the Michtavim blog

Eleventh Yahrzeit of Prof. Jacob Katz z"l

2009-06-06T16:46:00.004-04:00

Several weeks ago was the eleventh yahrzeit of the late Professor Jacob Katz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, arguably "the most distinguished Jewish historian of the twentieth century." In addition to the works that have been dedicated to the memory of Prof. Katz, there have been countless tributes written, delivered, and published in memory of the man who has squarely secured himself a permanent place at the junction of Heinrich Graetz and Simon Dubnow in the great modern Jewish historiographical debate. Prof. Katz’s more than 300 bibliographical entries are available on the website created and hosted by his sons. For two wide-ranging collections devoted to the legacy and memory of Prof. Katz, see the articles collected in Jay M. Harris, ed., The Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and His Work (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), and, more recently, Israel Bartal and Shmuel Feiner, eds., Historiography Reappraised: New Views of Jacob Katz's Oeuvre (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar and Leo Baeck Institute, 2008; Hebrew). In perhaps a fulfillment of the injunction of the prophet Isaiah 30:20, see the photographs that I posted last year at "A Picturesque Look at Prof. Jacob Katz on his 10th Yahrzeit," the Michtavim blog (27 May 2008), available here, and special thanks are extended to Prof. Michael K. Silber of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for his assistance in obtaining the pictures from the children of the late Prof. Jacob Katz, and if you would like any of these photographs to adorn your home or sukkah wall, please let me know.

For the most-recently published appraisal of Katz's historiographical legacy, which I picked up from the Centre which is nearby by the Shai Agnon House (you know, the one on Rechov Klausner!), see the latest issue of Zion 74 (2009) for a symposium titled "Remembering and Forgetting: Israeli Historians Look at the Jewish Past," with contributions by Ezra Mendelsohn, Nadav Na'aman, Daniel R. Schwartz, Aharon Oppenheimer, Daniel J. Lasker, Ivan G. Marcus, Moshe Rosman, Mordechai Zalkin, Jacob Barnai, Dan Michman, Billie Millman, Gur Elroy, Anita Shapira, Mordechai Bar-On, David N. Myers, Kimmy Caplan, and Yfaat Weiss, and for an article that has a specific focus on the historiography of Prof. Jacob Katz, see Ivan G. Marcus, "Israeli Medieval Jewish Historiography: From Nationalist Positivism to New Cultural and Social Histories," Zion 74 (2009): 109-140, esp. 122-131 (Hebrew). For a work of a quite-similarly-titled, albeit from the American academic scene, see the articles in a volume published a decade ago by David N. Myers and David B. Ruderman, eds., The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), which includes contributions by Anthony Grafton, Moshe Idel, Israel Jacob Yuval, David N. Myers, Derek J. Penslar, David B. Ruderman, Elliott Horowitz, Gideon Libson, Martha Himmelfarb, and Sara Japhet.

Of course, ANYONE who is interested in any aspect of the Katz worldview and especially of his unyielding mesirat nefesh in his early years following aliyah, MUST read through the pages of Jacob Katz, With My Own Eyes: The Autobiography of an Historian, trans. Zipporah Brody (Hanover, N.H.: Brandeis University Press, 1995), for a review of this volume by my teacher, see David Berger, "Odyssey," Commentary 100:1 (July 1995): 58-60; and for a study of Prof. Katz's earliest of years, see David N. Myers, "Rebel in Frankfurt: The Scholarly Origins of Jacob Katz," in Jay M. Harris, ed., The Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and His Work (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 9-27; and for an article that could have been titled "Katz Responds!!!," see Immanuel Etkes, "Jacob Katz Confronts his Critics," in Israel Bartal and Shmuel Feiner, eds., Historiography Reappraised: New Views of Jacob Katz's Oeuvre (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar and Leo Baeck Institute, 2008; Hebrew), 183-200. For an important article about Prof. Katz that has appeared in print (I believe) three times, see Israel M. Ta-Shma, "Jacob Katz on Halakhah and Kabbalah," Israel Bartal and Shmuel Feiner, eds., Historiography Reappraised: New Views of Jacob Katz's Oeuvre (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar and Leo Baeck Institute, 2008; Hebrew), 143-152 (Hebrew), which appeared earlier idem, "Jacob Katz on Halakhah and Kabbalah," in Jay M. Harris, ed., The Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and His Work (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 29-39; and (if my memory serves me correctly) in idem, "Jacob Katz on Halakhah and Kabbalah," in Creativity and Tradition: Studies in Medieval Rabbinic Scholarship, Literature and Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 2007), though I do not have my copy at hand to provide you the exact pages.

Related to the quite-expanded field of the academic study of Orthodox Judaism -- most recently described in detail by Kimmy Caplan, "Trends and Characteristics in the Study of Orthodoxy in the Israeli Academy," Zion 74 (2009): 353-372 -- see the landmark article by Jacob Katz, "Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective," Studies in Contemporary Jewry 2 (1986): 3-17; as well as the very recent and important article by Aviezer Ravitzky (may he have a refuah shelaimah) in his "Dimensions and Varieties of Orthodox Judaism," in Andreas Gotzmann & Christian Wiese, eds., Modern Judaism and Historical Consciousness: Identities, Encounters, Perspectives (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2007), 391-416, and idem, "Orthodox Judaism: Dimensions and Varieties," in Benjamin Ish-Shalom, ed., BeDarkhei Shalom: Studies in Jewish Thought Presented to Shalom Rosenberg (Jerusalem: Beit Morasha of Jerusalem Press, 2007; Hebrew), 15-31; and see, as well, the article by Michael K. Silber, "The Emergence of Ultra-Orthodoxy: The Invention of a Tradition," in Jack Wertheimer, ed., The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era (New York and Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 23-84; and idem, "The Emergence of Ultra-Orthodoxy: The Invention of a Tradition," in Yosef Salmon, Aviezer Ravitzky, and Adam S. Ferziger, eds., Orthodox Judaism: New Perspectives (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2006; Hebrew), 297-345; and, of course, see the recent article by Maoz Kahana, "The Hatam Sofer: The Self Image of a Posek," Tarbiz 76:3-4 (2007): 519-556 (Hebrew), which is among the carefully-studied articles that I've read this year.

Count Valentine Potocki of Vilnius

2009-05-27T20:54:00.001-04:00

This week is the 260th yahrzeit of the legendary polish-born nobleman, Count Valentine Potocki, who later converted (in an historically problematic conversion) to Judaism and was popularly known as Avraham ben Avraham and then as the Ger Tzedek of Vilna, and who was killed in a public ceremony in the Vilna town square on the second day of Shavuot in 1749, and about whom see Magda Teter, "The Legend of Ger Zedek of Wilno as Polemic and Reassurance," AJS Review 29:2 (November 2005): 237-264; and the earlier lecture by Shnayer Z. Leiman, "Ger Zedek of Vilna: Fact or Fiction" (#3550), delivered on 8 June 2005, as well as his earlier "Who is Buried with the Vilna Gaon in his New Tomb?" (#3534), delivered on 2 February 1997; and idem, "Who is Buried in the Vilna Gaon's Tomb: A Mysterious Tale with Seven Plots," Jewish Action 59:2 (Winter 1998):, available here. See, as well, the earlier volume by Yehoshua Leiman & Selig Schachnowitz, Avrohom Ben Avrohom (New York: Feldheim Publishers, 1977).

Chmielnitzky/ Chmielnicki/ Khmelnytsky/ Khmel'nyts'kyi Pogroms

2009-05-27T20:52:00.000-04:00

This week is the 361st anniversary since the start of the Chmielnitzky/ Chmielnicki/ Khmelnytsky/ Khmel'nyts'kyi Pogroms, during which time -- according to the most-recent Jewish scholarly consensus [see Shaul Stampfer, "What Actually Happened to the Jews of Ukraine in 1648?"] -- around 20,000 Jews were massacred by Bogdan Chmielnicki and his troupe [sic] of Cossacks, and about which, see the recent symposium in Jewish History 17:2 (May 2003), which includes, among others, articles by Kenneth Stow and Adam Teller ("The Chmielnitzky Massacres, 1648–1649: Jewish, Polish, and Ukrainian Perspectives," pp. 105-106), Shaul Stampfer ("Maps of Jewish Settlement in Ukraine in 1648," pp. 107-114), Frank E. Sysyn ("The Khmel'nyts'kyi Uprising: A Characterization of the Ukrainian Revolt," pp. 115-139), Zenon E. Kohu ("The Khmelnytsky Uprising, the Image of Jews, and the Shaping of Ukrainian Historical Memory," pp. 141-163), Natalia Yakovenko ("The Events of 1648–1649: Contemporary Reports and the Problem of Verification," pp. 165-178), Gershon Bacon ("“The House of Hannover”: Gezeirot Tah in Modern Jewish Historical Writing," pp. 179-206), Shaul Stampfer ("What Actually Happened to the Jews of Ukraine in 1648?" pp. 207-227), Judith Kalik ("The Orthodox Church and the Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth," pp. 229-237), and Moshe Rosman ("Dubno in the Wake of Khmel'nyts'kyi," pp. 239-255).

On the watershed year and episode of 1648/1649 in early modern Jewish historical consciousness, see Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (University of Washington Press, Seattle 1982), 49; and David Wachtel, "The Ritual and Liturgical Commemoration of Two Medieval Persecutions," (MA thesis, Columbia University, 1995), cited most recently in Jeffrey Hoffman, "Akdamut: History, Folklore, and Meaning," Jewish Quarterly Review 99:2 (Spring 2009): 172n28, and Jacob J. Schacter, "Holocaust Commemoration and Tish'a be-Av: The Debate Over Yom Ha-Sho'a," Tradition 41:2 (Summer 2008): 20-21n9.

Unspoken Fragments of Cairo Genizagraphy

2009-05-27T20:47:00.000-04:00

In an evening lecture ("The Cairo Genizah and its Impact on the Advancement of Jewish Studies") last summer at the Bernard Revel Graduate School, Prof. Paul Fenton humorously noted that the latest document that can be found in the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge University Library, is the bus ticket that brought Solomon Schechter to the Cairo Genizah and which likely fell into one of the crates that were sent back to Cambridge University. I chuckled and reminded myself of this anecdote earlier this week as I came across the recently-published article by Rebecca J.W. Jefferson, "A Genizah Secret: The Count d-Hulst and Letters Revealing the Race to Recover the Lost Leaves of the Original Ecclesiasticus," Journal of the History of Collections 21:1 (2009): 125-142 -- as noted in 141n136, the author of the article is working on a forthcoming volume entitled On the Cairo Genizah as part of the Nextbook/Schocken Book Series -- and for other recent scholarly discussion on the scathing (scholarly) debate between David S. Margoliouth and Solomon Schechter/Adolf Neubauer, see also David Starr, "Catholic Israel: Solomon Schechter, A Study of Unity and Fragmentation in Modern Jewish History," (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2003), esp. 221nn.36-37; and see also Joshua Stein, ed., Lieber Freund: The Letters of Claude Goldsmid Montefiore to Solomon Schechter, 1885-1902 (Lanham: University Press of America, 1988); and as contemporary scholarship moves away from the popular institution-based denominational histories of the mid-to-late-twentieth-century, for a recently-completed dissertation on the final chapter of Solomon Schechter's life, see Michael R. Cohen, "Schechter's Disciples: How Solomon Schechter's Students Created Conservative Judaism, 1902-1946," (PhD dissertation, Brandeis University, 2008), esp. 9-71 ("The Bonds to Last a Lifetime, 1902-1915"); and Matthew Lagrone, "Between Fire and Ice: Studies in Jewish and Christian Centrism, 1850-1915," (PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2008), esp. 17-75 ("Schechter's Umbrella: England and the Church of England in the Life and Imagination of Solomon Schechter"), reprinted in Conservative Judaism 60: 1-2 (Fall-Winter 2007-2008): 116-138.

