quickly dug himself a foxhole.
Looking up at the sullen, fearful faces of those drivers his men had kidnapped a few days before, Bar-Shemer thought, "If looks could kill, I'd be dead." From his vantage point he followed their progress, a long column stretching out in the moonlight like an immense caterpillar. "The delicious odor of orange blossoms," he noted, "filled the night." Ahead, the road ran straight and flat for six miles up to a gentle hilltop rising on the left. There the steeple and the ochre facade of the Trappist Monastery of Latrun towered above a stand of olive trees. Then an easy arc to the right past the monastery's vineyards brought the column to the foothills marking the entry to Bab el Wad. Waiting for the last truck to leave Hulda so that he could fall in at the end of the convoy, Bar-Shemer noted far off in the distance the echo of sporadic rifle fire. "They're moving into Bab el Wad," he thought.
Riding at the head of the column, Harry Jaffe, the convoy commander, heard three of those rounds clang into the panel of his new blue 1947 Ford. He prayed that they were only the work of an isolated sniper. The trucks strung out behind him had none of the protective armor of the vehicles that had been used previously on the Jerusalem road. Huddled in his pile of potatoes, Iska Shadmi angrily scanned the dark forests above him for some sign of a foe. All the way up to Jerusalem, he would see only one human being in those pines, an old Arab with a white beard.
As Jaffe had hoped, apart from a few snipers there were no Arab forces in the hills. Shaking the night with the steady drone of their engines, the trucks ground slowly up the pass toward Jerusalem. Some lurched along with two or three fires flattened by sniper fire. From others, overheated by the long, slow trip, Jaffe saw jets of steam squirting into the air. All along the column, like huntsmen spurring on a pack of hounds, his men shouted, "Kadima, Kadima! Forward! Forward!" to the harried truckers.
In Jerusalem, the news that the convoy was coming rippled through the city. Hundreds of people ran down Jaffa Road to watch it come in: women in bathrobes and slippers and pincurlers, schoolchildren, religious Jews coming from morning service in the synagogues, their prayer shawls still draped over their shoulders. They hung out of windows, clambered onto rooftops and balconies, to watch in awe and gratitude. They sang and cheered and clapped as the convoy hove into sight. They were a desperate, hungry people existing that week on a ration of two ounces of margarine, a quarter of a pound of potatoes and a quarter of a pound of dried meat. For two weeks not a single vehicle had reached the city, and now they were rumbling forward in a steady stream as far back as the eye could see- dozens of trucks bumper to bumper, their swaying vans crammed with supplies.
Mature men watching them from the curb wept openly. Children scrambled up onto the trucks with flowers. Women sprang onto dashboards to kiss the drivers. In front of the Sephardic Home for the Aged an elderly woman embraced Yehuda Lash, and the young veteran of so many Jerusalem convoys sighed, "If only it could have been her daughter." Riding on his pile of potatoes, Iska Shadmi remembered all his lessons in the Palmach and the youth movement about "how, if we were strong, we would become a nation." Suddenly, seeing those grateful Jerusalemites, that theory became reality for Shadmi. Even the sullen truck drivers Bar-Shemer had forced to make this journey were transformed. Rolling down the corridor of ecstatic human beings, they understood they had saved a city.
Above all else, one memory would remain engraved upon the minds of those Jerusalemites watching the convoy stream down the streets of their city that happy April morning. It was the first glimpse many of them had of the convoy- the front bumper of the blue Ford of Harry Jaffe.
On it, Jaffe had painted six words: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem..."
~252-259 in the hardcover version of O Jerusalem!
~
This image, so brilliantly presented and seared into my mind, represents to me the tenacity, strength, kindness and resourcefulness of the nation that made Israel theirs, reclaiming the land given to them by God.
~
Two Haganah veterans of the British Army, Harry Jaffe and Bronislav Bar-Shemer, were assigned the job of organizing the convoys that would carry Joseph's supplies to Jerusalem. The Canadian told them they would need a minimum of three hundred trucks. After two days of scouring Tel Aviv's trucking firms, Bar-Shemer had managed to assemble barely sixty vehicles. To get the rest, he chose a simple expedient. He decided to hijack them.
"I took the Haganah boys from their training camps and sent them to the busy intersections," he later recalled. "They started stopping every truck that came along. I don't know who was more scared, the drivers or the soldiers pointing their guns at them, telling them to drive to a big empty field at Kiryat Meir."
Every time a score of trucks had collected in his playing field, Bar-Shemer formed their loudly protesting drivers into a convoy and, under the command of his teenage soldiers and their Sten guns, packed them off to the assembly point for the Nachshon convoys, an abandoned British Army camp called Kfar Bilu. The drivers were the most disgruntled group of human beings Bar-Shemer had ever seen. "They hated our guts," he remembered. "None of them had any idea of what was happening." Some of them, Bar-Shemer knew, "had wives who were giving birth and here we'd kidnapped them at high noon or in the middle of the night." Fortunately for Bar-Shemer, most of those drivers owned their trucks, and the vehicles represented their livelihood. They were not inclined to abandon them to Bar-Shemer, not even for a wife in childbirth.
Feeding his group of captive drivers soon became a serious problem. A firm believer in direct action, Bar-Shemer walked into one of the Tel Aviv's most popular restaurants, Chaskal's. "The Jewish nation needs you," he told its owner, Yecheskel Weinstein. In about three minutes' time Bar-Shemer explained what he required and placed a truck and a squad of soldiers at Weinstein's disposition. It was eleven o'clock in the morning. At five o'clock in the afternoon Weinstein was ladling out a hot meal to four hundred men at Kfar Bilu.
[...]
The former British Army camp of Kfar Bilu swarmed with Bronislav Bar-Shemer's kidnapped truck drivers, mechanics, Haganah men, all milling around the stocks of goods commandeered on Dov Joseph's orders from Tel Aviv's warehouses. To load them onto the waiting trucks, the Haganah had rounded up a team of Salonikan stevedores from the port of Tel Aviv. Squat, heavily muscled men whose leaders had ordered them a special diet of sardines, rice, apples and cheese, they set to work by the flickering glare of torches.
