Why Study Talmud in the Twenty-first Century?
Why Study Talmud in the Twenty-first Century? The Relevance of the Ancient Jewish Text to Our World
Paul Socken
LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
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Published by Lexington Books A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.lexingtonbooks.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Socken, Paul, 1945Why study Talmud in the twenty-first century? : the relevance of the ancient Jewish text to our world / Paul Socken. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-4200-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-4202-8 (electronic) 1. Talmud. I. Title. BM501.S63 2009 296.1’25—dc22 2009027478 Printed in the United States of America
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Dedication
This volume is dedicated to Moshe Avraham Weissmann and Temima Esther Weissmann, my grandchildren. May they grow in Torah and in good deeds.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
ix
Talmud Introduction
1
Women’s Voices
9
Elizabeth Shanks Alexander
11
Judith Baskin
25
Jane Kanarek
41
Devora Steinmetz
47
Devorah Zlochower
67
Teaching Talmud
73
Tsvi Blanchard
75
Pinchas Hayman
93
Academics Respond
103
Michael Chernick
105
Shaye Cohen
125
Yaakov Elman
135
Richard Kalmin
151
Ephraim Kanarfogel
161 vii
viii
Table of Contents
Jeffrey Rubenstein
177
Barry Wimpfheimer
195
Azzan Yadin
207
A Philosopher’s Approach David Novak
221 223
Bibliography
241
Biographies
243
Index
251
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Professor Arnold Ages, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the University of Waterloo, and Professor James Diamond, Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo, for their invaluable advice on this project. A good idea is of little value if one cannot develop it and their assistance was indispensable. I am deeply grateful for their kindness and their friendship.
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Talmud Introduction
My family moved back to Toronto after many years in Kitchener-Waterloo, a mid-sized city with a major university, where I still work, and a small, closeknit Jewish community. In Kitchener-Waterloo, I studied Bible (Chumash) with the revered and brilliant teacher, Rabbi Phyvle Rosensweig. Once in Toronto and commuting to the University of Waterloo, I took up the study of Talmud.1 However, not having a day/parochial school or yeshiva background, this was truly a daunting task and very different from the analysis of French and French-Canadian literature, my academic field. Literary critics tell university students that authors invite readers into their novelistic world and share with them their vision. We remind students of Coleridge’s dictum of the willing suspension of disbelief until they have a complete view of the author’s universe and are in a position to judge. Talmud is different. Besides the obvious difference of the Talmud’s dealing with the interpretation of the sacred and the writer’s usually secular vision, it would be impossible to wait until all of Talmud is thoroughly examined before coming to conclusions because of the vastness of the Talmudic enterprise. Nevertheless, after seventeen years of study, I have more than a passing acquaintance with both the content and the methodology of Talmud. As has been noted before, Talmud is perhaps the first interactive text. Not only do rabbis over a period of approximately five hundred years comment on one another’s interpretations, the extensive and elaborate reflections continue through the Middle Ages and beyond in sidebar comments and analyses. This massive set of volumes is clearly the distillation of many centuries of thought and wisdom that have been transmitted to each succeeding generation.2 However, the point needs to be acknowledged that Talmud is studied by a fraction of the world’s Jews. In addition, the organization, presentation, and 1
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discussion of the issues raised are sometimes exceedingly detailed, elaborate, and ostensibly unfocused. This was essentially an oral tradition that was eventually set down in writing and reflects the informal structure of oral transmission. This means that comprehension is not automatic, that understanding evolves over time, that texts sometimes seem impenetrable, and that their relevance to today’s world is not always obvious. Understanding that most Jews have little or no knowledge of Talmud and realizing that its study requires a serious, disciplined, long-term commitment, I asked myself why it is studied at all. What reward is there for such engagement and effort? What precisely is the point? Those committed to it have done so for so many years that I am not sure they have reflected on the “Why?” of the matter. It is part of the chain of sacred transmission from Mount Sinai, it is a link through the millennia to the great Sages and their insights. That, I imagined, would be the response of most practitioners of the tradition. I set out to pose the question to some of the finest academic Talmudists and to get their considered response. To receive answers that were worthy of the subject, I cast my net very wide. I decided to ask scholars from Israel, the United States, and Canada and from a broad range of Jewish interpretive traditions. It seemed to me that this was not a topic that should be restricted to a parochial approach, hence my inclusion of thinkers and teachers from a variety of Jewish schools of thought. One thing I have learned is that Talmud should not be the exclusive domain of any single group and that, if it is to be appreciated widely, it must be broadly approached. The revered Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein addressed this issue in a chapter (“Why Learn Gemara?”) of his book Leaves of Faith.3 After conceding that the text itself is “unwieldy, rambling, allusive and convoluted,” he identifies four factors that make the study of Gemara/Talmud essential. The first is “its status as a primary—in a sense . . . the primary—text” of Jewish sources so that the “sense of challenge and concomitant invigoration is pervasive.” Second, the student of Gemara feels “the pulsating presence of our masters in the primal forge of the [Oral Law].” The third factor is the “substantive nature” of Gemara: “anecdote and proverb jostle with rigorous textual and legal analysis; within which the excitement of confrontation takes precedence over the lucidity of exposition, discourse over conclusion, debate over resolution—such is the fabric of the Gemara.” Finally, he concludes that the individual becomes wholly engaged as a result of the process, “the activated self is then open to a more intensive relationship, religious as well as intellectual.” What I found even more striking than the four reasons for studying Talmud was his realization that the question “Why Study Gemara/Talmud?” was not merely one for novices: “The question may also be asked of bnei Torah
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(students of Torah) fully committed, intellectually and emotionally, to the study of Gemara, and yet seeking to define the basis of their aspiration. Even when no need is felt for an apologia or a raison d’être to shore up personal learning, a richer understanding of its import may very well enhance it.” From this perceptive and insightful acknowledgement from one of the great Torah sages of the modern era, I took encouragement and inspiration. Elizabeth Shanks Alexander views Talmud study as both an academic exercise and an intensely personal Jewish experience. She sees the Talmud as an important great text of world literature in its ability to develop critical thinking, amongst other qualities. However, it also presents an opportunity for 21st century Jews to come to an understanding of Judaism and themselves in ways not possible before because of the postmodern acceptance of sustained contradictions. New research holds profound implications for the role of women in Judaism. In light of the fact that “revealed texts demand continuous rereading,” Judith Baskin discusses what she discovered about “rabbinic convictions of female otherness.” The Talmud’s view of women is as varied as it is on every other subject, but the fundamental belief is in the separate nature, the distinctions, between men and women, physically, morally, and intellectually. Baskin reads the rabbinic interpretation of the source of women’s subordinate status as Divine intention from the moment of her creation. Why, then, should she and others study Talmud today? Baskin concludes with a series of reasons, including the fact that it is a “rich and enduring component of the Jewish heritage,” that its teachings “united and sustained Jewish life and identity,” and “all contemporary forms of Jewish religious life are constructed on the foundation of rabbinic Judaism.” In addition, feminist interpreters have focussed on alternative and minority voice in the Talmud, a text of “endless possibilities.” Tsvi Blanchard sees Talmud as part of one of the great human wisdom traditions. Like other contributors, he finds talking about Talmud to be impossible without exploring specific passages because the ideas are inextricably embedded in the text. In order to discuss values, meaning, and culture in the Talmud, he studies a passage about cooking and comes to the conclusion that the Talmudic discussion, ostensibly a technical disagreement about placing food on a fire on Sabbath, reveals a cultural distinction about the nature of food and cooking. Similarly, prohibitions about moving objects on the Sabbath and what we may wear engage fundamental cultural questions about the nature of how we dress. In the arena of illness and healing, Talmudic passages portray a profound sensitivity to the fear of death and to mortality itself. Finally, Blanchard gives legal examples of compensation for liability. He finds that the Talmud allows for a creative ambiguity between the individual’s desire for strict jus-
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tice and society’s need for social harmony. Balance is provided by an intricate legal system tempered by much experience and great wisdom. In “The Meaning and Purpose of Contemporary Talmud Study,” Michael Chernick makes the claim that knowledge of the Talmud’s literary structure provides insight into the “more global messages” that Talmud’s particular way of expressing itself generates. Those messages include grappling with the notion of truth and the extent to which truth is accessible. The Talmud’s content has important lessons to teach, including the “totality of what it is to be human, and especially human in a particularly Jewish way.” While the whole paper is valuable and instructive, I found Chernick’s treatment of what he calls “hard cases,” ones that “moderns would find problematic if not unpalatable” to be particularly striking. Finally, understanding Talmudic reasoning “has the potential to help the Jewish people develop meaningful responses to emerging contemporary religious and secular concerns.” Shaye Cohen’s “Why Study Talmud” is a response on two levels, the personal and the general. As an individual, Cohen is a lover of antiquity, has been immersed in Talmud study since his youth, considers himself good at parsing it, and enjoys it as an intellectual challenge. His elaboration of just how intellectually challenging it can be is entertaining and illustrative. He places the rabbis of the Talmud in their historic context and demonstrates lacunae as well as greatness. He praises the Talmud’s ability to support conflicting positions on a single question and concludes with a stimulating and contentious reason for others to study Talmud. Yaakov Elman asks why Jews educated in Jewish schools often turn away from the study of Talmud and suggests that it is because they do not understand the extent to which “the Bavli presents us with a microcosm of a Torah society in formation,” that its “society holds up a mirror to our own, and we may learn a tremendous amount from the challenges its leaders . . . met and overcame.” This view permits the Talmud to become relevant and seen as “a fascinating, exciting, stimulating and even captivating work.” Pinchas Hayman argues for the exclusive status of Torah study which inextricably includes Talmud: “Other disciplines teach knowledge; Torah teaches existence. Other disciplines help us know or do, Torah helps us to be.” For Hayman, asking why we should study Talmud reflects a modern disconnect from the Jewish oral tradition. Modern Jewish identity is influenced by the Protestant Reformation’s rejection of the Catholic interpretive tradition. Emancipated Jews in Protestant western Europe essentially became Protestant Jews with an emphasis on individual interpretation and a rejection of the oral law (Talmud). Hayman writes that the traditional Jew believes that the oral law is part of an ongoing, divine revelation: “I learn Talmud, therefore I am a Jew.” The extraordinarily complex combination and interplay of languages,
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history, law, stories, authors, and perspectives yields a unique text of unsurpassing value that constitutes its own universe. Hayman’s contention is that the Talmud’s associative thinking, without restriction, as opposed to a topic by topic approach, reflects a monotheistic view of the world—“all knowledge is one since all creation is one, the work of the One.” Richard Kalmin came to Torah study as a graduate student with no background. He appreciated the “concreteness” of the text and its ability to assist him in experiencing “the sights and sounds of antiquity.” As a Conservative Jew, he appreciated the Talmud’s “multiplicity of possibilities and legitimate alternatives” and its ability to “expand my notions about what is possible in a human being.” He presents an imaginative reading of the Talmud’s discussion about a woman’s rights and obligations concerning the benediction after meals (Berakhot 20b) to illustrate his thesis. Jane Kanarek, in “Ancient Voices,” also confronts the inevitable difficulty of being a woman and a Talmudist, a field previously an exclusively male domain. She movingly recounts her own personal journey toward Talmud study and eventually her adoption of it as a professional teacher and researcher in the field. She examines the reasons for her attraction to Talmud study, including the acquisition of “a deep voice within the Jewish world” and an understanding of “how I want to live as a Jew.” Torah learning may well be a commandment (mitzvah), but it also provides great enjoyment writes Ephraim Kanarfogel. In his essay, he sets out the reasons that this particular form of study affords him such pleasure—from the linguistic and literary challenges to understanding the concepts that buttress the text: “the ability of someone to find something really new to say in the midst of so much that has come before . . . is truly exciting.” David Novak’s contribution examines the Talmud as a source of philosophical reflection. He asserts first, that there is such a thing as religious philosophy —and Jewish philosophy in particular—and that the most important Jewish thinker of the rabbinic tradition, Maimonides, considered it an actual religious duty to practice philosophy (for those who were inclined and able to do so). In this current volume, Jeffrey Rubenstein (“Talmudic Stories and their Rewards”) lists a host of reasons for studying Talmud, chief among them being the biographical anecdotes about the Sages whose aim is to teach values, beliefs, and ideals which are relevant today. His illustration of these lessons, based on two passages from the Talmud, demonstrate how Talmudic stories move characters—and the reader—from a conventional, simplistic view of reality to a deeper spiritual insight, helping to mold the reader’s moral and spiritual character. His complex, multilayered analysis yields profound insights into the meaning of Talmudic passages. His discussion of a revealing
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passage in Tractate Menahot stunningly reflects a deep rabbinic frustration in understanding theodicy. Devora Steinmetz argues that Talmud study should be a component of religious practice that shapes a person’s life, not only an essential part of one’s formal education. She uses a number of texts to demonstrate the Talmudic ability—among many other values—to shape attitudes, make one appreciate the wisdom of another’s point of view, and thereby to instill a sense of humility. She applies the lessons of Talmud as a living text to modern Israel in a dramatic and engaging fashion. Barry Wimpfheimer’s submission is based on a personal anecdote about a question asked of him at a shiva house. The question leads Wimpfheimer to reflect on the relationship between traditional scholars of Talmud and academics. He concludes that the intellectual creativity in both approaches yields a joy in learning that is similar and that is unique to Talmud study no matter who is studying the text and no matter the setting. Azzan Yadin’s contribution is unique. As a secular Jew deeply immersed in the academic study of Talmud, he chooses to recount his personal relationship in a series of four vignettes. He reveals a profoundly emotional as well as scholarly attachment to Talmud, at one moment calling it “overwhelming”: “I felt the historic chasm that separated me from the Talmudic sages collapse.” His analysis of royal power would hardly be typical of traditional rabbinic commentary, but it is in keeping with his desire “to think through questions of meaning and interpretation together with the rabbinic texts themselves.” Devorah Zlochower adds to this collection an intensely personal meditation on the question of being a woman and a student of Talmud. She plumbs the depths of both her own personal journey toward the discovery and the teaching of Talmud and the omnipresent tension that enterprise necessarily engenders. Secular studies did not satisfy her desire for spiritual sustenance, and so her quest for Talmud was undertaken after three and a half years of graduate school. She grappled then, as she does now, with how Talmud speaks to her as a woman of the 21st century who seeks religious meaning in these texts. She concludes that she finds herself “engaged in an impossible dance between delight in tradition and its foundational texts and discomfort with its limitations and exclusions.” When organizing the structure of the volume, I thought it would be simplest to place the essays in alphabetical order, as any ordering is almost certainly arbitrary. However, I finally decided to divide the text into four parts— women’s voices, academics respond, teaching Talmud, and a philosopher’s appraisal. I am fully aware of the cross-overs—for example, the women contributors are academics, indeed so are all the eminent writers. Still, I wanted
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to convey a sense of the variety and range of responses. Talmud study engages women as academics, but also—and in some cases, primarily—as women; David Novak is a celebrated academic and a philosopher as well, and so forth. It is my hope that this volume will yield “a richer understanding”—to borrow Rav Aharon Lichtenstein’s phrase—amongst the cognoscenti, serve as an enticing introduction to those unfamiliar with the rich heritage, and provide insights, understanding, and motivation for those embarked on the voyage of Jewish self-discovery.
ENDNOTES 1. If the Bible is the cornerstone of Judaism, then the Talmud is the central pillar, soaring up from the foundations and supporting the entire spiritual and intellectual edifice. In many ways the Talmud is the most important book in Jewish culture, the backbone of creativity and of national life. No other work has had a comparable influence on the theory and practice of Jewish life, shaping spiritual content and serving as a guide to conduct. The Jewish people have always been keenly aware that their continued survival and development depend on study of the Talmud, and those hostile to Judaism have also been cognizant of this fact. The book was reviled, slandered, and consigned to the flames countless times in the Middle Ages and has been subjected to similar indignities in the recent past as well. At times, Talmudic study has been prohibited because it was abundantly clear that a Jewish society that ceased to study this work had no real hope of survival. The formal definition of the Talmud is the summary of oral law that evolved after centuries of scholarly effort by sages who lived in Palestine and Babylonia until the beginning of the Middle Ages. It has two main components: the Mishnah, a book of halakhah (law) written in Hebrew; and the commentary on the Mishnah, known as the Talmud (or Gemarah), in the limited sense of the word, a summary of discussion and elucidations of the Mishnah written in Aramaic-Hebrew jargon. This explanation, however, though formally correct, is misleading and imprecise. The Talmud is the repository of thousands of years of Jewish wisdom, and the oral law, which is as ancient and significant as the written law (the Torah), finds expression therein. It is a conglomerate of law, legend, and philosophy, a blend of unique logic and shrewd pragmatism, of history and science, anecdotes and humor. It is a collection of paradoxes: its framework is orderly and logical, every word and term subjected to meticulous editing, completed centuries after the actual work of composition came to an end; yet it is still based on free association, on a harnessing together of diverse ideas reminiscent of the modern stream-of-consciousness novel. Although its main objective is to interpret and comment on a book of law, it is, simultaneously, a work of art that goes beyond legislation and its practical application. And although the Talmud is, to this day, the primary source of Jewish law, it
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cannot be cited as an authority for purposes of ruling. Adin Steinsaltz, The Essential Talmud, New York: Basis Books, 1976. 2. For an outstanding appreciation and explanation of Talmud that is accessible and even lyrical at times, see “Chapter 15. The Talmud,” “Chapter 16. Jewish Common Law,” and “Chapter 17. From the Talmud to the Present” in Herman Wouk, This is My God: The Jewish Way of Life, New York: Pocket Books (Simon and Schuster), 1974. 3. Jersey City, NJ: Ktav, 2003.
Part I
WOMEN’S VOICES
Why Study Talmud in the 21st Century: The View from a Large Public University OR Studying Talmud as a Critical Thinker Elizabeth Shanks Alexander
I had my first meaningful encounter with Talmud when I was an undergraduate Religion major at a liberal arts college. A short selection from the Talmud appeared on the syllabus of my Intro to Religion class. The class exposed students to sacred texts from various world religions: the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, the New Testament, the Quran and hadith, the Mahabarata, and the Dhammapada. Until this point, the Talmud for me was nothing more than a collection of aphorisms from which my Conservative rabbi occasionally quoted in his sermons. I knew that Jews regarded the Talmud as a central text, but I couldn’t begin to tell you how or why. In the afternoon Hebrew school that I attended twice a week, I had learned that the Talmud was a commentary on the Mishnah and that the Mishnah was a commentary on the Torah. I knew the definition so I could quote it by heart, but it didn’t add anything to my understanding. The professor who introduced me to the Talmud was a specialist in early Christian theology. He probably knew as much about the Talmud as he did about the Mahabarata: not a lot by professional standards, but enough to stay two steps ahead of us undergraduates . . . and enough to select a few accessible, but intriguing passages for us to break our teeth on. He may not have been an expert in the Talmud, but he was a master at close reading. He knew how to tease meaning out of cryptic passages, alerting us to implicit claims of the text. I loved my first exposure to the text: the Talmud was replete with subtle textual clues that could be mined for rich, and often opposing or counterintuitive, claims. My professor’s knack for close reading meant we regarded each textual detail as the tip of an iceberg which lay deep beneath the surface of the text. Our goal was to imagine the shape, size, and contours of each structure. 11
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This minimal exposure to Talmud was enough to light a fire. From my other classes I had already come to feel a strong affinity for the method of close reading emphasized by my Religion professors. When I turned to apply these methods to Jewish texts, I was surprised at how much more deeply I was able to probe. When reading the Talmud, I had a sixth sense that allowed me to push my readings in unexpected, but productive, directions. What’s more, the Talmud with its cryptic, but suggestive, style lent itself to slow, purposeful reading. This material was for me—and I knew it. I wanted to study more. I often joke ruefully that if my undergraduate Religion major had offered an Intro to Talmud class I might have saved myself the arduous labor of getting a Ph.D. But none of my professors were experts in Judaism and none had condensed the intricacies of Talmudic thinking into a one-semester syllabus suitable for undergraduate consumption. Lacking that option, I applied straight out of my undergraduate major in Religion to do a Ph.D. in rabbinic literature. One could reasonably ask why, given my newly ignited passion for Talmud study, I chose to pursue a Ph.D. I needn’t have taken eight long years to do coursework, comprehensive exams and write a dissertation. By the late eighties when I graduated from college, traditional settings for serious women’s learning were popping up all over the place. It was about that time that Vanessa Ochs published the book Words on Fire, chronicling her experiences at the many places of high-level women’s study in Jerusalem. The fact is it never occurred to me to spend a year or two at one of the yeshiva-like institutions for women in Jerusalem or New York. My intellectual aspirations were shaped so strongly by my undergraduate experience that I couldn’t imagine pursuing them outside the academy. For one thing, I wanted to apply the methods of close reading I had practiced in college on the sacred texts of so many other traditions to a Jewish text where my interpretive instincts were more acute. For another, I left college with a mission: I wanted to get the Talmud up on the same shelves with Plato and Aristotle in the “great books” curriculum. As an undergraduate, I was entranced by my classes in philosophy and theology. Discussing the questions that had absorbed the great thinkers of history allowed me and my cohorts to wrestle with them anew: How could God be both all-powerful and all-good? What is the nature of the “good”? What is the essence of “being”? Does the world exist beyond our sensory experiences of it? Is there a purpose behind creation and nature? By engaging the questions that fed the engine of the Western philosophical and theological traditions, we came up against both the limits and the grandeur of human existence and tried to imagine our place in the world. I was sure that wrestling with the intricacies of the Talmud could play an important role in the undergraduate drama of intellectual discovery. Doing a Ph.D. would equip me to teach Talmud at a university or college where I could make my vision a reality.
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Finally, it never occurred to me to go a religious environment for Talmud study because when I graduated from college I was not religious. Drawing an analogy between how sacred texts functioned in other traditions, I recognized that the Talmud could serve as a wellspring for Jewish identity. I wanted to avail myself of this valuable resource for constructing and grounding my own identity as a secular Jew. I sensed that in traditional settings, the range of possible selves that would emerge from Talmud study would be limited. I feared that my questions would be dismissed—not necessarily because they were theologically threatening, but because they were irrelevant by virtue of being shaped in a different intellectual setting. I wanted to be able to ask questions freely because experience had taught me that the degree of textual insight one achieves is proportionate to the intensity with which one interrogates the text. To put the matter in crude political terms, I wanted to take the Talmud back from Orthodox Jews who I perceived to be dominating the field of Talmud study. I acknowledged that Orthodox Jews were the experts of Talmud study. But I feared that if I availed myself of their expertise I would have to accept their social and theological framing of the text, which I was not prepared to do. In retrospect, I don’t think I need have been as wary of traditional settings for study as I was, but that was how I thought about things at the time. As I entered my doctoral program, I was dimly aware that two different selves were embarking on the journey. On one hand, I came to the Talmud as an intellectual citizen of the world—tied to no culture or tradition except scholarly excellence. This side of me wanted to study Talmud so I could integrate it into the liberal arts curriculum where it could serve as fodder for the self-formation of young adults. I felt that the Talmud was relevant to people from all backgrounds and faiths, as long as they were committed to the mission of the university. On the other hand, I came to the Talmud as a Jew, eager to find within it models for the construction of my own contemporary identity. This side of me was parochial, invested in the Talmud because of what it offered my people and my people alone: a guide for what it means to live as a Jew. Since entering graduate school, these two selves have grown and become stronger on their respective paths. Eighteen years later, each has a very different answer to the question “Why Study Talmud in the 21st Century?”
THE TALMUD WITHIN THE LIBERAL ARTS CURRICULUM I teach at a large public university that emphasizes excellence in undergraduate teaching. According to the latest figures, only ten percent of the student population is Jewish, which means I teach mostly non-Jews. Very occasionally in my upper-level courses, the Jewish enrollment will hit fifty
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percent. It is much more common, however, for Jewish students to comprise a mere ten to twenty percent of my classes. Teaching my “Intro to Talmud” class to a group that has little, if any, prior exposure to the Talmud, I’ve learned that I need to build investment in the material from the first day of class. As the semester goes on, students invariably get frustrated by the Talmud’s logical complexity and technical arcana. Their brains are ready to burst when I walk them through such things as the biblical derivation of the Mishnah’s four categories of damages or Abaye and Rava’s competing understandings of the principle of “despair without [active] knowledge.” If they don’t have a good sense of why this material is relevant to their lives, they can become discouraged and lose momentum. I can’t be subtle. I need to be very transparent about what they stand to gain. I start by building up the mystique of Talmud study. I acknowledge that following the complex logical sequences that make up Talmudic argumentation will challenge them. But, I tell them, once you can follow the argument, you will marvel at its subtleties; you will be enchanted by its playful turns of logic. I also discuss the social context in which Talmud has been studied historically. I note that up until about thirty years ago Talmud study was the exclusive prerogative of men. Being learned in Talmud was a way to achieve premiere social status in Jewish society, but women were denied the privilege. I tell my students that, like them, I had to learn Talmud as an outsider. I reassure them that by the end of the semester sequences of Talmudic argumentation will make sense to them. I’ve thought long and hard about how to translate Talmudic logic (internally consistent, but utterly foreign to Western-trained minds) into paradigms comfortable to those acculturated in Western modes of thinking. To up the ante, I note that a fair number of people think that it’s impossible to “teach Talmud” if you’re working in translation; according to them, the best one can hope for is to teach about Talmud. I, however, know I can teach them Talmud, Talmud itself. I want my students to feel special: that they are about to enter an exclusive, elite club. Next I connect Talmud study to other aspects of their liberal arts curriculum. As a teacher in the university, one of my most important mandates is the cultivation of critical thinking in my students. The practice of critical thinking requires rigorous interrogation of evidence before reaching conclusions. In order to do this honestly, we must recognize where our assumptions bias our interpretation of the data. Often students aren’t even aware of how their assumptions act on them. For example, a student may superimpose onto a text her assumption that the very concept of God implies a God that is all-powerful when the text clearly indicates its author thought otherwise. One of my chief pedagogical challenges is to help students disentangle their assumptions from legitimate observations about the text.