Shavuot Reading 5769/2009

2009-05-27T20:04:00.001-04:00

On Akdamut Milin that is recited on the first day of Shavuot, see Jeffrey Hoffman, "Akdamut: History, Folklore, and Meaning," Jewish Quarterly Review 99:2 (Spring 2009): 161-183; and see the earlier post by Dan Rabinowitz, "The Custom of Akdamut on Shavuot," the Seforim blog (21 May 2007), available here; and similarly, related to the eves of Hoshana Rabba and Shavuot -- the two nights a year when Jews traditionally have the custom to stay up all night studying Torah -- see Elliott Horowitz, "Coffee, Coffeehouses, and the Nocturnal Rituals of Early Modern Jewry," AJS Review 14:1 (Spring 1989): 17-46, regarding the connection between the rise of coffee and the popularity of Tikkun Leil Hoshana Rabbah/Tikkun Leil Shavuot; and as Horowitz writes (44):

"The vigils of Shavuot and Hoshana Rabbah, previously limited in their appeal and relatively brief in duration, came to be widely observed as allnight affairs. This was due more to the availability of coffee than to the habit of frequenting coffeehouses, but the vogue achieved by the midnight rite of Tikkun Hazot would seem to have been equally linked to the latter."

In a previous post at the Michtavim blog, I have noted the little-known article by the much-lamented British rabbi and scholar, Hirsch Jakob Zimmels, "The Controversy about the Second Day of the Festival," in Samuel Belkin, ed., Abraham Weiss Jubilee Volume (New York, 1964), 139-168, as well as the more famous article by the late Hebrew University professor Jacob Katz, "The Orthodox Defense of the Second Day of the Festivals," Divine Law in Human Hands: Case Studies in Halakhic Flexibility (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1998), 255-319, who, in footnote 4 of his article, writes of his indebtedness to Zimmels:

"for forging the path I have followed in my research."

For an article that discusses the JNF-iniatiated celebration of Zikhron ha-Bikkurim on Shavuot, see Anat Helman, "Two Urban Celebrations in Jewish Palestine," Journal of Urban History 32:3 (March 2006): 380-403; and for recent scholarship on the municipality of Tel-Aviv, see idem, "The Development of Civil Society and Urban Culture in Tel-Aviv during the 1920s and 1930s," (PhD dissertation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000), and idem, "East or West? Tel-Aviv in the 1920s and 1930s," in Ezra Mendelsohn, ed., People of the City: Jews and the Urban Challenge [=Studies in Contemporary Jewry 15] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 68-79.

Ramchal, Pahad Yitzhak, and Mekize Nirdamim

2009-05-27T20:00:00.000-04:00

Last week was the 262nd yahrzeit of Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, the Ramchal (1707-1747), about whom I have previously noted at the Michtavim blog early modern maskilic perceptions of the Ramchal, in Joëlle Hansel, "Philosophy and Kabbalah in the Eighteenth Century: Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Commentator of Maimonides," in Martin F.J. Baastein & Reinier Munk, eds., Studies in Hebrew Literature and Jewish Culture: Presented to Albert van der Heide on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 213-227; and Israel Bartal, "On Periodization, Mysticism and Enlightenment - The Case of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto," in David B. Ruderman and Shmuel Feiner, eds., Early Modern Culture and Haskalah: Reconsidering the Borderlines of Modern Jewish History [=Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 6] (2007), 201-214; and on one aspect about Ramchal's teacher, Rabbi Yitzchak Lampronti, author of the multi-volume eighteenth-century encyclopedic Pahad Yitzhak, the first major Talmudic encyclopedia, see David B. Ruderman, "Contemporary Science and Jewish Law in the Eyes of Isaac Lampronti of Ferrara and Some of His Contemporaries," Jewish History 6 (1992): 211-224, reprinted in idem, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (Yale University Press: New Haven, 1995), 256-272 (chapter nine), and David Malkiel, "The Burden of the Past in the Eighteenth Century: Authority, Custom and Innovation in the Pahad Yitzhak," Jewish Law Annual 16 (2006): 93-132, and for updated scholarship regarding the kashruth of sturgeon -- based on, what Malkiel terms, "[t]he best known Pahad Yitzhak entry" -- Ari Z. Zivotofsky, "The Turning of the Tide: The Kashrut Tale of the Swordfish," Bekhol Derakhekha Daehu 19 (January 2008): 5-53.

The multi-volumes of Pachad Yitzchak began to appear during the nineteenth-century in the first batch of volumes published by the literary society Mekize Nirdamim (lit. "awakening the slumbering") during its first year of existence in Lyck, Germany, in 1864 -- the Society Mekitze Nirdamim was re-established a generation later in Berlin, in 1885, and then again during the early decades of the twentieth century, leading Israel Abrahams to write in 1923 about Mekitze Nirdamim (in what can be similar said of other leading literary enterprises of the twentieth-century) that

"[s]tudents will be glad to know that the activities of the Society Mekize Nirdamim are about to be revived. As its name suggests, this Society never dies; it sometimes goes to sleep for an interval of more or less extent."

72nd yahrzeit of Rabbi Hayyim Elazar Shapira

2009-05-27T19:57:00.000-04:00

This week is the 72nd yahrzeit of Rabbi Hayyim Elazar Shapira, leader of the Munkatch Hasidic dynasty in the decades prior to the Holocaust. Known for his fierce wit and stances towards the leading religious and political movements within early twentieth-century European Jewry -- he once suggested that the latter protagonist in the Talmudic encounter between Kamtza and Bar-Kamtza (see Gittin 56a and Vayikra Rabbah 4:3) was a reference to the "Communistim, Mizrachistim, Tzionistim, and Agudistim" and thus refused to partner with any of those segments of Jewry (see Anshel Miller, Olamo shel Abba [Jerusalem 1984]) -- and several articles have appeared over the past decade that highlight his brilliant, eclectic, and multi-faceted personality, and see Aviezer Ravitzky (may he have a speedy and complete recovery), "Munkacs and Jerusalem: Ultra-Orthodox Opposition to Zionism and Agudaism," in Shmuel Almog, Jehuda Reinharz & Anita Shapira, eds., Zionism and Religion (Brandeis University Press, 1998), 67-89; and Allan L. Nadler, "The War on Modernity of R. Hayyim Elazar Shapira of Munkacz," Studia Judaica 3 (1994): 91-123, republished as idem, "The War on Modernity of R. Hayyim Elazar Shapira of Munkacz," Modern Judaism 14:3 (October 1994): 233-264. In a previous post at the Michtavim blog about a wedding from the House of Munkatch -- the granddaughter of the current Munkatcher Rebbe had a festive wedding in Brooklyn -- I reprinted several of the wedding invitations from the past many decades, available, as well, "Invitations to Four Weddings from the Chasidic Court of Munkatch (1933, 1960, 1984, 2008)," the Michtavim blog (25 March 2008), available here, of the bride's parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. Indeed, for the oft-mentioned video (rescued from a bombed out warehouse in Europe) that surfaced just over a decade ago from the wedding of the daughter of the Minchas Elazar -– recalled as one of the greatest events in the history of the Chasidic Court of Munkatch and, indeed, of interwar Chasidic life -– was videotaped by an (unknown) visiting American journalist, who interviewed the Minchas Elazar and recorded his plea for greater levels of Sabbath observance in the United States; turn up the volume and click on the following link for the video that first surfaced in California just over a decade ago, now available here and the complete version here.

Even the non-Hasidic-readers of the Michtavim blog will feel the intensity of the following timeline of events (each verifiable by independent historic documents), which first appeared in Toledot Rabbeinu: Hayyim Elazar Shapira (Munkatch, 1938; Hebrew), 170, available here, which was later (and recently) translated in Moshe Goldstein, Journey to Jerusalem: The Historic Visit of the Minchas Eluzar of Munkacs to the Saba Kadisha (New York: Mesorah Publications, 2009), 192-193n3:

"It was in the wee hours of the morning of 2 Sivan 5690 (1930), and he did not allow the people coming to welcome him from this great and holy journey [to the Land of Israel] with singing and music. This was remarkable, for at almost the same exact time, during the early morning of 2 Sivan 5697 (1937), the Rebbe's pure soul departed into the Heavens, and darkness covered the earth. The Rebbe lived exactly seven years after his trip to Eretz Yisrael....

[Seven years later, in Nisan 5704/1944] the Jews of Munkacs were sent to the ghetto. On the 20th of Iyar, the Nazi's began to transport people daily from the Munkacs region to Auschwitz, the valley of death. The final transport was loaded onto the cattle-cars on the afternoon of the first day of Sivan, and the people on the transport stayed in the cattle-cars overnight at the brick factory near the cemetery. On 2 Sivan, they traveled to Auschwitz. At that horrific time, our brothers recalled how exactly seven years earlier on that day, the Rebbe had passed away. And seven years before that, on that very day, the Rebbe had said, "The heart knows its own bitterness" (Mishlei 14:10). He had seen in his crystal-clear vision what would eventually happen on this day."

R. Isaac of Corbeil and R. Jehiel of Paris

2009-05-27T18:49:00.000-04:00

This week is the 729th yahrzeit of R. Isaac of Corbeil, about whom see Ephraim Kanarfogel, "German Pietism in Northern France: The Case of R. Isaac of Corbeil," in Yaakov Elman & Jeffrey S. Gurock, eds., Hazon Nahum: Studies in Jewish Law, Thought, and History Presented to Dr. Norman Lamm on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1997), 207-227; and whose work, (popularly termed) the Semak, Haym Soloveitchik has noted, in "Catastrophe and Halakhic Creativity: Ashkenaz - 1096, 1242, 1306 and 1298," Jewish History 12:1 (Spring 1998): 75-76,

"was an instant classic. Dividing the commandments into seven units and eliminating all dialectic and any Maimonidean traces, Rabbi Isaac penned the definitive handbook of French halakhic practice. It rightly earned its wide influence and dissemination. Indeed, no other work of any Tosafot has survived in so many manuscripts. The Semak, as it was called, was completed by the closing decades of the thirteenth century, as were the labors of the Tosafists in Normandy who edited and compressed the twelfth-century Tosafot of Dampierre into the format that was destined to be printed, centuries later, in the Talmud. With the completion of the Semak and the editorial work of Normandy in the third quarter of the thirteenth century, the French Tosafist movement may be said to have come to its close,"

and in 83n14, Soloveitchik notes that Semak is

"[a]n acronym for Sefer Mitzvot Katan. Interestingly, the author entitled his work Sefer Amudei ha-Golah, however, the name never caught on. Indeed, I know of no medieval author ever referring to it by this name."

For more on these medieval halakhic handbooks, see most-recently Judah D. Galinsky, "On Popular Halakhic Literature and the Jewish Reading Audience in Fourteenth-Century Spain," Jewish Quarterly Review 98:3 (Summer 2008): 305-327, esp. 311n18. And for recent-related articles by the same author, see idem, "Of Exile and Halakhah: Fourteenth-century Spanish Halakhic Literature and the Works of the French Exiles Aaron ha-Kohen and Jeruham b. Meshulam," Jewish History 22:1-2 (June 2008): 81-96; and his article with James T. Robinson, "Rabbi Jeruham b. Meshullam, Michael Scot, and the Development of Jewish Law in Fourteenth-Century Spain," Harvard Theological Review 100:4 (October 2007): 489–504.