"It was like an automatic chain belt," the wondering Tel Aviv restaurateur Yecheskel Weinstein recalled. "Every five minutes they loaded a truck. Two young boys stood beside them playing a guitar while they worked. Greek music filled the night and those stevedores kept heaving crates and sacks of food to one another without a break in their rhythm."
Standing by the side of the road in the darkness, Bar-Shemer watched the trucks set off. There was an incredible variety of vehicles in that line passing before his eyes. There were vans from the Tnuvah dairy, Bedfords, Fords, factory trucks, delivery vans, heavy Mack dump trucks, open kibbutz farm trucks, White semitrailers, Rio hay wagons. They came in every size, shape and color imaginable, many of them splashed with posters advertising soap, baby food, a kosher butcher in Haifa, a brick kiln in Ramat Gan or a shoe factory in Tel Aviv. The light ones came first. The heavier, slower vehicles brought up the rear, each rigged out with a steel cable to take in tow the trucks that faltered along the way.
None of them had its lights on. Bar-Shemer had seen to that. His men had meticulously removed the bulbs from every headlight in the convoy so that no panicky flick of a light switch would illuminate the column for Arab snipers. Their escorts swung on board as they rolled past the kibbutz of Hulda. Iska Shadmi landed in a load of potatoes and quickly dug himself a foxhole.
Looking up at the sullen, fearful faces of those drivers his men had kidnapped a few days before, Bar-Shemer thought, "If looks could kill, I'd be dead." From his vantage point he followed their progress, a long column stretching out in the moonlight like an immense caterpillar. "The delicious odor of orange blossoms," he noted, "filled the night." Ahead, the road ran straight and flat for six miles up to a gentle hilltop rising on the left. There the steeple and the ochre facade of the Trappist Monastery of Latrun towered above a stand of olive trees. Then an easy arc to the right past the monastery's vineyards brought the column to the foothills marking the entry to Bab el Wad. Waiting for the last truck to leave Hulda so that he could fall in at the end of the convoy, Bar-Shemer noted far off in the distance the echo of sporadic rifle fire. "They're moving into Bab el Wad," he thought.
Riding at the head of the column, Harry Jaffe, the convoy commander, heard three of those rounds clang into the panel of his new blue 1947 Ford. He prayed that they were only the work of an isolated sniper. The trucks strung out behind him had none of the protective armor of the vehicles that had been used previously on the Jerusalem road. Huddled in his pile of potatoes, Iska Shadmi angrily scanned the dark forests above him for some sign of a foe. All the way up to Jerusalem, he would see only one human being in those pines, an old Arab with a white beard.
As Jaffe had hoped, apart from a few snipers there were no Arab forces in the hills. Shaking the night with the steady drone of their engines, the trucks ground slowly up the pass toward Jerusalem. Some lurched along with two or three fires flattened by sniper fire. From others, overheated by the long, slow trip, Jaffe saw jets of steam squirting into the air. All along the column, like huntsmen spurring on a pack of hounds, his men shouted, "Kadima, Kadima! Forward! Forward!" to the harried truckers.
In Jerusalem, the news that the convoy was coming rippled through the city. Hundreds of people ran down Jaffa Road to watch it come in: women in bathrobes and slippers and pincurlers, schoolchildren, religious Jews coming from morning service in the synagogues, their prayer shawls still draped over their shoulders. They hung out of windows, clambered onto rooftops and balconies, to watch in awe and gratitude. They sang and cheered and clapped as the convoy hove into sight. They were a desperate, hungry people existing that week on a ration of two ounces of margarine, a quarter of a pound of potatoes and a quarter of a pound of dried meat. For two weeks not a single vehicle had reached the city, and now they were rumbling forward in a steady stream as far back as the eye could see- dozens of trucks bumper to bumper, their swaying vans crammed with supplies.
Mature men watching them from the curb wept openly. Children scrambled up onto the trucks with flowers. Women sprang onto dashboards to kiss the drivers. In front of the Sephardic Home for the Aged an elderly woman embraced Yehuda Lash, and the young veteran of so many Jerusalem convoys sighed, "If only it could have been her daughter." Riding on his pile of potatoes, Iska Shadmi remembered all his lessons in the Palmach and the youth movement about "how, if we were strong, we would become a nation." Suddenly, seeing those grateful Jerusalemites, that theory became reality for Shadmi. Even the sullen truck drivers Bar-Shemer had forced to make this journey were transformed. Rolling down the corridor of ecstatic human beings, they understood they had saved a city.
Above all else, one memory would remain engraved upon the minds of those Jerusalemites watching the convoy stream down the streets of their city that happy April morning. It was the first glimpse many of them had of the convoy- the front bumper of the blue Ford of Harry Jaffe.
On it, Jaffe had painted six words: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem..."
~252-259 in the hardcover version of O Jerusalem!
~
This image, so brilliantly presented and seared into my mind, represents to me the tenacity, strength, kindness and resourcefulness of the nation that made Israel theirs, reclaiming the land given to them by God.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Let Me See You Stripped
Let me see you stripped
Down to the bone
Let me hear you speaking just for me
Let me see you stripped
Down to the bone
Let me hear you crying just for me
~ “Stripped” by Shiny Toy Guns
Down to the bone
Let me hear you speaking just for me
Let me see you stripped
Down to the bone
Let me hear you crying just for me
~ “Stripped” by Shiny Toy Guns
There’s a sick, aching kind of eroticism in this song that disturbs me. This is a song of two selfish people, each one of them wanting to see the other without any masks or coverings; the girl wants the man to sing and cry just for her. She doesn’t want him to exist outside herself. There’s something disturbing in that. At the same time, he is offering her an exit to an escape land that will only last for a few hours. Hence both of them exhibit their selfish tendencies. Despite this, there is an undercurrent of something more potent than lust in the song, and perhaps it is the very brokenness of the two protagonists that catches me. I listen to the song and find myself fascinated. I listen to it and picture two very broken people reaching out to one another, pretending that such reaching is pure, when it truth it is destructive.