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I want my students to read Jewish texts without the overlay of their preconceived ideas. I want them to construct their interpretations on the basis of concrete textual evidence. These are fine pedagogical goals, you may say, but how are they served by the study of Talmud, specifically? The short answer is that because Talmudic logic is so thoroughly unfamiliar to students, their hardwired assumptions do them little good. Following Talmudic logic requires taking on altogether new habits of thinking. Throughout the semester I work on identifying the assumptions that govern Talmudic thinking and illustrating how they work themselves out in specific texts. Students are especially bewildered by the assumptions that inform the rabbis’ reading of biblical scripture. In order to illustrate the difference between their intuitive way of engaging biblical texts and the rabbis’ strategy of reading I liken individual verses of the Bible to the tiles in our classroom floor. The floor is made up of countless squares lined flush against each other on single plane. If we were to start in one corner of the room, we could trace a line from one tile to the next until we reached the next corner. Then we would move onto the next row of tiles and the next. Eventually, we would trace the surface of the entire floor. That way of mapping out the relationship between the tiles conforms to my students’ intuitive way of interacting with the biblical text. They read the text linearly, moving from one tile to the next. For them, each verse makes best sense in light of the verses immediately preceding and following it. For example, Exodus 2:7 (which tells of a young girl offering to fetch a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby that the Egyptian princess has just drawn from the Nile) makes most sense when read in the context of the surrounding verses. Exodus 2:7 illuminates one moment in a story about a baby who had to be thrown into the Nile because of Pharaoh’s evil decree, but who was miraculously saved by the princess, who drew him out of the water, and the baby’s sister, who went to fetch the baby’s mother to nurse the child. In its broader narrative context, it tells how Moses was rescued so he could go on to save his entire people from Pharaoh. Gesturing to several rows of tiles on right side of the room, I propose that these tiles represent the Five Books of Moses. In our way of reading, we step from tile to tile, from line to line. As we move into the center of the room, we leave behind one set of stories and shift to another. Now we are reading through the Prophets. Finally, as we reach the left side of the room, we have progressed to the last section of the Bible, the Writings. For us, each tile is secured in its place by those immediately preceding and following it. We are used to reading the Bible in a linear manner. The Talmudic rabbis, however, had a totally different way of interacting with the tiles. They pulled individual tiles out of their spots on the floor and stacked them one on top of the other. For the rabbis, it didn’t matter if the
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tiles were from different parts of the room. They read the tiles vertically, rather than horizontally. That is, they divorced verses from their local literary context and created new contexts based their own fanciful sense of what belonged with what. For example, in the Talmudic way of reading, Exodus 2:7 (“Then his sister said to Pharoah’s daughter: Shall I go get you a Hebrew nurse to suckle the child for you?”) is most profitably read with Isaiah 28:9 (“To whom would He give instruction? . . . To those newly weaned from milk, just taken away from the breast?”). The students resist: Stacking the tiles on top of each other like this does damage to the floor. The two verses have nothing to do with each other. Each belongs in its own setting in its own part of the floor. Indeed, if one reads as they are accustomed to reading, the two verses have no bearing on one another. I gently prod them, however, to accept an alternate way of imagining connections. Once detached from their respective narrative contexts, what comes to the fore is that each verse talks about suckling babies. Exodus 2:7 describes Miriam offering to find a Hebrew woman to nurse Moses. Isaiah 28:9 discusses the ability of newly weaned babies to receive God’s instruction. For the rabbis, the common allusion to nursing shows the two verses to be entirely relevant to one another. The rabbis of the Talmud offer the following fanciful reading of Exodus 2:7 based on the “nursing” connection: Why, they ask, did Miriam specify in her offer that she would find a Hebrew woman to nurse the child? Apparently she knew that the princess had already auditioned all the available Egyptian wet nurses. In each case, however, Moses had refused to suck. This explanation of Exodus 2:7 is implied by Isaiah 28:9: “To whom would God give instruction?” Through whom would God eventually give the Torah? To Moses: that is, “to one just taken away from the breast,” one just taken away from the breasts of the Egyptians!1 No, my students exclaim: The Talmudic interpretation is a distortion of Isaiah 28:9. In its original narrative context Isaiah’s question is a rhetorical one. When the prophet asks, “To whom would God give instruction?” he’s criticizing the contemporary leaders by suggesting they are not up to the job. When the prophet gives the answer that God should give instruction “to one just taken away from the breast” he’s making an absurd suggestion. Of course a newly weaned baby can’t absorb God’s instruction. By saying that only a newly weaned baby is pure enough, he’s emphasizing the corruption of those who should properly be receiving God’s instruction: the priests and prophets of his day. My students resist: How can the rabbis say that Isaiah 28:9 refers to Moses eventually being able to “receive God’s instruction” because he was “taken away from the breast” of the Egyptian women?! I have become accustomed to the internal resistance students display towards the underlying assumptions governing Talmudic logic. In fact, only
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when my students express their discomfort with this foreign system do I generally feel they have wrestled with it sufficiently. It seems students need to articulate how Talmudic logic is counterintuitive to them in order for them to recognize where their own cultural biases conflict with fundamental assumptions of the Talmud. My ultimate goal is for the students to be able to regard this foreign system sympathetically in light of its own internal consistency. If one is stacking verses vertically, rather than lining them up linearly, this interpretation does make sense. Of course, I do not require that my student abandon their own deeply held commitments or the underlying structures that shape their thinking; I ask only that they be able to reflect simultaneously on another way of encountering the text. In the end, my students may not choose to read Exodus 2:7 as the Talmud does, but they can marvel at the cleverness displayed by the Talmud’s reading and the deep familiarity with the biblical text it exhibits. This ability to balance two different ways of seeing (their own intuitive one and the learned one they must adopt in order for the Talmudic text to make sense) represents a high level of critical thinking. When I engage my students in this delicate balancing act, I help them strengthen their “critical thinking” muscles. Talmud study promotes the ability to hold on to two different, even mutually exclusive, ways of viewing the same data because the Talmud itself models the practice. In a standard move of Talmudic argumentation the Talmud shows how two competing interpretations of a single datum are equally viable. In this move, the Talmud initially represents one position as more compatible with a particular piece of evidence. The argument goes on to show, however, that a second, contradictory position can also be reconciled with the evidence. Consider the famous argument between Abaye and Rava on the question of whether one needs to be aware of a loss in order for the lost object to become ownerless (hefker). The significance of an object being ownerless is that when another person happens upon an ownerless object, he or she becomes its new owner. By way of contrast, if a person finds an object that still legally belongs to another person (non-hefker), then the finder is obligated to return the object to its rightful owner. Abaye and Rava have different opinions about the conditions under which a lost object becomes ownerless. Abaye says the owner must actively be aware of the loss and despair of recovering the object in order for it to become ownerless. Rava, on the other hand, suggests there is a legal principle called “despair without knowledge.” Even though an owner may not be aware of his loss, we may presume that he will eventually become aware of his loss. We may also presume that when he does become aware, he will despair of recovering the lost object. The principle of “despair without knowledge” is relevant to the case where a person finds an object before
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the owner has become aware of his loss. According to Rava, the finder may keep the lost object because we assume the owner “despairs without [active] knowledge” of so doing. A rule in the Mishnah seems to support Rava’s position. The mishnah (m. Baba Metzia 2:1) stipulates that a person who finds coins scattered on the street may keep them. Apparently, the coins are considered to be ownerless. But how did they become so? Was the owner aware of his loss and did he actively despair over the lost coins? Or is the owner not yet aware of his loss, in which case we must assume that the coins became ownerless through an act of “despair without knowledge”? At first blush, the mishnah seems to provide evidence in support of Rava’s position. The mishnah says nothing about the owner being aware of his loss, and yet the mishnah regards the scattered coins as ownerless. Apparently, the mishnah takes for granted the principle of “despair without [active] knowledge,” or so claims Rava. The Talmud is quick, however, to show that there is more than one way to read the mishnaic rule. The rule can also be show to be compatible with Abaye’s position. The Talmud explains that since coins are valuable the owner constantly checks his pocket to make sure they are still there. Owing to the frequent checks, the owner becomes aware of his loss almost immediately. In this way of reading, the mishnah also comports with the view of Abaye. The finder is able to claim the coins as his own because the owner is aware of having lost the coins and has actively despaired over the loss.2 The positions of Abaye and Rava on the question of whether one needs to despair actively in order for a lost object to become ownerless are mutually opposed. Nonetheless, both draw support for their respective positions from the same mishnaic rule. In order for my students to follow this argument, they must be able to inhabit two different points of view with equal sympathy. At these moments, the Talmud promotes mental flexibility; it forces the students to let go of their investment in one or another interpretation as the “natural” or “right” one. Talmud study also opens one to recognizing the full range of interpretations any set of words can bear. It leads us to see texts in fresh and new ways. In the first Talmudic interpretation I discussed we now see new significance in the fact that Miriam specified that she would find a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby. Miriam’s offer of a Hebrew woman was introduced to solve the problem presented by the Egyptian wet nurses (from whom the baby would not suck). Who would have thought Miriam’s reference to Hebrew women was anything more than incidental? Likewise, the second Talmudic interpretation I discussed helps us see the mishnaic rule in a way we had not initially anticipated. We might have assumed that the rule takes for granted that the owner has despaired over his loss without conscious “knowledge” of so doing. Now, however, we know there is a different way to read the rule.
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In these and many other cases, the Talmud trains its students to perceive the world around them in fresh, creative, and even counterintuitive ways. I like to tell the story of two wayward Talmud students. No matter how much their teachers reprimand them, they can’t sit still. In a final move of desperation, the rabbi sends the students to the local tennis court to blow off some steam. “Don’t come back until you’re ready to sit down seriously,” he yells after them. Five minutes later, they’re back, with nary a drop of sweat on their foreheads. “Nu?” the rabbi asks. The students explain that they came back because of a sign at the courts: “Courts closed. No playing.” The rabbi shakes his head in despair. “Haven’t you learned anything from your studies? You’re reading it wrong: “Courts closed? No! Playing.” And he sends them back to the courts with strict instructions not to return until they are ready to learn! The insight of this joke is to introduce a new way of punctuating the words. For the Talmud, all words worthy of interpretation are like that: with a little mental flexibility they can be combined and recombined, emphasized and deemphasized so as to reveal worlds of unexpected sense. Take for example, the title of this book: “Why Study Talmud in the 21st Century?” Taking our cue from the rabbi in the joke, we come to recognize that more than one question is embedded in this line. The most common reading places the emphasis on the word “Talmud.” It assumes we will read many great works in the 21st century, but wonders why we would read Talmud specifically, as opposed to, say Shakespeare or Faulkner. In this reading, the question is: what does the Talmud offer people in the 21st century. That is the question I must answer for my undergraduates and that is the question I have been answering up until this point in the essay. I have argued that Talmud study contributes to the training of critical thinkers, a resource which our society needs in abundance if we are to thrive in the 21st century. There is, however, another way to read the question. One might just as well emphasize the words “21st century,” as in: Why study Talmud in the 21st century, as opposed to in, say, the 20th or the 16th century? Here one assumes that Jews have read the Talmud for centuries. Now that we enter the 21st century, what does Talmud study stand to gain that it has not achieved before? Now we are asking what the 21st century has to offer the Talmud. That is the question to which I would now like to turn.
THE TALMUD FOR ME AS A JEW When I began my academic study of the Talmud I had two different sets of goals. One set was tied to the university, the other to my identity as a Jew. Throughout my academic career I’ve struggled with how these two different
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sets of internal motivations relate to each other. When I study in the university, I obey the same rules of critical thinking that I am training my students to observe: I examine this material without the overlay of Jewish dogma. For example, Jewish tradition regards the Talmud’s interpretation of the Mishnah as “the” inherent meaning of the Mishnah. By way of contrast, my academic study emphasizes that the Talmud’s interpretations are constructions of mishnaic meaning. They are not innate at all. In order to do my academic work well—that is, in order to perceive clearly the forces that impact Talmudic interpretations of the Mishnah—I can’t let traditional preconceptions that the Talmud reflects the obvious meaning of the Mishnah color my thinking. Adopting the critical stance, however, leaves me with a question for what it means for me to read Talmud as a Jew. If I reject the traditional Jewish framing of the text, in what way can I say that Talmud study affirms or contributes to my identity as a Jew? In my years of struggling with this question, I’ve learned that though the critical stance might seem to interfere with my ability to draw on the Talmud as a source for personal inspiration and insight, I have no other lens through which to view the Talmud. The critical eyes are my eyes. If I want to have an authentic encounter with the Talmud, I cannot pretend to be someone I am not. And here is where I think the 21st century has something important to offer Talmud study. In the 20th century, critical thinkers viewed their work as antithetical to religious study of Talmud. Chaim Potok’s 1969 novel The Promise illustrates this viewpoint. The protagonist of the novel is a young rabbinical student, Reuven, who excels in technical Talmud study. He suffers discontent, however, in that he is often dissatisfied with traditional explanations of the text. Under the tutelage of his academically oriented father and unbeknownst to the great rabbis of his yeshiva, Reuven starts evaluating the received text in light of ancient manuscript evidence. As the result of his investigations, he often reaches the less than pious conclusion that the best reading is to be found in manuscripts and not in the version of the text espoused as authentic and authoritative by his community. The novel reaches its climax when Reuven daringly introduces his teachers to what is known as the text critical method (assessing the validity of the received text in light of manuscript evidence) during his examination for rabbinic ordination. The dean of students shakes his head, “Who would believe it? Source criticism in an exam for rabbinic ordination?!” The authoritarian and dogmatic Rav Kalman only grudgingly agrees to grant Reuven ordination and a position in the graduate division of the yeshiva. Reuven must agree, however, not to use the critical method in the training of rabbis; he must reserve it for those students pursuing an academic degree. For Potok, there is no reconciling the academic and the pious. The best one can do is to house them in different wings of the building.3
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The shift from the 20th century to the 21st coincides with the shift from modernism to postmodernism. The 21st century with its postmodern ethos, I believe, offers a way for those engaged with critical methods to integrate them into tradition-serving encounters with the Talmud. Postmoderns are known for their ability to compartmentalize, relativize and live with logical inconsistency. In the 20th century, academics assumed that adopting the critical stance directly conflicted with the pious stance. The critical stance was aimed at recovering a Talmud of the past—as it “really” was. To the extent that the pious had a different tradition about how the Talmud came to be, the two views were irreconcilable. In the 21st century, however, critical study is moving beyond reading the Talmud exclusively as an artifact of history. Critical textual studies are today equally as interested in reconstructing how Talmud generates meaning for its readers. Critical study seeks to illuminate not just the world that lies behind the text of the Talmud, but also the world that is opened up by it. Insofar as the goals of critical study are shifting, I believe the 21st century offers critical thinkers the chance to feel that their insights contribute to the religious work performed by the Talmud. What does the 21st century offer the Talmud? The opportunity for authentic Jewish encounters with the Talmud to be informed and enriched by critical study. Allow me to illustrate how this dynamic might work with an example from my current research. Several years ago I became very interested in how gender roles in Judaism are maintained and perpetuated by a rule in the Mishnah. (The Mishnah is the earliest stratum of the Talmud). The mishnaic rule (m. Kid. 1:7) stipulates that women are exempt from so-called timebound, positive commandments, but obligated to perform all other commandments. “Timebound, positive commandments” are ritual actions that must be actively performed (the “thou shalts”) at, by, or within a certain timeframe. The rule of women’s exemption from this class of commandments appears to shed light on how the Talmud conceptualized the difference between men and women. Whatever it is that makes women exempt from this class of commandments is what marks women as different from men. If one could only figure out why the Talmudic rabbis exempted women from timebound, positive commandments, one would understand what the Talmudic rabbis thought characterized women’s nature. My project began as an examination of the past, a desire to uncover and understand better a feature of Judaism’s sources. My interest in this question, however, was not driven by a theoretical fascination with history alone. I was curious about the rule of women’s exemption because it had been invoked many times in my life as the basis for articulating and affirming particular models of male/female difference. I had been told that women are exempt from timebound commandments because their maternal duties place such extensive demands on their time that it isn’t fair to
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subject them to additional timebound responsibilities. I also heard that women are exempt from these ritual acts because they are more spiritually intuitive than men and don’t need the mundanities of timebound commandments to achieve a rich and powerful relationship with God. Both explanations of the rule offered a vision of womanhood that I might embrace or reject, but neither provided an intellectually satisfying account of the many traditions addressing women’s involvement in ritual. Neither explanation could account for the many exceptions to the mishnaic rule. The project, then, had both historical and contemporary aspects. I was keenly aware of the power of the mishnaic rule to ground gender roles today. It was precisely this aspect of the rule that made me want to understand its past. What I have found has been interesting. I initially assumed that the rule had been formulated with a particular social vision in mind. I assumed that the rabbis exempted women from this class of commandments because of their ideas about who women are, or who they should be. Instead I discovered that the language of the rule was formulated as the summary of an academic exercise in biblical exegesis. I have argued that only in the course of the rule’s transmission did it come to be viewed as a prescriptive statement.4 Only when the rule was viewed as a prescriptive statement was it taken to be a cryptic expression of the rabbis’ understanding of women’s nature. And only then did the rule provide the occasion to articulate different visions of Jewish womanhood. One cannot deny that the rule did eventually come to function in a way that stabilizes and grounds a particular vision of women’s roles. What is interesting, however, is that this function of the rule was not programmed into it by the Talmudic rabbis who formulated it. Only late in the course of its transmission did the rule begin to operate as a stabilizer of gender identities. The bulk of my research documents the incremental shifts in perception of the rule, eventually bringing us to the point where we view the rule as a definitive, albeit cryptic, statement by the rabbis about the proper role of women in Judaism. This project is focused on reconstructing the past, but it has implications for my contemporary self-understanding as a Jew. Whenever someone cites the rule in the context of a discussion about women’s role’s (not terribly rare in the Orthodox synagogues I now frequent), I can experience the rule in ways that were not formerly available to me. Before I did this research, I might have argued about the specific claims made by my conversation partners: “You say that the rule confirms that women’s primary duties are domestic, but perhaps the rule was motivated by other concerns?” Alternatively, if I was uncomfortable with the particular vision of Jewish womanhood espoused by my conversation partner as inherent in the rule, I could reject the rule’s authority for myself. If, however, I wanted to claim the Talmud (with its
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mishnaic rule) as relevant and central to my self understanding, I had to live with a vision of Jewish womanhood that did not comport with my own self understanding. Now I have the option to observe (even if only quietly to myself) that the law was not composed to encourage one set of behaviors as opposed to another among women. Nor was it a tribute to women’s intuitive spiritual capacities. I observe that only very late in the history of the rule has it grounded gender identities. In making these observations, I see the transformative power of communal transmission. The rule was once about one thing and now it’s “about” something else. I am comforted to know that my research will also become part of the ongoing conversation about the rule. As yet I cannot see how the trajectory of the rule’s reception will be changed by my research. My research, however, demonstrates to me that Talmudic traditions take on unexpected meanings in the course of their transmission. I am content to know that my research will enter the stream of tradition and coexist alongside other understandings of the rule. Though I cannot see how, I know that the rule will be understood differently by those who come after me (and all the more so, by those who come after them). A work of critical scholarship about the past can contribute to the ongoing dialogue about who we are as Jews. The Talmud is an important point of reference in this conversation. But as I have noted, texts (even important and foundational texts like the Talmud) do not have an innate meaning. Rather, the Talmud takes on meaning as different generations of Jews wrestle with its obscurities. Each generation bequeaths the text to the next generation embedded in a rich matrix of questions and assumptions. I am reassured knowing that the very act of having engaged the Talmud with inquisitiveness and intellectual integrity will shape how the future generations of Jews grapple with it. When I perform the work of scholarship, the center of my community’s conversation about the Talmud shifts, however subtly. How, then, is critical study of the Talmud different in the 21st century than it was in the 20th? I must acknowledge that it is unlikely that the fictitious rabbis of Reuven’s yeshiva (or their real life counterparts) will be any more open to my scholarship than they were to Reuven’s. But Potok’s novel wasn’t written by them. It was written from the perspective of a critical thinker wrestling to figure out if his critical methods are compatible with traditional Talmud study. In the very framing of the plot, Potok indicates that he sees the two types of study as discordant. The difference between the 20th and the 21st centuries lies not so much in how the Rav Kalmans of the world will relate to critical methods of Talmud study. We can assume they will be just as uncomfortable with them in the 21st century as they were in the 20th. The audience of this essay, however, is the Chaim Potoks of the world. In the last
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century, critical thinkers faced a question that also challenges critical thinkers now: Will we engage the Talmud as an artifact of history to be dissected and demystified? Or will we feel that the Talmud, when viewed through the lens of our critical analysis, has important something to say about who we are and how we should live. The 21st century gives us the opportunity to take the second—I think, more compelling—route.
ENDNOTES 1. See b. Sotah 12b for the interpretation discussed here. 2. This discussion is drawn from and based on the talmudic argument on b. Baba Metzia 21b–22b. 3. The wonderful drama of Reuven’s examination for rabbinic ordination is told in Chaim Potok, The Promise, New York: Fawcett Crest, 1969, 327–342. 4. For a fuller view of my arguments regarding the mishnaic rule see my “From Whence the Phrase ‘Timebound, Positive Commandments’?” The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 97, No. 3 (Summer 2007), 317–346; and “How Tefillin Became a Non-Timebound, Positive Commandment: The Yerushalmi and the Bavli on mEruvim 10:1,” in A Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud: Introduction and Studies, ed. Tal Ilan et. al., Mohr Seibeck, 2007, 61–89.
Female Alterity and Divine Compassion: Reading the Talmud from the Perspective of Gender Judith R. Baskin
At the conclusion of one of his Talmudic readings, Emmanuel Levinas declared that the most glorious title for God is “Parent of orphans and champion of widows” (Psalm 68:6). Levinas, focused as always on the meaningful encounter with the other, suggested that our own encounter with the Exemplar of compassion is best achieved in engagement with Divine revelation. As he wrote, Consecration to God: his epiphany, beyond all theology and any visible image, however complete, is repeated in the daily Sinai of [human beings] sitting before an astonishing book, ever again in progress because of its very completeness.1
For Levinas, as for most Jews of the past fifteen hundred years, this “astonishing book” of revelation encompasses the Hebrew Bible (the Written Torah), and rabbinic literature (the Oral Torah). Jewish involvement with this literary heritage is “ever again in progress” and represents a “daily Sinai” because revealed texts demand continuous rereading and ever renewed interpretation. Women and men of this present moment, as much as those who stood at the historic Sinai, are a part of this ongoing process of study and enlightenment. My own involvement with “this astonishing book” has been through a particular focus. Through the entryway of aggadic midrash, I have spent more than twenty years exploring the ways in which women have been imagined in rabbinic writings; I have delineated, as well, the continuing ramifications of these representations in Jewish social life, past and present.2 In this essay, I discuss some of what I have discovered about rabbinic convictions of female otherness. 25
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WOMEN ARE A SEPARATE PEOPLE Rabbinic views about women are as various as rabbinic opinions on other subjects, and there are many positive portrayals of women in the Talmudic and midrashic texts. The Rabbis praised biblical women who played central roles in the destiny of the people of Israel, including the matriarchs, the midwives of Egypt, and the women of the wilderness generation. According to the Babylonian Talmud (abbreviated as BT), Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Huldah, and Esther had the status of prophets (BT M’gillah 14a); the midrash collection Genesis Rabbah declared that all four matriarchs of Israel were prophets (67.9 and 72.6). The Rabbis also lauded the women whose supportive roles in the domestic realm enabled husbands and sons to participate in public worship and communal study; according to BT Berakhot 17, this is how women earn merit. Rachel, wife of Rabbi Akiva, is cited as an exemplary woman who sacrificed her own comfort for her husband’s scholarship.3 On the other hand, the Rabbis condemned as immodest women who appeared unveiled in public, gathered in groups with other women, or whose voices were considered too strident. Similarly, the Sages criticized women who asserted themselves as public leaders. Thus, BT M’gillah 14a goes on to denigrate the judge Deborah as a hornet and the prophet Hulda as a weasel (the meaning of their respective names), since they held powerful positions usually associated with men.4 In general, rabbinic views of women are based on the certainty of women’s essential alterity or otherness from men. The Talmudic statement that “women are a separate people” (BT Shabbat 62a) conveys the basic rabbinic belief that females are human entities inherently dissimilar from males, not only in body but in moral and intellectual capacities. Moreover, the ways in which women were perceived to be essentially different were not only ineradicable but problematic for men. This is why it was considered best to limit female access to male realms of communal worship, study, and leadership. This is also why women occupied a subordinate place in rabbinic Judaism’s world view where free, unblemished Jewish men alone participated fully in Israel’s covenant with God.5 The following passage from BT Niddah 31b expresses many of the areas of woman’s profound otherness from man that are so central to rabbinic thinking: R. Isaac citing R. Ammi further stated: As soon as a male comes into the world peace comes into the world, for it is said, “Send a gift (khar) to the ruler of the land” (Isaiah 16:1), [and the Hebrew word for] “male” (zakhar) [is composed of the consonants of the words for] “this is a gift” (zeh khar). R. Isaac citing R. Ammi further stated: When a male comes into the world his provisions come
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with him, [the Hebrew for] “male” (zakhar) [being composed of the consonants for the words for], “this is provision (zeh khar),” for it is written, “And he prepared a great provision (khera) for them” (2 Kings 6:23). [Conversely,] a female has nothing with her, [the Hebrew for] “female” (n’kevah) implying “she comes with nothing” (n’kiyyah ba’ah). Unless she demands her food nothing is given to her, for it is written, “Name (nak’vah) the wages due from me and I will pay you” (Genesis 30:28). R. Simeon b. Yohai was asked by his disciples: Why did the Torah ordain that a woman after childbirth should bring a sacrifice? He replied: When she is giving birth she swears impetuously that she will never again have intercourse with her husband. The Torah, therefore, ordained that she should bring a sacrifice (Leviticus 12). . . . And why did the Torah ordain that in the case of giving birth to a male [a woman may resume sexual relations with her husband] after seven days but in the case of a female [relations may not resume until] after fourteen days? [On the birth of] a male, with whom all rejoice, she regrets her oath after seven days, [but on the birth of ]a female, about whom everybody is upset, she does not regret her oath [of abstaining from sexual relations] until after fourteen days. And why did the Torah ordain circumcision on the eighth day? In order that the guests should not enjoy themselves while his father and mother are not in the mood for it [since they must abstain from intercourse until the eighth day]. It was taught: R. Meir used to say, Why did the [Oral] Torah ordain that the uncleanness of menstruation should continue for [an additional] seven days? Because being in constant contact with his wife [a husband might] develop a loathing towards her. The Torah, therefore, ordained: Let her be unclean for [an additional] seven days in order that she shall be beloved by her husband as at the time of her first entry into the bridal chamber.
A number of themes having to do with distinctions between males and females are raised in this sugya (passage). They include the statement that the birth of a male excites celebration while the birth of a female is a cause for disappointment. Males come into the world well equipped to function fully in society and to leave progeny after them. Women come into the world with nothing; they are dependent upon male largesse for their very survival and, as empty vessels, they must wait for male agency in order to become bearers of children. A male child is circumcised on the eighth day of life to the great delight of all; indeed, on that day his parents may resume sexual relations. No rituals await a new born daughter and, as a sign of grief at her gender, marital relations may only resume fourteen days after her birth. Women must be separated from their husbands during their menstrual periods, and, as rabbinic legislation evolved, for an additional week afterward. R. Meir is credited with the view that this enforced hiatus maintains marital romance since it prevents the husband from finding his wife tiresome and distasteful.
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The secondary status of women is accepted in this text as a fact of human life. Sifre B’Midbar 133, an early rabbinic midrash on the Book of Numbers, acknowledged this reality and its concomitant injustices in its discussion of the daughters of Zelophehad, the biblical sisters of Numbers 27:1. There the daughters argued their case and received Divine approval of their argument that they should inherit from their father, who died without male heirs: When the daughters of Zelophehad heard that the land of Israel was being apportioned among the males of the tribes but not the females, they consulted together as to how to make their claim. They said: The compassion of God is not like human compassion. Human rulers favor males over females but the One who spoke and brought the world into being is not like that. Rather, God shows mercy to every living thing, as it says, “Who gives food to all flesh/Whose steadfast love is eternal” (Psalm 136:24) . . . and “The sovereign is good to all/God’s mercy is upon all God’s works” (Psalm 145:9).
In this midrash, reminiscent of Levinas’s praise of the Divine epithet, “Parent of orphans and champion of widows” (Psalm 68:6), cited above, the daughters of Zelophehad appealed to God. They trusted that Divine mercy would transcend the mutable norms of a human society in which women, including widows, are subordinate beings unlikely to be treated equally by men. In constructing women as other than men and as inferior and subordinate to them, rabbinic Judaism was far from unique among human cultures past and present. Yet, the men who formulated these strictures were well aware of the dichotomy they had established between male privilege and female disempowerment. So much did the Rabbis understand that women were destined for a secondary position in the ideal society they wished to establish and enforce that they actually listed the numerous disadvantages which made women’s lives manifestly inferior to their own. What is even more noteworthy is that some of the Sages also felt compelled to explain and justify these exclusions of women from the activities and prestige available to their own sex.
WOMEN’S DISADVANTAGES This topic of female disabilities is explored in BT ‘Erubin 100b.6 The context is a discussion of appropriate and inappropriate modes of marital sexuality, including the impermissibility of coercing a wife to have sexual relations. The recounting of women’s handicaps in this Talmudic passage is prompted by the citation of the tradition that, “A woman who solicits her husband to the [marital] obligation will have children the like of whom did not exist, even
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in the generation of Moses.” This statement, which appears to praise direct expressions of female sexuality, is challenged on the following grounds, built in part around an exegesis of, “And to the woman He said, ‘I will greatly multiply/Your pangs in childbearing;/In pain shall you bear children./ Yet your urge shall be for your husband,/And he shall rule over you’” (Gen 3:16). R. Isaac b. Abdimi stated: Eve was cursed with ten curses, since it is written: “And to the woman He said, ‘I will greatly multiply’” (Gen 3:16), which refers to the two drops of blood, one being that of menstruation and the other to that of virginity; “Your pangs” refers to the pain of bringing up children,; “And your travail in childbearing” refers to the pain of conception; “In pain shall you bear children” is to be understood in its literal meaning. “Yet your urge shall be for your husband” teaches that a woman yearns for her husband when he is about to set out on a journey; “And he shall rule over you” teaches that while the wife solicits with her heart the husband does so with his voice, this being a fine trait of character among women. What was meant is that she ingratiates herself with him [by affectionate actions]. But aren’t these only seven [of the ten]? When R. Dimi came he explained: She is wrapped up like a mourner; banished from the company of all men; and confined within a prison. What is meant by “banished from the company of all men?” If it be suggested: That she is forbidden to meet a man in privacy, is not the man also forbidden to meet a woman in privacy? The meaning rather is that she is forbidden to marry two men. In a baraita it was taught: She grows long hair like Lilith; sits when making water like a beast; and serves as a bolster for her husband. And the other [How do these three differ from R. Dimi’s suggestions]? These [three qualities] he holds are rather complimentary to her, R. Hiyya having made the following statement: What is meant by the biblical text, “Who gives us knowledge from the beasts of the earth/Makes us wise by the birds of the sky?” (Job 35:11). “Who gives us knowledge from the beasts of the earth” refers to the mule which kneels when it makes water, and “Makes us wise by the birds of the sky” refers to the cock which first coaxes and then mates.