On the Semak's father-in-law, Rav Jehiel of Paris, see most-recently Simcha Emanuel, "Rabbi Yehiel of Paris: His Life and Connection to the Land of Israel," Shalem 8 (2008): 86-99 (Hebrew), and the earlier article by William Chester Jordan, "Marian Devotion and the Talmud Trial of 1240," in Bernard Lewis and Friedrich Niewöhner, eds., Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter (Wiesbaden, Otto Harrassowitz, 1992), 61-76; and most-recently for Saadia R. Eisenberg, "Reading Medieval Religious Disputation: The 1240 'Debate' Between Rabbi Yehiel of Paris and Friar Nicholas Donin," (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 2008); and referring to Prof. Simcha Emanuel's recently-published volume on the Ba'alei ha-Tosafot, Saadia Eisenberg noted in his dissertation that R. Yehiel of Paris "is the only tosafist to earn a lasting reputation based on historical events rather than for his scholarship" (1n2), and wherein he analyzes the famous 1240 debate from the perspective of both Rabbi Yehiel of Paris and Friar Nicholas Donin, and of their respective historiographers. For a monograph on R. Yehiel of Paris and his debate 'against' Nicholas Donin that was first published 'over' eighty years ago in Lemberg, in 1928, see Reuven Margoliyot, ed., Vikuah Rabbeinu Yehiel mi-Paris (Jerusalem: Hotzaat Ateret, 1975; Hebrew), available here.

The Western Wall in Jerusalem (Yom Yerushalayim 5769/2009)

2009-05-21T13:15:00.003-04:00

Just a quick post at the Michtavim blog in honor of Yom Yerushalayim before the flags begin to twirl throughout Jerusalem and the Jewish people throughout the world celebrate the forty-second year since the reunification of Jerusalem and the return of the Old City under Israeli auspices, I figured that you might be interested in a short post at the Seforim blog about nineteenth-century Christian and Jewish perceptions of the Kotel ha-Maaravi, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, by Elliott Horowitz, "'The Howling Place of the Jews' in the Nineteenth Century: From William Wilde to Ahad Ha'am," the Seforim blog (21 May 2009), available here; and see also idem, "As Others See Jews," in Nicholas de Lange & Miri Freud-Kandel, eds., Modern Judaism: An Oxford Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 415-425, esp. 415-419.

For a link to the famous recording of Rav Shlomo Goren, Chief Rabbi of the IDF who would later become the Chief Rabbi of Israel, as he recited the Kel Malei Rachamamim and sounded the shofar while wearing tefillen and being lifted on the shoulders of the Israeli soldiers who liberated the Old City of Jerusalem on 7 June 1967/28 Iyyar 5727, see here; and related to "arguably, the most beloved Jewish photographic image of our time," of the Israeli paratroopers at the Western Wall, see Yossi Klein Halevi, "The Photograph: A Search for June 1967," Azure 29 (Summer 5767 / 2007): 15-27, available here. On recent appraisels of Rav Goren's role as military halakhist, see Chaniel Nahari, "Development of Halakhic Literature for Soldiers from 1880-1975," (MA thesis, Bar-Ilan University, 2003), 57-75; Arye Edrei, "Divine Spirit and Physical Power: Rabbi Shlomo Goren and the Military Ethic of the Israel Defense Forces," Theoretical Inquiries in Law 7:1 (January 2006): 257-299; idem, "War, Law and Redemption: Military and War in the Halakhic Thought of Rav Shlomo Goren," Cathedra 125 (Tishrei 5768 [2008]): 119-148 (Hebrew); and as I noted in a post at the Michtavim blog a half-year ago, among the few small volumes that I purchased at the "International Conference on Contemporary Issues and Halakhah" (December 2008) at Yad ha-Rav Herzog in Jerusalem, was the new new volume from the ReShu"t: Classic Modern Responsa series about Rav Goren's famous responsum freeing agunot from the Dakar disaster, whose husbands were aboard the British-constructed and Israeli-recommissioned Dakar submarine that disappeared in January 1968 (and whose wreckage was located in May 1998) -- and which now join my collection of the volumes of Rav Moshe Feinstein on Halav Aku"m, Rav Yitzhak Isaac ha-Levi Herzog on non-Jews in Medinat Yisrael -- see David Brukner, ed., Rabbi Shlomo Goren's Responsa Regarding Releasing the Agunot of the Dakar Submarine (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 2008), which includes a short biographical sketch (pp. 9-26), followed by an annotated discussion of Rav Goren's teshuva that appeared in in She'elot u-Teshuvot Meshiv Milchama (Jerusalem, 1983-1992), 3:144-213 (see pp. 27-104), with concluding thoughts by Ariel Picard (pp. 107-112), regarding Rav Goren's ruling that the wives of the Dakar's soldiers were not agunot.

NEW: Alei Etzion, vol. 16 (2009) in Honor of ha-Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, with updated bibliography!!

2009-05-18T17:28:00.003-04:00

As mentioned in a number of posts at the Michtavim blog over this past year, Moreinu ha-Rav Aharon Lichtenstein delivers weekly shiurim in Hashkafa (this year, Derashot ha-Ran), Gemara (this year, Masekhet Gittin), and hosts, as well, a monthly "Press Conference/Q&A" -- last week I asked about "Machshava in the Siddur" [hat-tip A.J.S.] and "Holocaust Education and Trips to Eastern Europe at the High School and/or Post-High School levels" -- at the RIETS Israel Kollel (Gruss) in Jerusalem, where Rav Lichtenstein serves as RIETS Rosh Yeshiva and Rosh Kollel; recordings of these shiurim are available for free download online at YUTorah.org. (As mentioned in a previous post at the Michtavim blog, several years ago Rav Lichtenstein delivered an entire year of shiurim on "Hashkafa Ramban on Vayikra" and how fortunate we are that twenty-five recordings are available to be downloaded in MP3 format at YUTorah.org, see here; and his recently-published Shiurei ha-Rav Aharon Lichtenstein on Masekhet Gittin (Alon Shvut: Yeshivat Har Etzion, 2009; Hebrew) can be ordered here). In terms of Rav Lichtenstein's shiurim, from which his articles often appear, hundreds of audio recordings available at both YUTorah.org and at Gush's Virtual Beit Medrash, and the latest issue of journal Alei Etzion, #16 (2009 [Iyyar 5769]), published by Yeshivat Har Etzion where Rav Lichtenstein serves as a Rosh Yeshiva, is entirely devoted as a "Special Edition in Honor of Harav Aharon Lichtenstein." No doubt that any future scholar wishing to study the thought of contemporary Orthodox Judaism's most original and greatest thinkers will require deep familiarity with this latest issue of Alei Etzion, and especially to the most-recently-updated-987-entry-bibliography (now in its third edition), prepared by my esteemed cousin-in-law, Rav Dov Karoll, of "Torat Chesed: The Writings of Harav Aharon Lichtenstein," pp. 175-225, (available upon request in PDF), with direct links to online articles, available here. Special thanks, as well, to Reuven Ziegler and Aviad Hacohen.

Of the eight articles in this "Special Edition in Honor of ha-Rav Aharon Lichtenstein," available online for free, the first three essays were written by Rav Lichtenstein in Hebrew and translated to English for this latest issue of Alei Etzion (similar to the chapters in Rav Lichtenstein's two-volume Leaves of Faith [2003 and 2004]) -- see "The Responsibilities of the Recipient of Charity," pp. 7-30, available here; "Kofin al Middat Sedom: Compulsory Altruism?" pp. 31-70, available here; "Does Involvement in Torah Study Exempt One from Mitzvot?" pp. 71-107, available here; -- and the subsequent five articles were originally delivered as lectures and were transcribed by his students and prepared for publication, similar to his volumes, By His Light [2003] and Shiurei ha-RAL, as noted above), "Yosef’s Tears," pp. 109-127, available here; "'The Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep': Reading a Poem by Robert Frost," pp. 129-134, available here; "'Kallot va-Chamurot': Gradation of Sins in Repentance," pp. 135-153, available here; "Jerusalem: Between Holiness and Purity," pp. 155-163, available here; and "'Is This Not a Brand Plucked from the Fire?': Confronting the Aftermath of the Holocaust," pp. 165-174, available here.

Copies of the new issue of Alei Etzion, vol. 16 (2009) were given as a parting gift last week at Yeshivat Har Etzion's annual dinner in New York City and are available for free download -- along with ALL previous issues of Alei Etzion -- as well as many hundreds of written shiurim and sichot by Rav Lichtenstein (see below for listing) hosted by Yeshivat Har Etzion's Israel Koschitzky Virtual Beit Midrash, available here.

In a December 2008 post at the Michtavim blog entitled "Chutzpah, Lomdus, and Psak Halakhah," I mentioned a recent volume from Yeshiva University's annual Orthodox Forum series has recently been published in YosefBlau, ed., Lomdus: The Conceptual Approach to Jewish Learning (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2006), see Aharon Lichtenstein, "The Conceptual Approach to Torah Learning: The Method and Its Prospects," pp. 1-44; J. David Bleich, "Lomdut and Pesak: Theoretical Analysis and Halakhic Decision-Making," pp. 87-114; Michael Rosensweig, "Reflections on the Conceptual Approach to Talmud Torah," pp. 189-228; Elyakim Krumbein, "From Reb Hayyim and the Rav to Shi’urei ha-Rav Aharon Lichtenstein: The Evolution of a Tradition of Learning," pp. 229-297; as well as the earlier articles by (Chief Rabbi Sir) Jonathan Sacks, "Creativity and Innovation in Halakhah," in Moshe Sokol, ed., Rabbinic Authority and Personal Autonomy (Northvale and London: Jason Aronson, Inc, 1989), 123-168; and Chaim Saiman, "Legal Theology: The Turn to Conceptualism in Nineteenth-Century Jewish Law," Journal of Law and Religion 21 (2005-2006): 39-100; and, also mentioned in that previous post, see Jack Achiezer Guggenheim, "The Evolution of Chutzpah as a Legal Term: The Chutzpah Championship, Chutzpah Award, Chutzpah Doctrine, and Now, the Supreme Court," Kentucky Law Journal 87:2 (1998-1999): 417-438, and see, especially, his telling description of the legal difference between a schnook and a schlemiel -- "the schnook is the one who always spills his soup while the schlemiel is the one who always gets spilled on" (427n76).

Related to Yom Yerushalayim 5769/2009 that will be celebrated at the end of this week in Jerusalem and throughout the Jewish world -- for related halakhot, see Nahum Rakover, ed., The Laws Relating to Yom Ha'atzmaut and Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem: Ministry of Religious Affairs, 1973; Hebrew), which I purchased several months ago in a used bookshop near Shuk Mahane Yehuda in Jerusalem -- there is a listing in "Torat Chesed: The Writings of Harav Aharon Lichtenstein," pp. 219-220 (nos. 865-885) of Rav Lichtenstein's nearly two-dozen essays (in Hebrew and English) related to Yom Yerushalayim; see also here. This Thursday evening, Rav Lichtenstein will be delivering his annual Yom Yerushalayim lecture in memory of his father-in-law and mentor, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik zt"l, on the topic of "Kodshim in the Rav's Perspective," at the RIETS Israel Kollel on Rechov Duvdevani.