The destructive tendency in a person is always harder to match when it is layered in leather and lace. A destructive tendency which results in a physical disturbance to the world generally leaves proof such as blood and gore spattered throughout a room. The inner destruction, of a person and their beliefs, leaves no such proof. It is therefore much more dangerous. Who knows how many times we selfishly reach for what we cannot have, should not have, what is not good for us? It is the kind of thing from which we do not learn; we cannot learn. It is a sickness that poisons us from the inside out, a dark rose that blossoms in the dead of night.
It reminds me a little of the supposed love story in the book Forever Amber. This book sickened me; it seemed nothing so much as an expose of the deadened, cruel world which was masked by the glittering realm of parties and escapades. It is Amber’s love interest who makes me most angry. Amber professes a love for Bruce which is disturbing due to his treatment of her. I would even venture to say that it is an emotionally abusive relationship. Amber herself is not a good person; she is even an evil person; the fascinating part of the book is the fact that despite her evil, one feels sorry for the fact that she cannot get Bruce to love her or respond to her. The biggest problem is that their love is built on absolutely nothing. Amber saw Bruce one day and presumably fell in love with him; he did not. There is nothing in them to love, no character traits, nothing of them. So I read the book and find it disgusting; it is a long, macabre, twisted recount of the evils to which two individuals will stoop in their mutual desire to allow the glittering coinage of the world slip through their fingers. Bruce is meant to be likeable, and yet, to me, he still appears as a monster, a cruel person. The two of them leave me with no feeling so much as horror.
There is something to that. It takes a skilled author to create a sense of horror in a person, to allow one to feel such utter disgust with the human being, and nevertheless to follow their fate with curiosity. Perhaps it is because, within that mirror, we nevertheless see ourselves, dark as the path is. Perhaps this is our way of self-punishment; we read so as to know what is coming to us, what we deserve. Perhaps we desire to be made aware so that we may stave it off before it actually happens.
What breaks a person? Since it is the brokenness of people that often leads to their not caring anymore, which allows them access to the darker parts of the personality, where we can commit such deeds as cannot be spoken of aloud. People often think that it is ambition that ruins a person, but even when it comes to ambition, every person has their price. And when it comes to righteousness, it is true that if one believes they are right they will not be swayed from their position, which permits evil for the sake of their righteousness. But true depravity occurs, not in the pursuit of pleasure, but in the pursuit of something to dull the pain. The truly depraved do not care; they taste of all the pleasures of the world and discard them. So what is it that breaks a person?
There are different points, I think, where we are tested in that way. A person becoming one who is broken depends upon whatever it was they cared about and lived for. With the loss of whatever it is that one is living for, there is no ability to care any longer; life becomes a long series in a set of dances to ease the pain. I shall try anything, anything to take it away from me. And on the way I shall expose others to the darkness that consumes me because I long for a companion in my misery, someone who will see the attractive properties of the ugliness that exists, who understands the fascination it has for me. And so the broken person walks through the world, inflicting pain and laughing into his palm. Every monstrosity created is more cause for rejoicing, and yet, somewhere within, another shard has crept into one’s heart, piercing it and allowing the blood to bead on the flesh, the palpitations allowing the blood to creep like jewels, forming a necklace that clutches at the muscle, strangling it.
Perhaps the most fascinating creature is the one drowning in darkness who nevertheless refuses to drag the others down. In that case, they are not broken; they believe in something still. It is for this reason that they shall struggle and overcome, that they shall not demand the selfish tears that exist just for them. They shall rid themselves of the black beast that rides them and sacrifice themselves within the black cauldron. And perhaps, in this way, they shall gain the atonement they so savagely seek, and with their death become what they longed to be in life.
But in the meantime they walk in a fog which clutches at their clothing, a howling wind that sings in their ears; their hair waves about them and their eyes, once entirely sharp, look like they have seen a vision which cannot be described. For them, the days are an increasing torment, and the pain is visible, before them in their waking hours, wrapped in their clothing, appearing in their eyes. To look ever upon a visible pain, to have no respite from it, to watch it come closer and be helpless against it; this is the struggle of a saint; this is why people turn mad. It is because of all they see, and cannot help but see.
The destructive tendency in a person is always harder to match when it is layered in leather and lace. A destructive tendency which results in a physical disturbance to the world generally leaves proof such as blood and gore spattered throughout a room. The inner destruction, of a person and their beliefs, leaves no such proof. It is therefore much more dangerous. Who knows how many times we selfishly reach for what we cannot have, should not have, what is not good for us? It is the kind of thing from which we do not learn; we cannot learn. It is a sickness that poisons us from the inside out, a dark rose that blossoms in the dead of night.
It reminds me a little of the supposed love story in the book Forever Amber. This book sickened me; it seemed nothing so much as an expose of the deadened, cruel world which was masked by the glittering realm of parties and escapades. It is Amber’s love interest who makes me most angry. Amber professes a love for Bruce which is disturbing due to his treatment of her. I would even venture to say that it is an emotionally abusive relationship. Amber herself is not a good person; she is even an evil person; the fascinating part of the book is the fact that despite her evil, one feels sorry for the fact that she cannot get Bruce to love her or respond to her. The biggest problem is that their love is built on absolutely nothing. Amber saw Bruce one day and presumably fell in love with him; he did not. There is nothing in them to love, no character traits, nothing of them. So I read the book and find it disgusting; it is a long, macabre, twisted recount of the evils to which two individuals will stoop in their mutual desire to allow the glittering coinage of the world slip through their fingers. Bruce is meant to be likeable, and yet, to me, he still appears as a monster, a cruel person. The two of them leave me with no feeling so much as horror.
There is something to that. It takes a skilled author to create a sense of horror in a person, to allow one to feel such utter disgust with the human being, and nevertheless to follow their fate with curiosity. Perhaps it is because, within that mirror, we nevertheless see ourselves, dark as the path is. Perhaps this is our way of self-punishment; we read so as to know what is coming to us, what we deserve. Perhaps we desire to be made aware so that we may stave it off before it actually happens.