The first seven divinely ordained afflictions for women in this passage are based on a sequential exegesis of Genesis 3:16. True to the rabbinic principle that scripture contains no repetitions, this Talmudic passage demonstrates that each component of this verse has a separate meaning. Thus, the biblical phrase “I will greatly multiply [harbeh ’arveh],” in which forms of the Hebrew verb “to multiply” appear twice for emphasis, is understood to refer to two female flows of blood: the blood shed at menstruation and the blood shed at the loss of virginity. “Your pangs” is said to refer specifically to the pain of bringing up children, and “Your travail” to
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the pain suffered during pregnancy, while “In pain shall you bear children” refers to the discomforts of labor and delivery. “Yet your urge shall be for your husband” is said to refer to a woman’s desire for her husband when he is away on a journey and she has no sexual partner. The seventh curse, based on the end of Genesis 3:16, “And he shall rule over you,” is said to mean that a woman may not speak but must ingratiate herself with her husband by her actions when she is desirous of sexual attention. It is this statement that answers the question that prompted this entire excursus. A woman may solicit her husband sexually but must do so indirectly. Having to express her needs covertly is indicative of the sexual passivity imposed on women, certainly an undesirable condition from the male vantage point, and hence one of Eve’s curses. Four of these curses are directly related to what men saw as undesirable and distasteful features of women’s bodies and their biological functions which result in blood flow and in physical pain. The other three disabilities: the pains of bringing up children, a woman’s frustrated sexual desires when her husband is absent, and her enforced sexual passivity, were results of her dependence on male mastery. At this point, the discussion turns to the three remaining burdens which made women’s lot so much less appealing than that apportioned to men. According to R. Dimi, the final three curses are, “She is wrapped up like a mourner; banished from the company of all men; and confined within a prison.” This is a strong expression of the consequences for women of their separation from participation in the major activities of Jewish communal life, as well as evidence that men were fully aware of the consequences of that deprivation.7 Even if “wrapped up like a mourner” is understood as a straightforward reference to women’s having to veil themselves when they appeared in public, the comparison of woman’s ordinary public state to that of a mourner is a telling and disturbing remark of male understandings of female isolation from life beyond domestic confines. BT ‘Erubin 100b then goes on to debate the meaning of “banished from the company of all men.” This curse had to be distinguished from “confined within a prison,” the disability which immediately follows, in order to eliminate any possibility of repetition. What differentiated these two conditions for the rabbinic expositors was that “banished from the company of all men” was said to refer to the fact that a woman is forbidden to be married to two men at the same time. We see an appreciation in this sugya, as in a similar discussion in Genesis Rabbah 17.8, of the male’s relative freedom which allowed him sexual access to more than one woman at a time, whether with an additional wife or wives, or unmarried women he might encounter elsewhere; patriarchal norms, however, demanded that a wife’s fidelity be assured. The rabbinic
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frequent references to women’s lack of access to a variety of sexual partners as a disadvantage strongly implies that polygyny and/or frequent resort to women outside of marriage were accepted and appreciated features of men’s lives in the various times and places in which rabbinic literature was composed. “Confined within a prison” is the ninth disability suffered by women. Rabbinic social policy apportioned separate spheres and responsibilities to women and men, making every effort in its blueprint for an ideal society to contain women and their activities in the private realms of the family and its particular concerns, including home-based economic activities which would benefit the household. Clearly, from a male point of view, this was tantamount to imprisonment. That men would characterize the consequences of this social pattern for women as “confinement in a prison” is reminiscent of a statement in Genesis Rabbah 18.1 that women’s inherent potential for common sense and understanding atrophies because they are isolated from the rest of the world. In fact, in her separation from the public realms of Jewish life, women’s situation was analogous to that of other excluded and disadvantaged classes of human beings, including minors, disabled men, male slaves, and male gentiles. Women were associated with men perceived as lacking or damaged in some way, or those, like minors and slaves, who were subject to a master’s will. Such incomplete individuals could not function in the ways available to the unblemished, free, Jewish male who shared fully in the covenantal relationship between God and Israel. The threefold prayer, part of the daily morning liturgy, in which a Jewish adult male expresses gratitude for not being created a gentile, a slave, or a woman maintains these distinctions between completeness and deficiency. Moreover, the exclusion of women goes further. Presumably a male Jewish slave who was freed could assume the rights and privileges of any other free Jewish male. Similarly, a male gentile could convert, undergo circumcision, and also join the covenant community as a spiritual equal. Jewish males who were minors became adults. A woman, however, was condemned by the essential qualities and characteristics of her gender to permanent restriction from fully sharing in the privileges and responsibilities of male-defined covenantal Judaism, particularly the highly valued communal pursuits of worship, study, and communal governance. As this sugya from BT ‘Erubin freely admits, women were disempowered in rabbinic society and many of their so-called “curses” result from their physical differences from men and their being subject to menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth. These and similar remarks strongly support the contention that the roots of the exclusion of women from participation in public worship, literary culture, and the communal life of their community, and their relegation to domestic, enabling roles, were deeply embedded in rabbinic Judaism’s profound consciousness of corporeality and its consequences. Indeed, BT ‘Erubin 100b
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concludes its discussion of women’s less desirable lot with three alternate curses derived from a baraita (a legal opinion not in the Mishnah). Two of these curses also stress aspects of woman’s physical otherness, while the third is simply a bald acknowledgement of the distasteful nature, from a male perspective, of a woman’s enabling role. These disabilities are as follows: “She grows long hair like Lilith,8 sits when making water like a beast, and serves as a bolster for her husband.” But are these curses or benefits? R. Dimi is cited as saying that these three qualities are compliments to women. Perhaps from a male point of view they are: women’s long hair can be sexually attractive; urinating in a sitting position bespeaks modesty; that she serves as a support for her husband is certainly desirable, at least from his point of view. R. Dimi’s statement facilitates a segue into an apparently unrelated midrashic discourse which serves both to complete the larger Talmudic passage and offers a last word in this sugya on rabbinic understandings of the relative roles and capacities of women and men. The mention of the inconvenience of women’s need to sit while making water, which evoked an exegesis of Job 35:11 explaining what humans can learn from the animals, leads to the following concluding remarks: R. Johanan observed: If the Torah had not been given we could have learned modesty from the cat, honesty from the ant, chastity from the dove, and good manners from the cock who first coaxes and then mates. And how does he coax his mate?—Rab Judah citing Rab replied—He tells her this: “I will buy you a cloak that will reach to your feet” [an interpretation of the spreading of the rooster’s wings and the bending of their tips towards the ground prior to mating]. After the event he tells her, “May the cat tear off my crest if I don’t buy you one when I have any money.”
This praise of the rooster in BT ‘Erubin 100b who seduces his mate rather than coercing her, fittingly ends the sugya. This passage, which began with the statement “A man is forbidden to compel his wife to the [marital] obligation,” ends appropriately with a commendation of gentle seduction. This depiction of women as easily persuaded, credulous, and likely to be deceived, moreover, not only displays a typical rabbinic blend of eroticism and humor, but must also have reinforced male satisfaction at not being created female. As literary arguments like these in BT ‘Erubin establish, women are indeed subject to disadvantages, but men are in no way culpable: all of these handicaps were either ordained by God at the outset of the human drama or were part of women’s punishment for disobeying divine commandments in the Garden of Eden. For the Rabbis, the origins of female disadvantages were preordained in woman’s very creation.
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CREATED DISTINCTIONS BT Niddah 31b, partially cited above, is one of the several places in rabbinic literature that attributes distinctions between man and woman to differences in their modes of coming into being. The sugya ends as follows: R. Dostai son of R. Jannai was asked by his disciples: Why does a man go in search of a woman and no woman goes in search of a man? This is analogous to the case of a man who lost something. Who goes in search of what? He who lost a thing [his rib] goes in search of what he lost. And why does the man lie face downwards [during sexual intercourse] and woman face upwards towards the man? He [faces the elements] from which he was created and she [faces the man] from whom she was created. And why is a man easily pacified and a woman is not easily pacified? He [derives his nature] from the place from which he was created and [she derives hers] from the place from which she was created. Why is a woman’s voice sweet and a man’s voice is not sweet? He [derives his] from the place from which he was created and she [derives hers] from the place from which she was created. Thus it is said, “Let me hear your voice;/ For your voice is sweet/And your face is comely” (Song of Songs 2:14).9
This final section of this passage suggests that the preferred position for sexual intercourse is that in which the man, on top, looks towards his origins in the earth (i.e., to the cosmic substance from which God created him) while the woman, facing upward, looks toward the man from whose body she was created. Men communicate directly with God and the cosmos while women experience that relationship only vicariously, if at all, through their subordinate relationship to their husbands. Moreover, because woman was created from a bone, which can be used as a musical instrument, her voice is described here as sweet. A woman’s sweet voice can be as much of a sexual incitement as her physical beauty and BT. Niddah 31b concludes with a proof text from Song of Songs which evokes the pleasant and the problematic aspects of woman’s sexual attractiveness to men, both of which play significant roles in rabbinic constructions of the feminine. As BT Niddah 31b makes clear, the essential differences between male and female, and therefore the rationale for their separate status and roles in Jewish life, have their origin in human creation. Although the subsequent behavior of the first woman in convincing her husband to disobey God’s commandments (Gen 2–3) further justified women’s lesser opportunities, rabbinic interpretation explains that the ultimate source of women’s secondary status is not human whim but was the Divine intention from the moment of her creation. The initial chapters of Genesis relate two separate versions of the creation of men and women. In the first account, contained within the cosmology of
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Genesis 1–2:4, unnamed human creatures, male and female, are simultaneously created by God’s word, in the divine image and likeness (Gen 1:26–27), as the ultimate act of six days of creation. These creatures, and it is never stated explicitly that there are only two, are blessed by God and instructed, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth” (Gen 1:28). In this sophisticated theological narrative, the creation of human beings, both female and male, as uniquely sentient among other living things and as dominant over all other creatures, signifies the climax of God’s creation of “Heaven and earth and all their array” (2:1). The second and quite different narrative, attributed to the so-called Yahwist writer, describes how the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the earth and animated him with the breath of life (Gen 2:7), even before vegetation had appeared on the earth. The Lord God planted a garden in Eden and placed the man in the garden to tend it. At this point, the Lord God noticed the man’s solitary state and, proposing to make a “fitting helper for him” (Gen 2:18), formed all the beasts and birds out of the earth. Although the man gave these new creatures names, no appropriate partner was found among them and the man remains solitary until he is cast into a deep sleep. While he sleeps the Lord God takes one of the man’s ribs and fashions it into a woman and brings her to the man (Gen 2:21–22). Adam proclaims this female being to be “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh/This one shall be called woman, for from man was she taken” (Gen 2:23). Here the biblical redactor editorializes, “Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). Although Adam names his companion “woman,” he does not give his “fitting helper” a personal name until after the episode of human disobedience that leads to the expulsion from the garden. Only after assuming the mortal burden of a life characterized by frustration and suffering, does Adam name his wife Eve. In a folk etymology, the biblical author connects the name Eve (Havvah) with the word for life (hai), explaining, “The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living” (Gen 3:20). Modern scholarship suggests that these stories were probably seen as complementary rather than contradictory since each account provided information about God, God’s creatures, and the nature of the human condition absent in the other. The effort to merge them into one seamless whole is made overt when the redactor summarizes the origins of the first human family at Genesis 5:1–2: “This is the record of Adam’s line./When God created humanity He made it in the likeness of God; male and female He created them. And when they were created, He blessed them and called them “adam.”
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Rabbinic exegetical principles did not accept the possibility of either repetition or contradiction in divine revelation; thus, the male and female created in the Divine image in Genesis 1 were obviously the Adam and Eve of Genesis 2:4–3, and their later actions are referred back to the circumstances of their origins. Similarly, rabbinic readers understood Adam and Eve to be married; thus, rabbinic comments on the nature of the first woman also reflect broader rabbinic views on the roles and status of women as wives. Nevertheless, questions about the details of human creation remained and had to be dealt with. The Sages wondered particularly whether both men and women were created simultaneously in the divine image, or if woman was a later and essentially lesser creation. Genesis Rabbah 8.1 addressed the quandary over simultaneous creation in its discussion of “And God said: Let us make humanity” (Gen 1:26): R. Jeremiah b. Leazar said: When the Holy One, blessed be He, created the first ’adam, He created it with both male and female sexual organs as it is written, “Male and female He created them, and He called their name ’adam” (Gen 5:2). R. Shmuel bar Nachman said, “When the Holy One, blessed be He, created the first ’adam, He created him with two faces, then split him and made him two backs—a back for each side. To this it is objected: But it is written, “He took one of his ribs (mi-tzalotav)” (Gen 2:21) [a reference to the second biblical story of the creation of woman from the man’s body]. He replied, [“One of his ribs” means] one of his sides, as you read [in an analogy from the similar use of the same word elsewhere], “And for the other side wall (tzel’a) of the Tabernacle” (Exod 26:20).
This comment, based on exegeses of Psalm 139:5, offers explanations for the apparent contradictions in the biblical accounts of the origins of man and woman. R. Jeremiah b. Leazar suggests that God created one entity with both male and female genitalia. However, in this vision of a primal androgyne, which imagines human male and female sexual characteristics as originating in one simultaneous creation, the primary being is still constructed as male. Only afterwards, as R. Shmuel bar Nachman elaborates, did God separate the female “side” from the male entity to create a new and independent being. In these interpretations, both biblical versions of human creation are accounted for, while any possibility of imagining an initial female creation separate from the original man is obviated. The idea of an essentially male being with male and female characteristics is the closest the Rabbis came to acknowledging the simultaneous and co-equal creation of man and woman described in Genesis 1:26, and even this view is a decidedly minority opinion.10 Rather, most rabbinic voices assume that the initial human creation was a solitary male. BT. Ketubbot 8a states categorically,
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No. The whole world agrees that there was only one formation [and it was of man alone], [but they differ in this:] one holds that we go according to the [divine] intention [which had been to simultaneously create two human beings, man and woman] and the other holds that we go according to the fact [only man was created and woman was later created out of him]. [This is the import] of that statement of Rab Judah [who] asked: It is written, “And God created man in his own image” (Gen 1:27), and it is written “Male and female He created them” (Gen 5:2). How is this [to be understood?] [In this way]: In the beginning it was the intention [of God] to create two [human beings in the divine image], and in the end [only] one was created.
Establishing that the first human creation was male was absolutely essential to rabbinic Judaism’s conviction that men were created in the Divine image, with all the implications of potency, dominance, and generativity which followed from this analogy. The secondary nature of woman’s creation from man’s rib affirmed her subordinate position in marriage, reproduction, and in the public aspects of rabbinic society. Genesis Rabbah 17.4 confirms women’s inferior nature in a discussion of Adam’s naming of the animals (Gen 2:19–20): Said he, “Every one has a partner, yet I have none”: Thus, “But for Adam no fitting helper was found” (Gen 2:20). And why did He not create her for him at the beginning? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, foresaw that [Adam] would bring charges against her [for tempting him into disobedience in the Garden of Eden], therefore God did not create her until he expressly demanded her. But as soon as Adam did so, forthwith “So the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon the man , and while he slept, He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that spot” (Gen 2:21).
In this account, even Divine foreknowledge of future female failings cannot produce an improved product. Instead, God simply delays the inevitable. The rabbinic conundrum is explicit: women are essential for human survival and for human completeness, yet it was clear from the start that their potential for upsetting the cosmos would be a perpetual concern. In an extended midrashic excursus on the second version of creation, Genesis Rabbah 18.2 points out the ways in which women are inherently flawed: R. Joshua of Siknin said in R. Levi’s name: Vayyiben (“And He built” [Gen 2:22]) is written, signifying that He considered well (hitbonnen) from what part to create her. Said He: “I will not create her from [Adam’s] head, lest she be swelled-headed; nor from the eye, lest she be a coquette; nor from the ear, lest she be an eavesdropper; nor from the mouth, lest she be a gossip; nor from the
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heart, lest she be prone to jealousy; nor from the hand, lest she be light-fingered; nor from the foot, lest she be a gadabout; but from the modest part of man, for even when he stands naked, that part is covered.” And as He created each limb He ordered her, “Be a modest woman.” Yet in spite of all this “You spurned all my advice,/And would not hear my rebuke” (Prov 1:25). I did not create her from the head, yet she is swelled-headed, as it is written, “Because the daughters of Zion/Are so vain/And walk with heads thrown back “(Isa 3:16); nor from the eye, yet she is a coquette: “With roving eyes “(Isa 3:16); nor from the ear, yet she is an eavesdropper: “Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent” (Gen 18:10); nor from the heart, yet she is prone to jealousy: “Rachel became envious of her sister” (Gen 30:1); nor from the hand yet she is lightfingered: “And Rachel stole her father’s household gods” (Gen 31:19); nor from the foot, yet she is a gadabout: “Now Dinah . . . went out to visit the daughters of the land” (Gen 34:1).
In this literal excursus on the construction of the female body, God is described as attempting to build a woman who would personify what the framers of rabbinic Judaism believed to be ideal female qualities of humility, sexual modesty, domesticity, discretion, and passivity. However, despite the best divine intentions, woman, once built, possessed a profusion of undesirable characteristics. Apparently something inherent in the very essence of the female prohibited the elimination of undesirable traits.11 Indeed, this passage returns us to where we began: women as a separate people (BT Shabbat 62a). That statement appears in a technical discussion of M. Shabbat 6:3 about what jewelry a woman may wear on the Sabbath. The Mishnah differentiates between acceptable ornaments and objects which are considered burdens. The Talmudic discussion begins with the ruling of the sage ‘Ulla that whatever applies to a woman in this particular instance does not apply to a man, and vice versa. R. Joseph concludes from this that “‘Ulla holds that women are a separate people,” or as the phrase is sometimes translated, “women are a nation unto themselves.” Emphasizing the inherent sexual unreliability of the female, as opposed to the steadiness of the male, the sugya ultimately progresses from whether women may wear perfume flasks on the Sabbath to perfumed women who indulge in a variety of vulgar and sexually immoral behaviors. The passage graphically details the unpleasant physical afflictions such immodest women will receive as punishment and ends with a description of the sexual coarseness of the men of Jerusalem immediately prior to the destruction of the city. The message of this passage is clear: perfumed women seduced men into ever greater degrees of sexual immorality and the result was ruination. Women are indeed “a separate people” and men must strictly limit their converse and contacts with them.
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WHY READ TALMUD IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY? The Rabbis adapted the legal and ethical teachings of the Hebrew Bible to their own circumstances and attitudes, but always with the conviction that they were proceeding with Divine authority. The traditions they established about the inappropriateness of women’s presence in the communal domains of worship, study, and leadership were continued, with few exceptions, in medieval and early modern Judaism. They persist in some Jewish communities up to the present day. Although the patriarchal approach toward women that is typical of rabbinic traditions was never unique to Judaism, the consequences of these attitudes were long lasting in stifling female intellectual achievement, spiritual empowerment, and leadership roles in Jewish life. From the vantage point of the early twenty-first century, one might well inquire why Talmudic literature, which is so often problematic and even unpleasant on the topic of women, should continue to be read and taught? I would answer that the complex and many faceted Talmud, and the larger body of Jewish rabbinic literature of which it is a part, constitutes a rich and enduring component of the Jewish heritage. Talmudic teachings and legislation united and sustained Jewish life and identity across immense distances for well over a thousand years. All contemporary forms of Jewish religious life are constructed on the foundation of rabbinic Judaism. The Talmud is also a central guide to the ways in which Jews read the Hebrew Bible. The Rabbis and later interpreters were profoundly immersed in biblical literature and had considered deeply its wide range of meanings and possible applications. The many dimensions they read into and out of the biblical text over the centuries have shaped the course of Jewish intellectual and spiritual history—and continue to amaze and enlighten us today. Moreover, rabbinic interpretive ingenuity always allowed for creative legal responses to changing realities in Jewish social, economic, and political life. Contemporary feminist interpreters of Jewish texts have used these methods and the flexibility of the midrashic tradition to reconstruct and tease out new images of women from the Jewish past and to justify contemporary transformations in women’s religious practice. In doing so, they have played a leading role in bringing about positive modifications in women’s status in Judaism and in the larger world, and in enlarging women’s access to Jewish learning. In the twenty-first century, we also read the Talmud in an historical context, as an edited anthology of religious texts that reflects a variety of eras and geographical settings. In many of these times and places, women were decidedly secondary members of human society, and it is not surprising that we find
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reflections of such social attitudes in rabbinic writings. However, close readers of the Talmud are also able to find alternate voices. While the majority of halakhic and aggadic teachings in the Talmud tended to limit female prerogatives and women’s range of social options, differing and less restrictive points of view were also preserved.12 These minority voices indicate that at certain moments in the Jewish past, particular Rabbis may have resisted dominant views on topics pertaining to female qualities and religious opportunities and may have imagined an alternative reality in which women were more than bolsters to their husbands. Such richness of opinions and alternatives is the essential characteristic of this astonishing liferary production that continues to engage us through its completeness and its endless possibilities.
ENDNOTES 1. Emmanuel Levinas, “The Nations and the Presence of Israel: From the Tractate Pesahim 118b,” in In the Time of the Nations, trans. Michael B. Smith (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1994), 108. I have emended Levinas’s words to read “human beings” rather the original “men,” just as I read the first segment of Genesis 1:27 as “and God created human beings in God’s image.” 2. See, for example, Judith R. Baskin, Midrashic Women: Formations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2002); idem, “Jewish Women in the Middle Ages,” in Jewish Women in Historical Perspective 2nd Edition, ed. Judith R. Baskin (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998); idem, “The Changing Role of the Woman,” in Modern Judaism: An Oxford Guide, ed. Nicholas de Lange and Miri Freud-Kandel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 389–400. 3. On Rachel, see Baskin, Midrashic Women, 101–103; and Tal Ilan, Mine and Yours are Hers: Retrieving Women’s History from Rabbinic Literature (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1997). 4. Baskin, Midrashic Women, 31–32, 109–114, 140–154. 5. For discussion of the context in which this statement appears, see below, p. 35. 6. Similar enumerations appear in Genesis Rabbah 17.8 and Abot d’Rabbi Nathan B 9; see Baskin, Midrashic Women, 65–87. 7. Genesis Rabbah 17:8 connects women’s wearing of veils with their shame at bringing death into the world; see Baskin, Midrashic Women, 68–71. 8. The reference here is to lilith, a night spirit common in ancient Near Eastern folklore who is said to seduce men and harm children. Rebecca Lesses, “Exe(o)rcising Power: Women as Sorceresses, Exorcists, and Demonesses in Babylonian Jewish Society of Late Antiquity,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 69, 2 (2001), writes, 358, that “the demonic image of the lilith’s long, flowing, and disheveled hair [on incantation bowls from Sassanian Babylonia] may shed some light on the
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significance of women’s uncovered hair in rabbinic literature.” She suggests that this statement in BT. ‘Erubin 100b “connects women’s demonic and bestial nature to their sexual subordination to men.” On the figure of Lilith in later Jewish folklore, see Baskin, Midrashic Women, 58–60. 9. See parallel passage in Genesis Rabbah 17:8; see Baskin, Midrashic Women, 33–64. 10. For further discussion of this aggadic midrash on the androgyne and its significance in rabbinic Judaism, see Baskin, Midrashic Women, 60–64; and Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 42–46. 11. A similar passage appears in Genesis Rabbah 45:5, in which women are said to be greedy, eavesdroppers, slothful, envious, talkative, prone to steal, and gadabouts, with many of the same proof texts. 12. For discussion of alternate traditions, see Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice (Radical Traditions) (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998).
Ancient Voices Jane Kanarek
BEGINNING TALMUD It is my junior year at Brown University, and a group of my friends are sitting in the sukkah trying to decide which tractate of Talmud they will study together this year. Berakhot, they conclude, and bring out a few copies. Although I am a complete beginner, having just started to study Hebrew again after years of neglect, they invite me to join them. Appropriately enough, they begin from the beginning, the first mishnah in the first tractate of the Talmud. “From when does one recite the evening Shema? From the time that the priests enter to eat terumah [the priestly offering] until the end of the first watch—the words of Rabbi Eliezer. And the sages say: until midnight. Rabban Gamliel says: until the dawn rises.” Because it is Shabbat and we cannot write, my friends start to move glasses around the table in order to explain the various divisions of time to me. I am captivated by this ancient world of the Talmud and join the group every Shabbat afternoon for the rest of that year. My senior year, we again meet, and now we study the first chapter of tractate Pesahim. But what is it that captivates me about Talmud study? Why am I drawn into this foreign and difficult world? Part of my attraction is simply the mystique of the Talmud. This is a book that I have heard talked about since I was a child, something that has somehow defined us as Jews. It is a book that I never imagined I would be able to read, but now here are my friends telling me that I can. It is a beautiful book, with its main column of text surrounded by yet more words, and I am a lover of beautiful books. It is also the most difficult intellectual challenge I have ever faced; I know that reading and understanding it will not come easily. Most importantly, it is an ancient 41
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book, and I love the challenge of taking the ancient and combining it with the modern, seeing where that dialogue will lead. Within all this mystique is also hidden the idea that being able to read Talmud gives a Jew power. If I can learn how to study Talmud well, I will have a deep voice within the Jewish world. But my attraction to Talmud does not stem only from its mystique and potential power. As I begin to study Talmud, I have also begun to read widely in modern Jewish thought and theology as well as feminist theory, Jewish and general. Part of studying Talmud is trying to understand how I want to live as a Jew. I believe that the Talmud grounds who we are, so that it can help me to understand what it means to live as a Jew. Talmud study, then, is connected to my increasing observance of Jewish practice—of Shabbat, Torah study, the dietary laws, tallit, and tefillin. If I am to learn what it means to live as a Jew, I want to enter into this ancient world to hear these shaping voices of our tradition.
SPIRITUAL CHALLENGES Much as I want to enter into this ancient world of the Talmud, I also face it with some trepidation and anger. The Talmud will become not only an intellectual challenge, but also a deep spiritual challenge. I ask myself, what does it mean to study Talmud as a woman? What does it mean to study this literature which contains the names of so few women? What would it mean to immerse myself in a literature which can matter-of-factly discuss the status of a three-year-old girl’s virginity or how a woman is acquired in marriage? Most basically, I consider what it means to study a literature that was not written for me—and often even forbidden to me. I consider why, despite these hesitations, I may nonetheless want to place the Talmud at the center of my Judaism. So I continue on with my journey into the Talmud, spending a year studying at Matan, an Orthodox women’s yeshiva in Jerusalem and then on to rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. I see more pages of Talmud along with many medieval and modern commentators. But I still get angry at some of my teachers and the text because I am not able to answer my questions. I have not yet found my voice in the text. Even more importantly, I am not at all satisfied with my ability to learn a page of Talmud. Perhaps this is why I have not been able to find my voice. So a year after I finish rabbinical school, I return to full-time study of Talmud and Jewish law. I go to the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem and sit and learn. There are no shortcuts to learning how to learn. I simply have to sit in one
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place and read these texts, slowly and painstakingly. I want to understand the twists and turns of the arguments, and I want the various voices on the page to become coherent and distinguishable, one from another. Now I am strict with myself, trying to separate the various layers of the text one from the other. I try to internalize more of the methodology of academic Talmud which recognizes the Talmud as a layered and edited book. I no longer see sugyot as the recordings of contemporaneous discussions of the ancient Beit Midrash (Study Hall). Instead, they are constructed arguments and narratives, voices that are made to speak with each other across generations and so build an ideology. In these different voices, if we look closely enough, we can see the development of religious ideologies and the process of forming Jewish law. I also choose to study a tractate that I know will not touch on too many of the issues that make me angry. Masekhet Shabbat is perfect, allowing me to examine and understand the practice of Shabbat while permitting me to bracket temporarily my questions about women’s voices. I will return to my questions and my anger, but this pause allows me to do what I most want to do: learn how to learn.
A STEP FURTHER After this year of intense Talmud study in Jerusalem, I feel that I am finally learning how to analyze a sugya—to break a dense piece of Talmud into its component parts and then to build those parts up once again into a bigger picture. While I know that I am not done, that mastering Talmud will be a lifelong journey, I also know that the words are no longer a blur on the page. Instead, that column down the middle of the page has started to open itself up to me. I see clearly now the earlier voices of the tannaim and the later voices of the amoraim and then the editorial voice weaving among them. Best of all, as I gain these skills, studying Talmud becomes more of a joy. I discover that the sense of the Talmud’s mystique that kept me learning is beginning to be rewarded. Equally important, I realize that Talmud study has become central to my Judaism. Through it, I have a sense of the Divine, perhaps sometimes even of God’s voice. Talmud study, much more than daily ritual prayer, is where I approach God. I begin a doctoral program at the University of Chicago. There I will continue to study rabbinic literature, Talmud and Midrash, as well as legal theory. My love of personal study of Talmud has become even more deeply bound with my professional life. As the page opens before me, I find myself drawn more into this ancient world, watching the formation of rabbinic Judaism. I would love to meet some of characters from the Talmud’s pages: Yalta, Abaye, Rava, and many others. I also love teaching others how to read
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a page of Talmud, giving them the tools through which they too can access a page. While I realize that learning Talmud is never easy, I still believe there are ways in which I can make it less frustrating for others. I try to demystify the page for my students and at the same time keep a sense of Talmud as a sacred text. I want to help others acquire the ability to consider the core text of our tradition for themselves, to begin to think more closely about how we have gotten to the Judaism we practice today.