95th yahrzeit of Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac Halevy ("Dorot ha-Rishonim")

2009-05-14T20:10:00.003-04:00

This week is the 95th yahrzeit of Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac Halevy, author of the multi-volume "Torah-true" work of Jewish history, entitled "Dorot ha-Rishonim," written in response to the maskilic historical works; and the seven volumes are available for download at HebrewBooks.org; and for general biographical information about "the Dorot ha-Rishonim," see David Goodblatt, "Y.I. Halevy," in Jacob Neusner, ed., The Formation of the Babylonian Talmud: Studies in the Achievements of Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Historical and Literary-Critical Research (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970), 26-47; Eliezer Sariel, "A Historian from the World of Torah: The Historiographic Approach of Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac Halevy (1847-1914)," (MA thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2003; Hebrew); Asaf Yedidya, "Orthodox Alternatives to Wissenschaft des Judentums 1873-1938," (PhD dissertation, Bar-Ilan University, 2006; Hebrew), esp. 116-160, about Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac Halevy; and the forthcoming (and final) dissertation under the auspices of Prof. David Weiss-Halivni at Columbia University. On this entire genre, see Shmuel Feiner, Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004), as well as the earlier articles by Israel Bartal, "True Knowledge and Wisdom: On Orthodox Historiography," in Jonathan Frankel, ed., Reshaping the Past: Jewish History and the Historians [=Studies in Contemporary Jewry 10] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994): 178-192; Ada Rapoport-Albert, "Hagiography with Footnotes: Edifying Tales and the Writing of History in Hasidism," History and Theory 27:4 (Beiheft 27: Essays in Jewish Historiography) (December 1988): 119-159; and Jacob J. Schacter, "Facing the Truths of History," Torah u-Madda Journal 8 (1998-1999): 200-273; Nathan Kamenetsky, Making of a Godol: A Study of Episodes in the Lives of Great Torah Personalities (Jerusalem: Hamesorah Publishers, 2002), 1:3-19, esp. 14 (where the author discusses "the Dorot ha-Rishonim"), and David Assaf, Ne'ehaz ba-Sevakh: Chapters of Crisis and Discontent in the History of Hasidism (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2006; Hebrew), esp. 15-50, among other sources. Regarding Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac Halevy's role in the founding of the Agudath Israel, see Gershon C. Bacon, The Politics of Tradition: Agudat Yisrael in Poland, 1916-1939 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1996), and Alan L. Mittleman, The Politics of Torah: The Jewish Political Tradition and the Founding of Agudat Israel (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996); and for general background on this era, see Vladimir Levin, "Jewish Politics in the Russian Empire During the Period of Reaction, 1907-1914," (PhD dissertation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007; Hebrew), esp. 198-290 ("The Rise of Orthodox Politics"), and Jonathan Frankel, "S.M. Dubnov: Historian and Ideologist," in Sophie Dubnov-Erlich, ed., The Life and Work of S.M. Dubnov: Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 1–33, which was very-recently reprinted in idem, Crisis, Revolution, and Russian Jews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 239-275 (chapter ten).

716th yahrzeit of Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg ("Maharam mi-Rothenburg")

2009-05-14T20:01:00.004-04:00

This week is the 716th yahrzeit of Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg ("Maharam mi-Rothenburg") and several studies about Maharam mi-Rothenburg have appeared within the past generation; in particular, see Ephraim Kanarfogel, "Preservation, Creativity, and Courage: The Life and Works of R. Meir of Rothenburg," Jewish Book Annual 50 (1992-1993): 249-259; Simcha Emanuel, "Pseudo-Responsa of Maharam of Rothenburg," Shenaton ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri 21 (1998-2000): 149-205 (Hebrew); idem, "Unpublished Responsa of R. Meir of Rothenburg as a Source for Jewish History," in Christoph Cluse, ed., The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries): Proceedings of the International Symposium held at Speyer, 20-25 October 2002 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 283-292; Joseph Isaac Lifshitz, "The Political Theology of Maharam of Rothenburg," Hebraic Political Studies 1:4 (Summer 2006): 383-412, based on idem, "The Political Theory of the Maharam of Rothenburg: Holy Community and Political Organization," (PhD dissertation, Tel-Aviv University, 2006; Hebrew), esp. 37-75, for historical background on "Maharam, His Teachers, and His Students" (chapter one). For a brief and curious historiographical aside, see also the conclusion of "Prof. Haym Soloveitchik on Mishneh Torah vs. Shulhan Arukh," the Michtavim blog (16 January 2008), available here, where I discussed Haym Soloveitchik, "Mishneh Torah: Polemic and Art," in Jay M. Harris, ed., Maimonides After 800 Years: Essays on Maimonides and His Influence (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 327-343, and specifically noted (333n25) an interesting footnote where Prof. Soloveitchik mentioned how editors of a volume that included his entry on Maharam of Rothenburg who,

"wishing to improve upon my scant bibliography, added Shmuel Argaman, The Captivity of the Maharam: A Narrative of the Events Surrounding the Arrest and Captivity of the Maharam of Rothenburg [New York, 1990] - a children's storybook published by the Lakewood Heder."

For an earlier biographical study on Maharam mi-Rothenburg, see the little-studied volume by Hirsch Jakob Zimmels, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland im 13. Jahrhundert, insbesondere auf Grund der Gutachten des r. Meïr Rothenburg (Vienna: Israelitisch-theologische Lehranstalt, 1926; German), which reworked his doctoral dissertation that he received from the University of Vienna. This volume appeared a half-decade prior to his landmark study on Marranos, entitled idem, Die Marranen in die Rabbinischen Literatur: Forschungen und Quellen zur Geschichte und Kulturgeschichte der Anussim (Berlin: Rubin Mass, 1932; German), which then elicited the fascinating response that appeared in a long-forgotten anonymous article that appeared over seventy-six years ago in the "Notes on Books and Authors" section of the London Jewish Chronicle (16 September 1932), which noted that

"[s]ome time ago, a plea was made in this column," lamenting the lack of academic coordination amongst scholars worldwide, "which would prevent needless duplication in Jewish research and literary work. Now there comes a somewhat pathetic instance of how badly this is needed. For many years, almost no work has been done upon the important question of the Marranos in Rabbinical sources. However, in the latest number of Zion, published in Hebrew in Jerusalem, there is a detailed monograph by S[imha] Asaf on the 'Marranos of Spain and Portugal in the Responsa Literature.' Simultaneously there has appeared in Germany 'Die Marranen in der Rabbinischen Literatur,' by H.J. Zimmels. The method of the two works is completely different, but the ground covered is identical. Both are admirable specimens of the products of the new school of Jewish historiography, based upon rock-bottom source material. One can only express regret that they were not produced in collaboration instead of competition" (14).

Both of Zimmels' earlier works in German were reworked into idem, Ashkenazim and Sephardim: Their Relations, Differences, and Problems As Reflected in the Rabbinical Responsa (London: Oxford University Press, 1958).

I mentioned last year that Prof. Jacob Katz, "the most distinguished Jewish historian of the twentieth century," who has squarely secured himself a permanent place at the junction of Heinrich Graetz and Simon Dubnow in the great modern Jewish historiographical debate, remarked, at an evening of discussion on the occasion of the publication of his Goy Shel Shabbat (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1983; Hebrew), that he was relieved that he is not known by the title of his works, lest he be forever known as "the Shabbes Goy" (on the spelling, see the JPS translation, trans. Yoel Lerner). Whereas Prof. Katz prefaced his comment by saying that the first person to whom it was applied was to Adolf Buchler, author of Der Galilaische am Haaretz, published in 1906, the Rosh Ha-Chabura, shlita, suggested to me last year that some thirty-eight years prior to Buchler's work, Dostoevsky published his enigmatic novel, The Idiot. I refer to this anecdote, today, as this week is the 216th yahrzeit of Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, whose name is forever associated with the title of his 1776 work of halakhic responsa, She'elot u-Teshuvot Nodah bi-Yehudah, based on Psalms 76:2. On titles of rabbinic volumes, see the articles by Solomon Schechter, "Titles of Books," London Jewish Chronicle (21 June 1889): 14, expanded in idem, "Titles of Jewish Books," in Studies in Judaism, First Series (London: Black, 1896), 270-281; and the later article by Joshua Bloch, "Some Odd Titles of Hebrew Books," Bulletin of the New York Public Library 41:10 (October 1937): 775-781, reprinted in idem, Hebrew Printing and Bibliography (New York: New York Public Library and Ktav Publishing House, 1976), 151-157; and more recently, see Marvin J. Heller, "Adderet Eliyahu: A Study in the Titling of Hebrew Books," Studies in the Making of the Hebrew Book (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2008), 72-91, esp. 72nn1-3. About "the Nodah bi-Yehudah," see David Katz, "A Case Study in the Formation of a Super-Rabbi: The Early Years of Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, 1713-1754," (PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, 2004); and Sharon Flatto, "Prague's Rabbinic Culture: The Concealed and Revealed in Ezekiel Landau's Writings," (PhD dissertation, Yale University, 2000), and idem, The Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth-Century Prague Ezekiel Landau (the 'Noda Beyehudah') and his Contemporaries (London: Littman Library, forthcoming), and her earlier article in idem, "Hasidim and Mitnaggedim: Not a World Apart," Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 12:2 (August 2003): 99–121; and Shnayer (Sid) Z. Leiman, "When a Rabbi is Accused of Heresy: R. Ezekiel Landau's Attitude Toward R. Jonathan Eibeschuetz in the Emden-Eibeschuetz Controversy," in Jacob Neusner, Ernest S. Frerichs, Nahum M. Sarna, eds., From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism: Intellect in Quest of Understanding - Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 3:179-194 (chapter thirty-nine of part thirteen, "Hasidism. Messianism in Modern Times"), and stay tuned for information about a soon-to-be-completed dissertation on Rabbi Ezekiel Landau and Hatam Sofer.

My Meron Journey 5769/2009 (Part II)

2009-05-14T19:55:00.000-04:00

As mentioned in a previous post at the Michtavim blog, in the final hours before Lag Ba-Omer, I traveled from Jerusalem to Meron (via Bnei Brak) where I joined -- according to the media reports -- more than 400,000 people who gathered on Mount Meron for an assortment of Lag ba-Omer festivities. I must admit, I have never seen so many busses in my life (and some helicopters too!). About two hours before the bus (finally) arrived in Meron, we stopped at a scheduled stop -- complete with refreshments and Mincha minyanim galore, though I chose to hold my seat on the bus -- and just before we pulled out, the police checked the entire bus and sealed the outside door of the bus with a "Lag ba-Omer in Meron" sticker. The fellow sitting next to me, who has been going to Meron for the past many years, explained that as a way of controlling the traffic outside of Meron, the police search all of the buses at the various rest-stops and if the bus will arrive in Meron with the seal intact -- it thankfully did -- we would be able to enter directly without the need for another security check. I felt like I was trapped in an airline kosher meal!!! Upon arriving in Meron, we danced and sang "Bar Yochai" as we trekked up Mount Meron together with Jews from the entire rainbow of the Jewish spectrum, and arrived early enough to watch the celebration surrounding the Boyaner Rebbe -- who inherited Meron from his current seniority in the House of Ruzhyn -- as he lit the first of the many bonfires in Meron. After making our way to the (purported) tomb of RaShB"I and cutting the hair of my friend's three-year-old son (whom we pushed in his holy carriage throughout the packed crowds to thw chagrin of many), we met up with a friend who brought us up the mountain to the Yeshivat Bnei Akiva of Meron, where, for the past few years, the Karliner Hasidim have rented the sprawling campus to accommodate the thousands of their (and other) Hasidim who spend Lag ba-Omer in Meron; and we sang Bar Yochai, yet again, high on the bleachers and while performing the art of synchronized shuffling.