What breaks a person? Since it is the brokenness of people that often leads to their not caring anymore, which allows them access to the darker parts of the personality, where we can commit such deeds as cannot be spoken of aloud. People often think that it is ambition that ruins a person, but even when it comes to ambition, every person has their price. And when it comes to righteousness, it is true that if one believes they are right they will not be swayed from their position, which permits evil for the sake of their righteousness. But true depravity occurs, not in the pursuit of pleasure, but in the pursuit of something to dull the pain. The truly depraved do not care; they taste of all the pleasures of the world and discard them. So what is it that breaks a person?
There are different points, I think, where we are tested in that way. A person becoming one who is broken depends upon whatever it was they cared about and lived for. With the loss of whatever it is that one is living for, there is no ability to care any longer; life becomes a long series in a set of dances to ease the pain. I shall try anything, anything to take it away from me. And on the way I shall expose others to the darkness that consumes me because I long for a companion in my misery, someone who will see the attractive properties of the ugliness that exists, who understands the fascination it has for me. And so the broken person walks through the world, inflicting pain and laughing into his palm. Every monstrosity created is more cause for rejoicing, and yet, somewhere within, another shard has crept into one’s heart, piercing it and allowing the blood to bead on the flesh, the palpitations allowing the blood to creep like jewels, forming a necklace that clutches at the muscle, strangling it.
Perhaps the most fascinating creature is the one drowning in darkness who nevertheless refuses to drag the others down. In that case, they are not broken; they believe in something still. It is for this reason that they shall struggle and overcome, that they shall not demand the selfish tears that exist just for them. They shall rid themselves of the black beast that rides them and sacrifice themselves within the black cauldron. And perhaps, in this way, they shall gain the atonement they so savagely seek, and with their death become what they longed to be in life.
But in the meantime they walk in a fog which clutches at their clothing, a howling wind that sings in their ears; their hair waves about them and their eyes, once entirely sharp, look like they have seen a vision which cannot be described. For them, the days are an increasing torment, and the pain is visible, before them in their waking hours, wrapped in their clothing, appearing in their eyes. To look ever upon a visible pain, to have no respite from it, to watch it come closer and be helpless against it; this is the struggle of a saint; this is why people turn mad. It is because of all they see, and cannot help but see.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
What Comes Naturally, Part 2
I once addressed these concepts here. This is the continuation.
*
I am always impressed by people who are actually misers, who are stingy, who cannot give, who don't spend much money on themselves, but when it comes to charity, you feel their hands tremble, shake, for you feel the man experiences excruciating pain [from giving money], but still [he] gives...I like people who worked on themselves and conquered themselves. I don't like born saints. A person who is born a saint, who from early childhood walked on earth as a little saint, never appealed to me. But people who remade themselves [do].
~Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in The Rav: Thinking Aloud by David Holzer, pages 186-187
*
Great is not the man who did not falter in his loyalties, who never found himself in opposition to God. It is greater one who tripped, fell, and rose. One who feels that he never came into conflict with God, who lives under a delusion that he always worshipped and never fled, leads an unredeemed existence. You may call it self-righteousness. Woe to the moralist or religionist who gazes at himself in proud rapture, who boasts of his unstained, unwavering indebtedness and loyalty to God.
~Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in The Rav: Thinking Aloud by David Holzer, page 187
*
Or as I would put it, we do people a disservice if we claim they were born without any desire for sin. People choose goodness; everyone has their struggles. The impressive people are the ones who are dying to sin and choose to refrain even so.
*
I am always impressed by people who are actually misers, who are stingy, who cannot give, who don't spend much money on themselves, but when it comes to charity, you feel their hands tremble, shake, for you feel the man experiences excruciating pain [from giving money], but still [he] gives...I like people who worked on themselves and conquered themselves. I don't like born saints. A person who is born a saint, who from early childhood walked on earth as a little saint, never appealed to me. But people who remade themselves [do].
~Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in The Rav: Thinking Aloud by David Holzer, pages 186-187
*
Great is not the man who did not falter in his loyalties, who never found himself in opposition to God. It is greater one who tripped, fell, and rose. One who feels that he never came into conflict with God, who lives under a delusion that he always worshipped and never fled, leads an unredeemed existence. You may call it self-righteousness. Woe to the moralist or religionist who gazes at himself in proud rapture, who boasts of his unstained, unwavering indebtedness and loyalty to God.
~Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in The Rav: Thinking Aloud by David Holzer, page 187
*
Or as I would put it, we do people a disservice if we claim they were born without any desire for sin. People choose goodness; everyone has their struggles. The impressive people are the ones who are dying to sin and choose to refrain even so.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
דוד חיים יוסף בן צבי עקיבא ע"ה
Everyone else is happy today.
But there is one family who is desperately unhappy today, who has been plunged into sadness, into sorrow. This is the family of David Chaim Rottenstreich, who passed away today.
This is what I know about David Chaim.
I know that he was a Wilf Campus student at Yeshiva University who suffered from a severe case of MRSA, which is a very severe staphylococcal infection. I know he was my age.
But much more importantly, I know that he was loved.
I know this because when I was having my dance party in my room a couple days ago, a girl walked inside, her voice shaky, and she begged us to say Tehillim for David, whom she knew as a family friend. I know this because the Yeshiva University community has received student-wide emails, had signed up to say Tehillim and learn in his honor, because my friend Alana asked us to try to do good deeds in his merit. What I know is that everyone joined together to try to help David. There was an immense amount of unity created because of him, because of the love that people bear him, and the ways in which they wanted to help him.
It is the night before Birkat HaChama, the blessing on the new sun. What is this blessing? It's the blessing that we say because God has positioned the sun in the exact place it was at the time of Creation. But even more importantly, tonight is the night before Pesach, the holiday in which we remember God's actions towards us, for he passed over our houses and spared us, and God remembers our dedication to him, and the unleavened bread we made as we so quickly left Egypt.