FINDING MY VOICE While writing my dissertation, I start teaching at the rabbinical school of Hebrew College. I am assigned to teach a Talmud course that focuses on rabbinic Judaism and gender. My teaching task forces me to return to questions that I have bracketed for a number of years. What does it mean to study this text that can talk about women in dehumanizing ways? What does it mean to call it sacred? I choose to teach the first chapter of tractate Kiddushin, a chapter that focuses on procedures for betrothal, and I realize that now I do have ways to respond to these questions. While our printed Talmud is composed of certain words written on a page, those words certainly do not end the discussion. As I now well know, the Talmud is a multivalent, multilayered text. My task is to look for these multiple ideologies, to search for the fault lines in the text—where a sugya reveals the issues with which it struggles. For example, M. Kiddushin 1:1 states, “A woman can be acquired in three ways and acquires herself in two ways. She is acquired by money, document, or sexual intercourse.” The very language of this mishnah is problematic: “acquiring” (kinyan) is language that is used to describe the purchase of land and slaves. Is betrothing, or acquiring, a woman similar to buying land?1 The opening sugya (B. Kiddushin 2a—b) reflects this tension when it asks for the Biblical source of the mishnah’s law that a woman can be acquired by money. The sugya presents two different options, both based on the hermeneutical technique of gezerah shavah, a comparison between equals. One option utilizes proof-texts from the story of Abraham’s purchasing the cave of Makhpelah to bury his wife Sarah (Genesis 23:13; 25:10). The other uses a verse from the prophet Jeremiah, “Fields shall be acquired for money” (Jeremiah 32:44). On the one hand, both examples extrapolate from buying land to betrothal. On the other, these two options emphasize very different types of purchases. The example of Makhpelah comes from a marriage narrative, the story of Abraham and Sarah’s marriage. Admittedly, the narrative is from after Sarah’s death, but it is still a tale of a husband ensuring his wife’s proper
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burial. While Jeremiah 32:44 does come from a narrative of God’s promise of everlasting covenant, it does not derive from a narrative of human marriage. It describes the way in which fields will once again be purchased as part of the restoration of Israel’s fortunes. Jeremiah 32:44 emphasizes the purchase of land; Makhpelah emphasizes a husband’s securing a proper burial for his wife. The choice of proof-texts reflects a fault line that continues through this sugya, a fault line which addresses the question of the similarity between betrothal and land purchase. As we can ask the question—to what extent is marriage like land purchase—so too we can see this sugya confronting the same question. Equally powerful as this tension within the Talmud is the continuing conversation that takes place among the medievals and the moderns about this sugya.2 They too deal with this fault line about the similarity between betrothal and land purchase. They too represent multiple voices and ideologies. I see how the medieval Tosafists have the ability to transform the meaning of a Talmudic passage so that I can no longer read it the way I had once thought. Because the Talmud is a living text, a text continuously studied and a text still relevant for Jewish practice, the conversation will not end with the page of Talmud itself or even with the medievals or even with the moderns. I find room for my own voice within this chorus and understand that these words do contain sacredness. But I believe that this sacredness lies not only in the words on the Talmud page but also in the ongoing conversation about those words and their meanings. I find sacredness in opening myself to letting the text talk to me, in acknowledging that the ancients represented on the page have much to teach me—as I also have something to teach them. I locate myself firmly within this group of ancients, medievals, and moderns; then I try to teach my students that they too, by learning how to read this text and its commentaries, can place their voices inside this textual tradition. Yes, the Talmud can dehumanize women, but I can stand within a long chain of commentators who have countered such dehumanizing statements. If Yalta, living sometime in the 3rd century C.E., can voice her opinion of her exclusion from ritual by breaking four hundred wine barrels,3 surely I can do so by learning how to include myself. By reading Talmud, I claim it as mine.
ANCIENT VOICES In the 21st century, why should we take this journey into Talmud? It is not an easy book to learn how to read. But I do believe that it is an essential one. First, along with the Tanakh, the Talmud is the foundational book of Jewish culture. Without it, we would not have the rabbinic Judaism that is practiced today. Second, it is an ancient book. Studying the ancient has the potential to teach
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us humility, to realize that those who lived long before us have something to teach us about how to live—how to worship God, conduct business, construct criminal law, observe the Sabbath, fast on the Day of Atonement, marry, and mourn for the dead. Studying ancient legal debates and ancient stories reminds us that we are not the first to construct a system of compensation for physical injury or to try to understand how human beings were created.4 Studying the ancient not only trains our minds; it brings us into a different world that has the ability to challenge us to consider more closely why we act and believe as we do today. It brings the ancient and the contemporary into close dialogue with one another, encouraging the ancient to speak to us as we speak back to it. It reminds us that not everything has to be of immediate relevance. Studying Talmud acts as a constant reminder that I am part of a long, rich tradition that is thick with meaning. Third, it is important for us to know and think about why we live as the kinds of Jews we do. Learning Talmud provides us with unmediated access into our history. Studying a sugya is very different from receiving a sound bite about Judaism; it is being absorbed into the very process of Judaism’s construction. Fourth, there is joy in mastering a difficult task, in investing the time it takes to do so. There is joy in listening to voices that are both foreign and still ours. There is joy in finding Talmud study to be a form of prayer. There is joy in finding a good hevruta, a study partner, who enables me to see things that I could not on my own. There is joy in becoming part of a chain of people who have studied Talmud before me. Studying Talmud is a Jewish practice. Fifth, studying Talmud enables me to find my voice as a Jew and to help me articulate a vision for Jewish life—it gives me power. It gives me an anchor from which to consider the world in which I now live. It gives me a place to get angry and a place to mend my anger. It gives me a multiplicity of voices and opinions and a constant intellectual challenge. Through its laws, stories, and debates, it gives me a window into the past and thus a better understanding of the present. Most of all, the Talmud gives me a place to be a Jew. Really, I would study Talmud in any century.
ENDNOTES 1. Rabbinic marriage consists of two stages: betrothal (kiddushin/`erusin) and marriage (nissu`in/huppah). This mishnah discusses the first stage of marriage, betrothal. 2. See, for example, Tosafot to B. Kiddushin 2a, s.v. ve-kesef menalan. 3. B. Berakhot 51b. 4. See M. Bava Kamma 8:1 and B. Berakhot 61a.
Talmud Study as a Religious Practice Devora Steinmetz
“Why study Talmud?” is a question that I think about often. I think about it because of my role as a teacher of Talmud—why is this subject worthy of the time that students must devote to it in order to become even marginally competent beginning learners? I think about it, too, because of the time that I spend on its study—and I have thought about it especially over the past few years as I have adopted, in addition to my regular study of Talmud, the practice of daf yomi study. And I think about it, also, as a parent who has introduced my own children to the study of Talmud and who hopes that my children will find it interesting, important, and engaging while being aware that the language, form, and content of this text pose formidable obstacles to the development of the kind of engagement into which I wish to see my children grow. The question “Why study Talmud?” can mean different things. It can mean “Why should Talmud study be a part of every Jewish person’s education”— that is, why is it important for any Jew, in order to be considered an educated Jew, to have been introduced at some point in his or her life to the study of Talmud? Or it could mean “Why should Talmud study continue to be a—or even the—central component of the Jewish studies curriculum”—or should Talmud study continue to have this pride of place in traditional educational settings, whether high schools, yeshivot, or even rabbinical schools? Both of these are important questions, and I have thought long and hard about each of them. Certainly, one could argue that Talmud study is essential in order for a person to be literate in Judaism’s foundational texts, in order for a person to be able to engage in discourse about halakha, and in order for a person to understand the dynamic nature of traditional Jewish ideas, interpretation, and practice. But I have decided to limit my discussion here to a third possible 47
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understanding of the question “Why study Talmud?” The question that I would like to address is this: “Why should Talmud study be a component of the ongoing religious practice that shapes a person’s Jewish life?” In other words, I am not looking at knowledge of Talmud as something that one must acquire as part of one’s education or at intensive Talmud study as something that one might engage in as a central component of part of one’s formal educational trajectory. Rather, I am looking at Talmud study as a practice that, along with other traditional practices, contributes toward the shaping of a particular kind of Jewish life, and I want to offer some thoughtsin-progress on ways in which the regular practice of Talmud study can be part of the ongoing formation of the person who incorporates this practice into his or her life. These thoughts are in progress because, as with any practice (or relationship) to which one is committed and in which one continues to engage over the course of a long time, the meaning of the practice continues to shift and grow as one changes and grows through the experiences of a lifetime. These thoughts are also very personal, as I am well aware that they are mediated by my own dispositions and experiences as well as by my own particular history in relation to Talmud study. And they are also culturally contingent, as I know well that, at least in relation to some of the domains that I will mention, certain kinds of Talmud study can lead to the exact opposite attributes and dispositions of those that I will discuss here. Nevertheless, I hope that the thoughts that follow might resonate with some of the readers of this volume and help give shape to some of their own thoughts about the place of Talmud study in their lives and the kind of Talmud study in which they might want to engage. I make no attempt here to be comprehensive in my response to “Why study Talmud,” even in relation to the specific way in which I have chosen to construe the question, but will focus my discussion on several elements that I have been thinking about over the past few years of reflecting on this question in relation to my teaching, my own life, and my aspirations for my children. ***** This is not the way of the Talmud [—to construe a teaching in a way that leads to its rejection]— for they . . . put themselves in pledge to resolve the statements of their teachers.1 (Nachmanides, Sefer Milchamot to bSanhedrin 72a)
In this passage, the Ramban (Nachmanides) describes his understanding of one of the central commitments of Talmudic discourse. The Ramban is reflecting on a common move in Talmudic argumentation, one that beginning students of Talmud often find maddeningly unreasonable or perhaps even disturbingly disingenuous. An amora’s2 statement, students quickly come to learn, cannot contradict a ruling of a tanna.3 But when an amora
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makes a statement that seems to be contradicted by a tannaitic ruling, the statement is rarely refuted. Rather, the Talmud employs a variety of strategies to defend the amora’s statement—distinguishing his case from the case referred to in the tannaitic ruling, so that there is no longer a conflict between the rulings; demonstrating that the tannaitic ruling is in fact disputed by other tannaitic sages, so that the amora has a tannaitic position that supports him; or, most extreme, at times changing our understanding of the tannaitic statement by asserting that one must read additional words into the statement in order to understand its true intent. While, at worst, this can seem like a game that no one would want to play or like a dissimulation in which no one should want to engage, the Ramban understands this core element of Talmudic discourse to embody an underlying ethic. In fact, it represents a commitment that motivates the Ramban’s own life work as a commentator on both rabbinic and biblical texts and as a respondent to scholars who preceded him and who he felt too easily dismissed the ideas of those who came before.4 The core commitment of Talmudic discourse to which the Ramban is pointing in the quotation above is, as Gadamer says in a rather different context, to “try to understand how what he [the author] is saying could be right.”5 That doesn’t mean that what the person says is right; it means that our encounter with a text, or with a statement of the greats who came before us—or, by extension, with the words of the person who sits next to us—demands of us that we try to make sense of it, that we experiment with ways of seeing whether it might be plausible, whether it might have something to teach us despite seeming at first glance to be wrong or irrelevant or out of sync with the way we see the world. What the Ramban is suggesting is that Talmudic reasoning offers us practice in a practice—not, it must be emphasized, in the habit of playing mind games or in parking our good judgment by declaring all positions to be equally plausible or valid, but in the practice of seeing whether there is a way in which we can understand the words of the other on the way to developing our own best understanding, an understanding which may, in the end, not accept the position of the other but which will, nevertheless, be informed by our encounter with that position. Implicated in this practice is the development of what I would call virtues (or midot): in particular the virtues of generosity and humility, along with the virtues of courage and integrity. It is a practice that develops generosity because it refuses too readily to dismiss what at first glance appears to be wrong or in conflict with our beliefs. We are obligated, as participants in this discourse, to try to figure out how the person whose words we are reading could be right—and it sometimes takes much effort (“we put ourselves in pledge”) to suspend quick judgment and try to see the value and wisdom of
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the point of view being expressed. It also takes humility—the humility not to assume that I immediately understand the intent of the other and can judge it at face value, the humility to think that the other might have an insight that is not immediately apparent to me. These virtues are both intellectual and moral dispositions. The challenge posed by Talmudic discourse is the challenge of seeing the opposing point of view in its best light—to see how what the other is saying could be possible— but yet, importantly, never to confuse whether it is possible with whether it is plausible or convincing. I am asked to engage the other point of view with generosity and humility while sticking to what, ultimately, seems to me to be right—and that is where the courage and integrity come in. As the Ramban says in his introduction to Sefer Milchamot, in Talmudic discourse there is generally no solid proof of what is right; there are only good arguments, and ultimately we must use our good judgment to determine what is most plausible, what we should believe in, and what we should act upon. This, he says, is the goal of every wise and God-fearing person in the study of Talmud. And the practice of Talmud study can, at its best, inspire us to strive to infuse these same commitments into the way we lead our lives—into how we encounter others with whom we disagree or others who make us uncomfortable, into how we decide what we ought to believe, and into how we deliberate what to do and to which paths we ought to commit ourselves. ***** He said to him [Rabbi Yitzchaq to Rav Nachman]: “Thus said Rabbi Yochanan: ‘Our father Jacob did not die.’” He [Rav Nachman] said to him: “But was it for naught that the eulogizers eulogized him and the embalmers embalmed him and the buriers buried him?!” He [Rabbi Yitzchaq] said to him: “I am expounding [doresh] scripture, as it says: ‘But you, do not fear, my servant Jacob, says the Lord, and do not dread, Israel, for I will deliver you from afar and your descendants from the land of their captivity’ (Jeremiah 30:10)—[the verse] compares him [Jacob] and his descendants: just as his descendants live, so he lives.” (bTa’anit 5b)
The Talmud is a universe inhabited by people, practices, beliefs, events, and ways of life—in short, it is a rich, thick cultural universe, a universe that is both ours and different from the one in which we live. For Rabbi Yitzchaq, our ancestor Jacob is not a person who lived in the past or a character in an ancient story. Jacob is alive—he must be, because we, his descendants, are alive. Jacob lives in our experience of him as our father, as a real person whom we know and in whose life we are implicated. Rabbi Yitzchaq’s statement offers a challenge to the modern learner of traditional texts: Do we approach these texts as artifacts of an ancient culture, a culture that lived in the past but is dead to us, or do we experience these
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texts as living worlds, as embodying a universe that is alive for us, a universe in which we too live—in which the figures of the past and we ourselves live together (“just as we live, so they live”)? There are, of course, many methods of studying Talmud. Different methods not only ask different kinds of questions and use different kinds of tools in the attempt to arrive at answers; they also construct (and are constructed by) different kinds of relationships between the learner and the text. While a modern (or postmodern) learner of traditional texts willy-nilly recognizes the tremendous cultural differences between herself and the world from which the text emerged, that recognition does not necessarily dictate approaching the text as an artifact of a world that was embalmed and buried. Engaging in Talmud study as a regular practice offers an alternative experience, the invitation to participate in a world in which we get to know not only our father Jacob but the heros and anti-heros of our rabbinic past, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Meir and Elisha ben Avuya, Beruria and Ima Shalom, Rabbi Yochanan and Resh Laqish and Rav Huna and Rav Ada bar Ahava and Raba and Rav Yosef and Abaye and Rava. For people who study Talmud regularly, the stories and figures of rabbinic tradition construct a universe of shared memory and meaning, a world of experience in which we participate, a lived frame of reference that enriches our own lives and that gives thickness to our identity as Jews. The characters that fill the pages of rabbinic texts, like those that inhabit our biblical texts, constitute a mythic world.6 It is just such a world that the authors of the Zohar entered into and expanded when they chose to follow Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his troupe of disciples into the hills of Galilee in search of new understandings of ancient texts. Dor dor vedorshav7—every generation has its seekers, and our search for meaning and for understanding becomes a shared search across place and time, a search shared with others whose names we know and whose struggles we share (as well as with others whose names have been forgotten but whose struggles were just as real), when we choose to enter the mythic world of our traditional teachers. Rabbi Yitzchaq’s derasha brought the biblical Jacob to life; our study brings Jacob as well as Rabbi Yitzchaq to life. Talmud study challenges us to do this, and it invites us to participate in the thick mythic universe of those who are doresh, who bring the past to life, and who continue to live as future generations choose to join their life journeys with the journeys of those who came before. ***** Things that are spoken [shebe’al peh], you may not put into writing. (bGitin 60b) Make for yourself a teacher, and acquire for yourself a companion. (mAvot 1:6)
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Talmud, like other rabbinic texts, is inherently a spoken medium. Although we read these texts nowadays from a printed book, they were meant to be studied orally and continued to be studied that way long after they were put into written form. The oral nature of a text has many implications, and the insistence that the text be transmitted and encountered in oral form can be explained in many ways. I want to discuss just one important feature of the essentially oral nature of the study of rabbinic texts. As Walter Ong points out in his classic book Orality and Literacy,8 the act of reading a book is essentially a private act. The reader encounters the text in isolation from others, construing the meaning of what she reads in a private meeting between herself and the words that the author has decided will appear on the printed page. An encounter with an oral text, in contrast, always involves the mediating presence of another. At the very least, one’s first encounter with an oral text involves a teacher, a person who has already committed the text to memory and who recites the text in your presence until you have assimilated it yourself. The presence of that teacher shatters the possibility of an initial private encounter between the person and the text. Even if the teacher says nothing other than the words of the text, the encounter with the text is always, at one and the same time, an encounter with an other. And that encounter with the other, the experience of transmission and the experience of relationship between teacher and learner—an experience that takes place at a particular time and in a particular setting—constitutes an inseparable part of the experience of the text. Most likely, and perhaps inevitably, the teacher will also mediate the meaning of the text, minimally through the tone, intonation, and affect that color the recitation, and maximally through explicit explanations, interpretations, and contextualizations of the text that is being transmitted. And, commonly, the encounter with an oral text would involve others besides the individual student and the teacher, most probably a small or large group of students who together are learning the text from the teacher who serves to mediate the tradition. Learning an oral text, then, is always an interpersonal experience; the relationship with the text develops along with the relationship with others, with a teacher and with companions who together seek to assimilate and understand what is being learned.9 While we now access the Talmud and other rabbinic texts from printed books, there are many ways in which these texts retain qualities of an oral medium. For one thing, the Talmud in particular is so opaque a text, in language, in the formulaic way in which arguments are structured, and in the thickness of references to a range of concepts and a network of other texts and traditions, that it virtually demands a teacher to initiate the beginning student into its world and the method of its study. And, even when students no longer need a teacher to help them make beginning sense of the Talmudic
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text, students traditionally (and, increasingly, in less-traditional settings) have studied Talmud with a chavruta, a learning companion. This practice, one could argue, is an extension of the mediated nature of rabbinic text study. It is also continuous with the nature of Talmudic texts themselves, which, it is often pointed out, are inherently dialogical. Much of the text of the Talmud is cast as an actual dialogue, as questions are raised and answers are offered, challenged, and defended and as the opinions of different sages are positioned in relation to each other and in relation to the positions of those who came before. The printed form of Talmudic texts extends the dialogue beyond the words of the Talmud itself and gives visual form to the dialogical nature of these texts, as it includes on the page the interpretations and discussions of Rashi and Tosafot and a variety of other commentaries from different places and times as well as cross-references to other rabbinic texts and to halakhic codifications of the legal material under discussion. Thus, even the lone student who no longer studies regularly with a teacher and who does not study together with a chavruta experiences Talmud study as participation in a conversation, a conversation that takes place over huge spans of time and space and that continues to live in the experience of the present, even when you open your volume of Talmud at home over coffee in the early morning when it is not yet light out and everyone else is still asleep. Talmud study as participation in a conversation relates to both of the elements of Talmud study that I have discussed already: the development of virtues that are essential for understanding and for commitment to action, and the joining of one’s own search for meaning and one’s own lived experience as a Jew in the mythic world of other Jews who have participated in this search. But I want to focus here on an additional aspect of torah shebe‘al peh as mediated Torah, as Torah that lives in conversation with a teacher and with a companion, as Torah that takes the shape of a conversation and that invites one to join that conversation. The dialogical nature of torah shebe‘al peh reminds us that Torah is never disembodied; the Talmud’s existence as and in conversation reminds us that Torah is always the expression of an encounter, an encounter between me and the text, an encounter between me and others, an encounter of each person’s reality with the reality of others and with the words and worlds of the text. This brings me to another quality of rabbinic texts as unwritten texts—the idea that torah shebe‘al peh is essentially unbounded by the margins of the page or the covers of the book. Torah shebe‘al peh reminds us both that Torah is greater than any one person’s understanding and that Torah is comprised of each person’s understanding. As a text mediated in encounter, the Talmud reminds us that no two moments of talmud torah can ever be the same, because no two people are the same, and because no two moments
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of life are ever the same. Thus, Torah can live and grow only in encounters of different people across time and in encounters of the same person across time with Torah. That is why Torah study must be a regular practice, and why Talmud study is an essential part of that practice. That is why we seek to study Talmud with others, and why we recognize that our understanding of Torah is enriched by our encounters with others, as our encounters with others are enriched when we study Torah with them. That is why we celebrate the completion of study of a tractate of Talmud with the words “we will return to you and you will return to us.” Study of torah shebe‘al peh reminds us that the trueness of our study of Torah must be measured in relation to the fullness of our engagement with the reality in which we live and the realities of the others whom we encounter. ***** Study is great(er), for study leads to action. (bKidushin 40b)
I am sitting in the library of Hebrew University on the morning after Israel released arch-murderer Sami Kuntar and other terrorists in return for Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, two Israeli reservists who were captured by Hezbollah two summers ago and whose fate was only known for certain when images of two black coffins being handed across the border appeared on TV screens across Israel. I saw these images yesterday morning when I went to buy a cup of coffee in the cafeteria after giving my last shiur of the year on tractate Ta‘anit, on the way to continue studying in the beit midrash along with others, students and faculty, who have been learning this tractate throughout the year in Havruta, a program of Talmud study for Hebrew University students. The day before, in a different shiur, I taught the last section of the tractate, a section that discusses the celebration of Tu be’Av and which lists a number of events that explain why this day is a happy day, a yom tov. All of the events, I note along with my students, are not actually happy events in and of themselves; what they are, rather, is the cessation of something bad that has been going on, a return to normalcy. One of the things that happened on this day, according to the Babylonian Talmud, is that the people who were killed at Betar, in the devastating revolt against the Romans under Bar Kokhba, were allowed to be buried. It is this same event, says the Talmud, that generated the final blessing that we say in birkat hamazon, the blessing hatov vehametiv—“who is good and who does good.”10 We couldn’t help but take note of the resonance of this teaching, of the event that it discusses and of the human experience that it reflects, with the events that were unfolding at that very moment. The image on the TV screen the next morning shifted from the two coffins to a rabbi who had just emerged from the house of one of the bereaved families. Reporters crowded around to ask for reflections on what the families were
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experiencing, on the meaning of the events for the mourners and for the nation as a whole. Searching for a way to express the complex tangle of raw emotions, the rabbi quoted the Talmudic teaching: “on the day that the people killed at Betar were allowed to be buried, they enacted in Yavneh ‘who is good and does good.’” The agreement that Israel made for the return of Regev and Goldwasser, or Eldad and Udi, as they are called here, in a country where every soldier is still everyone’s son, was tremendously controversial and has been and will probably continue to be hotly debated. Some think that it represents Israel at its best—we take care of our sons, even if the most that that can mean is bringing them home for burial. Others think that it is a disastrous capitulation to enemies who will use it to build up their capacity for terror and who will be increasingly motivated to kidnap Israelis and to raise their “price” for the return of captives, whether they are alive or dead. Let me say upfront that, while I have my own strongly held opinions about this matter, I do not think that classical Jewish sources generally have unequivocal answers to difficult and complex questions such as this. Nor do I want to suggest that someone who is steeped in Jewish learning is necessarily better able to resolve such a question than anyone else. Nevertheless, I do think that the practice of Talmud study has a potential contribution to make to the development of the kind of person who I think might best be entrusted with the difficult task of making hard decisions such as this one. I learned the passage about the enactment of the blessing hatov vehametiv as a young child. It puzzled me then, as it still does now, and things that puzzle have the tendency to remain in one’s consciousness, as the mind is drawn to dissonance and to engagement in the attempt to resolve it. But there is another passage that I learned as a child, and it too puzzled me then, not because I couldn’t understand it, but because it made all too much sense from one perspective while it seemed quite impossible from a different perspective. The Mishna says that, if a Jew is taken captive and the captors demand an exorbitant ransom, it is forbidded to ransom that person—this is one of the rulings that was enacted for the sake of tikun olam.11 The gemara and commentaries discuss the policy issues that are at stake here, primary among them the concern that ransoming the captive in such a case will motivate further acts of kidnapping. The Mishna’s teaching makes perfect sense from a policy perspective, but it is a very different thing to imagine putting this teaching into practice in the case of an actual person, with a name and a face and a family, whose fate is in your hands. And, not surprisingly, this difficulty surfaces in the gemara and commentaries, which immediately bring into discussion situations in which individuals did ransom family members or others at exorbitantly high prices. Did they do the right thing or did they not, and is it
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different if it is a family member who is acting as a private person rather than the community that is being called upon to act? The student of Talmud is used to deliberating on such questions and bringing to bear a range of important variables that might affect the decision in any given case, though of course deliberation on questions that appear in texts, no matter how complex those questions are, is worlds apart from deliberating on a real-life situation such as the one that confronted Israel in the past weeks. Much Talmud study, especially as it has traditionally focused on the legal discussions that make up most of the Talmud, obscures the face of the individual person in favor of complex discussion of general principles of law and their application to particular hypothetical situations. This can be terribly problematic if it characterizes the totality of one’s practice, but I want to suggest that, as one element of a practice, it can be a very useful thing. What this element of Talmud study does is make deliberation on action a religious act. It is a religious practice to think about, deliberate on, and argue about how one must act in a variety of complex circumstances. And, ideally, the habit of deliberation gives one practice in thinking hard and clearly about complex circumstances that will arise not in the pages of a book but in real life. As part of a practice, learning to reason with cold facts and general principles can make a crucial contribution to one’s ability to make good decisions in bad situations and to act on those decisions, no matter how difficult that might be. This ability to reason, I want to emphasize, must be shaped and mediated by the elements of the practice of Talmud study that I have discussed already. The process of deliberation must be guided by the virtues of humility and generosity along with integrity and courage—allowing oneself to be fully confronted by the point of view of the other and demanding of oneself to follow what, in the end, seems most reasonable and most right. In addition, deliberation cannot ignore the lived experience of the people who will be affected by the decision that one will make and the action that one will take; participation in the conversation of torah shebe‘al peh reminds us that Torah only can live if it speaks to the particular experience of our reality and the reality of the individuals around us. And our deliberation and, importantly, the way in which we give meaning to our experiences and to the reality to which our deliberations are addressed, is shaped as well by our participation in a mythic world, a world in which our current situation is a unique instance of an ongoing lived experience, in which the still-living events of Betar and Yavneh give depth and resonance to the particularity of our own situation. None of these elements of Talmud study, to be sure, tells us what to decide, but it is possible that the interplay of these elements of a rich, regular practice of Talmud study might help us become people who
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know how to decide. And one crucial element of Talmud study is the regular habit of deliberation on action, and the experience of such deliberation as itself a religious practice. Of course, thankfully, we are not confronted with decisions such as the one concerning the kidnapped soldiers every day. But we are confronted with much more mundane kinds of decisions about the way we live our lives every single day. It is not that Talmudic (or later halakhic) sources offer clear-cut answers to most of the questions that everday choices present to us, though they may offer valuable guidance. But I do think that the deliberation on action that is a part of Talmud study can help us be the kind of people who are disposed to reflect on the choices that we make and take note of the consequences of what we do. Deliberation on action as a religious practice, the habit of noticing and of thinking about choices and the implications of different courses of action, just might help us become more disciplined, more thoughtful, and more deliberate in the way we approach even the most mundane choices that confront us in our daily lives. ***** It was taught—Rabbi Akiva said: One time, I followed Rabbi Yehoshua into the bathroom, and I learned from him three things. . . . Ben Azai said to him: You were this brazen with your master?! He said to him: It is Torah, and I need to learn. It was taught—Ben Azai said: One time, I followed Rabbi Akiva into the bathroom, and I learned from him three things. . . . Rabbi Yehuda said: You were this brazen with your master?! He said to him: It is Torah, and I need to learn. Rav Kahana went and lay down under the bed of Rav. . . . He said to him: Kahana, are you here?! Go away, for this is not proper. He said to him: It is Torah, and I need to learn. (bBerakhot 62a)
The conception of Torah that is reflected in this passage is a broad one indeed. It is a Torah that encompasses all of life—even how one goes to the bathroom and how one sleeps with one’s spouse. It is a Torah that one learns from people, not only from texts, and it is a Torah that is learned not only from what people say but from what people do, what they do in the course of the day-to-day living of their lives. Rabbi Akiva and Rav Kahana insist that Torah relates to all aspects of life, and this insistence is reflected in the very nature of the Talmud. The Talmud is an encyclopedic repository of law, interpretation, argument, stories, teachings, and folk beliefs. Its very comprehensiveness reminds us that we should adopt a broad conception of Torah, that no part of life is excluded from Torah—that Torah must speak to all aspects of life, and that all aspects of a life lived well constitute Torah.