My Meron Journey 5769/2009 (Part I)

2009-05-11T06:50:00.003-04:00

As we count the hours of transition from the Heart of the Omer to Lag ba-Omer, I am journeying up to Meron (via Bnei Brak) on the occassion of the Hillula de-RaShB"I with a friend who is in Israel for the occasion of the halakhah haircut of his three-year-old son to take place in Meron on Lag ba-Omer, about which, see Daniel Sperber, The Jewish Life Cycle: Custom, Lore and Iconography - Jewish Customs from the Cradle to the Grave (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2008; English), 130-138, esp. 131n14, which includes a review of the recent half-dozen traditional works that discuss the "Halakhah haircut," and also the articles by Bezalel Naor, "The Practice of Cutting the Son's Hair (Opsherenish)," Ohr Yisroel 5:4 (Sivan 5760 [2000]): 156-158 (Hebrew), available here, and the editors response in Ohr Yisroel 6:1 (Tishrei 5761 [2000]): 251 (Hebrew), available here; and for three chapters related to Sefirat ha-Omer, see Daniel Sperber, Minhagei Yisrael (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1989; Hebrew), 1:98-120 ("Reciting le-Sheim Yichud Prior to Counting Sefirat ha-Omer," 98-100; "Customs of Mourning During Sefirat ha-Omer," 101-111; and "The Sephardic Position Regarding Haircuts during the Perior of the Omer," 112-120).

Rabbi Norman Lamm -- Rabbi Emanuel Rackman z'l: A Critical Appreciation

2009-05-11T06:33:00.001-04:00

After the passing six months ago of Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, at the age of 98 years old, I mentioned, in a brief post at the Michtavim blog, the obituary by Rabbi Michael J. Broyde, "On The Death of a Giant: Thoughts on the Passing of Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, zecher tzaddik levracha," the Hirhurim blog (10 December 2008), available here, which serves as the most recent biographical article about a man who served at nearly every level of academic, communal, and rabbinic leadership of American Modern Orthodox Judaism -- and who was even termed by the New York Times as "the dean of the modern Orthodox rabbinate" (3 March 1977), having served as the rabbi of Congregation Shaaray Tefila of Far Rockaway and the Fifth Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan -- for a listing of the other rabbis who received a similar designation from the New York Times throughout the twentieth-century, see "Rabbi Emanuel Rackman (1910-2008)," the Michtavim blog (2 December 2008), available here -- and whose article was preceded by David Singer, "Emanuel Rackman: Gadfly of Modern Orthodoxy," Modern Judaism 28:2 (May 2008): 134-148; and the earlier critique by Michael J. Broyde, "An Unsuccessful Defense of the Beit Din of Rabbi Emanuel Rackman," Edah Journal 4:2 (Kislev 5765 [2004]): 1-28, available here. In one of the final articles published in the YUdaica section of The Yeshiva University Commentator (during the 2004/2005 academic year), my friend Zev Nagel and I interviewed Rabbi Rackman at his Upper East Side residence and the interview, "Reflections on Those Years: An Interview with Rabbi Emanuel Rackman," The Yeshiva University Commentator (5/16/05), available here, is also available in idem, "Reflections on Those Years: An Interview with Rabbi Emanuel Rackman," in Menachem Butler and Zev Nagel, eds., My Yeshiva College: 75 Years of Memories (New York: Yashar Books, 2006), 96-99. For a recent critical look at the Synagogue Council of America (SCA) during the latter part of the twentieth-century, during Rabbi Rackman's tenure as leader of the American Orthodox community, see Jonathan J. Golden, "From Cooperation to Confrontation: The Rise and Fall of the Synagogue Council of America," (PhD dissertation, Brandeis University, 2008), esp. 83-113 ("Matir Issurim? The Synagogue Council of America and the Struggle for Unity, 1946-1960"), and 114-137 ("For Whom Do They Toil? The Decline and Collapse of the Synagogue Council of America, 1960-1994"); and for a volume published just several months ago, see A Modern Orthodox Life: Sermons and Columns of Rabbi Emanuel Rackman (Ktav, 2008).

I mention the above bio-bibliography of Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, as his longtime younger friend and colleague -- with whom he even sparred on occasion -- Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, Chancellor and Rosh ha-Yeshiva of Yeshiva University, who is currently in Israel to receive an honorary doctorate, this week, from Bar-Ilan University, recently-penned a reflection, in Norman Lamm, "Rabbi Emanuel Rackman z'l: A Critical Appreciation," Tradition 42:1 (Spring 2009): 7-13, available here. and related to the above ever-timely discussion -- though not on the specific topic of hafka'at kiddushin -- see the terrific article of ha-Rav J. David Bleich, "Jewish Divorce: Judicial Misconceptions and Possible Means of Civil Enforcement," Connecticut Law Review 16:2 (Winter 1984): 201-289; and his earlier article in idem, "The Attitude of American Civil Courts Towards Jewish Divorce," Dine Israel 10-11 (1981-1983): 365-384 (Hebrew).

Shnayer Z. Leiman -- "The Strange History of Lag ba-Omer: Its Rabbinical, Mystical, and Historical Dimensons

2009-05-10T18:23:00.002-04:00

In advance of the upcoming holiday of Lag ba-Omer, to begin tomorrow evening in Meron, my friend Rav A.E. pointed me towards a recently-uploaded lecture by Prof. Shnayer Z. Leiman ("The Strange History of Lag ba-Omer: Its Rabbinical, Mystical, and Historical Dimensons"), delivered in May 2003 in New York, and the recording is available online here.

Preparing for Meron-fest-5769/2009

2009-05-07T21:19:00.002-04:00

Related to Lag Ba-Omer and the upcoming Meron-fest-5769/2009, see Eliezer Brodt, "Lag Ba-omer and Upsherins in Recent Jewish literature: Revisionist History and Borrowing and Plagiarism," the Seforim blog (22 May 2008), available here; and for recent scholarly discussion on visiting Meron, see Avraham Yaari, "History of the Pilgrimage to Meron," Tarbiz 31 (1962): 72-101 (Hebrew), which elicited the response of Meir Benayahu, "The Practices of the Kabbalists of Safed in Meron," Sefunot 6 (1962): 9–40 (Hebrew), and then expanded in Eli Schiller, ed., Sefer Ze'ev Vilnai (Jerusalem: Hotzaat Sefarim Ariel, 1984; Hebrew), 2:326-330. Special thanks to my friend Eliezer Brodt for his assistance with these sources. See, as well, Elliott Horowitz, "Coffee, Coffeehouses, and the Nocturnal Rituals of Early Modern Jewry," AJS Review 14:1 (Spring 1989): 29n35; Yair Paz, "Holy Inhabitants of a Holy City: How Safed Became One of the Four Holy Cities of Eretz Israel in the 16th Century," in Marcel Poorthuis & Joshua Schwartz, eds., A Holy People: Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Religious Communal Identity (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2006), 237-260; and Lutz Kaelber, "Place and Pilgrimage, Real and Imagined," in William H. Swatos, Jr., ed., On the Road to Being There: Studies in Pilgrimage and Tourism in Late Modernity (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2006), 277-295; and for the most recent and extensive academic discussion on visiting Meron, see Elchanan Reiner, "Pilgrims and Pilgrimage to Eretz Yisrael (1099-1517)," (PhD dissertation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1988; Hebrew), 295-320.

Hakham Zevi & Yaavetz II and the Early Modern European Rabbinic Community

2009-05-07T21:02:00.004-04:00

Two weeks ago was the 291st yahrzeit of Rabbi Zevi Hirsch Ashkenazi ("Hakham Zevi") and the 233rd yahrzeit of his son Rabbi Jakob Emden (aka "Yaavetz II") and though, in previous posts at the Michtavim blog, I have discussed a variety of aspects related Emden-Eybeschütz affair (and related to my own completed graduate paper "The Emden-Eybeschütz Controversy Recharged: The Notorious Debate between Prof. Gershom Scholem and Rav Reuven Margoliyot, circa 1940s") -- the notorious debate that literally (not figuratively) destroyed the early modern European rabbinic infrastructure -- about Rabbi Jacob Emden's Megillat Sefer, written as his own polemic defense against harsh criticisms from the Eybeschütz camp, see Jacob J. Schacter, "Rabbi Jacob Emden: Life and Major Works," (PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1988), 7-14, greatly expanded into idem, "History and Memory of Self: Autobiography of Rabbi Jacob Emden," in Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron, David N. Myers, eds., Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 1998), 429-452; and Alexandr Putík, "The Prague Sojourn of Rabbi Jacob Emden as Depicted in his Autobiography Megillat Sefer," Judaica Bohemiae 42 (2006): 53-124, who utilized contemporary meteorological facts to reconstruct the journey of Yaavetz II, similar to the discussion in the final footnotes on the final pages of Chava Turniansky, ed. and trans., Glückel of Hamelin: Memoirs, 1691-1718 (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2006; Hebrew), courtesy of Reuven Gevaryahu's documented, though unpublished, scholarly work; for an earlier critical edition, see David Kaufmann, ed., Die Memoiren der Glückel von Hameln, 1645-1719 (Frankfurt am Main, 1896). For two other recent and significant articles by Alexandr Putík, see Alexandr Putík & Dana Veselská, "A Textile from Izmir with an Embroidered Lion: Remnant of the Robe of Sabbatai Zevi?" Judaica Bohemiae 43 (2007-2008): 193-218; and see also Alexandr Putík, "The Prague Jewish Community in the Late 17th and Early 18th Centuries," Judaica Bohemiae 35 (1999): 4-140. Related to this, see Rachel Greenblatt, "A Community's Memory: Jewish Views of Past and Present in Early Modern Prague," (PhD dissertation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2006), and her earlier article in idem, "The Shapes of Memory: Evidence in Stone from the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague," Leo Baeck Institute YearBook 48 (2002): 43-67.

Related to the autobiography of Yaavetz II, see the very-recently-published article by a Satmar dayan of Kiryas Joel in Menachem Mendel Goldstein, "Sefer Megillat Sefer," Kovets Ets Hayyim 3:2 (January-February 2009): 239-263 (Hebrew), whose rabbinical colleague of Kiryas Joel recently published an article about the famed 1848 Cholera epidemic in Vilna and Rabbi Jisrael Lipkin's involvement in Eliezer Mermelstein, "Eating on Yom Kippur While Ill or During an Epidemic," Kovets Ets Hayyim 3:1 (October 2008): 273-294 (Hebrew), in the same Bobov-sponsored Hebrew language Torah journal, Kovets Ets Hayyim (est. 2006). For biographical information about Hakham Zebi, see Jacob J. Schacter, "Motivations for Radical Anti-Sabbatianism: The Case of Hakham Zevi Ashkenazi," in Rachel Elior, ed., The Sabbatian Movement and Its Aftermath: Messianism, Sabbatianism and Frankism (=Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 17 [2001]), 2:31-49, who mentions in footnote seventeen that Hakham Zevi "has not received the scholarly attention he deserves," and mentions that "[t]he best study to date is still" Judith Bleich, "Hakam Zebi as Chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazic Kehillah of Amsterdam (1710–1714)," (MA thesis, Yeshiva University, 1965), which has (to the best of my knowledge) been most-recently cited in the above-mentioned article by Menachem Mendel Goldstein, "Sefer Megillat Sefer," Kovets Ets Hayyim 3:2 (January-February 2009): 247n17 (Hebrew), which I believe is the only recent scholarly work cited. Among my favorite sections of Bleich's MA thesis is "Attempt to Dismiss Hakam Zebi," (pp. 84-89). Related to the above article on Hakham Zevi's Anti-Sabbatianism, see Matt Goldish, "The Spirit of the Eighteenth Century in the Anti-Sabbatean Polemics of Hakham David Nieto," in Jeremy D. Popkin, ed., The Legacies of Richard Popkin (=International Archives of the History of Ideas - Archives internationales d' histoire des idées, no. 198 [2008]), 229-243.