And today, most of us are at home, enjoying spending time with our families, spending time preparing for the holiday. Most of us are happy, joyously squabbling, glad. But there is one family who is sad today, and that is David's family. Because today they lost their son, and tomorrow they are expected to celebrate. Today David has gone to walk with God, and tomorrow they must sit down at the Seder and praise God for having redeemed us from Egypt.
What is there to say? How can we think of this?
I have only a thought, and I mean it most humbly. But my thought is this. It cannot be coincidence that David passed away today. Today, before both the blessing of the new sun and the first night of Pesach. No, if David passed away today, there is a reason to it, a meaning in it. And my thought is this.
The Maggid of Dubno has a parable in which he speaks of the spirit of the Jew. He explains that every Jew has a flame within him which burns with the desire to grow close to God. Even those who are removed from Judaism have the glowing embers that lie within their hearts, which the Maggid of Dubno would attempt to fan into flame.
But beyond this flame, there is a special light granted to particular people. Moshe was a recipient of this light, and therefore hid his face. He glowed with the light of God, and masked himself because of it. In the time of the Messiah, we shall all walk the world, and our faces will be illuminated with the light of our Torah, whether it be the light of a Menorah, the Stars, the Moon, or the Sun.
David Chaim left this world, and he has passed beyond us. Yet he left us at a particular time, just before the rising of the new sun, the apportioning of light unto the world in the same exact place where that sun was on creation. And it occurs to me that a soul that was chosen to depart this earth before seeing this sun could only have done so because he himself was imbued with so much light that he would be able to help with this task, with this mitzvah, would be able to shed his light and glow just as the sun shall tomorrow. What, after all, are the Children of Israel compared to? We are the stars in the heavens and the earth of the world. David has returned to the earth which is our essence, and tomorrow he shall shine as the star that was promised Abraham. That soul that was David's, the light which he brought to us, the unity that allowed so many Jewish people to come together in an attempt to save him, was a special light. It was so special that the transformation from earth to star that all of us make, being compared to both, was not ordinary in his case. Rather, David's light is so bright that it is comparable to the greatest star of them all, the Sun itself.
What is tomorrow night? Tomorrow night we remember, nay, relive, the Exodus of Egypt. What was so special about this particular exodus? The fact that we walked out freely, not cowards, not slaves, but in the vast light of day. God lit up the night as though it were day, and that was how we exited Egypt, after having been begged to leave by Pharoah. We did not steal away in the darkness, in the cover of night, like a common thief. We left proudly; we left with a light as great as that of the sun.
David passed away today so that we would be able to remember him tomorrow, as the sun shines where it once did when God created the world, as he is transformed from dust to the greatest star, as the rays light the heavens just as they lit our way when God took us out of Egypt. Tomorrow, at 8:30 AM, it is David's levaya. Is this a coincidence? I think not. The light which imbues the entirety of tomorrow, the light of the sun and of our journey as we departed from Egypt, is the light which represents David, who he was, who he is, and the ways in which he has shaped our lives. I did not know David Rottenstreich. But I know that in Judaism we are honored with light, and that a man who merits to be remembered on so special a day has done something to deserve it.
May David rest in peace, and may his family find comfort among the mourners of Zion.
But there is one family who is desperately unhappy today, who has been plunged into sadness, into sorrow. This is the family of David Chaim Rottenstreich, who passed away today.
This is what I know about David Chaim.
I know that he was a Wilf Campus student at Yeshiva University who suffered from a severe case of MRSA, which is a very severe staphylococcal infection. I know he was my age.
But much more importantly, I know that he was loved.
I know this because when I was having my dance party in my room a couple days ago, a girl walked inside, her voice shaky, and she begged us to say Tehillim for David, whom she knew as a family friend. I know this because the Yeshiva University community has received student-wide emails, had signed up to say Tehillim and learn in his honor, because my friend Alana asked us to try to do good deeds in his merit. What I know is that everyone joined together to try to help David. There was an immense amount of unity created because of him, because of the love that people bear him, and the ways in which they wanted to help him.
It is the night before Birkat HaChama, the blessing on the new sun. What is this blessing? It's the blessing that we say because God has positioned the sun in the exact place it was at the time of Creation. But even more importantly, tonight is the night before Pesach, the holiday in which we remember God's actions towards us, for he passed over our houses and spared us, and God remembers our dedication to him, and the unleavened bread we made as we so quickly left Egypt.
And today, most of us are at home, enjoying spending time with our families, spending time preparing for the holiday. Most of us are happy, joyously squabbling, glad. But there is one family who is sad today, and that is David's family. Because today they lost their son, and tomorrow they are expected to celebrate. Today David has gone to walk with God, and tomorrow they must sit down at the Seder and praise God for having redeemed us from Egypt.
What is there to say? How can we think of this?
I have only a thought, and I mean it most humbly. But my thought is this. It cannot be coincidence that David passed away today. Today, before both the blessing of the new sun and the first night of Pesach. No, if David passed away today, there is a reason to it, a meaning in it. And my thought is this.
The Maggid of Dubno has a parable in which he speaks of the spirit of the Jew. He explains that every Jew has a flame within him which burns with the desire to grow close to God. Even those who are removed from Judaism have the glowing embers that lie within their hearts, which the Maggid of Dubno would attempt to fan into flame.
But beyond this flame, there is a special light granted to particular people. Moshe was a recipient of this light, and therefore hid his face. He glowed with the light of God, and masked himself because of it. In the time of the Messiah, we shall all walk the world, and our faces will be illuminated with the light of our Torah, whether it be the light of a Menorah, the Stars, the Moon, or the Sun.