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Rav Huna said to his son Raba: “Why aren’t you regularly in the presence of Rav Chisda, whose teachings are sharp?” He [Raba] said to him: “Why should I go to him? For when I go to him, he teaches me mundane things. He says to me: ‘A person who goes to the bathroom shouldn’t sit down forcefully and shouldn’t strain himself too much, for the rectum rests on three “teeth,” lest the “teeth” of the rectum become dislodged and the person become endangered.’” He [Rav Huna] said to him: “He engages with the lives of human beings, and you say with ‘mundane things’?! Certainly, then, you should go to him!”12
Rav Huna criticizes his son for not recognizing the importance of Rav Chisda’s teachings about life. For Raba, these are mundane things, they are not Torah, and they are certainly not sharp teachings, the kind of brilliant insights that might lead one to choose to align oneself with a particular teacher. For Rav Huna, Raba has completely missed the point; if he thinks that teachings that sustain life are mere mundane matters, then he does not understand Torah at all. Raba must become a disciple of Rav Chisda to learn this very thing—not only to learn the specific teachings that Rav Chisda has to offer but to learn that teachings that sustain life are the Torah that he should be seeking. Engagement in Talmud study, in its very comprehensiveness and with its variety of topics and genres, is an experience of searching for knowledge and understanding. As a practice of talmud torah, it makes the point that the search for knowledge, knowledge of all kinds and knowledge of all kinds of things, is a religious act. Curiosity and the desire to understand are religious dispositions, as the desire to learn how to act well is a religious aspiration. To learners who live in a time and culture far removed from the culture(s) that generated the Talmud, much of the content of the Talmud cannot satisfy our quest to understand—we don’t really believe in demons and spells or in the folk remedies that Abaye learned from his foster mother or the dream interpretations collected in the final chapter of tractate Berakhot. But the fact that our teachers sought to understand the forces that threatened them, the illnesses that befell them, and the dreams that haunted them, and the fact that their understandings are included as part and parcel of Talmudic texts, speaks powerfully to what it means to learn Torah and to the religious nature of the act of seeking to understand. But beyond expressing and cultivating the value of the search for knowledge and understanding, I think that there is additional benefit in encountering the sometimes strange and often distant or unfamiliar content of Talmudic texts. Encountering a world different from my own challenges me in several ways. First, if I am to seek to understand, which, as I discussed earlier, is a moral and intellectual challenge that I feel is central to the practice of Talmud study, then I have to work hard on developing ways of looking at things that can help make the strange familiar and the distant close. A corollary of this is the
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very useful exercise of seeking to make the familiar strange—that is, looking at my own beliefs and ways of life, at the givens of my own culture, and asking in what ways they are embedded in beliefs that might be just as irrational as the beliefs of distant cultures seem to me. All cultures, as anthropologists are quick to remind us, have ways of structuring experience to keep dangers at bay and to impose order and give meaning to the chaos that is our lives. Our own practices of handwashing after contact with certain things but not with others, our sense of which bodily fluids are contaminating and which are not, our choices of where and when we feel safe and what places we avoid at what times, the “five-second rule” and its many variations—all of these may have some basis in science or in fact but they are largely shaped and sustained by a set of beliefs that we might imagine are scientific and rational but that in actuality are ways of trying to convince ourselves that we are safe in an unsafe world. Confronting a culture with different beliefs and practices helps us be able to take a step back from our own cultural beliefs and practices and recognize the contingent nature of many taken-for-granted aspects of our own way of life—including, perhaps, some of our deeply held contemporary values. What Peter Berger says about “religious faith” is perhaps even truer about immersion in the thick culture of rabbinic texts: it “is one powerful help in maintaining a reasonable distance from the ever-changing intellectual fashions of elite culture.”13 At the same time, this making of the familiar strange helps make the strangeness of the other more familiar, offering us a way to experience an affinity with the search for understanding, meaning, and order that shapes the lives of others—and that infuses rabbinic texts—as well as our own lives. The practice of Talmud study demands an intellectual leap of the imagination. I need to be able to imagine a world in which priests wading ankle-deep in sacrificial blood is a praiseworthy thing.14 What different ways of seeing the world and of experiencing the world am I missing, and how can I try to access these other modes of experience and meaning-making? The attempt to do this puts me in empathic communion with Jews who came before, even as I recognize that the life that I lead and the meaning structure that I inhabit are not the same as theirs. It forces me into a place of humility about the ultimate validity or value of my way of life, and it asks me to reflect on and imagine with generosity the value of alternative ways of life, ways of life that still live in the mythic universe of the Talmud, a universe that still lives for me. And it asks me, as well, to reflect on and to imagine what is missing from my own way of being in the world. To quote Peter Berger again, “Our ancestors didn’t know about particle physics, but they spoke with angels.”15 We do know about particle physics, but it is important to remember that we know less than we think we know about the things that we do know about, and it
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is also important to remember that, like Berger’s angels, there are things that we know nothing about and that learning Talmud asks us to imagine and experience. ***** On that day Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hurqanos taught (darash): It was out of love that Job served the Blessed Holy One, as it says: “Though he slay me, in him (lo16) I trust.” (Job 13:15) But the meaning is ambiguous—I do look to him, or I do not look to him? Another verse clarifies this: “Until I expire, I will not cast off my integrity from myself” (Job 27:5)—this teaches that he acted out of love. Rabbi Yehoshua [ben Chanania] said: Who will remove the dust from your eyes, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai! For you taught (doresh) all of your days that it was out of fear that Job served the Omnipresent, as it says: “A man of integrity and upright, fearing God and keeping from evil.” (Job 1:8) And behold Yehoshua the student of your student has taught that he acted out of love! (mSotah 5:5)
The Talmud is the central text of what David Hartman calls Judaism’s “interpretive tradition.” This is so not only because the Talmud is full of interpretations, interpretations of biblical verses as well as of rabbinic teachings, but because the Talmud is a celebration of interpretation and an invitation for ongoing interpretation. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chanania, an important and beloved sage who is the student of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai, the mythic founder of post-destruction rabbinic scholasticism, and the teacher of Rabbi Akiva, the paradigmatic rabbinic hero and master of interpretive creativity, delights in the new teaching of the more junior sage, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hurqenos. But more, he is convinced that his own teacher, the great Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai, would himself be delighted to hear the teaching of Rabbi Yehoshua—and this despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai taught the very opposite interpretation of the biblical story of Job. If only Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai could come to life now, his understanding would be enriched by the new insight of this young scholar— and, moreover, he would see that the tradition of interpretation that he sought to establish and nurture in the wake of the destruction continues to flourish. Earlier, I discussed the dialogical nature of torah shebe‘al peh in relation to the notion of encounter, of learning Torah as mediated by the presence of the other and as responsible to the reality of the other and of oneself. I want now to focus on the nature of torah shebe‘al peh as a web of interconnected texts and traditions—a masekhet or “weaving,” as a tractate of Talmud is called—a web that continues to invite us to weave it through our own understandings and interpretations. For Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chanania, the younger Rabbi Yehoshua’s new interpretation is not a violation of the honor or authority of
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the master teacher Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai. On the contrary, it is the greatest tribute to the life and work of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hurqenos has continued to search the depths of the texts to whose understanding Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai devoted himself. He has applied exegetical strategies to try to resolve difficult questions of interpretation. And he has come up with a new understanding that, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chanania is certain, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai would surely want to know. There is a tremendous continuity here, but it is a continuity that is grounded in individuality, in difference, and in change. And it is a continuity in which each person has a crucial role to play, because each person who engages in Torah study has the capacity to grow Torah, to enter into and add to the web of interpretation and understanding that constitutes torah shebe‘al peh. My obligation to learn Torah, then, is not complete if I only learn the insights and interpretations of those who came before. Torah shebe‘al peh demands that I actively participate in the growth of Torah, that I enact my commitment to Torah and to my teachers, present and past, by doing exactly what they have taught me to do—to interpret as they have interpreted, to seek to understand and, in so doing, to help offer new understandings that themselves become a part of the infinity of Torah. And, it is important to note, studying Talmud reminds us that our tradition is an interpretive one that has been shaped and continues to be shaped by the new insights and understandings of different people in different situations. Talmud study brings to our awareness the dynamic nature of our tradition, the ways in which practices and understandings develop and change over time as individuals and communities engage in complex interactions with the texts and traditions of the past. ***** A certain heretic saw Rava engrossed in study, and he had put his fingers under his leg, and he was crushing them, and his fingers were bleeding. He [the heretic] said to him: “You rash people who put your mouth before your ears17—you still persist in your rashness! First, you should listen—if you are able to, accept it, and if not, do not accept it.” He [Rava] said to him: “We who walk in wholeness, of us it is written: ‘The integrity of the upright shall guide them’ (Proverbs 11:3).” (bShabbat 88a–88b)
The final dimension of the practice of regular Talmud study that I would like to discuss might appear to stand in tension with the point that I have just made about the nature of the practice as active participation in the interpretive tradition, though I believe that both elements of the practice live together in the experience of those who make Talmud study a regular part of their religious practice.
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The practice of regular Talmud study—and in particular a practice such as daf yomi or any regular study of a continuous Talmudic text—is a little like a marriage. I commit myself to being with this person, and I commit myself out of love, but there might be mornings when I would prefer to wake up alone or moments when things about my spouse bother me and when I would prefer not to have to deal with the totality of my spouse’s presence in my life. But marriage is a covenant, a commitment born of love and sustained by love, and that commitment means that I have to confront and live with the whole of the person whom I love—I don’t get to pick and choose which parts of the person make me feel good and ignore the parts with which I struggle. Rava is struggling with the passage that he is learning. We don’t know whether he is struggling because it is a particularly difficult text or whether he is struggling because he finds the teaching impossible to accept at face value. We only know that his struggle is so intense that he does not feel the physical pain of his fingers being crushed—or, perhaps, that his very body experiences the pressure and the pain of his attempt to understand the Torah that he is learning—Rava’s practice of talmud torah makes him bleed! Why bother, asks the gentile. Why not reject Torah if it includes things that you cannot accept? Or, perhaps, why not choose in advance what you can accept and reject what you can’t? But, says Rava, that is impossible, because we walk in wholeness. Rashi explains: “We walk with him in wholeness of heart, as one does out of love . . .” One can, of course, study Talmud by picking and choosing (or having someone else pick and choose for you) the parts that are meaningful, interesting, relevant, and accessible. But a regular practice of Talmud study—in particular, a practice such as daf yomi, in which you commit to completing the study of every single page of the Talmud over the course of seven years of continuous study—puts you face-to-face with parts of the Talmud that, sometimes, you would rather not have seen. There are, as I already mentioned, passages that reflect folk beliefs that we simply do not accept, such as how to protect yourself from the demons that roam outside on certain nights of the week. There is, also, a huge amount of material about things to which we might find it difficult to relate, such as the details of the laws of sacrifices and the rules of purity. And, of course, there are passages and entire tractates that reflect values and viewpoints that we might find antithetical to our core beliefs, such as much of the Talmud’s discussion of women or of marriage and divorce. Moreover, apart from the content, parts of the Talmud are just plain extremely difficult to understand—why should we bother? As the earlier sections of this essay show, I think that there are many reasons we should bother. But here I want to focus on what it means to bother, on what it means, as a religious practice, to wake up each morning ready to hear what the Talmud has to say, without prejudging whether we can accept it and without prechoosing what we are ready to hear.
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Regular Talmud study is an expression of—or, better, an enactment of—a relationship. The relationship with Torah is a covenantal relationship; like a marriage, it too is a commitment born of love and sustained by love. And, as in a marriage, in my relationship with Torah I must open myself to what is there; I must be ready to encounter the presence of the other, the totality of the other as it presents itself to me each day. I cannot choose what face the other will show me; I cannot choose the parts of Torah that I will find meaningful or interesting or with which I will resonate. Sometimes I will encounter things that trouble or upset me, sometimes things that I cannot affirm, but I am nevertheless in relationship with the whole, and the relationship is expressed in my openness to encountering the whole. The experience of struggle—Rava’s sitting on his fingers until they bleed—the very experience of making an effort, of taking the time and trouble to try to understand, and sometimes the experience of pain—is an integral part of the construction and maintenance of the relationship with Torah. This is not to say that there aren’t moments of joy, of discovery, of engagement, even of revelation, but a full relationship means relating to the whole, being open to the whole, and it is in the openness to whatever I might find and the effort that I put into trying to understand that I enact and experience the depth of my commitment to and love of Torah. The practice of regular study is, in a way, similar to the practice of regular prayer. In both, I set time aside for an encounter and for the expression of a commitment. But study is different from prayer—or at least from the ways in which most of us experience prayer—in that in study I must open myself to the voice of the other. The aspect of study of which I am speaking here is also different from the dimension of study of which I spoke in the preceding section—a study characterized by chidush, by adding one’s own voice to the interpretive tradition, by challenging what came before, by joining in the conversation of Torah. These modes of study, or experiences of study, complement each other. I join my voice to the ongoing conversation of Torah, and I also open myself to the voice that Torah presents to me. I am doresh Torah, and I am meqabel Torah. It is in both the listening and the speaking that my relationship to Torah and to the learners of Torah is realized and sustained. ***** “As in water face to face, so the heart of a person to a person.” (Proverbs 27:19) Rashi: Like water, at which a person gazes and sees in it a face like his face—if he is smiling, it is smiling, and if he is frowning, it is frowning—so the heart of a person to another person—if he loves the other, he too loves him. . . .
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Rabbi Yehuda [says]: That is written concerning Torah study. (bYevamot 117a) As I noted in the introduction to this essay, the list of dimensions of Talmud study that I discuss here is, no doubt, highly personal. It reflects my own values, my own concerns, my own understanding of Judaism, and my own orientation toward learning. But it also emerges from deep and long-standing reflection on the question of why study Talmud and, in particular, on what dispositions a practice of Talmud study might nurture in its students. I am all too aware that Talmud study can nurture very different dispositions, and that it often does. Learning how to argue every side of an issue, how to defend every point of view, can teach one to suspend one’s good judgment, to argue based on logical possibility rather than on plausibility and good sense. Or it can lead one to the laissez-faire conclusion that any result is all right as long as you’ve played by the rules of the game. We can learn to be wise-guys rather than wise and good people. Engagement in the mythic universe of the Talmud can lead one to confuse that world with the world in which we live, to obliterate the differences in culture and values between those two worlds, rather than challenge ourselves to struggle with what those differences mean for our choices and for our religious consciousness. Or, as I’ve already noted, awareness of the differences can lead us to declare that other world dead and buried, an interesting artifact of a historic past rather than a living universe that we inhabit along with our own. We can continue to see the distant as strange, or even conclude that it is stranger than we ever imagined it to be, and complacently affirm our own intellectual and moral superiority over those who came before. We can so fully enter into the conversation on the Talmudic page that we forget that conversation is an encounter and that Talmudic conversation must include the encounter with others around us and with the reality in which we live. Or we can so fully engage with the reality in which we live that we confuse that reality as constituting the whole of the truth of Torah and miss the opportunity to be instructed and challenged by our conversation partners of long ago. We can get so used to debating hypothetical situations and general principles of law that we become overconfident of our ability to address complex and difficult real-world situations. We can imagine that, somehow, the person who is expert in Talmud is expert in life. We can become so enchanted with the notion of our own participation in the interpretive tradition that we neglect to ground our thinking and our decisions in the voices of the past. And we can become so willing to open ourselves to the voices of the past that we forget that we are obligated to add our own voices to the conversation of Torah.
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So my discussion of the dimensions of a practice of Talmud study is really a reflection on what Talmud study can mean for those who adopt it as part of their religious practice, not on what it necessarily does mean or has meant. Of course, much of this depends on one’s values and dispositions and on those of one’s teachers and study companions. How one approaches the act of study, what one looks for and what one hopes to find, is a matter of choice. The discussion that I have offered here is a window into some of the choices that I have made, into the values and dispositions that shape my own life, that sustain and are sustained by my own practice of study. It is one way of thinking about how one might approach the practice of study and how a practice of Talmud study might contribute to the shaping of a religious life and to one’s aspirations as a Jew.
ENDNOTES 1. I have offered here a simplified version of this quotation. Here is a fuller version of the Ramban’s statement: This is not the way of the Talmud [—to construe a teaching in a way that leads to its rejection]—for they subtract from and add to amoraic statements [in order to make them plausible] and they declare tannaitic sources to be missing [material that renders the meaning of the statement different] or to be faulty [so that it no longer serves as a refutation of the amoraic sage’s position] and they put themselves in pledge to resolve the statements of their teachers. 2. An amora is a sage of the Talmudic, post-mishnaic period. 3. A tanna is a sage of the mishnaic period. 4. See, for example, the Ramban’s commentary on Maimonides’ Sefer Hamitzvot, in which he defends the traditions of the geonim, his Sefer Milchamot, in which he defends the rulings of the Rif against the attacks of R. Zerachia Halevi, and his commentary on the Pentateuch, in which he frequently attempts to show how a rabbinic interpretation can be sustained in light of the plain meaning of the biblical text (for one example, see the commentary on Exodus 22:6). 5. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (London and New York: Continuum, 2004), 292. 6. By “mythic,” I mean relating to foundational stories, events, or experiences that transcend time, that tell of the distant past but that continue to live in the present, and that resonate with meanings that accrue over time as individuals and communities identify with the reality of the story. 7. bSanhedrin 38b. 8. Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 128; see also pp. 100–102. 9. For a striking description and insightful discussion of an example of contemporary oral transmission of texts, in a culture that is not characterized by what Ong
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calls “primary orality” and in which the texts have long been available in written form, see Georges B. J. Dreyfus, The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: The University of California Press, 2003), especially pp. 85–87, 150–152, 154–157, and 160–163. Martin S. Jaffee discusses the relationship between torah shebe‘al peh and discipleship in Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE–400 CE (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 10. bTaanit 31a, bBerakhot 48b. 11. mGitin 4:6. 12. bShabbat 82a. 13. Peter Berger, A Far Glory: The Quest for Faith in an Age of Credulity (New York: Anchor, 1993), 66. 14. bZevachim 35a. 15. A Far Glory, 13. 16. This word, depending on the spelling, can mean “to/for him” or “not”; the two possible meanings of the phrase, depending on how this word is read, will be explicated in a moment. 17. I.e., who commit to action before hearing what is being demanded, an interpretation of the Israelite’s declaration at Mount Sinai “We will do and we will hear” (Exodus 24:7).
An Opened Book: Talmud Study by Women in the 21st Century Devorah Zlochower
When I was a little girl, I had two secret wishes. The first was to play in the Major Leagues and the second was to study Gemara. We called it Gemara and not Talmud and it was definitely the Major Leagues. Boys in my community began studying Gemara in the 6th grade, and it was the only subject they studied in high school. Men learned Gemara as well. There was a kollel in town that ran a daf yomi shiur where the men of the community could study a page of Gemara everyday. The goal of intellectually gifted and religiously minded males in my community was to devote themselves to the study of Gemara. Girls did not study Gemara and did not play baseball. At recess we played dodgeball and kickball, and in our Jewish studies we learned Chumash (Bible) and Navi (Prophets). When I asked my teachers why we did not study Gemara they usually responded that men’s and women’s brains were different and men’s were more suitable for Gemara study. When pressed, my rebbeim would say that women were gifted with bina (practical knowledge) and not hokhma (analytical knowledge) and were thus unable to plumb the depths of a sugya (Talmudic discussion). Being brighter than many of my male peers, I thought that explanation untenable but I did not stand up in protest. And so I became a secret student of Talmud. When my father purchased a set of mishnayot with the highly accessible commentary by Pinchas Kehati, I began studying the order of Nezikin on my own. But it was much harder to sneak a Gemara. They were large, heavy tomes often hidden in plain view behind glass doors. I did a project on women in the Talmud during my junior year of high school and glanced at a few pages, getting permission to remove some volumes. And I convinced my father to study the beginning of Bava Metzia with me. But for the most part, the Gemara remained a closed book. 67
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When I began my university studies, I redirected my intellectual curiosity to the study of political science, and because of some wonderful mentors in university I began to pursue graduate studies in political science. I discovered that there were arenas in which my intellectual curiosity was respected. I remained a religiously observant Jew but my intellectual passions were ignited by the secular world; Torah moved to the back burner and I did little other than review the weekly Torah portion. While political science was intellectually satisfying it did not provide the spiritual sustenance I needed. I could not decouple intellect from religious passion; I had been trained too well in my yeshiva days. I longed for “learning,” not just studying. After three and a half years of graduate school, I took a leave of absence and entered the Fellowship Program at Drisha Institute. At Drisha I began to immerse myself in the study of Gemara. We learned Gemara every morning for three and a half hours. My seat in the beit midrash (study hall) was right in front of the tall bookcase holding the volumes of Gemara and there were no glass doors. These volumes were meant to be studied; some had broken bindings, some had penciled in translations, and all were light enough to be lifted but still retained a satisfying heft. If not yet the Majors, I was at least on the playing field. It was thoroughly satisfying and, to date, I still have not left the beit midrash. What was it that I was seeking? What did Gemara study mean to me? I had always been a serious student not particularly prone to rebelliousness, and I took to heart the maxims I had been taught lauding study of Torah. If talmud Torah is indeed the pinnacle of Jewish religious life, then as a religiously minded person with intellectual drive and abilities it seemed fairly obvious that Torah study would be my avodat Hashem, my Divine service. What I missed was that those messages had not been intended for me. I was supposed to understand, intuitively somehow, that I was not to be a Torah scholar. That role was reserved for my brothers. I was to value Torah, to put a premium on high achievement in Gemara learning, but only in a spouse. I was not to dream those dreams for myself. This was the paradox I faced. I wanted to learn Gemara as a religious act, a fulfillment of God’s will, but I couldn’t learn Gemara without committing an act of rebellion and breaking a religious taboo. When I became a student of Talmud at age 25, the paradox faded into the background for a time. I had so many years of catch-up to do and I was too busy drinking of the living waters of Torah. But there were moments, glimpses, that brought me back to this inescapable dilemma. One day, as my havruta (study partner) and I were studying, our teacher, a man a few years older than me, rushed into the beit midrash declaring excitedly, “Today we are going to look at the sources justifying why you are allowed to learn Gemara.” I looked up at
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him and without thinking said, “I don’t care what the sources say; I have to learn Gemara.” Could this be Torah lishma? Was I enaged in avodat Hashem? This challenge has been posed to outsiders seeking membership in the inner circles, and it is a challenge that can only be answered satisfactorily by questioning its very premise. Here finally is where feminism came in for me. Feminism gave me the tools and language to understand that as a woman seeking entry into the men’s, only beit midrash, I would never be able to be religiously devout without being rebellious. I would never be able to read the texts of my tradition unimpeded by questions of authority. I would never be able to forget that I was not a student of Gemara but a woman learning Gemara. I would not succeed in entering the conversations of Rava and Abaye, Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam, and lose myself completely; I would always be watching, watching myself and watching the texts, and waiting for those moments when I would be revealed as an intruder. I was to be a simultaneous insider and outsider, longing for the center and never able to fully leave the periphery. At Drisha we spent one year learning parts of the tractate of Gittin, which details the laws of divorce. I invariably found myself saying when analyzing the various cases and points of law, “So let’s say I want to divorce my wife.” There is no way to make this statement make sense for me since as a woman, I cannot divorce a man in Jewish law. I cannot say, “I want to divorce my husband” without being false to the halakha and I cannot say, “I want to divorce my wife” without being false to myself. But this goes beyond a question of the limits of Talmudic language. Unless I talk about Reuven (the Talmudic John Doe) divorcing Leah (Jane Doe), I cannot learn Gittin, but if I allow Reuven to divorce Leah without noting that Leah cannot reciprocally divorce Reuven, I am allowing that inequity to be expressed unchallenged. If the Talmud is to speak to me, a woman of the 21st century who seeks religious meaning in these texts, I cannot allow that moment to pass without marking the agony of the modern day aguna, the woman who is chained to a dead marriage by a husband unwilling to grant her a divorce. Examples abound. There are the texts in which women are ignored, texts in which women and their bodies are the objects of study and, in some senses most problematic for me, texts in which women are given space but a space defined by and controlled by men. Here is an illustration of the last phenomenon. When an individual brought a sacrifice to the Temple, one of the required acts was semikha, the laying of the hands on the head of an animal sacrifice. Three types of sacrifices were brought by the individual specifically for the pilgrimage festival. In Tractate Hagiga 16a, the mishna discusses the permissibility of performing the ritual act of semikha on these pilgrimage sacrifices.
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Yosi son of Yoezer says one should not perform semikha while Yosef son of Yohanan says that it may be performed. Yehoshua son of Perahia says one should not perform semikha while Nittai the Arbelite says it may be performed. Yehuda son of Tabai says one should not perform semikha while Shimon son of Shetah says it may be performed. Shemaya says one should perform semikha while Avtalyon says it may not be performed. Hillel and Menahem did not disagree. Menahem went forth and Shammai entered. Shammai says one should not perform semikha while Hillel says it may be performed. The first ones were patriarchs and the latter were heads of the court.
The gemara then proceeds to comment on this multigenerational dispute noting that the longevity of this dispute and specifically the resilience of the position forbidding semikha indicates the seriousness of violating the Rabbinic prohibition of shevut, activities seen as inappropriate to the Sabbath or festival. In the course of accounting for the details of the debate, the gemara goes on to discuss the definition of the act of semikha. Is semikha a light resting of the hands or is it a full press of the hands on the head of the animal? We are introduced to the words of Rami son of Hama who insists that a full press is required for only then would there be a problem of shevut; the light resting of the hands not qualifying as shevut and therefore would not occasion the debate in the mishna. The gemara proceeds: An objection was raised. It is written: Speak to the sons of Israel . . . and he shall lay his hands. (Leviticus 1: 2, 4) The sons of Israel lay hands but the daughters of Israel do not lay hands. Rabbi Yosi and Rabbi Shimon say: The daughters of Israel may opt to lay hands. Rabbi Yosi said: Abba Elazar told me, “Once we had a calf which was a peace offering and we brought it to the Women’s Court and women laid their hands on it; not that semikha must be done by women, but in order to grant nahat ruah, (gratification) to women.” Now if you thought that we require semikha to be performed with all one’s strength, for the sake of gratification of women would we permit work to be done with sacrificial animals! Infer from this that we do not require all one’s strength. But no, say (rather) that we do require all one’s strength, but he told the women to rest their hands lightly. If so it is not the case that women may perform semikha, rather infer that it was no semikha at all! R. Ammi said: He said one and then another; it was no semikha at all and it (the light resting of the hands) was done in order to create nahat ruah for women.
Let’s first clarify the argument. Rami son of Hama maintains that semikha requires the full pressing of the hands. The gemara then cites a beraita in objection to his claim. The beraita delineates a debate regarding the permissibility of a woman performing semikha on her sacrificial offering. The first anonymous opinion is that women may not perform this ritual. The second opinion, attributed to Rabbis Yosi and Shimon, states that while
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a woman bringing a sacrifice is not required to perform semikha, she may perform semikha. Note that in both opinions women are not held to the same ritual obligations here as men. How does the beraita serve as a challenge to the position of Rami son of Hama? The gemara asserts that the women must not have been leaning full strength on the sacrificial animal. Why must this be the case? One is prohibited to do any labor with an animal that has been designated as a sacrifice. Leaning on the animal and causing the animal to bear one’s weight is labor, thus, unless the semikha was mandated it would be forbidden to perform this act. Since women are not required to perform semikha, they may not perform semikha. The gemara initially concludes that any semikha, even a mandated semikha, is only a light resting of the hands and does not cause the animal to bear any additional burden. This challenges the statement of Rami son of Hama. In order to defend Rami son of Hama’s position, the gemara ends by suggesting that it was only the women who did not perform an actual act of semikha but instead did a pseudo-semikha. Turning our attention to the participation of women as described in this discussion, we see some significant limitations. We have seen that women are not obligated to perform semikha when bringing a sacrifice unlike men who are obligated. We have seen one view in which women are actually forbidden to perform semikha based on a reading of the verse in Leviticus 1:2 in which the phase bnei yisrael is understood as Israelite males and not the entire Israelite population. But it is the view of Rabbis Yosi and Shimon that I wish to examine in greater detail. This view affords a greater ritual role for women in the sacrificial order. Generally, the role a non-kohen may play in the bringing of the sacrifice is quite circumscribed; one may only participate by slaughtering the animal and performing semikha. Rabbis Yosi and Shimon permit women to perform semikha and cite case study to buttress their position. According to Abba Elazar women did perform semikha in the Temple. However, this is not because women are required to perform semikha but to afford them nahat ruah. What is nahat ruah and what is its message? The term is somewhat ambiguous but, minimally it would seem to indicate that women felt good when they were allowed to participate. This gratification or satisfaction is seen as legitimate by Abba Elazar and a sufficient reason to allow women to perform semikha. This notion of nahat ruah li’nashim, allowing women’s ritual participation when it is not required is used by later authorities to recite the accompanying blessings to mitzvot from which women are exempted and thereby endow those acts with full religious significance. Thus, some medieval commentators ruled that women may, for example, sit in the sukka and recite the blessings without concern that the berakha which states that God commanded
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us to dwell in the sukka is a brakha li’vatala, a blessing recited in vain. The notion of nahat ruah li’nashim has been a powerful means of creating greater ritual roles for women, however, it is not an unadulterated good. It is, first of all, an act of benevolent paternalism. It is benevolent in that it gives women something good, the opportunity to do mitzvot, and paternalistic because it is men granting and circumscribing these possibilities. Nahat ruah li’nashim is unsatisfactory for it is contingent on the good will and power of men and it covers up systemic inequities. But the gemara does not end here with a semikha born of a desire to give women a role where none is mandated. In order to resolve the problem of avoda bi’kodshim, performing labor with a sacrificial animal, the gemara suggests that the women of Abba Elazar’s story were actually not performing semikha. Perhaps the women were not aware that their “semikha” was not a legitimate semikha for how else could they experience nahat ruah if they were aware that their actions were religiously meaningless. And there lies my problem. I love these texts; I still find myself shocked that I have actually become a student of the Talmud. But Talmud study for me is a mixed blessing as I find myself engaged in an impossible dance between delight in the tradition and its foundational texts and discomfort with its limitations and exclusions. It is essential for me to understand the texts of our tradition but I cannot do this without wrestling with the tradition simultaneously. My Torah lishma has become, by desire and necessity, a form of reverent critique. Reverence for the beauty and staying power of these texts for which I still thirst, and critique because I cannot study them divorced from the context in which they were born and the assumptions of the men who wrote them. Every morning as I wake again to another day of Torah study, I make the blessing la’asok bi’divrei Torah, to busy myself, to fully engage in the words of Torah. I am so blessed to be able to study Torah; Torah is fully alive for me with its pleasures and its pains, its power to infuriate and inspire. Blessed is the Giver of the Torah.