On the growing scholarship of post-Rousseauean Early Modern Jewish autobiographical works, see (most comprehensively) the volume by Marcus Moseley, Being For Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006); Elliott Horowitz, "Confessions of a Jewish Autobiography Reader," Jewish Quarterly Review 95:1 (Winter 2005): 74-80, and Marcus Moseley, "Jewish Autobiography: The Elusive Subject," Jewish Quarterly Review 95:1 (Winter 2005): 16-59, an adaptation of chapter one of the above -- and from the same forum, but not really related to autobiographies, see the discussion of ethical wills in J.H. (Yossi) Chajes, "Accounting for the Self: Preliminary Generic-Historical Reflections on Early Modern Jewish Egodocuments," Jewish Quarterly Review 95:1 (Winter 2005): 1-15; and also see Avriel Bar-Levav, "'When I was Alive': Jewish Ethical Wills as Egodocuments," in Rudolf Dekker, ed., Egodocuments and History: Autobiographical Writing in its Social Context since the Middle Ages (Rotterdam: Erasmus University, 2002), 47-59, expanded in idem, "'When I was Alive': Jewish Ethical Wills as Egodocuments," in Amir Horowitz, et. al, eds., The Past and Beyond it: Festschrift for Elazar Weinrib (Raanana: The Open University, 2006; Hebrew), 263-282. Of course, the timeless volume of primary source material remains Israel Abrahams, Hebrew Ethical Wills (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1926); and his earlier study in idem, "Jewish Ethical Wills," Jewish Quarterly Review 3 (o.s.) (1891): 436-484; and for an historiographic article on the famed "Baal ha-Books and Book-Men," Israel Abrahams, albeit with a focus on another work, see Elliott Horowitz, "Jewish Life in the Middle Ages and the Jewish Life of Israel Abrahams," in David N. Myers and David B. Ruderman, eds., The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1998), 143-162.

On the interconnectedness of the Jewish communities of eighteenth-century Amsterdam and London, see the recently-published volume by David B. Ruderman, Connecting the Covenants: Judaism and the Search for Christian Identity in Eighteenth-Century England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Adam S. Ferziger, "Between 'Ashkenazi' and Sepharad: An Early Modern German Rabbinic Response to Religious Pluralism in the Spanish-Portuguese Community," Studia Rosenthaliana 35:1 (Spring 2001): 7-22, reprinted in idem, Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance, and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2005), 27-40; Matt Goldish, "Jews, Christians and Conversos: Rabbi Solomon Aailion's Struggles in the Portuguese Community of London," Journal of Jewish Studies 45:2 (Autumn 1994): 227-257; Evelyne Grausz, "A Study in Intercommunal Relations in the Sephardi Diaspora: London and Amsterdam in the Eighteenth Century," in Chaya Brasz & Yosef Kaplan, eds., Dutch Jews as Perceived by Themselves and By Others (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2001), 41-58; and for an every-contemporary -- daily occurence for some? -- article on "Halakhah vs. Kabbalah," see Matt Goldish, "Halakhah, Kabbalah and Heresy: A Controversy in Early Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam," Jewish Quarterly Review 84:2-3 (October 1993 - January 1994): 153-176; and no discussion of Hakham Zevi can be complete without reference to the highly-publicized public lecture of indefatigable Hungarian scholar David Kaufmann that he read before the Jewish Historical Society of England and later published in David Kaufmann, "Rabbi Zevi Ashkenazi and His Family in London: A Contribution to the History of the German Community in London," Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England (1899): 102-125, and for a discussion of the American context related to 123n34, see Kimmy Caplan, "In God We Trust: Salaries and Income of American Orthodox Rabbis, 1881-1924," American Jewish History 86:1 (March 1998): 77-106. See also the various articles collected in Yosef Kaplan, ed., The Dutch Intersection: The Jews and the Netherlands in Modern History (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2008), especially the chapters by Bernard Dov Cooperman ("Amsterdam from an International Perspective: Tolerance and Kehillah in the Portuguese Diaspora," pp. 1-18), Adam Sutcliffe, ("The Boundaries of Community: Urban Space and Intercultural Interaction in Early Modern, Sephardi Amsterdam, and London," pp. 19-31), Yosef Kaplan, ("Amsterdam, the Forbidden Lands, and the Dynamics of the Sephardi Diaspora," pp. 33-62), and Avriel Bar-Levav ("Amsterdam and the Inception of the Jewish Republic of Letters," pp. 225-237).

Descendants and relatives of Hakham Zevi filled some/many/most and/or all, of the leading positions of rabbinic leadership throughout Europe over the subsequent few centuries -- see the complete data and charts collected in Neil Rosenstein, The Unbroken Chain (New York: CIS Publishers, 1990), passim -- and though not discussed in any of the articles mentioned below (though inclusion of the Hakham Zevi's family would have been appropriate in several places), for the celebrated symposium on the "Inheritance of the Rabbinate," in Jewish History 13:1 (Spring 1999), see the articles from within the European context by Mordechai Breuer ("Appointment and Succession among Yeshiva Deans," pp. 11-23); Simon Schwarzfuchs ("The Inheritance of the Rabbinate Reconsidered," pp. 25-33); Shaul Stampfer ("Inheritance of the Rabbinate in Eastern Europe in the Modern Period: Causes, Factors, and Development over Time," pp. 35-57); and Gershon Bacon ("Warsaw-Radom-Vilna: Three Disputes over Rabbinical Posts in Interwar Poland and their Implications for the Chance in Jewish Public Discourse," pp. 103-126), which is related to idem, "Rubinstein vs. Grodzinski: The Dispute Over the Vilnius Rabbinate and the Religious Realignment of Vilnius Jewry, 1928-1932," in Izraelis Lempertas, ed., The Gaon of Vilnius and the Annals of Jewish Culture (Vilnius: Vilnius University Publishing House, 1998), 295-304; and, more recently, Shnayer Z. Leiman, "Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg: In Praise of Esther Rubinstein," Tradition 40:3 (Fall 2007): 48n6. For a wealth of information about the broader late-eighteenth-century debate that ensued following the death of Rabbi Samuel b. Avigdor, the last Chief Rabbi of Vilna, in 1793, and related to the breakdown of the relationship between the official communal and Chief Rabbinical position in Vilna, see the entire issue of Yehoshua Mondshine, ed., Kerem Habad 4:1 (November-December 1992), which made use of the earlier scholarly work of Israel Klausner, Vilna During the Time of the Gaon (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1942; Hebrew); and see, as well, idem, ha-Gaon Rabbi Elijah of Vilna (Tel Aviv: World Congress of Jewish Studies, 1969; Hebrew). For a recent academic response to Mondshine's landmark article, see Immanuel Etkes, "Yehoshua Mondshine: A Plot of the Parnasim and the Weakness of the Vilna Gaon," in The Gaon of Vilna: The Man and His Image, trans. Jeffrey M. Green (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 130-138, and also discussed in the latest scholarly work on ha-GRA, of my elder friend (who left YU just as I arrived) Eliyahu Stern, "Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Rabbinic Judaism," (PhD dissertation, UC Berkeley, 2008), 273n111. A legend, of sorts, from the late 1990s around Yeshiva University, (Rabbi Dr.) Elli is currently a Junior Research Fellow in Modern Eastern European Jewish History, Oxford University, and has recently been appointed to Assistant Professor of Modern Intellectual and Cultural History, Yale University.

Shabbaton in Safed: Selection on Maran Joseph Caro

2009-05-07T20:53:00.002-04:00

Earlier this week I received a request from a friend of mine who will be leading discussion groups this weekend in the mystical city of Safed for students at one popular post-High School Overseas yeshiva program, where one of my esteemed elder brothers studied -- and a group from said institution recently continued its time-honored tradition of trekking 42km (=15+ hours) on Yom Haatzmaut to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and was joined this year by the esteemed scholar of American Orthodox Judaism, Prof. Chaim I. Waxman, who should have worn a t-shirt that read: "Look Mom, I'm Flipping Out!," (see here for their pre-Kotel picture) -- and who will be delivering sessions about the historic ressurection of semikhah controversy of 1538 -- about which, see Jacob Katz, "The Dispute between Jacob Berab and Levi ben Habib over Renewing Ordination," Binah 1 (1989): 119-141, originally published in "The Controversy on the Semikha between Rabbi Jacob Berab and Rabbi Levi ben Habib," Zion 16 (1951): 28-45 (Hebrew), and later revised in idem, Halakhah and Kabbalah (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1985; Hebrew), 213-236, and then translated by Roberta Bell-Kligler in Jacob Katz, Divine Law in Human Hands: Case Studies in Halakhic Flexibility (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1998), 146-170, as well as Meir Benayahu, "The Renewal of Semikha in Safed," in Salo W. Baron, Benzion Dinur, Shmuel Ettinger, Israel Halperin, eds., Yitzhak Fritz Baer Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel, 1960; Hebrew), 248-269, and the earlier article by Hayyim Zalman Dimitrovsky, "The Academy of Rabbi Jacob Berab," Sefunot 7 (1983): 41-102 (Hebrew); and, "[f]or an interesting legal discussion on the semikha controversy," very-recently noted in Shaul Magid, From Metaphysics to Midrash: Myth, History, and the Interpretation of Scripture in Lurianic Kabbala (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2008), 263n34, see Robert Cover, "The Folktales of Justice: Tales of Jurisdiction," in Martha Minow, Michael Ryan, Austin Sarat, eds., Narrative, Violence, and the Law: The Essays of Robert Cover (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 187-195, based on his earlier article in idem, "The Folktales of Justice: Tales of Jurisdiction," Capital University Law Review 14 (1984-1985): 179-203

Additionally, there will be a session this weekend in Safed devoted to the halakhic and mystical works of Maran Joseph Caro -- which I've discussed in a previous post at the Michtavim blog a half-a-year-ago ("Rabbi Joseph Caro - His Historians and Their Critics: A Survey of Recent Scholarship on Shulhan Arukh") -- and specifically related to his Maggid, about which, see R.J. Zwi Werblowsky's very-critical (and very rarely cited) critique of Hirsch Loeb Gordon, The Maggid of Caro: The Mystic Life of the Eminent Codifier Joseph Caro as Revealed in his Secret Diary (New York: Pardes Publishing House, Inc., 1949) -- viciously reviewed under the nom de plume "Z.W." -- which was reviewed alongside the volume by Yekutiel Yehuda (Leopold) Greenwald, Rabbi Joseph Caro and His Times (New York: Philipp Feldheim, 1953; Hebrew), in the Journal of Jewish Studies 7:1-2 (1956): 117-121, an article that Werblowsky later hoped would absolve "every writer on Karo from the necessity of taking note of [Gordon's] book," in R.J. Zwi Werblowsky, Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), ix, an entire study that was devoted to R. Caro's mystical Maggid, which followed his "On the Figure of R. Joseph Karo’s Maggid," Tarbiz 26 (1958): 310–321 (Hebrew); and for an article that has not fared too well within the academic Jewish literature, see idem, "Mystical and Magical Contemplation: The Kabbalists in Sixteenth Century Safed," History of Religions 1:1 (Summer 1961): 9-36. Gordon's own father, R. Eliyahu Gordon, published his own commentary to R. Joseph Caro's Shulhan Arukh, entitled Seder Eliyahu (Warsaw, 1932), available here; See, as well, Mor Altshuler, "'Revealing The Secret of His Wives': R. Joseph Karo's Concept of Reincarnation and Mystical Conception," Franfurter Judaistische Beiträge 31 (2004): 91-104, available here; and idem, "Prophecy and Maggidism in the Life and Writings of R. Joseph Karo," Franfurter Judaistische Beiträge 33 (2006): 81-110, available here.