David Chaim left this world, and he has passed beyond us. Yet he left us at a particular time, just before the rising of the new sun, the apportioning of light unto the world in the same exact place where that sun was on creation. And it occurs to me that a soul that was chosen to depart this earth before seeing this sun could only have done so because he himself was imbued with so much light that he would be able to help with this task, with this mitzvah, would be able to shed his light and glow just as the sun shall tomorrow. What, after all, are the Children of Israel compared to? We are the stars in the heavens and the earth of the world. David has returned to the earth which is our essence, and tomorrow he shall shine as the star that was promised Abraham. That soul that was David's, the light which he brought to us, the unity that allowed so many Jewish people to come together in an attempt to save him, was a special light. It was so special that the transformation from earth to star that all of us make, being compared to both, was not ordinary in his case. Rather, David's light is so bright that it is comparable to the greatest star of them all, the Sun itself.
What is tomorrow night? Tomorrow night we remember, nay, relive, the Exodus of Egypt. What was so special about this particular exodus? The fact that we walked out freely, not cowards, not slaves, but in the vast light of day. God lit up the night as though it were day, and that was how we exited Egypt, after having been begged to leave by Pharoah. We did not steal away in the darkness, in the cover of night, like a common thief. We left proudly; we left with a light as great as that of the sun.
David passed away today so that we would be able to remember him tomorrow, as the sun shines where it once did when God created the world, as he is transformed from dust to the greatest star, as the rays light the heavens just as they lit our way when God took us out of Egypt. Tomorrow, at 8:30 AM, it is David's levaya. Is this a coincidence? I think not. The light which imbues the entirety of tomorrow, the light of the sun and of our journey as we departed from Egypt, is the light which represents David, who he was, who he is, and the ways in which he has shaped our lives. I did not know David Rottenstreich. But I know that in Judaism we are honored with light, and that a man who merits to be remembered on so special a day has done something to deserve it.
May David rest in peace, and may his family find comfort among the mourners of Zion.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Friday, April 03, 2009
The Personalities of the Talmudic Scholars Part 1
In The Collected Writings of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Volume V, R' Samson Raphael Hirsch addresses the Origin of the Oral Law, beginning, in Part One, to write "A Critical Examination of Dr. H. Graetz's History of the Jews From the Destruction of the Jewish State Until the Conclusion of the Talmud." It is necessary to read the entire work, but what I shall reproduce below is R' Hirsch's "Introduction," (pages 3-6) which will clearly demonstrate the point when it comes to attempting to sketch the personalities of the Talmudic scholars.
*
Introduction
I once had a young friend who was a deaf-mute. He was a rather popular artist in one of the German provincial capitals. All his portraits looked very much alike, yet they were not truly alike. He had a habit- we called it a peculiarity- of painting all his pictures in colossal dimensions. All his paintings were much larger than life and therefore had a strange, spectral look. One could readily surmise that the subject had sat for the portrait, but one could not state with certainty that this was indeed the one. Recognition was not the result of a visual impression, but of reflection. The portrait hinted at the identity of the subject, but it was clear that the artist had not painted his subject in terms of objective reality. He had only captured the subjective impression made upon him by the personality of his subject.
When it comes to a human subject, the artist's eye is not his only medium of perception; the portraitist is influenced also by his emotions. Any contemplation of a human subject entails the conception of an intellectual personality. The subjective image of a subject, which is largely influenced by personal likes and dislikes, will unconsciously guide the brush in the artist's hand. Such an image may often be entirely inaccurate. In addition, it may be further influenced by accidental poses of the subject, or even by the subject's- or the artist's- momentary state of health or ill health.
This should explain the many portraits which, though they cannot be dismissed out of hand as "bad," show features so unlike the subject and are so much at variance with his true character, that those better acquainted with him- especially his closest friends and relations- will categorically reject the portrait. The artist has captured in his work a trait that is transient or accidental (and colored by the artist's own subjective impressions) as if it were a permanent aspect of his subject's personality. In fact, the portrait flagrantly contradicts the character of the person they know. Regarding our deaf-mute friend, it might be worthwhile to make a psychological study to establish whether deaf-mute artists see their human subjects in a light so basically different from normal portraitists that there must always be something unusual about any portrait painted by a deaf-mute.
Now imagine an artist whose natural angle of vision causes him to see his subjects not larger, but smaller than life. Imagine further that, over many years, this artist created portraits for which his subjects never sat. He based his work on some isolated trait in his subjects that may have come to his attention by accident and that, in addition, may have been distorted by the artist's hasty judgment or misinterpretation. This artist then brings his creative imagination into play, using this one traits as a basis for interpreting the personality of the subject as a whole. He portrays his subjects as he saw them once, in unguarded odds, positions or activities: the one in a playful mood, the other in a pensive state; the one laughing, the other weeping; the one angry, the other joking. Some of his subjects are made to appear indignant, arrogant or impudent, while others look depressed, anxious, humble or embarrassed. But in thus portraying a person, the artists has seized upon only one note in that person's whole range of emotions, a note which, in fact, may have been played only once in the person's lifetime, but which the artist has perpetuated as the keynote, the dominant character.
Now let us imagine that, years later, this artist presents to use these sketches as true-to-life portraits, committing the error of explaining the transient moods in which he painted his subjects as typical of their character. "Look," he says, "this one was always laughing; that one had an evil temper; this one was forever playing games; that one was always deep in thought." Even worse, he passes off these products of his imagination not only as authentic character sketches of his subjects but as prototypes of all their contemporaries; thus, "during this period, people were laughing all the time; during this other period, they tended to be depressed; this era was one of arrogance; that era was an age of anxiety and timidity."
Now let us say that, in reply to our look of disbelief, the artist cites ancient chronicles in support of his presentation: "During that year the cherries were sour; as a result, everyone alive at the time had a sour look on his face," or, "During this year the future looked bright; as a result, everyone was in an unusually friendly mood." Say, further, that this artists clings to his fancies as if they were absolute truth, so much so that wherever he needs a historical reference to authenticate his portrait he feels free to invent a reference to suit the portrait. Consider all these caprices of artistic fancy, and you have the History of the Jews by Dr. H. Graetz.
These lines were written to a friend who waned to hear my opinions of this History soon after its publication. They reflect the impression which the book made upon me after I read it through only once, without subjecting the author's views and descriptions to detailed tests in the light of of the data and the sources he cites int heir support. Even a superficial glance at this so-called "History of the Jews" should be sufficient for anyone with even a slight knowledge of the literature cited by the author as his source material to see that this work presents more fiction than fact.