Part II
TEACHING TALMUD
The Dialectics of the Divine Commanding Voice: Values, Meaning, and Culture in the Talmud Tsvi Blanchard
When I began studying Talmud I didn’t know very much about it. As a traditional Jew, I did so because, as most of the committed Jews I knew, I believed that studying Talmud along with the study of Chumash [the Bible] and its traditional commentaries was an indispensable part of the mitzvah of talmud torah, the study of Torah that is “equal to all the mitzvoth.” In addition, I recognized that if I wanted to be a well-educated, practicing Jew—and I did—I had to study the Talmud. In my late teens, a good friend, overhearing me as I limped my way through a Talmudic passage, pointed out to me that I was really only kidding myself, imitating people studying Talmud and not actually studying it. Painfully, I admitted to myself that he was correct and went to a traditional yeshiva to “learn.” There was no helpful ArtScroll edition; we were forbidden to use the Soncino translation. There was only a teacher (a “rebbe”), the dialogue with study partners (a hevruta), the Jastrow dictionary, and the intense, daylong immersion in the world of the Talmud text and its commentaries. And all this successfully worked its magic. Somehow, by osmosis perhaps, I “learned how to learn”; I came to be at home in and even love that Talmudic world. I am very grateful for all that because, to be fully honest, as I study the Talmud today I experience it as Torah, that is, as revealing to me the commanding Divine voice.1 There is, however, more to the story. Over the more than forty years that I have made Talmud study a regular part of my life, I have increasingly come to understand its depth and power. The Talmud is truly an essential part of one of the great human wisdom traditions. In my own life, studying Talmud serves as a vehicle for exploring many basic human issues, especially the 75
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meaning-making questions involved in understanding and even constructing culture, that is, in “living culturally.” Talmud study is one of the ways that I discover and explore the moral, psychological, and symbolic complexities of human life. For me, the Talmud has become a spiritual document that, properly understood, uncovers a hidden depth in human experience. It also shows us the wisdom available in the details of what is probably the activity that most defines what it is to be human—creating meaningful culture. In large measure, this essay is meant both to say and also to show why and how this is so.2 In this essay, I want to share what it is about Talmud study and its world that makes it so attractive to me. This is hard to do without actually studying Talmudic passages. For those without a background in Talmud, this is not easily done. The Talmud is not a document that lends itself to easy decoding. Nevertheless, actually considering particular passages is the only way that I can point toward the features of Talmud study that interest me the most. I realize that, for some, this will ensure that my explanations are incomplete. The reader is invited to fill in what I must perforce omit. I first discuss three brief examples of Talmudic discussions that raise questions about values, meaning, and culture. Then, I provide an extended discussion taken from a set of narrative passages that exemplifies the subtle literary quality of many Talmudic considerations of existential human issues. Finally, I consider the dialogical character of the Talmud and Talmud study and the appreciation for ambiguity that they display. Since in the world of the Talmud, as in Judaism in general, holiness is most often expressed in law and lawfulness,3 I provide several examples that involve issues of law.
THREE BRIEF EXAMPLES OF TALMUDIC DISCUSSIONS THAT RAISE QUESTIONS ABOUT VALUES, MEANING, AND CULTURE Why Do We Cook Food? In rabbinic Judaism, the Sabbath is in large part defined by 39 categories of culturally creative work,4 one of which is cooking and another of which is kindling a fire. Therefore, it is forbidden to put uncooked food on a fire on the Sabbath since this will necessarily cook the food. Also, one cannot stoke a fire that is burning low since this is the same as kindling a fire. The Talmud (beginning with T.B. Shabbat 36b) directly and indirectly discusses these questions: May one leave food on a fire over the Sabbath?
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If one has removed it from a fire, may that food be put back on the fire on the Sabbath5 in order to have hot food to eat? Responding to these questions, the Talmud takes account of the fact that the rabbis had enacted a decree prohibiting6 leaving or returning food to a fire on the Sabbath out of a concern that “perhaps one will come to stoke the fire.” The worry was that some people who had put food on a fire before the Sabbath would become concerned that their food wasn’t cooking properly and would stoke the fire to speed up the cooking process (a violation of kindling). Clearly, if someone put raw food on a fire just before the Sabbath there was a serious possibility that he or she might worry that it wasn’t cooking fast enough and come to stoke the fire. But what about cases where the food was not actually raw? We find a disagreement in such cases about how well cooked the food must be in order to calm rabbinic fears that there will be a temptation to stoke the fire in order to speed up the cooking process. One view insists only already fully cooked food (kol tzorcho) can be returned (or placed) on a fire, while the other requires only that the food be partially, minimally cooked (that is, onethird cooked). The argument, it seems to me, turns on our answer to another culturally significant question: Why do we cook food? If cooking is primarily to make one’s food edible, then one-third is a reasonable standard. Why? Because, since the food is indeed already minimally edible, there should be no worry that people will become concerned about how well cooked it is and thus come to stoke the fire. If, on the other hand, we cook food to make it taste good, then, one should be allowed to leave only already fully cooked food on a fire. If improving the taste is the point of cooking, then leaving food that is only partially cooked on a fire might very well lead people who were worrying about its not tasting good to unthinkingly stoke the fire to hasten the cooking process. At the heart of what appears to be a technical disagreement about leaving (or returning) food to a fire on the Sabbath is a difference about the cultural meaning of one of the basic activities that define the emergence of civilization: cooking food.7 Unsurprisingly, this dispute remains essentially unresolved over the course of Jewish discussions. To me, this is due to the fact that there was no way to universally decide once and for all why we cook food.
How Our Values are Reflected in How We Dress Another Sabbath prohibition is “moving an object four amot [about six to eight feet] through a public domain.”8 As one might guess, this does not
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automatically apply to wearing clothes or other items, (for example, jewelry, glasses, a prosthesis). Some of these are deemed part of one’s self, not a separate object to be carried. In the Talmudic discussion, “self” means one’s social self, and hence that self is appropriately gendered and even related to one’s species. In T.B. Shabbat 63a, the question of wearing weapons on the Sabbath (without needing them for self defense) is raised. Might some weapons be permitted because they are like jewelry, that is “beautiful,” or perhaps all weapons are prohibited because to wear them is shameful? Given that Shabbat is a day that means to represent an ideal, “messianic” society, might it not be the case that such a “compromised” form of dress isn’t really appropriate? The Talmudic discussion is complex involving a dispute between “maximalist” and “minimalist” definitions of a messianic society. The passage also includes the roles of beauty and function in such a society. The discussion in part engages fundamental cultural questions about the messages we send by how we dress. It also provokes us to think about the relationship between our most ideal values and the culture we create.9 Independent of the more technical issues of the Jewish laws of Sabbath observance, one could ask: What would we leave home on our “ideal” Sabbath just to send the cultural message that, “when the messiah comes,” these things will disappear?10 Having myself used this Talmudic passage to ask people this question, I can tell you that cell phones and day diaries lead the list. Many people want more relaxed, unstructured time that belongs just to them and to their families. One reason I find studying Talmud so valuable is that it raises questions like these. Narrative and Obligations: Sexual Urges, Duty, and Inclination Let us reflect upon a basic human experience: We are committed to doing what is right, what we are supposed to do, but we don’t really feel like it. As Kant famously presented it, we have duties, positive and negative, but our inclinations often seek to take us in other directions. Our inclinations come from many places—habit, training, desire, impulse, imagination, fear, and anxiety to name just a few. Although we know that “wrong” means “don’t do that!” where sexuality is involved, the push of imagination and desire can be very persistent, throwing up fantasies and beckoning us to seek gratification. But there are also costs to simply refusing the demands of these “inclinations” by exercising self-control. The intensity of the urge may increase; its nature may shift into something even worse. As I read them, the rabbis in the Talmud honored human sexuality when it found proper expression. However, they also saw it as very dangerous.
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The rabbis thought so especially when they suspected that it was a manifestation of a self-centered ego unconcerned with the costs to others of its own gratification. They saw this as z’nut (sexual immorality). But it was because of their sense of the power of sexual impulse that they understood how difficult exercising sexual self-control usually is. They deliberately built protective fences around human behavior, designing a system that limited the opportunities for men and women to “fraternize” both openly and, more importantly, in private. Nonetheless, they realized that some would find their lives significantly disrupted by the urges and fantasies that occur as “duty” became unceasingly confronted with unbearable “inclinations.” The question now becomes: What are we supposed to do when “just say no” is in fact interfering with living a good life? In B.T. Hagigah 16a, (and also B. T. Kiddushin 40a) the Talmud discusses the case of a man who can not control his sexual urges. It says “R. Elai the elder said: If a man sees that his [evil] inclination is prevailing upon him, let him go to a place where he is not known, and put on black garments and wrap himself up in black garments, and let him do what his heart desires but let him not profane the Name of Heaven publicly! The text seems to be saying that, given a passionate inclination beyond one’s control, one should at least commit the sin in secret and not dishonor the Divine publicly.11 Of course, this brief passage is not a sophisticated essay on the relationship of duty and inclination. Nevertheless, my studying this Talmudic passage triggered just such a discussion of duty and inclination. It also helped me to see that a Talmudic legal system tolerates a certain degree of ambiguity. The system prohibits such sexual activity, branding it as evil, and at the same time allows for it, (perhaps even requires it) thus in some sense making it “legitimate,” if only as the lesser of two evils.
AN EXTENDED EXAMPLE TAKEN FROM A NARRATIVE PASSAGE Illness, Healing, and Human Vulnerability Berachot 5b is a classic Jewish healing text. The text—an edited version of inherited material—involves telling the same core story three times with important additions in the second and third tellings. Even without a thorough analysis of this text, you will easily imagine how powerful an interpretive conversation about it could be. My comments reflect only a part of the results of my having studied this emotionally and spiritually poignant passage on many occasions.
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The core story is: R. Chiyya b. Abba fell ill and R. Yochanan went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him.
Who determines the meaning of an illness? Is it the healer? Is it the patient? Given Rabbi Yochanan’s strange initial question, we must conclude that he believes that it is primarily the patient who will decide if there is something meaningful in his suffering. Apparently, despite a strong Jewish aversion to romanticizing human pain, suffering can nonetheless be welcome, that is, meaningful—if the patient endows it with meaning.12 Another question: Is the patient “passive,” that is, an object of the healer’s techniques? Or, is the patient actively engaged in his or her own cure? Most students of this passage read it as the latter, since the one who is ill is asked to give his hand to the healer. One of my study partners was a neurologist who found in this text a perfect metaphor for most of his practice. He said “My practice mostly involves building an alliance with folks who are still holding out for the impossible full return of their faculties. I see now that I spend three quarters of my time convincing patients to “give me their hands.”13 The core story is then retold with an addition: R. Yochanan once fell ill and R. Chanina went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him. Why could not R. Yochanan raise himself?— They replied: The prisoner cannot free himself from jail.
In the original story, it was R. Yochanan who was the healer. The student immediately notices that it is now the healer himself who is ill. What do we learn from this, I ask? Answer: Human vulnerability is universal. Why can’t healers heal themselves? Surely they can heal themselves in cases where it is merely necessary to apply a technique and take a medication. Healers can take the same medications they have given their patients. If so, we are left with the question: What kind of healing must this passage be considering? Answer: The model of healing here is based on the concept that “healing is in the relationship.” This is indeed something that cannot be done alone, however charismatic the healer. This text is offering us a profound model of healing, one that is an alternative to the models available in magical approaches to illness or in modern medical theories.14 Finally, the core story is retold with an insertion.
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R. Eleazar fell ill and R. Yochanan went in to visit him. He noticed that he was lying in a dark room, and he bared his arm and light radiated from it. Thereupon he noticed that R. Eleazar was weeping, and he said to him: Why do you weep? Is it because you did not study enough Torah? Surely we learnt: The one who sacrifices much and the one who sacrifices little have the same merit, provided that the heart is directed to heaven. Is it perhaps lack of sustenance? Not everybody has the privilege to enjoy two tables. Is it perhaps because of [the lack of] children? This is the bone of my tenth son!—He replied to him: I am weeping on account of this beauty that is going to rot in the earth. He said to him: On that account you surely have a reason to weep; and they both wept. In the meanwhile he said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you?—He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand, and he gave him his hand and he raised him.
How do you comfort a man who is so poor that he doesn’t even have a candle? Or is his darkness a way of referring to how he feels about his situation? R. Yochanan seems to be thinking: perhaps, despite his greatness, as R. Eleazar now faces death he is troubled. Is he now confused about the meaning of his own life? Is he somehow disappointed? And what is the meaning of R. Yochanan’s luminous arm? To me, it seems more a metaphor for enlightenment than a literal description of his arm as a light bulb. Will R. Yochanan “enlighten” R. Eleazar—will he illuminate his situation for him? And if he does so, will that bring R. Eleazar to feel more at peace? R. Yochanan now seems to go against, at least in part, his earlier view that the patient creates the meaning of the illness. He first tries to console R. Eleazar by reminding him that it is the purity of our intentions, far more than the scope of our accomplishments, that ultimately determines the religious and moral quality of our lives. And what are we to make of the macabre bone of his tenth son—something he regularly takes with him to a house of mourning? It might be meant to say “compared to me how little you have suffered by not having children.” But that is not the most interesting reading, nor the most charitable. Perhaps R. Yochanan means to say—“You are truly suffering. But I am telling you that you can get through this pain. We are in this together. See that I too have suffered, and I have somehow gone through it to the other side. You can too.” In the end, we discover that R. Yochanan’s efforts to console R. Eleazar are misplaced. R. Eleazar weeps because even a profoundly beautiful spiritual giant like R. Yochanan, a man whose flesh itself is spiritually transformed—a body of light—even this man will die, be buried, and rot in the earth. And that loss, the “defeat” that reveals to us the existential reality of human mortality, is indeed worth crying over. I imagine them there embracing and
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crying. Ultimately, being there for and with each other is the most that we mortals can do in the face of the inevitability of death. I find this text brilliant and subtle in the way it approaches our deepest narcissistic fantasies. Ostensibly about wondrous cures—seeming to give a slap in the face to death—in fact, this Talmudic passage ends by reminding us that we are all mortal. It softens that blow only by finishing with a miraculous healing. But the subtext is: For all of us, no matter how good we are, one day healing will not be there. And even the fantasy that great healers escape death is just a self-delusion. All of us are vulnerable to death. And what are we to do? In the face of this truth, we can only hold each other, support each other, and strive to create whatever deep meaning we can. Studying this kind of Talmudic narrative has had a profound effect on me and those I study with. It provides another reason to study Talmud in the twenty-first century. TALMUDIC SPACE: THE WORLD OF DIALOGICAL REASONING AND THE APPRECIATION OF AMBIGUITY I study Talmud because I find it a remarkable exercise in the type of human thought that allows for a profound, even intense connection to what transcends an entirely self-contained human reasoning process. To those not comfortable with talk of transcendent realities, I might say that Talmud study takes us to the edge of “calculating reason”;15 it opens up a pluralist, polyvalent world of meaning-making, the appreciation of which requires, or develops, one’s tolerance for ambiguity. Its flow of thought is very often dialogical; it is interpretive, especially of earlier sources, and, because much of its thinking is associative, the Talmud exhibits a kind of “interstitial reason.”16 Let us explore these ideas further. The heart of Talmud study is conversation. It belongs first and foremost in a beit midrash—a noisy study hall filled with people in pairs (hevrutot) mostly talking out loud. They debate and argue, break for a moment, consult sources and then start again. They are not always talking, but even when they are writing and not speaking, they are writing to someone. Their commentaries on the Talmudic passages that they are studying await the inevitable super commentary. And this same process is, in many ways, happening in the Talmudic text itself. Whatever text you are studying, you cannot understand it without also understanding its discussions, its debates, and the “solutions” it negotiates when it is forced to draw final conclusions. The Talmudic page is surrounded by exegesis and questions, often going on between generations in the same family and always followed by seemingly endless further questions and commentary.
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Conversations, we should note, must have more than one participant— even when you study Talmud by yourself you act as if you are having a conversation. In much of the Talmud, the flow of dialogue and discussion presents and evaluates alternative positions and claims. Just as there are different participants, there are, indeed there must be, differences of opinion and belief. Hence, the process of Talmud study presents the kind interpretive process that is, in the Platonic sense, dialectical. While all discussions have some a priori assumptions about both substance and procedure—after all, one cannot argue about everything at once—the Talmud does not start with premises understood to be self-evidently true. Talmud study begins with particular texts, specific claims and arguments, all requiring and expecting interpretation, grounding, and response. Every volume of the Talmud begins on page 2. In the Talmudic world, the world of oral Torah, we always enter in the middle of something; we typically find ourselves in medias res. This is not accidental. Traditionally, the Talmud and its study were seen as part of the ongoing “conversation,” an unceasing interpretation of an inheritance, at once Jewish and “human.” As with any dialectical process, the dialogue and conversations that form Talmud study always start somewhere with inherited texts of all sorts, given assumptions— theoretical, moral esthetic—and even rules for correct exegesis, some explicitly articulated and others only implicitly embraced in the flow of discussion. Consider the opening of the Talmud as we have it—Brachot 2a. The Mishna discusses the question of the earliest time that kriyat Sh’ma may be said in the evening. Clearly, we are in the middle of something. The language and structure of the Sh’ma already exists; its recitation already exists; it seems as if the obligation to recite it—in the morning and in the evening—also exists. The Gemara—with which we begin the Talmud as a document separate from the Mishna presented alone—reaches out for the context. Where is this Mishna with its ritual obligations and timing, coming from? On the one hand, perhaps it finds its roots in Deuteronomy 6:7, a verse that is itself clearly already a part of what is called “the Sh’ma.”17 In it Moses instructs the people that they should recite or teach18 “them”19 “when you lie down and when you rise up.” On the other hand, our Mishna might be rooted in the part of the Genesis creation narrative that tells of the cycle of evening and morning—and it was evening and it was morning, one day 20 (Genesis 1:8). Might it come from both these sources? While I could never definitively demonstrate it, I have always thought that behind this conversation was a deeper question. In the Talmud, the unity of G’d is reflected in the unity of the world that G’d created and also in the unity of the “legal” order established by the commandments. The Sh’ma serves to express and enhance our awareness of this unity. Are the details of
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its practice grounded first in the legal, social, and cultural order of the Torah, that is, in the “lying down and rising up” that is part of the words that create the commandment itself? Or should we seek the origin of the ritual details in contemplating the divinely given structure of our natural universe as presented in the creation story? Or do we need both?21 I am not at all sure that this important question can be answered, if only because there are important truths associated with both approaches. My own life experience has confirmed for me both the value of the question and the wisdom of not answering it once and for all. Studying this Talmudic text reminds me that my own life is always in the middle of something. It reminds me that all my experience lives within an already existing, culturally meaningful reality and at the same time exists as part of nature, that is, I live in an ongoing natural environment. In short, I study Talmud in part because simply to enter “Talmudic space” is to enter a world that begins on page 2. I did not create it; instead, I inherit it. I will not finish it; instead I will become part of it. In this sense, Talmudic space is a concentrated representation of the world of my most intense and most profound experience. I have always loved the dialectical nature of Talmudic deliberation, not in the least because, at its heart, it generates an important paradox. On the one hand, both the Talmudic arguments themselves as well as the debates of Talmud study must be inherently pluralistic.22 This is to say that they fundamentally depend upon the legitimacy of the different positions taken and argued for. With the exception of interpersonal power plays masquerading as Talmud study, each speaker has a right, often a duty, to speak, be challenged, and respond. On the other hand, when one conversation partner challenges the other, it seems that a claim is being made that what the other is saying is false, wrong, or invalid. Granted, Talmud study is sometimes a search for mutual understanding; granted that in practical contexts Talmud study is also at times an exploration of the possibility of common action or a good-faith mediation of conflicting interests. But it is just as often, and in important disputed questions very often, a debate. This debate creates this paradox—I say to you: (a) what you say must be in itself taken seriously—implying some legitimacy—but (b) it is false, that is, I deny its truth, and in some way therefore, its legitimacy. TWO EXTENDED LEGAL EXAMPLES Partial Resolution: Vengeance, Equality of Physical Situation and Social Position, and Monetary Compensation Both privately and publicly, we cannot escape doing damage to others and suffering damage from them. We cannot even escape intentionally hurting
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others, even those we love. We work to have the mindfulness, good character, and self-control required to avoid hurting others. But, when damage has been inflicted, what are we to do? We begin with our experience. When someone else has hurt us, what do we often feel? We feel angry. By injuring us this person has caused us physical pain; he has demonstrated power over us, thus diminishing the dignity that comes from our being a free, self-determining agent. We ask: Is he going to get away with this? If nothing is done, it is made clear to us that our attacker “matters” more than we do; he is more important than we are. We are not social equals. Perhaps we think: Vengeance and retribution make us equal again. You caused me pain; I will cause you pain. You will hurt exactly as I did. You exercised wrongful power over me; I will do so over you. But, to avoid an unending feud, both your pain and loss of power will be proportionate to mine. My attacker and I will finish as equals; things are back where they belong. I begin my Talmud study with the Mishna, Bava Kamma 83b. MISHNA: ONE WHO INJURES ANOTHER BECOMES LIABLE FOR FIVE ITEMS: FOR DEPRECIATION, FOR PAIN, FOR HEALING, FOR LOSS OF TIME AND FOR DEGRADATION.
What?! “Liable” here seems to mean only monetary compensation. Is this really enough? To be sure, the loss is indemnified, but will this monetary payment actually make us equals again? I would never have taken this monetary compensation in advance as a payment allowing you to damage me as you did. Why am I being made to take it now? It seems to me that while you did not get away with it completely, you did in fact get away with it. I want to know: What is the basis for my having to accept monetary compensation? My study takes me into the Gemara. GEMARA. Why [pay compensation]?—my question exactly. And this is not my own voice alone speaking. Does the Divine Law not say “Eye for eye”? Why not take this literally to mean [putting out] the eye [of the offender]?23
But this is not accepted. Let this not enter your mind, since—I now find myself reading a braitha24—it has been taught: You might think that where he put out his eye, the offender’s eye should be put out, or where he cut off his arm, the offender’s arm should be cut off, or again where he broke his leg, the offender’s leg should be broken—when I was angry that was indeed my desire—But this is a mistaken interpretation, I should consider that it is laid down, “He that smites any man.” “And he that smites a beast: Just as in
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the case of smiting a beast compensation is to be paid, so also in the case of smiting a man compensation is to be paid.” Is this merely a case of the language of the text? No. The source of an obligation to compensate runs deeper. To what case of “smiting” does it refer?25 . . . The quotation was [therefore] made from this text: “And he that smites a beast mortally shall make it good: life for life” which comes next to “and if a man maim his neighbor, as he has done so shall it be done to him.” But is [the term] “smiting” mentioned in the latter text? We speak of the “hakaah-beating” [Soncino renders it: the effect of smiting] implied in this text and of the “hakaah-beating” [effect of smiting] implied in the other text: just as smiting mentioned in the case of beast refers to the payment of compensation, so also does smiting in the case of man refer to the payment of compensation.26 This seems to say that careful attention to the language of the Torah suggests that, except for intentional unlawful killing,27 the obligation of monetary compensation comes first from the action (smiting), that is, damages flow from the wrongful nature of the deed. You were not allowed to strike me and you did. This payment is almost as a kind of punishment or even atonement.28 The compensation—punishment—will of course be proportionate but it will in part be different in kind from the damage that I suffered; it will be monetary, not physical. No matter what you pay me, I will be walking on only one leg and you are still on two. But the braitha offers a second reason: And should this [reason] not satisfy you, note that it is stated, “Moreover ye shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer that is guilty of death,” implying that it is only for the life of a murderer that you may not take “satisfaction” whereas you may take “satisfaction” [even] for the principal limbs, though these cannot be restored. It is analyzed later as follows: But what is meant by the statement, “if this reason does not satisfy you”? [Why should it not satisfy you?]—The difficulty which further occurred to the Tanna was as follows: What is your reason for deriving the law of man injuring man from the law of smiting a beast and not from the law governing the case of killing a man [where Retaliation is the rule]? I would answer: It is proper to derive [the law of] injury from [the law governing another case of] injury, and not to derive [the law of] injury from [the law governing the case of] murder. It could, however, be argued to the contrary; [that it is proper] to derive [the law of injury inflicted upon] man from [another case of] man but not to derive [the law of injury inflicted upon] man from [the case of] beast. This was the point of the statement “If, however, this reason does not satisfy you.” [The answer is as follows:] “It
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is stated: Moreover ye shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer that is guilty of death; but he shall surely be put to death, implying that it was only ‘for the life of a murderer’ that you may not take ransom whereas you may take ransom [even] for principal limbs though these cannot be restored.”29 What paradigm am I to adopt in thinking about what has happened to me? I have been treating it as “harm done to persons.” Murder is the worst harm and deliberate infliction of injury is a “lesser form” of murder. A murderer kills and is in return killed; my attacker is wounded and should in turn be wounded. The logic is the logic of criminal law: the punishment must fit the crime. Now the Talmudic text has offered a different conception: damages. And the paradigm case is therefore different—damage done to property (my animal). We have moved from criminal to civil law—proportionate damages.30 We are being asked to think of the loss of an arm just as we would think about the loss of a cow and its fetus. The relevant Hebrew term here is n’zikin, a term not found in the Bible but used in the Mishna. If we believe that it is morally or spiritually better to eliminate vengeance and retribution from our response to intentionally being done bodily harm, then we will view the separating out of these cases as the category “damages” [torts] as an important rabbinic legal “advance.” To the extent that “monetary damages” fail to truly satisfy us, such a shift in usage is either unrealistic or utopian. We would then expect that many people, if they have the power to do so, will make “private arrangements,” that is, find a ways of inflicting additional “punishments” on the one who hurt them. For me, the tension between these two orientations should not be immediately and permanently resolved. Instead, it should be preserved and contained within our universe of discourse. In these areas, the realities of human life are ambiguous. We have all seen the picture that seems to be of an old woman and then, with a small adjustment of perspectives, suddenly looks like a young woman.31 It never seems to be both at once. Well, we might mistakenly ask “Which is it really, a picture of an old woman or a picture of young woman? The correct answer is: It is a picture that can be seen as a young woman and also as an old woman, but not both at once and also not a picture of a rabbit or a dog. I think that often our “legal reality” must be understood in much the same way. In the case of one person wounding another, there is a reasonable perspective, the “punishment perspective” from which a law or a court decision seems just and fair only if “retribution” (or even vengeances”) is done. Otherwise someone guilty of wronging me has not been punished for it. He “got away with it.” However, looked at from a different perspective, call it the “compensation perspective,” monetary compensation will be seen as just
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only if we create another legal category called “damages” for which monetary compensation is sufficient.32 Despite the final decision in Jewish civil law in favor of damages and monetary compensation,33 the Talmud preserves this tension and also the struggle of feelings that goes with it. This gives Talmud study the depth that I seek.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE: DOUBTS, JUST JUDGMENTS, AND SOCIAL HARMONY Here is another interesting text: Baba Kamma 46a, about compensation for damages caused by one’s own property to another person’s property. MISHNA IF AN OX HAS GORED A COW AND ITS [NEWLY-BORN] CALF IS FOUND [DEAD] NEAR BY, AND IT IS UNKNOWN WHETHER THE BIRTH OF THE CALF PRECEDED THE GORING OR FOLLOWED THE GORING, HALF DAMAGES WILL BE PAID FOR [THE INJURIES INFLICTED UPON] THE COW BUT [ONLY] QUARTER DAMAGES WILL BE PAID FOR [THE LOSS OF] THE CALF. GEMARA. Rab Judah on behalf of Samuel said: This ruling is the view of Symmachus who held that money, the ownership of which cannot be decided has to be shared [by the parties]. The Sages, however, say that it is a fundamental principle in law that the burden of proof falls on the claimant. Why was it necessary to state “this is a fundamental principle in law”—It was necessary to imply that even where the plaintiff is positive and the defendant dubious it is still the plaintiff on whom falls burden of proof. 34
We have here several ambiguities. First, there must have been witnesses that the ox gored the cow and that it killed it. But we cannot have witnesses who can clarify whether the fetus died before or after the goring for if that were the case the decision would be the same for the fetus as for the cow. While in principle, this objective doubt about the facts might be resolved, we understand our case as one where this doubt cannot be. We see the dead cow, we see the dead fetus but our view of any reality larger than that is limited. We also have a doubt about the law in such cases—Symmachus rules that we must equally divide the part of the compensation that is in dispute as a result of our factual ambiguity. The Sages, however, insist on liability for payment only if proof can be provided that in some measure “fairly” resolves the ambiguity of the situation. The ambiguity of fact is preserved. Our situation—looked at from the view of the “certain owner of the ox,” provides no basis for an obligation to pay
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compensation for the fetus. But, as one opinion in the Gemara suggests, the court should not look at our situation in this way. It should question the ox owner’s certainty because he knows that he can assert it without being subject to contradiction by the uncertain owner of the cow. We should not rely on the ox owner’s certainty to resolve either the factual or the legal ambiguity of this case. Nonetheless, the ambiguity of law looks to be resolved in the Talmud. Given the way that the Gemara presents our legal disagreement, and given that the Talmud generally asserts that the view of the majority (the Sages) prevails, it seems clear and unambiguous that the court cannot deprive anyone (here the owner of the ox) of his property without proof. The burden of resolving the ambiguity, that is, the burden of providing that proof, lies with the one who wants the money—the owner of the fetus. Is there indeed a way to continue to look at this legal situation as Symmachus does? My reading of the Talmud is that indeed there is such a way. What arguments might we today advance for the view of Symmachus? In discussing the situation, my study partners and I could easily see that equally dividing the money insures that at least the owner of the fetus is not left with nothing at all. He has already been required to absorb half the loss on the cow. He may feel that this is “fair” since the owner of the ox had no reason to expect it to gore and hence could not be expected to take extraordinary measures in securing it. However, he might feel angry about his having to foot the entire bill for the loss of a fetus that he probably expected to add to the size of his herd. As a result, he might develop a negative view of the court and perhaps even the legal system as a whole. Symmachus’s ruling avoids this. In addition, the owner of the fetus may resent the owner of the ox whom he sees as having “gotten away with something.” Their ongoing relationship may very well sour. Hence, Symmachus’s seeing to it that the owner of the fetus gets something preserves social peace and harmony, something that is highly valued in the Talmud. In fact, in the Talmudic discussion in B.T. Sanhedrin 6b, two of the three views presented about making peshara, compromises (that is “settling”), in legal cases are positive. One sees it as an obligation to seek compromise rather than a strict black letter law ruling and the other treats it as a serious and desirable possibility. Hence, we are not surprised when later Jewish law rules that judges should endeavor to create compromised settlements in cases of disputed monetary obligations, peshara preserves both social peace and the legal system itself. Once again, however, a certain ambiguity is preserved. On the one hand, litigants have the right to insist on strict justice—no money will be taken from them without proof. On the other hand, efforts will be made to bring about a compromise settlement that advances social harmony and the interests of
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the legal system. From the point of view that seeks only justice, the owner of the ox does not pay for the fetus unless and until it can be proven that his ox caused its death. From a more “covenantal” point of view that seeks primarily social peace, the owners of the ox and the cow should share the loss of the fetus. Well, which is it? In this Talmudic legal system it is a “legal reality” that can be seen both ways.35 I hope that I have been able to convey what I find motivating and meaningful in Talmud study. In part I have focused on the ways in which the dialogical Talmudic text addresses important human values and questions present in the realities of “living culturally.” I have also suggested that the multivalent nature of the Talmud text not only facilitates the dialectical consideration of fundamental human life issues, but also works to preserve the ambiguity often found in both empirical and legal domains. I love studying Talmud because it immerses me in what I take as existence in its deepest sense. In the end, I love the Talmud because I love life—with all its pains and provocations, with all its messy options and possibilities, and, to be sure, with its subtle delights and profound insights as well. ENDNOTES 1. While I personally have faith in the Talmud as Torah and thus understand Talmud study as a, if not the, primary religious duty [mitzvah], I also recognize that very few Jews and non-Jews, whatever their respect for the text, share this theological conviction. Thus this essay is not built on my own personal religious faith. It seems to me more helpful to discuss the constructive features of Talmud study that can be experienced without giving assent to the Orthodox religious beliefs that are so much a part of my own life. On the other hand, to have omitted any discussion of how my religious faith informs my study of Talmud would have eliminated an important dimension of what is “personal” in this essay. 2. While I am interested in the work of historians and literary critics, I must admit that I do not study Talmud as an historical or even literary source. With few exceptions, while we twenty-first century people have an historical consciousness, we are not first and foremost historians. As we make important ethical choices, debate social policy, or think through our personal “philosophy,” we tend to draw on novels, biographical narratives, even television and the movies. In more traditionally Jewish terms, I would say that, for the most part, it is not historians who are writing “our midrash.” In this way, we are quite happily, for lack of a better term, “post-modern.” When we are in the “life-philosophy” or “personal meaning-making” business, we contemporary Westerners prefer an approach typically informed by social science, most often by psychology but sometimes by anthropology or sociology. In any case, since this is a personal essay I can say that it is most useful for me to talk about Talmud study in these terms and not as an historian.