Yahrzeit #906 of Rabbi Yitzhak Alfasi

2009-05-07T20:44:00.002-04:00

This week is the 906th yahrzeit of the Rif, about whom see, most-recently, Leonard Levy, "Rabbi Yitzhaq Alfasi's Application of Principles of Adjudication in Halakhot Rabbati," (PhD dissertation, Jewish Theological Seminary, 2002), for biographical information, and general methodological observations, see pp. 1-44; and Ezra Chwat, "Studies in the Glosses of Rabbi Yizhaq Alfasi," (PhD dissertation, Bar-Ilan University, 1995; Hebrew).

186th yahrzeit of Edward Jenner

2009-04-28T05:15:00.001-04:00

This week is the 186th yahrzeit of English physician Edward Jenner, who successfully inoculated eight-year old James Phipps against smallpox by using cowpox matter, in 1796, and whom R. Yisrael Lipshutz listed as one of the four gentiles who have secured a place in the World to Come (in Tiferet Yisrael, Avot 3:14).

Wondrous Miracles, Then and Now: Yom Hazikaron & Yom Haatzmaut 5769/2009

2009-04-28T05:05:00.001-04:00

With the wail of a siren at 8pm last evening (followed by ma'ariv), observance of Yom HaZikaron began in Israel, in memory of the 22,570 soldiers and terror victims who had been killed in defense of the Land of Israel since 1860, the year of the founding of the Old Yishuv, when seven families (including my own ggg-grandmother's brother, Benjamin Beinish Salant) left the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.

While the story about the slaughter of members of Kibbutz Kfar Etzion on May 13, 1948, the day before the State of Israel was established, is quite well known, little discussed has been the impact of the event on the collective memory of the "the Children of Kfar Etzion," those sixty young men and women of the next generation, born between 1939-1948, whose fathers and brothers were killed while defending Kibbutz Kfar Etzion against the Arab onslaught during the early days of the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, and about whom see, most-recently, Amia Lieblich, "The Second Generation of Kfar Etzion: A Study of Collective Memory," in Doron Mendels, ed., On Memory: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Oxford & Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), 213-230. On "Jewish Memory" in general, see the landmark and must-read volume of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (University of Washington Press, Seattle 1982); and for a related discussion on the passage of time as a factor in recalling collective memory, see the review essay on the Jedwabne pogrom of July 1941 by Gershon Bacon, "Holocaust 'Triangles,' Ambivalent Neighbors, and Historical Memory: Some Recent Notable Books on Polish Jewry," Jewish Quarterly Review 97:2 (Spring 2007): 289-303. For the celebrated discussion on how the Goral ha-GRA was successfully employed to allow a dozen widows of the Lamed Hay ("Convoy of 35"), who were killed in January 1948, to remarry is detailed in Simcha Raz, A Tzaddik in Our Time: The Life of Rabbi Aryeh Levin (Jerusalem & New York: Feldheim Publishers, 1976); more recently (and broader) in Ze'ev Greenwald, Goral ha-GRA (Jerusalem: Z.G., 2005); and for several pictures, and recent discussions at HydePark's Chadrei Chareidim, available here.

Throughout the entire year in Israel, it is quite difficult to find a street sign that is not smothered with a "Na-Nach" or "Yechi" sticker, but from the days leading up to Yom Hazikaron and Yom Haatzmaut until Yom Yerushalayim, nearly every pole throughout the State of Israel is adorned with two (or sometimes more) Israeli flags in honor of these days, and most of the halakhot related to these days have been collected and ably documented in Nahum Rakover, ed., The Laws Relating to Yom Ha'atzmaut and Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem: Ministry of Religious Affairs, 1973; Hebrew) -- including Rav Menachem Kasher's landmark article included an article on "The Reason Why So Many Charedim, Though they Celebrate the State of Israel, Do Not Recite Hallel on Yom Ha'atzmaut," 178-181, later expanded into his ha-Tekufah ha-Gedolah, originally published in 1968 and famous for many reasons, including the famous reproduction of the letter that listed the more than 300 of the great Zionist, non-Zionist halakhic authorities, and Holy Hasidic Rebbes throughout the Land of Israel, who, in January 1950, ascribed a messianic status, to that great event of the establishment of Medinat Yisrael, sixty-one years ago this week, as being Atchalta de-Geula. Among those great halakhic authorities who signed this document reproduced in the volume (pp. 424-443 in the 2001 edition), is the Belzer Rebbe, and the late Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, about whose views on the halakhic recognition of the Israeli government, which he termed a "Malchut Yisrael," is most recently discussed in Amir Mashiach, "The Halakhic Thought of Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach," (PhD dissertation, Bar-Ilan University, 2008; Hebrew). For a listing of rabbinic authorities who've discussed the notion of pre-Zionist and Zionist conceptions of the arrival of the ultimate redemption by way of natural order, see the two-volume set of Yitzhak Dadon, Atchalta Hee (2005 and 2007), available here, and here.

For two earlier scholarly discussions on Geula be-Derekh ha-Teva, see David Berger, "Some Ironic Consequences of Maimonides' Rationalist Approach to the Messianic Age," in Yamin Levy and Shalom Carmy, eds., The Legacy of Maimonides: Religion, Reason and Community (New York: Yashar Books, 2006), 79-88, a translation of idem, "Some Ironic Consequences of Maimonides' Rationalistic Messianism," Maimonidean Studies 2 (1991): 1-8 (Hebrew). See, however, Ephraim Kanarfogel, "Medieval Rabbinic Conceptions of the Messianic Age: The View of the Tosafists," in Ezra Fleischer, Gerald Blidstein, Carmi Horowitz, Bernard Septimus, eds., Me'ah She'arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2001), 147-169. See, as well, the article by R. Aaron Soloveichik, "Israel's Day of Independence: Reflections in Halacha and Hashkafa," Gesher 4:1 (1968): 7-23; and for a little-studied work on the theoretical relationship between halakha and the State of Israel, see R. Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg, Hilkhot Medinah (Jerusalem, 1952; Jerusalem, 2006); and Arye Edrei, "Law, Interpretation, and Ideology: The Renewal of the Jewish Laws of War in the State of Israel," Cardozo Law Review 28:1 (2006): 188-227; Shlomo Fischer, "Excursus: Concerning the Rulings of R. Ovadiah Yosef Pertaining to the Thanksgiving Prayer, the Settlement of the Land of Israel, and Middle East Peace," Cardozo Law Review 28:1 (October 2006): 229-244.

Regarding the seemingly-never-ending historical discussion over the authorship of the Tefillah Le-Shlom Ha-Medinah, see Zev Nagel, "The 'Divine' Authorship of the Prayer for the Welfare of the State of Israel," The Commentator (4 May 2004), available here; Joseph Tabory, "The Piety of Politics: Jewish Prayers for the State of Israel," in Ruth Langer & Steven Fine, eds., Liturgy in the Life of the Synagogue: Studies in the History of Jewish Prayer (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 225-246; and Joel Rappel, "The Identity of the Author of the Prayer for the State of Israel," in Shulamit Eliash, Itamar Warhaftig, Uri Desberg, eds., Masuah Le-Yitzhak: Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac ha-Levi Herzog Memorial Volume (Jerusalem: Yad ha-Rav Herzog, 2008; Hebrew), 594-620, based on his ongoing and original (and clearly very passionate) scholarly research on the authorship of the Tefillah Le-Shlom Ha-Medinah and which includes photomechanical reproductions of "the famed envelope" and Rav Herzog and Nobel-laureate S.Y. Agnon's differing versions of the Tefillah, including lovely comparative charts. This article was published on the heels of his very-recent, idem, "The Convergence of Politics and Prayer: Jewish Prayers for the Government and the State of Israel," (PhD dissertation, Boston University, 2008), esp. 192-242 ("The Identity of the Author of the Tefillah Le-Shlom Ha-Medinah").

Nathan Birnbaum, Theodor Herzl, and Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson

2009-04-28T05:01:00.003-04:00

Several weeks ago was the seventy-second yahrzeit of Nathan Birnbaum, an early Zionist leader most famously credited for coining the terms "Zionism" and "political Zionism." Birnbaum was elected the Secretary General at First Zionist Congress in 1897, and later became the first general secretary of the Orthodox Agudat Yisrael (1919). For the most recent scholarly work on Nathan Birnbaum, see Jess Olson, "Nation, Peoplehood and Religion in the Life and Thought of Nathan Birnbaum," (PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 2006); and see idem, "The Late Zionism of Nathan Birnbaum: The Herzl Controversy Reconsidered," AJS Review 31:2 (November 2007): 241-276; see also his earlier article in idem, "Nathan Birnbaum and Tuvia Horowitz: Friendship and The Origins of an Orthodox Idealogue," Jewish History 17:1 (January 2003): 1-29, which discusses the relationship between Birnbaum and Tuvia Horowitz, a nephew of the Vizhnitzer Rebbe, R. Yisrael Hager, who was taunted by friends for correspondence with a "western doctor," and later had to defend himself before his uncle against claims that "he had a picture of a Jewish doctor who goes about bareheaded, which seems to be a picture of Dr. Herzl," about which see Jess Olson, "Nation, Peoplehood and Religion," 80; idem, "The Late Zionism of Nathan Birnbaum," 456n47; and idem, "Nathan Birnbaum and Tuvia Horowitz," 22. For a late picture of Birnbaum in the recently-reissued (and greatly-expanded-and-updated) volume by Benjamin Salomon Hamburger, Meshihei ha-Sheker u-Mitnagdehem (Bnei Brak: Machon Moreshet Ashkenaz, 2009; Hebrew), 584 -- the first edition was published in 1989 (and this edition has additions in nearly every other footnote; not to mention the more-than-hald-dozen appendices at the end of the volume, though there is still no chapter on Habad Messianism) -- where the author reproduced a portrait of Nathan Birnbaum amidst the chapter-length discussion of Theodor Herzl, which includes, as well, some two dozen photographs of Theodor Herzl. For the authoritative work on Jewish portraiture, see Richard I. Cohen, Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

That a twentieth century Orthodox Jewish leader could be confused with the early Zionist leader Theodor Herzl is not a claim due to Nathan Birnbaum alone, but as mentioned in Pini Dunner, "Unknown Picture of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, c.1930s," the Seforim blog (30 March 2008), available here, a similar comparison has been made between the late Lubavitcher Rebbe ("ha-Shevi'i") and Theodor Herzl, where the former was leaning over a railing in the resort city of Marienbad in the late 1930s, and where the latter was allegedly leaning over the balcony of the Hotel Les Trois Rois in Basel, Switzerland, during the fifth Zionist Congress in 1901. Related to the Lubavitcher Rebbe of the 1930s, see the "out-of-print and extremely rare" volume of Shaul Shimon Deutsch, Larger Than Life: The Life and Times of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (New York: Chasidic Historical Productions, 1997), 2:71-208, 309-325 (chaps. 3-11), which includes many additional unknown and notorious pictures and documents about the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, specifically related to his years in Berlin, as well as an entire chapter devoted to "Pictures of the Rebbe during the 1920s and early 1930s." See here the infamous Haaretz articles (20-21-22 April 1998) about Prof. Menachem Friedman's travels throughout Berlin and research documenting where a young Rabbi and Mrs. Schneerson lived during their sojourn in Berlin. As mentioned in a previous post at the Michtavim blog, a forthcoming volume will be published this year by Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret: Post-Messianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

Yom Ha-Shoah ve-Ha-Gevurah 5769/2009

2009-04-20T22:47:00.000-04:00

Yom Ha-Shoah ve-Ha-Gevurah 5769/2009 began a number of hours ago in Jerusalem.