Since then, I have examined this work in detail and checked it against the cited sources. Leaving aside the religious philosophy for which it is intended as an ideological basis and which its conclusions are meant to support, I have found it to be, even from a purely scientific point of view, a product of the most outrageous, irresponsible superficiality. I therefore consider it my sacred duty to present the results of my investigation to the public.
Let honest men of all factions judge the extent to which Graetz's History of the Jews has adhered to the elements of veracity and thoroughness that are the basic criteria for any scholarly endeavor. If these essentials are disregarded, the consequences are particularly pernicious, for we are not dealing merely with an examination of some long-buried antiquities. Graetz's study is intended to explain to the contemporary reader certain historic forces that are still at work today. These forces form the organic basis for all development of our nation's religious life through the ages, down to our own time.
As the author of this History has understood correctly, the true core of Jewish history is the history of Jewish literature. This core relates to the political history of Jewish sufferings only as the kernel relates to a bitter, outer shell. It is with this kernel that we are dealing here primarily, and so we will leave aside our author's observations on the political aspects of the Jewish past which are contained in this history text.
The volume of Graetz's history that is now before us deals with the Talmudic era. It contains character sketches of all the outstanding bearers of the Talmudic tradition. Through our author's characterization of these individuals, the history of Jewish Law is presented from a pragmatic viewpoint. He does not examine the teachings and teaching methods disseminated and handed down by these personalities in objective terms, i.e., against the background of the Law which they received and which they were to pass on to future generations. Rather, he interprets them subjectively, in terms of what he perceives to be the temperament, the psychological makeup, the hierarchic positions and the political aims of these teachers (who, however, the author concedes, were in no way motivated by selfish consideration).
He sees these personalities not as the bearers of the tradition but as its creators. To him, Talmudic Law, which through all the centuries of our exile has upheld the Jews and shaped every aspect of Jewish life, is merely the product of the temperamental and psychological characteristics of these eminent figures. We will leave it to our author's scholarly conscience to judge such a view of tradition, which is not a tradition that harks back to Mount Sinai.
The fact remains that, like any other work of this type, this history text, too, must stand up before the critical forum of scholarship. It must be able to demonstrate the accuracy and acceptability of the factual data on which it bases its characterizations of the personalities and the issues it discusses- in this case, the teachers and their teachings.
Let us, therefore, examine the portrait gallery of great Talmudic personalities that Graetz has set up for us, and let us see whether the portraits offered to us are historically accurate.
*
Introduction
I once had a young friend who was a deaf-mute. He was a rather popular artist in one of the German provincial capitals. All his portraits looked very much alike, yet they were not truly alike. He had a habit- we called it a peculiarity- of painting all his pictures in colossal dimensions. All his paintings were much larger than life and therefore had a strange, spectral look. One could readily surmise that the subject had sat for the portrait, but one could not state with certainty that this was indeed the one. Recognition was not the result of a visual impression, but of reflection. The portrait hinted at the identity of the subject, but it was clear that the artist had not painted his subject in terms of objective reality. He had only captured the subjective impression made upon him by the personality of his subject.
When it comes to a human subject, the artist's eye is not his only medium of perception; the portraitist is influenced also by his emotions. Any contemplation of a human subject entails the conception of an intellectual personality. The subjective image of a subject, which is largely influenced by personal likes and dislikes, will unconsciously guide the brush in the artist's hand. Such an image may often be entirely inaccurate. In addition, it may be further influenced by accidental poses of the subject, or even by the subject's- or the artist's- momentary state of health or ill health.
This should explain the many portraits which, though they cannot be dismissed out of hand as "bad," show features so unlike the subject and are so much at variance with his true character, that those better acquainted with him- especially his closest friends and relations- will categorically reject the portrait. The artist has captured in his work a trait that is transient or accidental (and colored by the artist's own subjective impressions) as if it were a permanent aspect of his subject's personality. In fact, the portrait flagrantly contradicts the character of the person they know. Regarding our deaf-mute friend, it might be worthwhile to make a psychological study to establish whether deaf-mute artists see their human subjects in a light so basically different from normal portraitists that there must always be something unusual about any portrait painted by a deaf-mute.
Now imagine an artist whose natural angle of vision causes him to see his subjects not larger, but smaller than life. Imagine further that, over many years, this artist created portraits for which his subjects never sat. He based his work on some isolated trait in his subjects that may have come to his attention by accident and that, in addition, may have been distorted by the artist's hasty judgment or misinterpretation. This artist then brings his creative imagination into play, using this one traits as a basis for interpreting the personality of the subject as a whole. He portrays his subjects as he saw them once, in unguarded odds, positions or activities: the one in a playful mood, the other in a pensive state; the one laughing, the other weeping; the one angry, the other joking. Some of his subjects are made to appear indignant, arrogant or impudent, while others look depressed, anxious, humble or embarrassed. But in thus portraying a person, the artists has seized upon only one note in that person's whole range of emotions, a note which, in fact, may have been played only once in the person's lifetime, but which the artist has perpetuated as the keynote, the dominant character.
Now let us imagine that, years later, this artist presents to use these sketches as true-to-life portraits, committing the error of explaining the transient moods in which he painted his subjects as typical of their character. "Look," he says, "this one was always laughing; that one had an evil temper; this one was forever playing games; that one was always deep in thought." Even worse, he passes off these products of his imagination not only as authentic character sketches of his subjects but as prototypes of all their contemporaries; thus, "during this period, people were laughing all the time; during this other period, they tended to be depressed; this era was one of arrogance; that era was an age of anxiety and timidity."
Now let us say that, in reply to our look of disbelief, the artist cites ancient chronicles in support of his presentation: "During that year the cherries were sour; as a result, everyone alive at the time had a sour look on his face," or, "During this year the future looked bright; as a result, everyone was in an unusually friendly mood." Say, further, that this artists clings to his fancies as if they were absolute truth, so much so that wherever he needs a historical reference to authenticate his portrait he feels free to invent a reference to suit the portrait. Consider all these caprices of artistic fancy, and you have the History of the Jews by Dr. H. Graetz.