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3. In the third century, when Christianity offered a founding document that rejected law, rabbinic Judaism offered what is primarily a law code, the Mishna, as a founding document. 4. G’d rests from creating “nature” and humans rest from “creating culture.” The paradigm for this is the Tabernacle and its associated types of “labor.” 5. Whether the text speaks of leaving or of returning is a disputed issue in the Gemara. 6. It is defined here in relation to the materials being burned. 7. Cf. The Raw and the Cooked, Claude Levi-Strauss, University of Chicago, 1983. 8. Biblical law knows of only two legally disparate domains: a public domain and a private domain. Rabbinic law adds two others. 9. Again, although the matter will seem resolved, it was in fact not really put to rest, as was obvious when the emergence of a valued Jewish army complicated the meaning of wearing military symbols on the Sabbath. 10. As weapons will, at least on the maximalist view. 11. A medieval interpreter—R. Hananel—will find it hard to believe that the Talmud permits sin in such circumstances and will understand our text as saying that surely exile and dark garments will be help one to conquer the evil inclination, and as a result one will be able to do what he truly desires, that is, serve G’d. 12. For example, a life-threatening illness might serve as a “wake-up call.” 13. Imagine how rich an analysis of the metaphor “healing-as-raising-up” could be! 14. To further enrich your sense of what this text offers, think about the depth and breadth of a discussion that might result from asking how and why illness is like imprisonment. 15. See Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Stanford University Press, 2007. 16. See Legal Traditions of the World, H. Patrick Glenn, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 99−101. 17. The Sh’ma begins with Deuteronomy 6:4 and is named by its first word. 18. The word literally means “repeat.” 19. In the Talmud the suffix for “them” is taken to refer either to words of Torah or to the specific passages that comprise the Sh’ma or to both. 20. Some later commentators will understand this verse as cited only with respect to the Gemara’s question about why the evening obligation is discussed first, others will suggest that it also responds to the query about where the Mishna is coming from, presumably understanding the word “one” as connecting the verse to the recitation of the Sh’ma which is first and foremost an affirmation of the oneness of G’d. 21. This question is related to but not identical with the question of whether the unity of G’d is best demonstrated by the order and unity of the Torah, oral and written, or by the order and unity of nature. 22. The pluralism I am discussing is not the equivalent of relativism. It does not believe that any position is valid. There are falsehoods and mistakes. But there is often not one unique correct answer to the issues being debated.
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23. The shitah mekubetset and to my mind the mechilta both support the interpretation that this question can be read as meant seriously. 24. A baraitha is a source dated to the time of the Mishna but which was not included in the Mishna. 25. The text continues: “And he that killed a beast, shall make it good: and he that killed a man, shall be put to death,” does not this verse refer to murder? 26. The Talmud will further analyze this but in the end it will stand. 27. Implied by the second reason offered in the braitha. 28. Cf. Maimonides Mishne Torah, the Laws of Wounding and Damages, 1:3. 29. The further discussion of the Talmud does not, I think, significantly alter my analysis here. 30. Of course, the striking is also a violation of a criminal statute, but the Talmudic focus here is on compensation not punishment. 31. Another well-known example is a picture that sometimes seems to be of two faces looking at each other and at other times to be a picture of two vases. 32. In any case, in the Talmud, it is not a reality that can allow either a disproportionate response or no response at all. Both of these are seen as unjust. 33. Of course, there is also a penal law that punishes those who strike others, a fact that salves the feelings of the wounded party. For most of Jewish history however, such penal law was not enforced and the injured party had to make due with compensation and perhaps an apology. 34. The Gemara offers a second reason for using this expression but is not of concern to us here. 35. But not seen as a legal reality that requires the ox’s owner to pay the entire value of the fetus.
Why Study Talmud in the Twenty-First Century? Pinchas Zuriel Hayman
Before discussion of the importance, value, and benefit of Talmud study for the nation of Israel, it is necessary to consider the title of this volume. The question “Why Learn Talmud in the Twenty-First Century?” is inappropriate. It implies that something as arcane as Talmud could not possibly have a place in so advanced a period as the present century! Such an implication reflects Jewish cultural depravity, assimilation, and self-denial. Why should the indescribable depth, beauty, and challenge of authentic Jewish literature require apologetic essays? The eternal and inherent legitimacy, value, and role of Torat Yisrael cannot be measured by the culture of the twenty-first or any other Christian century, especially in light of what European Christian society created in the twentieth. In the realm of personal identity, the Rebbe of Kotsk said: if I am I because you are you, and you are you because I am I, then I am not I and you are not you, but if I am I because I am I, and you are you because you are you, then I am I and you are you. This approach is no less applicable to national identities. Why learn Torah at all, irrespective of the century? Torah is not just another discipline—it is simply not comparable to the study of geography, philosophy, or quantum physics. As explained by Rav Kuk in the first chapters of Orot HaKodesh, all human disciplines have value in their specific contributions to the understanding of the world, but Torah is the world itself. Green, yellow, and blue are beautiful colors, but light contains them all. Other disciplines teach knowledge, Torah teaches existence. Other disciplines help us know or do, Torah helps us be. One may occasionally need other disciplines to understand Torah, but one needs Torah to understand why there are disciplines in the first place, and in what cultural, intellectual, and even legal context they are to be placed. For Jews living in western civilizations, which 93
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define themselves by empiricism, utilitarianism, materialism, and hedonism, it should be obvious what a spiritual civilization has to offer. Let us focus a bit more: Torah subdivides into written and oral components. Written tradition consists of the twenty-four books of the Hebrew Bible. Oral tradition, which is the source of the vast majority of customs, ceremonies, beliefs, and attitudes known today as Judaism, consists of legal and nonlegal material housed in the Mishnah, the parallel tannaitic teachings,1 the Talmudim and the Midreshei Aggadah. According to Jewish tradition, oral tradition preexisted the written. Most students of Judaism assume that the written tradition came first, and the oral tradition as an interpretive afterthought. This approach is in error. Not only does the written tradition itself give witness to the fact that much law and lore was given before Sinai,2 the terseness and paucity of detail in the written tradition indicates that the written tradition relies for its comprehension by the reader on a coexistent (or preexistent) oral tradition.3 Why, then, is the question before us: “Why Learn Talmud?” and not “Why Learn Torah?” Apparently, the question expresses some deeply seeded doubt regarding the value of the oral tradition specifically. What might that be? In a fascinating research entitled Migreset HaZehuyot4 (“The Identity Grinder”), Shachar Peled studies the separation of the modern Jew from Jewish Oral Tradition. He claims that modern western Jewish civilization built its identity on the foundations of the Protestant Reformation and, specifically, on the rejection of Catholic traditional authority over Biblical interpretation. Peled argues that when Luther began his movement, his battle cry of “sola scriptura”—Scripture alone—asserted the right of every person to face the text of the Bible independently, freed from the shackles of Catholic interpretive tradition. All individuals have equal right and ability to interpret Biblical text—and the will of God—without the mediation of any traditional authority. As a corollary, one’s own conscience becomes the measure of the moral and upright, and the dictates of the Pope’s Apparatus are external and irrelevant. If both of us are reading and acting upon our understanding of the Bible, then I’m o.k.–you’re o.k., because no one has the absolute right to say what is o.k. according to the Bible. Protestant culture rejected Catholic oral tradition and created an uncompromisingly individualistic spirituality which, in turn, led to a fiercely unspiritual individualism. For the Jew leaving the ghetto and making his emancipated way in Protestant Western Europe, the adoption of European culture meant the conscious adoption or the unconscious absorption of “sola scriptura.” The rejection of Jewish oral tradition, and the rejection of the halachic tradition which springs from it, were the obvious result. Protestant Judaism was born, and just like Protestant Christianity, led to an individualistic Judaism which spawned
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Jews without need for Judaism at all. According to Peled, the kulturkampf in the Jewish community of this century is between a traditionally Jewish Judaism and a Protestant-nurtured, non-Jewish Judaism, the prime symptom of which is the attitude toward Jewish observance, toward Jewish Studies in general, and toward Talmud in specific. In light of Peled’s analysis, it would appear reasonable to suggest that the question: “Why Learn Talmud in the Twenty-First Century?” may be rewritten: “Considering the Ultimately Protestant Christian, Sola Scriptura Nature of Western Jewish Identity, Why Continue to Learn Oral Tradition?” The answer to such a toxic question is a paraphrase of “I think, therefore I am”—I learn Talmud, therefore I am a Jew. The traditional, authentic Jew believes that God speaks to him or her specifically through the Oral Tradition, believed to be divinely revealed literature at its root and, in its continuity, human literature which is an ongoing revelation of the divine. As R. Yohanan b. Napaha was quoted to say: “the covenant between God and Israel was only for the sake of Oral Tradition.”5 Only through the revealed interpretive and legislative principles of the Oral Tradition can the original divine revelation be understood in changing circumstances. Oral Tradition is process, not only product, combining awareness of precedents, consideration of circumstances, and the judgment of the posek to obtain the appropriate halachic position in each generation. To the Jewish mind, divine revelation means not only the imposition of divine will on the human condition, but empowerment of the human condition to filter, apply, and reinvigorate divine will. The study of Talmud is the quest for the understanding of this Oral Tradition process, and through it, the essence of revelation in the Jewish mind. I learn Talmud, therefore I am a Jew. “Why Learn Talmud Today?” Creeping disillusionment with western society, feelings of emptiness and vanity engendered by “Villa and Volvo,” and the incessant, insane pursuit of more and more capital, drive the thinking and feeling Jew to seek a safer and more authentic haven—k’yonim l’aruboteihem.6 In Talmud, maybe I can rediscover why my people survived murder, torture, oppression, and exile! In Talmud, maybe I can understand why my small and numerically insignificant people serve continually as the fulcrum to move the universe, capturing an inexplicable and entirely disproportionate share of human advance and accomplishment! In Talmud, maybe I can understand the divine spark which makes my nation of Israel indestructible, indefatigable, unsinkable, and downright incomprehensible! This visceral, instinctual, intuitive return to Talmud reflects the innermost awareness of a generation that it is time to break with Protestant civilization and come home. If I learn Talmud, maybe I too can once again be an authentic Jew! This is the answer to the emphasis: “Why Learn Talmud Today?”
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The searching Jew of today senses that all cultural and spiritual options pale in comparison to Talmud. The proliferation of Talmudic learning today is astonishing. Yet, mass realization of the centrality of Talmud to Jewish knowledge and spirituality may itself lead to complications. Talmud is not fast food. Prerequisites for Talmud include familiarity with Biblical, Tannaitic, and Amoraic literature, knowledge of two Hebrew and two Aramaic dialects, awareness of the major trends, personalities, and events of ancient and classic history, training in the use of reference works such as concordances, dictionaries, and research literature and, most importantly, training in legal, comparative, and abstract thinking. Translations, notes, and crib texts, no matter how sophisticated, complete, and well-designed, cannot replace the spiritual joy and intellectual fulfillment that result from study of the original Talmudic text after systematic and careful preparation. The discipline of disciplines demands discipline. Even for those not ascribing to the spiritual and national values espoused above, Talmud learning provides rich rewards for its devotees. Elsewhere, I have treated the “how” of Talmud learning.7 Here, I would like to focus on the cognitive effects and benefits of Talmud learning which flow from its correct study. The Talmud is unlike any text in western civilization. It is not a text at all. A western text is generally the work of a given author, from a given place and time, presenting a given story, thesis, or experience. Talmud is the work of hundreds of authors, from multiple places and times, presenting laws, stories, theses, and experiences in variegated languages (dialects of Hebrew and Aramaic, with a liberal sprinkling of terms in Greek, Latin, Babylonian, Elamite, etc.) and literary styles and conventions (poetry, narration, legislation, folklore, oratory, and lecture). This overwhelming variety of content components (Tannaitic and Amoraic literature from approximately 200 BCE until 500 CE)8 is then presented in and by a later discussant format which combines, abstracts, conceptualizes, and generalizes the specific content units in various ways from multiple perspectives (Stama D’Gemara = Shakla v’Tarya).9 The resultant apparatus is akin to an archeological mound consisting of approximately two dozen strata wrapped together in a later layer which attempts to justify all the strata with each other in alternative directions! In order to properly appreciate the complexity and richness of Talmud, the student must be able to “deconstruct” the apparatus into its various strata, appreciate each stratum in its own historical, legal, and cultural context, and then “reconstruct” the apparatus into an overall conceptualized whole, while holding in his or her mind widely variant alternatives for the reconstruction. Minds trained to think in this manner are faster, sharper, more sophisticated,
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and more flexible than others. The combined erudition of Milton, poetry of Shakespeare, complexity of Joyce, brilliance of Kant, and entertainment of Rowling withers in comparison to Talmud. WHAT ARE THE SPECIFIC COGNITIVE PROCESSES OF ACCURATE TALMUD LEARNING? Concrete versus Abstract Thinking The content components in Talmud hail from the Tannaitic and Amoraic periods, totaling almost two dozen generations in Israel and Babylonia.10 The overwhelming majority of these components consist of halachic decisions and disputes which deal with specific, concrete situations, much like case law. The decisions flowed from the legislative authority of the Rabbis ordained or authorized by the Sanhedrin, and were intended for those specific contexts. They did not attempt to present an integrated halachic field theory. However, the shakla v’tarya of the stama d’talmuda11 is designed to treat these specific decisions by abstracting, conceptualizing, and generalizing them into statutory legal principles applicable in all times and places. This speculative process demands of itself not only plausible accuracy in each case, but consistency in all cases in the Talmud! Thus, the learner is trained in comparison and contrast of concrete and abstract thinking in each case, and in the integration of hundreds of conceptualizations into an overarching abstract system. I know of no literature or legal system as complex as this. Product versus Process Thinking The Talmud contains thousands of case law decisions from over two dozen generations. Each decision is an individual, stand-alone product of its time, place, and circumstances, reflecting the judgment of the scholar involved. Therefore, as one moves from one stratum to the other, from one decision to the other, one is induced to connect product to product and ask about the motivations of the changes in the individual decisions, much akin to the intuition of a picture by connecting the dots. What circumstances or judgment changed to induce a different legal decision? This turns the learning from product thinking into process thinking. This type of thinking is transferable to many disciplines ranging from history to the exact sciences. Topical versus Associative Thinking Western thinking and writing is generally topical. The reader expects the author to restrict himself to the chosen subject. This attitude is the result of a
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philosophical predisposition which sees each topic, item, or investigation on its own merits, disconnected from all other fields of topics of investigation. It may be that this approach is the natural result of polytheistic thinking which perceives the world as a collection of multiple forces.12 Talmudic thinking is associative, moving from topic to topic and field to field without restriction. Content components can be joined by topic, but can also be joined by nothing other than the name of the scholar who said them, the place or instance in which they were said, common key words, numbers, or the like. This approach to editing flows out of an oral context, but also from a conception of the integration of all knowledge. This approach may ultimately be a reflection of a monotheistic view of the world – all knowledge is one since all creation is one, the work of the One.
Literal versus Figurative, Symbolic Thinking The Talmud intertwines legal and aggadic material, even though the two are radically different. Halachic material is to be understood literally, while aggadic material is to be understood figuratively, symbolically, poetically. For instance, an halachic remark that a given deed is permitted or forbidden intends exactly what it says, but an aggadic context would present a discussion between scholars living centuries apart, or variant ages of a given personality at a given event in his life. The dates offered would not be chronological, but typological.13 The reader must spontaneously adjust his thought as he moves through the Talmudic discussion, sorting sources by their type, and by the methodologies required to learn them.
Source Criticism and Evaluation The Talmudic discussion involves comparison of the Mishnah of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi with its parallel sources—Tosefta, Beraitot, and Midreshei Halachah. The Talmud must decide in each case whether all the sources quoted are reliable or corrupt, limiting the resulting discussion to those sources deemed authentic. Often, it is unclear why Tannaitic sources disagree, and speculative interpretation must be employed to uncover the root of the problem. Has a single Tanna authored both sources, but retracted his opinion between the teaching of one source and the other? Has a single Tanna authored both sources, but in two different situations requiring different legislation? Are the two sources representative of two different Tannaim, and thus not in contradiction of each other at all? When this process involves three or more sources, the process becomes significantly
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more complex, and the mental capabilities required for resolution of the conflict multiply. The sum of these cognitive processes is a learning experience which is for the mind what marathon running and personal training is for the body. Recent research in Israel has demonstrated that Talmud students untrained in mathematics compare favorably when pitted in mathematics against students of mathematics untrained in Talmud.14 It is therefore odd, if not shameful, that a recent publication of the Israeli Ministry of Education, delineating the skills learned in each discipline that are transferable to other disciplines, listed “none” for Talmud! Someone should remind the educators of the Jewish State that the Tannaim taught about Torah learning: “hafoch bah v’hafoch bah d’kulei vah,”15 and this is fulfilled most completely in Talmud. Beyond the cognitive processes associated with Talmud study, the traditional modality of learning carries further benefits. Western study patterns are either lecture formats associated with frontal instruction, in vogue until recently in primary and secondary schools and universities, or individual research in libraries which maintain a tomb-like silence. As Western educators realize the efficacy of decentralization and differentiation in the classroom, frontal instruction has given way to the superior pedagogy of collaborative work, generally conducted in small groups of students. However, even group work cannot hold a candle to the traditional chevruta learning of the Talmudic Bet Midrash.16 Imagine a room lined on all sides with books, floor to ceiling, filled with tables at which pairs of students learn together aloud. The room is filled with the buzz of study, including the roaming conversations of the chevrutot, their (often very heated) arguments, and their consultations with their Rebbeim (teachers) who are themselves engaged in study of Talmudic text. This sort of environment has multiple advantages over the modalities of modern Western classrooms: (a) Learning is active, not passive: no one will spoon-feed the student, he must initiate learning with his friend, or no learning will take place at all. The responsibility for study is on the student. Even exams are the initiation of the student wishing to move to a higher level learning group! (b) The teacher is “the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage:” there is no “us-them” conflict between students and teacher, because they contact with the teacher in a consultative capacity initiated by them. (c) Concentration skills are developed: learning in an environment in which one is surrounded by conversation, even argumentation, demands of one to learn to ignore the environment and concentrate.
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Beyond all of the above, there are several basic human values carried by Talmud learning, actualized by the very participation of the student in the process. First of all, and possibly most importantly, learning of Talmud implies that new is not necessarily improved, and old not necessarily irrelevant. In a recent popular television commercial featuring heroes of various sports, they put over the message regarding their accomplishments: “I never think about yesterday—the only thing that matters is today.” Despite the good intention of teaching the value of constant effort to improve, the subliminal message is a negation of the past as a basis for the present and future. For the Talmud Jew, one only thinks about the present because of the past which is, by definition, to be revered as more authentic, more authoritative, and more value-ridden. Secondly, the study of Talmud puts across the message that the source of knowledge is one’s parents and teachers—not books, not media, not external heroes. The unit of family and masorah17 comes first, and all outside experience is judged according to the extent of its consistency with the sources of authority and values. This approach lends stability to a society, meaning to family life, and a sense of belonging to systems greater than oneself. “Why Learn Talmud in the Twenty-first Century?” At this point, I think the more relevant question would be: “Who Needs the Twenty-first Century if One Learns Talmud?” In my opinion, this question would be far more difficult to answer.
ENDNOTES 1. Tosefta, beraitot, midreshei halachah. All extant material from the period of the Tannaim totals over ten times the material contained in the Mishnah of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, and the extant material is only a percentage of what existed originally. 2. The commandments given in Egypt, and the reference of the Torah that in Marah, soon after the exodus, laws and judgements were given, are two examples of this genre. 3. The famous example in Devarim 12: *** (“You shall sacrifice from your herds and flocks... as I have commanded you.”—though no previous command is to be found) suffices here. 4. Pelled, Shakhar, The Identity Grinder (Hebrew: Migreset HaZehuyot), Pardes Publishing, Israel, 2007. See the summary monograph of the same name by Rabbi Y. Kalner, Jerusalem, 2007 (unpublished), which presents the case more concisely and more cogently. 5. Babli Gitin 60b 6. “Like doves to the openings of their nests.” (Yeshayahu 60:5).
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7. See: “On the Teaching of Talmud: Toward a Methodological Basis for the Teaching of Oral Tradition Studies,” Religious Education, Volume 92, Number 1, Winter, 1997, pp. 61–76; “Implications of Academic Approaches to the Study of the Babylonian Talmud for Student Beliefs and Religious Attitudes,” in Abiding Challenges, Research Perspectives on Jewish Education, edited by Profs. Yisrael Rich and Michael Rosenak, Freund Publishing House and Bar Ilan University, 1999, pp. 375–399; “Methodology and Method in the Teaching of Tannaitic Literature,” Studies in Jewish Education, Melton Center for Jewish Education, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, September, 2000. 8. Although the date of 425 CE is generally given for the editing of the Babli, based on the date of death of Rav Ashi of the sixth generation, it is clear from the Igeret of Rav Sherira Gaon that the editing of the Amoraic material was done in the eighth generation by Rav Asi (Yosi) and Ravina bar Rav Huna. 9. The two strata, the Amoraic and the Shakla V’Tarya, are distinguished by language and form. Amoraic material is generally in Hebrew, and named, while Shakla V’Tarya is in Aramaic, and anonymous. The failure to distinguish these two strata, and to recognize and implement the tremendous implications of the difference between them, plagues the world of Yeshivot in our day. 10. Seven generations before the Tannaim, six generations of Tannaim, and eight of Amoraim. 11. “Stama d’Talmuda” refers to the anonymous, Aramaic language layer of the Talmudic text which comments on and analyzes the statements of the Tannaim and Amoraim. It is likely from the very end of the Amoraic period and the Saboraic period, circa 475–640 CE. “Shakla v’Tarya” means “give and take,” and refers to the conversational style of the Stama d’Talmuda, in which anonymous discussants appear to deal with the Tannaitic and Amoraic statements as if in a roundtable colloquim. 12. The departmentalization, categorization and isolation of academic fields, so characteristic of the western academic enterprise, is the direct heir of ancient western, polytheistic systems of thought in this regard. The integration of various fields is only valuable to one who sees ultimate unity in all knowledge, due to the ultimate unity of all existence. 13. Due to the unfortunate ignorance related to the symbolic nature of aggadic sources, it is worth devoting a note to another example of this type of thinking. It is well known that the midrashim present Rivka (Rebecca) as three years of age at the time of her marriage to Yitzchak (Isaac). This is due to the proximity of the relation of her birth to the binding of Yitzchak which is said to have occurred when he was 37 years of age. In any event, many individuals, and teachers, accept this midrash literally, and do not stop to think about the implications of such literalism. Naturally, the term “three years of age” is not literal, as other midrashim say that Rivka was twelve, or even twenty years of age. All of these numbers are typological, meaning: “Three-like,” “Twelve-like,” etc. Therefore, the student of Talmud must always ask himself whether he is reading halachic or aggadic material, in order to utilize the correct thinking skills for comprehension.
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14. See: Dembo, Y., Levin, I., & Siegler, R. S., “Schooling and Training Effects on a Geometric Misconception: A Comparison of Ultra-Orthodox and Mainstream Students,” Developmental Psychology, 33, 92–103. Dembo, Y., Levin, I., & Siegler, R. S., “Ultra-Orthodox and Mainstreamers: The Effects of Different Schooling Systems on Problem Solving,” Megamot, 38, 469–503. (Hebrew) 15. Pirkei Avot 5:22-”Turn it (Torah) over and over for all is in it.” 16. The Talmudic learning context is called “Bet Midrash”-”Study House” with emphasis on hermeneutical study of Scripture and analogical study of Tannaitic and Amoraic teachings. In the Bet Midrash, students sit in pairs (“chevrutot”) and learn out loud (including disagreements, arguments, even vocal disputations), alternately reading and commenting on the material in question. The atmosphere of dozens, if not hundreds, of students sitting in pairs and learning out loud is unique, even amazing. 17. “Masorah” refers to the living tradition of how to learn Torah, as well as many content components, which are handed down from generation to generation.
Part III
ACADEMICS RESPOND
The Meaning and Purpose of Contemporary Talmud Study Michael Chernick
The antiquity of the Talmud and of the myriad works that developed around it was certainly at the intellectual center of Jewish life until the late 19th century. The centrality of the study of the Talmud was not, however, the legacy of every Jew. Those who studied the Talmud in depth represented an elite. Nevertheless, most Jews would have said that Talmud study was the goal for which every Jewish male should strive. Jewish parents of the past hoped that their sons—the age of daughters’ equality not having arrived—would become talmidei hakhamim, Talmudic scholars. Those who did not achieve this goal still usually had some knowledge of this great treasury of Jewish knowledge. Under any circumstance, the Talmud greatly influenced the Jewish penchant for intellectual success. What changed the status of the Talmud and its place in Jewish life was the Emancipation of European Jewry and the granting of citizenship to them. These events ultimately meant more interaction with non-Jews and their languages and cultures. Jews transferred the intellectual energies they had poured into Talmudic learning into more varied intellectual fields in which more Jews with different interests than the Talmud could hope to succeed. Under these circumstances, the Talmud was studied either by those who in the name of traditional Jewish life fought the new conditions of Emancipation and modernity or by those who eventually turned Talmudic learning into a respectable university discipline. All of these factors provide the reasons why Talmud study is not as widespread today as it once was. Yet the Talmud remains a part of the curricula of denominational Jewish seminaries and among the offerings of the best, most well-rounded Jewish studies programs here and abroad. Which leads to 105
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question, “What does Talmud study have to offer its contemporary students and those who teach them?” The easy answer is that anyone interested in Judaism and its world of ideas has to have at least some background in the study of the Talmud. This is because Talmudic literature is at the root of most significant Jewish ideas that are products of rabbinic Judaism, the “proto-Judaism” that generated the Jewish movements of our time. Whether the matter is one of Jewish law, lore, philosophy, practice, or custom, the Talmud is usually the starting point for it. Hence, it would be poor academic practice to study or research any of these abovementioned issues without starting at the beginning. But, as I said, that is the easy answer and one applicable only to a limited circle of academic students and their teachers. In this essay, I would like to take on the harder question of why Jews particularly, and others more generally, might find the Talmud, or at least parts of it, a relevant document for our time. THE MEDIUM AS THE MESSAGE 1. The Talmud’s Development and its Message Several contemporary scholars of rabbinic literature, most notably Jacob Neusner, have taken the position that the literary formulation of various early rabbinic works expressed the ideology of their creators.1 Taking their lead, I would suggest that knowing something of the Talmud’s literary structure provides insight into the more global messages that the Talmud’s particular way of “speaking” generates. Hence, a description of the literary style of the Talmud is a good place to start. The Talmudic argument or form of discussion has been described as “labyrinthine.” That means that the Talmud is not a Western text that moves along in linear fashion. Rather, it is made up of a “skeleton” of early teachings in Hebrew that originally may have been a simple list. Connective material in Aramaic reshapes the early teachings into a series of questions and answers, thereby producing the typical form of Talmudic discourse (in Aram., sugya, i.e., “a meandering walk”). This revamping of the early teachings very likely changed their meaning, yet given other phenomena too manifold to describe here, it is not likely that the redactors did this consciously. Rather, it seems they were simply trying to make sense of the relationship of one teaching to another in the proto-Talmud’s lists of traditions. If the medium is the message, then the message coming from the Talmud’s development is that history is significant. Its significance for
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those who look back on it may, however, be different from the meaning it held for those who participated in the original events. But as the Talmud’s development shows, historians may collect historical data, however what they do with that data represents post factum reasonable and possible reconstructions of the past. Nevertheless, the attempt at historical restoration, remains inevitably tentative. The same may be said for the redactors who created the Talmudic discussion out of the early traditions they inherited. The redactor’s reconstructions, as we noted, often alter the meaning of original traditions. Then, we may ask, which counts: the early tradition as we may best try to recover its original intent or the redactor’s reshaping of it in the Talmudic dialectic? In other words, is it history or myth that really counts in the creation of the present? I would suggest that both are components in the making of today’s moment. Unfortunately, however, history as a subject is lately ignored and often disparaged. In a world focused on “now,” to look into an “old fashioned” past seems to many to be a waste of time. But lack of historical memory condemns people to refashioning the wheel over and over again. More historical perspective would add purpose to the lives of many people who have no clue about the direction into their future because they have cut themselves off or been cut off from their roots in the past. The idea of myth also suffers from the common definition of myth as a form of fiction. But myths represent accumulated wisdom organized in an easily understood form. This wisdom helps to create principles that also provide human life with meaning. Thus, history, which keeps us in contact with fact to the degree that that is possible, and myth and its particular form of wisdom join hands to enhance human experience. These are some of the significant things we can learn from the Talmud’s developmental history, to the extent that we can presently reconstruct that history.