About the Israeli Knesset's decision (on 21 April 1951) to create the State of Israel's national day of Holocaust commemoration, now known as Yom Ha-Shoah ve-Ha-Gevurah, which takes place annually -- tonight -- on the 27th of Nissan, see James E. Young, "When A Day Remembers: A Performative History of Yom Hashoah," The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), 263-281 (chapter ten); Kimmy Caplan, "The Holocaust in Contemporary Israeli Haredi Popular Religion," Modern Judaism 22:2 (May 2002): 142–168; Ruth Ebenstein, "Remembered through Rejection: Yom Hashoah in the Ashkenazi Haredi Daily Press, 1950-2000," Israel Studies 8:3 (Fall 2003): 141-167; Arye Edrei, "Holocaust Memorial: A Paradigm of Competing Memories in the Religious and Secular Societies in Israel," in Doron Mendels, ed., On Memory: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007), 37-100; and, most-recently, Jacob J. Schacter, "Holocaust Commemoration and Tish'a be-Av: The Debate Over Yom Ha-Sho'a," Tradition 41:2 (Summer 2008): 1-33. For an analysis of the Hazon Ish's actual objections towards Yom Ha-Sho'a, see Benjamin Brown, "The Hazon Ish: Halakhic Philosophy, Theology, and Social Policy as Expressed in His Prominent Later Rulings," (PhD dissertation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2003), 499-506 (appendix twenty-eight: "Rabbi Aryeh Leib Spitz's Critique of the Hazon Ish's Position on the Holocaust Commemoration").

Tomorrow morning at 10:00am, the entire country will come to a standstill for but two minutes and amidst the wail of a siren and the silence of all of Israel's heart, we will recall the memories of our holy brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, those who we can remember and learn about, and those who we never knew and who we will never know, the more than six million men, women and children, "who were put to death, slaughtered, burned, starved, buried alive; or who suffered other forms of unnatural death," and may they be continue to be elevated to even higher rungs of the Heavenly Throne.

Recent Work on Rambam-Maimonides, Copernicus, etc.

2009-04-20T10:49:00.001-04:00

Over Pesach -- I believe that it was towards the end of schul on Rechov Hildesheimer in Jerusalem -- I received the good news that the most recent volume from the renowned Merkaz Zalman Shazar series on Judaism's greatest rabbis and thinkers had just been published by Moshe Halbertal, Maimonides (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2009; Hebrew), available here -- and for the entire series, see here -- wherein the author incorporated his several previous studies on the Rambam; most glaringly on pages 145-172, based on Moshe Halbertal, "What Is the Mishneh Torah? On Codification and Ambivalence," in Jay M. Harris, ed., Maimonides after 800 Years: Essays on Maimonides and His Influence (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 81-111.

Several months ago, on the occasion of the Rambam's 804th yahrzeit, I noted that the absolute latest and most-recent Maimonidean scholarship had been recently published in the two-volume work of Aviezer Ravitzky, ed., Maimonides: Conservatism, Originality, Revolution (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2008; Hebrew), available here, and the two dozen articles are crammed into the two volumes -- first volume ("History and Halakha") and the second volume ("Thought and Innovation"). For two recently-published articles by Prof. Ravitzky (may he have a refuah shelaimah), see Aviezer Ravitzky, "The Political Role of the Philosopher: Samuel Ibn Tibbon versus Maimonides," Maimonidean Studies 5 (2008): 345-374; and idem, "Aristotle's 'Meteorology' and the Maimonidean Modes of Interpreting the Account of Creation," Aleph 8 (2008): 361-400. See, as well, the recent work Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes: The Book of the Soul of Man, trans. James T. Robinson (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), and Carlos Fraenkel, From Maimonides to Samuel ibn Tibbon: The Transformation of the Dalalat al Ha'irin into the Moreh ha-Nevukhim (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2007; Hebrew). For an additional recent volume on Maimonidean scholarship -- curiously and interestingly mentioned amidst a fierce rabbinic exchange on the communication pages of the recently-published issue of Ohr Yisrael (#55) 14:3 (Nissan 5769): 250 -- is Marc B. Shapiro, Studies in Maimonides and His Interpreters (Scranton and London: University of Scranton Press, 2008), an elaboration and expanded discussion -- i.e., many more footnotes -- of his two earlier articles about Maimonides, in idem, "Maimonidean Halakhah and Superstition," Maimonidean Studies 4 (2000): 61-108, and "Principles of Interpretation in Maimonidean Halakhah: Traditional and Academic Perspectives," Maimonidean Studies 5 (2008): 57-83. For an early critique of Shapiro's recent monograph, see Asher Benzion Buchman, "A Hagiographer’s Review of 'Studies in Maimonides and His Interpreters'," Hakirah 7 (Winter 2009): 107-154.

Also included in the above-mentioned latest issue of Kovetz Ohr Yisrael, which I picked up last Friday morning -- several hours before my visit to Shuk Machane Yehuda, where I filmed this -- is Chaim Rapoport, "'But the World Endures Forever': On the Relationship Between the Torah Sages and the Views of Copernicus," Ohr Yisrael (#55) 14:3 (Nissan 5769): 207-218 (Hebrew); and related to this article, see the recent post by Eliezer Brodt, "R. David Nieto's Matteh Dan, Life on Other Planets and Jewish Reactions to Copernicus," the Seforim blog (22 March 2009), available here. Please let me know if you are interested in submitting a letter-to-the-editor, though anonymous communications will not receive a response (similarly, see here). For additional scholarship -- surprisingly not cited in Rapoport's above-article -- on Copernicus "and the Jews," see André Neher, "Copernicus in the Hebraic Literature from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century," Journal of the History of Ideas 38:2 (April-June 1977): 211-226, later incorporated into his idem, Jewish Thought and the Scientific Revolution of the Sixteenth Century: David Gans (1541-1613), trans. David Maisal (Oxford: Littman Library, Oxford University Press, 1986); David B. Ruderman, "Jewish Thought in Newtonian England: The Career and Writings of David Nieto (In Memory of Jacob J. Petuchowski)," Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 58 (1992): 193-219, later incorporated into his idem, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001); as well as Y. Tzvi Langermann, "The Astronomy of Rabbi Moses Isserles," in Sabetai Unguru, ed., Physics, Cosmology and Astronomy, 1300-1700: Tension and Accomodation (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), 83-98, reprinted in idem, The Jews and the Sciences in the Middle Ages (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), chap. seven; and David E. Fishman, "Rabbi Moses Isserles and the Study of Science Among Polish Rabbis," Science in Context 10:4 (December 1997): 571-588; Elchanan Reiner, "The Attitude of Ashkenazi Society to the New Science in the Sixteenth Century," Science in Context 10:4 (December 1997): 589-603; and Joseph M. Davis, "Ashkenazic Rationalism and Midrashic Natural History: Responses to the New Science in the Works of Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1578-1654)," Science in Context 10:4 (December 1997): 605-626.

Related to the then-804th yahrzeit of Maimonides and the earlier, last year, then-recent passing of Mr. Jacob I. Dienstag z"l, the retired long-time Judaica Librarian at the Mendel Gottesman Library of Yeshiva University and author of many essays of Maimonidean bibliographies; see -- what I titled -- Menachem Kellner, "Bibliography of Jacob I. Dienstag's Maimonides bibliographies," Jewish History 18:2-3 (May 2004): 284-289, from a forum on "Commemorating the Eight Hundredth Anniversary of Maimonides' Death." From this same issue, see for Moshe Idel, "Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed and the Kabbalah," Jewish History 18:2-3 (May 2004): 197-226. See also Elliot R. Wolfson, "Beneath the Wings of the Great Eagle: Maimonides and Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah," in Görge K. Hasselhoff & Otfried Fraisse, eds., Moses Maimonides (1138-1204): His Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Wirkungsgeschichte in Different Cultural Contexts (=Ex Oriente Lux: Rezeptionen und Exegesen als Traditionskritik, vol. 4) (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2004), 209-237; and idem, "Via Negativa in Maimonides and Its Impact on Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah," Maimonidean Studies 5 (2008): 393-442. See, also, Menachem Kellner, "Each Generation and its Maimonides: The Rambam of Rabbi Aharon Kotler," in Uri Ehrlich, Howard Kreisel, Daniel Lasker, eds., Al Pi ha-Be'er: Studies in Jewish Philosophy and in Halakhic Thought Presented to Gerald Blidstein (Be'er-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2008; Hebrew), 463-486; Chaim Rapoport, "'Dat ha-Emet' in Maimonides' Mishneh Torah," Meorot 7:1 (Tishrei 5769): 1-20, available here; and the response in Menachem Kellner, "Maimonides' 'True Religion': For Jews or All Humanity?" Meorot 7:1 (Tishrei 5769): 1-28, available here.

A growing field of interest within the historiography of Maimonidean scholarship is related to Early Modern maskilic perceptions of pre-Modern rabbinic thinkers. For two recent articles on Rambam, see Irene E. Zwiep, "From Moses to Moses...? Manifestations of Maimonides in the Early Jewish Enlightenment," in Görge K. Hasselhoff & Otfried Fraisse, eds., Moses Maimonides (1138-1204): His Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Wirkungsgeschichte in Different Cultural Contexts (=Ex Oriente Lux: Rezeptionen und Exegesen als Traditionskritik, vol. 4) (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2004), 323-336; and Allan Nadler, "The 'Rambam Revival' in Early Modern Jewish Though: Maskilim, Mitnagdim, and Hasidism on Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed," in Benny Kraut, ed., Moses Maimonides: Communal Impact, Historic Legacy (New York: Queens College Press, 2005), 36-61. For similar studies related to the Early Modern maskilic perceptions of (for example) R. Moses Hayim Luzzatto (Ramchal) and Judah HaLevi, respectively, see Joelle Hansel, "Philosophy and Kabbalah in the Eighteenth Century: Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Commentator of Maimonides," in Martin F.J. Baastein & Reinier Munk, eds., Studies in Hebrew Literature and Jewish Culture: Presented to Albert van der Heide on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 213-227; and Israel Bartal, "On Periodization, Mysticism and Enlightenment: The Case of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto," in David B. Ruderman and Shmuel Feiner, eds., Early Modern Culture and Haskalah: Reconsidering the Borderlines of Modern Jewish History [=Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 6] (2007), 201-214. For Judah HaLevi, see Adam Shear, "The Later History of a Medieval Hebrew Book: Studies in the Reception of Judah HaLevi's Sefer Ha-Kuzari," (PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2003), esp. 365-534 (chapter four: "The Kuzari among the Maskilim, their Opponents, and Successors"), which has recently been published as idem, Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); and his earlier idem, "Judah Halevi's Sefer ha-Kuzari in Early Modern Ashkenaz and the Early Haskalah: A Case Study in the Transmission of Cultural Knowledge," in Resianne Fontaine, Andrea Schatz, and Irene Zwiep, eds., Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth-Century Enlightened Jewish Discourse (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen/ Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007), 69-83, available here. For a recently-reissued popular edition of the Kuzari, see N. Daniel Korobkin, The Kuzari: In Defense of the Despised Faith (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1998; 2nd edition, Jerusalem: Feldheim Publishers, 2009).