These lines were written to a friend who waned to hear my opinions of this History soon after its publication. They reflect the impression which the book made upon me after I read it through only once, without subjecting the author's views and descriptions to detailed tests in the light of of the data and the sources he cites int heir support. Even a superficial glance at this so-called "History of the Jews" should be sufficient for anyone with even a slight knowledge of the literature cited by the author as his source material to see that this work presents more fiction than fact.
Since then, I have examined this work in detail and checked it against the cited sources. Leaving aside the religious philosophy for which it is intended as an ideological basis and which its conclusions are meant to support, I have found it to be, even from a purely scientific point of view, a product of the most outrageous, irresponsible superficiality. I therefore consider it my sacred duty to present the results of my investigation to the public.
Let honest men of all factions judge the extent to which Graetz's History of the Jews has adhered to the elements of veracity and thoroughness that are the basic criteria for any scholarly endeavor. If these essentials are disregarded, the consequences are particularly pernicious, for we are not dealing merely with an examination of some long-buried antiquities. Graetz's study is intended to explain to the contemporary reader certain historic forces that are still at work today. These forces form the organic basis for all development of our nation's religious life through the ages, down to our own time.
As the author of this History has understood correctly, the true core of Jewish history is the history of Jewish literature. This core relates to the political history of Jewish sufferings only as the kernel relates to a bitter, outer shell. It is with this kernel that we are dealing here primarily, and so we will leave aside our author's observations on the political aspects of the Jewish past which are contained in this history text.
The volume of Graetz's history that is now before us deals with the Talmudic era. It contains character sketches of all the outstanding bearers of the Talmudic tradition. Through our author's characterization of these individuals, the history of Jewish Law is presented from a pragmatic viewpoint. He does not examine the teachings and teaching methods disseminated and handed down by these personalities in objective terms, i.e., against the background of the Law which they received and which they were to pass on to future generations. Rather, he interprets them subjectively, in terms of what he perceives to be the temperament, the psychological makeup, the hierarchic positions and the political aims of these teachers (who, however, the author concedes, were in no way motivated by selfish consideration).
He sees these personalities not as the bearers of the tradition but as its creators. To him, Talmudic Law, which through all the centuries of our exile has upheld the Jews and shaped every aspect of Jewish life, is merely the product of the temperamental and psychological characteristics of these eminent figures. We will leave it to our author's scholarly conscience to judge such a view of tradition, which is not a tradition that harks back to Mount Sinai.
The fact remains that, like any other work of this type, this history text, too, must stand up before the critical forum of scholarship. It must be able to demonstrate the accuracy and acceptability of the factual data on which it bases its characterizations of the personalities and the issues it discusses- in this case, the teachers and their teachings.
Let us, therefore, examine the portrait gallery of great Talmudic personalities that Graetz has set up for us, and let us see whether the portraits offered to us are historically accurate.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
The Last Lions
Rabbi Hutner's continual ferment entailed an uncharacteristic submission to the authority of two figures- an approximation of his stance as a student in Europe, when he searched out mentors. One of the two represented an extension of Rabbi Hutner's past, the other, a deviation from it. The first, Rabbi Aaron Kotler (1892-1962), was the "ari shebahavurah," "the lion of the pack," the most talented, loyal extension of the talmudic scholarship and intensity of pietistic purpose of Slobodka. In matters of high policy, such as whether to open a college in which secular studies would be sanctioned, Rabbi Hutner bent to Rabbi Kotler's will (the school was not opened). A far different figure, the Hungarian anti-Zionist Satmar Rebbe (Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, 1888-1980), was, said Rabbi Hutner, royalty; and one honors royalty. Rabbi Hutner explained with reference to the midrash that states that Noah once was late in feeding the two lions in his Ark, and was clawed. Noah humbled himself in the service of his zoo: why did he deserve to be clawed? Because, said Rabbi Hutner, these were the last lions [emph mine]. One does not neglect the honor of a last, majestic leader of undifferentiated, communally cohesive, pre-Holocaust East European Jewry.
It delighted the protean Rabbi Hutner when representatives of two diametrically opposite faces of Orthodoxy- the arch Zionist Rabbi Kuk's son, Rabbi Zvi Judah, and the arch anti-Zionist Satmar ally Rabbi Amram Blau- once met uncomfortably in Rabbi Hutner's waiting room. Both sought counsel from the same person. That Rabbi Hutner grew apart from Rabbi Kuk's Zionist views is clear. That he retained the highest regard for his person and his erudition is also clear. How he squared that regard with his emergent homage to the Satmar Rebbe is an issue he never addressed. Did the dialectical tensions in his multihued prism find a welcome anchor, a stream of pure light, in monochramatic Satmar Hasidism? Or did the meeting of the two opponents in his waiting room signify that Rabbi Hutner had tugged their perspectives into a unity?
~Between Berlin and Slobodka: Jewish Transition Figures From Eastern Europe by Hillel Goldberg, 80
It delighted the protean Rabbi Hutner when representatives of two diametrically opposite faces of Orthodoxy- the arch Zionist Rabbi Kuk's son, Rabbi Zvi Judah, and the arch anti-Zionist Satmar ally Rabbi Amram Blau- once met uncomfortably in Rabbi Hutner's waiting room. Both sought counsel from the same person. That Rabbi Hutner grew apart from Rabbi Kuk's Zionist views is clear. That he retained the highest regard for his person and his erudition is also clear. How he squared that regard with his emergent homage to the Satmar Rebbe is an issue he never addressed. Did the dialectical tensions in his multihued prism find a welcome anchor, a stream of pure light, in monochramatic Satmar Hasidism? Or did the meeting of the two opponents in his waiting room signify that Rabbi Hutner had tugged their perspectives into a unity?
~Between Berlin and Slobodka: Jewish Transition Figures From Eastern Europe by Hillel Goldberg, 80
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