2. The Talmudic Argument Form and Its Messages: The Joy of Study and the Search for Truth David Kraemer in his The Mind of the Talmud, following his teacher, David Weiss-Halivni, in Mirdash, Mishnah, and Gemara, sees the redactional level of the Talmud as one in which there was more interest in discussion of received traditions than in creation of new ones.2 These discussions treated diametrically opposed points of view as valid subjects
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for analysis and inspection. Hence, Kraemer’s conclusion is that those who created the last strata of the Talmud shared two values: (1) learning for learning’s sake; and (2) recognition that human beings could possess at best only partial truths.3 Only by respecting, validating, and challenging various viewpoints could a more complete sense of truth emerge, but even then, the final word on truth was with God. In a basically religious document, such a conclusion is by no means odd, though it may jar contemporary secular sensibilities. Yet, these messages, whether directed to religious individuals or to those for whom religion holds little value, have significance. To hold that the use of the mind is only for practical purposes is to put an end to the enjoyment of the mind as a vehicle for the full appreciation of everything from a good joke to a great work of art. In short, learning for learning’s sake and making use of the mind for the pleasure of that use were important values to the Talmud’s creators. The joy of Talmudic study was often the sustaining force for a people whose life conditions were frequently, though not always, tragic.4 The second principle implied in the present form of the Talmudic argument is that no human being can possess a full grasp of the truth. The Talmudic argument fosters respectful regard for all opinions, even ones that will eventually be dismissed on logical or practical grounds. Those who redacted the Talmud appear to have held that even those views that do not emerge as “normative” still have something to teach. Failure to listen to each side inevitably leads to the loss of valuable information that may be of theoretical or practical importance at another time under different circumstances. Lack of investigation of all views also renders impossible the discovery of a shared middle ground that brings all sides closer to as much truth as human beings can reach. This search for truth and the realization that it cannot be found in all its fullness in human discourse does not mean that the Talmud valorized relativism. Rather, the Talmud’s borders are the boundaries that rabbinic Judaism set for itself from the outset. Those boundaries depended on the content of the Torah, understood as a canon of twenty-four books, strictly or loosely interpreted. This was the framework for the subject matter of rabbinic interests and discussions about them. Even when rabbinic Judaism gave new meaning to the Torah’s words or extended its legislation into areas not explicitly mentioned therein, it did so through a process called midrash—intensive interpretation and manipulation of the Torah’s ancient and fixed text. Thus, the thought of any particular rabbinic Sage had at least to avoid conflict with the Torah, or, optimally, it had to be closely related to its words.
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HALAKHAH AND AGGADAH Up until now I have tried to discuss the relevance of Talmud study on the basis of its being a starting point for understanding the development of virtually all things Jewish. I have also claimed that to know something of the Talmud’s redactional history and form of discourse is to become aware of it values. Other disciplines and works may do the same, but the Talmud contains more than I have described until now. Its content and not just its form have important lessons to teach. Therefore, I will move away from describing the Talmud’s external features to dealing with some examples of its content. The Talmud contains halakhah, legal dicta, and aggadah, lore. Its halakhic content covers a tremendous range of human activities, which it seeks to regulate. Its aggadic content deals with the realms of Jewish belief and Jewish insights into the human experience. The combination of the two, often intertwined on a single Talmudic page, attempts to encompass the totality of what it is to be human, and especially human in a particularly Jewish way. Admittedly, there are aspects of the Talmud that are antiquarian, which contain ideas that many people, Jews and non-Jews alike, would find passé or even offensive in our time. I will deal first with some Talmudic halakhic cases that are eminently acceptable and relevant. In order to represent the Talmud’s halakhic content fairly, I will also deal with its “hard cases,” that is, ones that moderns would find problematic if not unpalatable. After this, I will have a word to say about aggadah. THE LAW OF SELF-INCRIMINATION In an halakhic rule stated by the Mishnah (the earliest compendium of rabbinic law redacted c. 185–220 CE) we read: The following are invalid as witnesses . . . one who lends (ha-malveh) on interest. . . . (as prohibited in Lev. 25:36–37 and Deut. 20–21) [Mishnah, Sanhedrin, ch. 3, mishnah 3, henceforth in this form: mSanhedrin 3:3]
The section of the Talmud called gemara, a commentary on the Mishnah and other early sources, discusses this mishnaic passage as follows: Mishnah text: “One who lends on interest (is an invalid witness)”: (a) Gemara discussion of the Mishnah: Rava (amoraic teacher, c. 350) said, “One who borrows on interest is disqualified as a witness.”
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(b) But doesn’t the Mishnah teach, “(only) one who lends on interest (is disqualified)?” (c) (Malveh, meaning a lender, should be revocalized and read as milvah, i.e., a loan. Therefore, the mishnah’s rule should be understood as) a loan that is made on interest (causes all those who are involved in it to be invalid witnesses). (d) (A case related to invalidation of witnesses who are lenders and borrowers on interest): Two witnesses testified against a man named Bar Binitos. One said, “He loaned on interest in my presence.” The other (who was a borrower) said, “He lent to me on interest.” Rava disqualified Bar Binitos as a witness. (e) But is it not Rava who says that even one who borrows on interest is an invalid witness?! (Therefore, Rava should have invalidated the borrower as a witness because) that person, i.e., the borrower, is considered evil because (he violated the Torah’s rule), and the Torah says, “Do not join hands with an evil person to become a witness” (Ex 23:1). (f) (Regarding Rava’s ruling,) Rava followed his own view. As Rava had said, “A person is considered a relative in regard to himself, and therefore no one can declare himself an evil person.” (I.e., we do not accept a person’s testimony against himself just as we do not accept the testimony of relatives in a case.) [bSanhedrin 25a]
This Talmudic passage is one of the classical sources for the accepted principle that Jewish law disallows self-incrimination. This was true from at least the period of Rava, which was almost 1,710 years ago. The right of witnesses to refuse to testify lest they incriminate themselves as ensconced in the U.S. Constitution is less than 300 years old. Notice, however, that Talmudic law goes further than the American Constitution. In American law, one can “take the Fifth” in order not to incriminate oneself, but the impression that is left is that the party has something incriminating to hide. In Jewish law, even if someone confessed to a criminal act, his or her testimony would not be accepted.5 This regulation covers all criminal cases known to Jewish law. It is important to consider what this Jewish legislation, which is considered normative, accomplishes. First, it maintains a larger pool of acceptable witnesses who may sign documents and testify in court. More importantly, however, this rule eliminates the usefulness of torture as a means of coercing a confession. Since confessions against oneself have no legal standing, torture in order to get such a confession accomplishes nothing beyond satisfying the sadism of the torturer. Torture as a legally acceptable practice for the extraction of confessions or other information relevant to a trial or other matters has a long history. Therefore, Jewish law’s invalidation of all self-incriminatory speech sets it apart
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from the behaviors of almost every society from antiquity to the present day. The Talmud provides an important precedent which human rights advocates can use in arguing for an end to torture as a means of extracting information and incriminating confessions. To the extent that Jews see themselves bound to the best aspects of the Talmudic tradition, this rule about self-incrimination obligates them to act to eradicate torture worldwide. First, however, one would have to know that such a tradition exists, and only by knowing something of the Talmud’s contents can one know about this Jewish value and obligation. THE OBLIGATION TO RESCUE The first documentation of an obligation to rescue someone who is in danger in Jewish law appears in the Torah itself. There the Torah teaches, “do not stand by while your brother bleeds” (Lev. 19:16). Though this verse clearly demands an action when someone is in danger, it is not clear how broad or limited the scope of this rule is. For example, must the rescuer endanger his or her life for the one being rescued? What happens if the rescuer damages the one being rescued or damages the property of others as he or she rescues another person? As usual the Talmud defines the more general imperative of the Torah and provides clearer guidelines regarding rescue. First the Talmud takes up the issue of how much violence one may use to stop a crime that threatens a person’s life. Then the Talmud turns to cases in which an individual may have to get more directly involved: (a) Our Rabbis taught: Whence do we know that we are permitted to save a party being pursued by one who seeks to kill him even at the cost of the pursuer’s life? Because the Torah says, “do not stand by as your brother bleeds” (Lev. 19:16). (b) But does that verse really teach the law of the pursuer? Rather this verse is needed to teach the following: “Whence do we know that one who sees his fellow drowning in a river, or a wild beast dragging him, or robbers attacking him, is obliged to save him?” The Torah says, “do not stand by as your brother bleeds.” (c) But is the verse cited from Leviticus really the source from which we derive the abovementioned law? Rather isn’t it derived from (an interpretation regarding the return of losses mentioned in Deut. 22:1–2) [From those verses we know that one must return another person’s lost animals, but] whence do we know that one must return his self to him? The Torah says, “and you shall return it to him” (lit., “you shall return him to him”]. (d) If we learned the obligation to rescue from that verse, we would only know that one had to rescue the victim if one could. (But if one could
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not save the individual by oneself,) then the potential rescuer might think that he did not even have to go to excessive trouble or hire people to help. Therefore, the verse that says, “do not stand by as your brother bleeds” teaches us that one must (do everything in one’s power to save the victim).
It is clear that Talmudic law requires intervention to save someone whose life is in danger. These acts are not a matter of voluntarism but of obligation. Essentially, the Talmud is describing contemporary “Good Samaritan” laws. At present there are several countries and one province that require people who witness a life-threatening situation to take action in order to limit harm or death to a victim or victims. These are Italy, Japan, France, Andorra, Spain, Germany, and the province of Quebec in Canada. In these places failure to aid in lifethreatening situations may render a person criminally liable, unless it is clear that the potential rescuer would have thereby endangered his or her own life. In other countries, these laws’ scope is much more limited. They are not proactive. Rather, they exist to protect rescuers from being sued for any damages they may cause as a side effect of their lifesaving efforts. In most instances the exemption from suit is limited to medically trained individuals who give their services or advice gratis, or to civil servants whose job it is to save people in critical or catastrophic situations. Most of the time, these laws do not usually require anyone but civil servants actually to “get involved.” The Talmud clearly goes further. According to its rules, even if rescuers do damage, including fatal damage, they are not liable as long as there was no negligence on their part.6 Again, I point this out in order to show how advanced Talmudic legal and moral thought was and how the two matters—legality and ethics—are often joined in Jewish law. The Talmudic obligation to rescue urges us to consider such questions as “Should we be held legally responsible for failing to call 911 when we see someone in danger or a crime being committed?” “Should we be urged or even forced by law to feel a sense of obligation to use our capabilities to help someone in extreme physical or possibly mortal danger as long as we need not reasonably fear for our own lives?” In environments in which the average person knows little about “Good Samaritan” laws, Talmud study would be a vehicle for opening a conversation about them and whether they go far enough in obliging bystanders to rescue those in danger. IS ALL OF THE TALMUD THIS GOOD? Is all of the Talmud this good? The obvious and immediate answer is, “No.” That answer, however, is reductive as well. Just as I brought two textual witnesses for the Talmud’s positive values, I now wish to present two witnesses
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to problematic views in the Talmud. We may find that even when we are taken aback by one Talmudic Sage’s view, another’s voice will often provide a more nuanced position. We also need to keep in mind that the TaNaKh (i.e., the Torah, Prophetic Books, and Holy Writings that make up the biblical canon) and its values influence the Rabbis. Thus, for example, the Rabbis accept slavery as a legal institution.7 The cultures that surround the Talmudic rabbis also influence them. They reject some aspects of those cultures, but they accept others. We who live in the 21st century might find what they accept or reject quite problematic if not objectionable. Some Talmudic Legislation Affecting Women One area that is a matter of serious concern for those who continue to regard the Talmud and the vast literature it generated as either binding or significant is the issue of the status of women. The popular conception of the ancient rabbis’ views of women is that they were uniformly misogynistic. Deeper study reveals a “mixed bag” of Talmudic law and lore about women, but it would be disingenuous to say that the preponderance of that “mixed bag” favored women. In some instances Talmudic legislation concerning women may have been influenced by laws that already appeared in the Bible, which the rabbis did not feel authorized to change. In other cases, the laws may have been the product of ingrained cultural models of the relationships of men and women in Jewish and surrounding non-Jewish societies.8 I cannot say whether women were satisfied with their position or not. Patriarchal societies do not tend to preserve women’s thoughts and concerns more than they must. I will only say that for many women who live today some of the Talmud’s legislation is not consonant with their self-perception or with the modern ethical principal of equal treatment and opportunity. Asymmetry in Marriage and Divorce The basic laws of marriage and divorce assign an active role in these events to men and a passive one to women. To cite the Mishnah in Kiddushin (Marriage Laws) 2:1: A man (actively) contracts a marriage by himself or through an agent. A woman may be taken in marriage by herself or through her agent.
The many examples that mKiddushin, chapter 2, provides of how marriage may be contracted always indicate that the man gives the woman something in order to make her exclusively his. Should she take an active role by giving something to him, the marriage would be invalid as we find in bKiddushin 8b:
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Our Rabbis taught: How does one contract a marriage using money? He (the groom) gives her (the bride) a sum of money or its equivalent in goods. If he says to her, “You are sanctified to me” or “You are my betrothed” or “Behold, you are my wife”—she is married (if she agrees). But if she gave the money and said, “I am sanctified to you” or “I am betrothed to you” or “Behold, I am your wife”—she is not married.
The same is true when a marriage is dissolved by divorce. Generally speaking, the Talmud rules that the husband initiates the divorce and the wife must accept it even against her will as this mishnah in Tractate Yebamot teaches: The man who divorces (his wife) is not similar to the wife who is divorced. For a woman is divorced in accordance with her will or against her will, but the man who divorces (his wife) does so only according to his will (mYebamot 14:1).
While these examples of Talmudic law about marriage and divorce indeed raise the question of the meaning and purpose of studying Talmud in our times, I would suggest that there are some important insights provided even by these “hard cases.” And this statement should not be considered a preamble to a defense of these rabbinic rules. The most benign thing we learn from the sources on marriage is where the custom of using a ring came from. Indeed, this was a great improvement over marriage via a document that was only worth the paper on which it was written, or by intercourse, which violated the privacy and dignity of the couple. But this is a small lesson. More importantly the Talmud’s rules governing marriage and divorce provide starting points for understanding the different decisions that Jewish denominations have made regarding these regulations. This helps a modern Jew and those seeking to understand contemporary religious Jewish movements to comprehend some of the guiding principles of these movements. Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism have rejected the nonegalitarian aspects of Talmudic law in the areas of marriage and divorce. These movements have created new rituals for marriage and divorce. The rituals use some material drawn from the Talmudic wedding liturgy or divorce procedure, but they are thoroughly egalitarian. This points to what standing these movements allot to Talmudic law as it appears on the pages of the Talmud itself. In the 19th century the Reform movement declared its freedom from biblical and rabbinic law whose content was not consistent with the regnant ethic of the period and the “spirit of the age.” It did not take long for thoughtful adherents of early Reform to recognize that acting on these principles emptied Judaism of some of its special cultural features and its specific set of values. Hence, a slow but steady return to the idea that Judaism was a unique tradition based
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on a long social and literary history reentered Reform Judaism. Nevertheless, Reform Judaism, and Reconstructionist Judaism after it, insisted that as ethical understanding grew, Jewish religious culture would have to respond. To a great extent both Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism maintained a good deal of the marriage service reworked into an egalitarian format. Reconstructionism, however, took the lead in creating new forms of Jewish observances regarding divorce to replace what it considered problematic if not offensive to a contemporary sensibility. This was consonant with its view that Judaism was a civilization that reconstructed itself over and over as it confronted new situations and values. As a result, Reconstructionist Judaism created an egalitarian divorce document and procedure. In its early days Reform Judaism accepted civil divorce as sufficient to end a Jewish marriage. In a recent reconsideration of this position, Reform Judaism has taken the position that individuals who entered into marriage via a religious ceremony should leave it via a religious ceremony. Therefore the Reform movement has recently offered its rabbinate and members an egalitarian tekes peredah, a ceremony of separation. This includes a document that declares the couple divorced and, therefore, free to marry again. I would suggest that had there been no Bible or Talmud, formulas and procedures which produced legal marriages and divorces would have never been part of our tradition. The existence of these traditions has forced Jewish religious denominations to define themselves as either submissive to tradition or challengers and renovators of it. In liberal Judaism’s wrestling with the biblical and Talmudic traditions, its adherents have clarified for themselves that the “bottom line” that God demands of them is ethical behavior as most present day individuals understand it. This has not prevented them from taking the Talmud’s need for specificity of formal behavior and imbuing it with the kind of ethical content that reflects the values of liberal Judaism. One, however, should not dismiss traditionalists as relics of a past age because they hew more closely to the Talmud’s laws and practices. There exists a modern and enlightened Orthodoxy, which is far from weak and which has considerable influence in the contemporary Jewish community. Certainly the most “conservative” elements in the Conservative movement are part of this spectrum as well, though the broad spectrum of Orthodoxy might disagree. In these traditionalist movements, there is a struggle to understand and interpret the Talmudic heritage in a way that may inform contemporary society. Their adherents also wish to allow certain aspects of Western and other cultures to inform and impact them. Rather than deviate from biblical and Talmudic legislation, contemporary traditionalists who live in an open society struggle with the issue of the place of women in Jewish life. In the realm of marriage, there have been arrangements that give the bride a voice during the wedding
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ceremony, though her statement is not an halakhic one betrothing her husband. In some of the traditional circles I have been describing, women sometimes read the ketubah (the traditional marriage contract) or recite some of the Talmudically prescribed Seven Wedding Benedictions after the wedding meal. In the realm of divorce, the one-sided nature of it in Talmudic law was supplanted by a 10th century enactment that prohibited a man from divorcing his wife against her will. This has not solved the problem of men and women in countries where church and state are separated by law from becoming trapped in intolerable marriages in which one of the spouses refuses to give or accept a get. Yet, thinking about how this situation can be avoided has occupied center stage in the modern traditional community for at least twenty years now. Some sectors of modern traditionalist communities have reduced this problem through the use of prenuptial agreements (Orthodox solution) or by means of a Talmudic mechanism called hafqa’at kiddushin, the annulment of a marriage (Conservative solution). In Israel, where the rabbinic courts have the power of coercion that they may apply to a recalcitrant spouse, the inequities of recalcitrance could be easily alleviated. If there is a complaint raised in Israel about the number of couples entrapped in defunct marriages due to a spouse’s recalcitrance, the complaint is not with the Talmud. Rather, it is with those who fail to make use of Talmudic legislation that might alleviate the problem. Nevertheless, it cannot be said with honesty that absolute loyalty to Talmudic law will, for example, ever produce a female cantor, though interestingly enough, it might allow for women acting as halakhic decisors, which is essentially a rabbinic role in the traditional community. In fact, in Israel and America the Orthodox community has created a position called yo’ezet halakhah, female halakhic advisers. These women are trained to answer halakhic questions that arise in areas that have usually been the exclusive bailiwick of Orthodox rabbis. In sum, an honest look at the Talmud’s views regarding women will not produce a place for women consonant with the prevalent ethos of “advanced” societies. This contemporaneously problematic Talmudic stance may not even coincide with the biblical idea that each individual is of equal worth because each was created in God’s image.9 So, then, why study the Talmud if it contains material that is either anachronistic or ethically problematic? The answer lies in the matter of how the Talmud’s form and content have been used over the centuries.
FORM AND CONTENT At this juncture it is important to consider how the Talmud has historically been used in the shaping of Jewish life. Have the rabbinic sages of each generation only made use of its content? Out of that content, have they only
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used what emerged as “normative”? Beyond the Talmud’s content, have they ever made use of its form of argumentation and thought without a high degree of reliance on any of its precedents? It would be fair to say that Jewish legal practitioners have used all three approaches in their application of Talmudic law. Application of the Content of Talmudic Law In early responses to questions posed to authorities on Jewish law, the Talmud’s content served as the basis for what are called responsa. For example, Rav Natronai Gaon10 received a question as to whether a menstruant might say the grace after meals or pray, or was she exempt as if she were sick? If she was required to pray and recite grace, should she pray in a language other than Hebrew, the holy tongue, since prayers and blessings are allowed in any language? Rav Natronai cites a Talmudic statement by Ravina (bBekhorot 27a) who says that a menstruant must separate the dough-offering (hallah) from a batter. When she does so, she is required to recite the blessing for being commanded to do this act (see bBaba Kama 94a). Rav Natronai reasons on this basis that menstruants are required to pray and recite the grace after meals as the Talmud requires. As he notes, “What is the difference between the blessing for a commandment and any other form of blessing?” Hence, Jewish women who are menstruating may recite blessings and prayers and attend the synagogue to do so. Rav Natronai’s ruling is based on the application of the content of the Talmud and the implications one might draw from it. It should be noted that the Ravina’s ruling is not declared “normative” law in the Bekhorot nor in an authoritative legal code like the Shulhan ‘Arukh. Rav Natronai Gaon’s view is far-reaching since the Muslim world surrounding the Jewish community restricted the prayer practices and mosque attendance of menstruating women. Rav Natronai’s decision remains Jewish practice until this day. The Use of Normative Law in the Shaping of Jewish Practice As we have noted, the Talmud does not usually decide the law in favor of one disputant over another. This, however, does not mean that the Talmud never makes such decisions. Thus, for example, we have several decisions regarding what is to be considered normative halakhah in Tractate Mo’ed Katan 26b. There Rabbi Meir’s view that the rent one is required to make in his or her garment as a sign of mourning for a relative must be at least a handbreadth in length is regarded as normative law (see also Shulhan ‘Arukh, 340:3). This practice obtains today in traditional Jewish communities. Two other rules regarding the rending of a garment in mourning receive normative status in Mo’ed Katan 26b, namely, if another relative other than one’s parents
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dies, one may add to the original tear. However, one need not add more that a minute amount. Jewish law codes also accept these mourning practices as normative law, and the traditional community or those who choose to follow traditional mourning regulations follow these practices, which have left a lasting imprint on Jewish mourning customs. The Use of the Form of Talmudic Reasoning in Shaping Jewish Practice There are examples of the development of Jewish law that impacted Jewish practice which had no Talmudic precedent. These developments were frequently the result of use of the Talmudic interpretational methodology of midrash, interpretation of the Torah’s text itself. While this kind of interpretation was a commonplace for the earliest rabbis, the tannaim (c. 40 BCE–220 CE), its use continuously waned in the subsequent amoraic period (c. 220–520 CE). From the fourth amoraic generation on, midrash existed solely to support the views of earlier authorities. Thus, the reappearance of midrash as a force for the creation of Jewish law is an interesting and surprising development. In Talmud-like fashion, once a sage formulated a rule, later sages tended to enlarge its scope. In the example below, a famous view of Maimonides, which he based on a midrash of his own, became the source for yet further legislation. In Talmudic law the rules governing the transfer of property are somewhat “primitive.” One could only transfer ownership of goods, for example, if one was their present owner and either had them in one’s possession or had nearly immediate access to them. From the Talmud’s point of view, dedication of goods or property for sanctified purposes (Heb., heqdesh) was another form of transfer of one’s property to another owner. However, normal transfer differed from sanctification of property. In the first case, the owner had to hand over the property to the new owner or have new owner take it into his possession. This could be accomplished either by physically removing it, or if it was real estate, by using it in some way. In the case of sanctification, transfer could be affected by verbal declaration. In his code of Jewish law, Mishneh Torah, Maimonides accepts these rules as normative law.11 However, he goes on to state that if one took a vow to make a donation to a sacred cause or institution rather than making a verbal transfer of property to heqdesh, then whether or not he owned and possessed the property he was dedicating by vow, his act of sanctification was valid and binding. Maimonides justified this new ruling by referring to Jacob’s vow described in Gen. 28:22. The essence of that vow was: If God would watch
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over him during his sojourn in Padan-Aram, and provide him with his basic needs, then the place at which he dreamed of angels ascending and descending a ladder would be made into a house of God, and Jacob would give God a tenth of all his possessions. But at the moment of his vow, Jacob had no more than the clothes on his back. When he returned to Canaan, however, he was wealthy. Thus, Maimonides claimed the Torah itself supported his ruling. He closes his creation of a new Jewish law with the statement “and thus it is fit to rule” when one takes a vow of sanctification rather than making a donation to heqdesh by a verbal statement of transfer.12 Pointedly, Maimonides notes that his rule bore no analogy to secular business transactions.13 As time went on, however, other halakhists extended the basic idea behind Maimonides’s view to business transactions in which there were transferences of property ownership. Thus, if sellers obligated themselves to transfer ownership of a certain product, they had to “deliver the goods.” Essentially, the legal theory behind this rule existed in potentio in Maimonides’s ruling. Later authorities simply viewed self-obligation as a form of vow that had to be kept. The fact that a seller did not have access to the product he or she was selling because it did not exist or was unavailable to him or her was irrelevant. The seller existed, and the obligation of transferring ownership of the product s/he offered rested on him or her.14 Once the product became available, he or she had to turn it over to the party to whom he or she was obliged. The new rules regarding transfer of ownership via self-obligation allowed for a wider range of business transactions than the Talmud had imagined. Dealing in futures became legal, and in autonomous Jewish societies from the middle ages until contemporary Israel, such transactions have the sanction of Jewish law. Indeed, wittingly or not, any Jew anywhere who writes out a contract in which he or she uses the language of self-obligation has created a legally binding agreement from the standpoint of Jewish law. The fact that some Jewish legal authorities used the Talmud’s form of legal reasoning and not only its content to create new legislation is an important factor in considering why the study of the Talmud and the mastery of its thought processes are significant in the 21st century. Understanding how to reason in this way has the potential to help the Jewish people develop meaningful Jewish responses to emerging contemporary religious and secular concerns. These responses have the benefit of squarely facing the present and future concerns while still being organically connected to the precedents of the Jewish past. To be able to use the Talmud’s form of legal reasoning in order to use it in the here and now requires a knowledge that one can attain only by study of the document from which it comes—the Talmud and its ancillary sources.
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A WORD ABOUT TALMUDIC LORE Until now I have concentrated exclusively on Talmudic law because that is what traditional Talmud teachers and students have emphasized. Nevertheless, the halakhic content of the Babylonian Talmud makes up only about a third of its entirety. Thus, two-thirds of the Talmud is lore. If one only looks at the halakhic aspect of the Talmud, one sees its mind but not its heart, and the heart is a singularly vital organ. Though the Palestinian Talmud declares that Talmudic lore, or aggadah, cannot yield any legal results, this “rule” was occasionally observed in the breach or circumvented.15 Perhaps some Sages’ reluctance to use aggadah as source of law was based on their sense that Talmudic lore lacked objective criteria for judging the “logic” of its ideas about theology, beliefs, and values. Nevertheless, when halakhah and aggadah become intertwined, often the aggadah sheds light on what spiritual or ethical goals the halakha seeks to accomplish. Skepticism, however, about the aggadah’s capability of yielding firm norms is the result of the fact that some pieces of Jewish lore on a single subject contradict one another.16 Also, as is the case with halakhah, there are wide divergences of opinion within the aggadah. One can make a decision about how logical, practical, or generally accepted a law is and thereby declare it normative. But how is one to judge whether a theological theory, belief, or ethical perception of one rabbinic thinker has more validity than that of another if that view does not violate the boundaries set by the basic source of authority for the rabbis, the TaNaKh? Thus, for example, if a rabbi said there was more than one God, obviously his rabbinic colleagues would reject his theological view. If, however, one rabbi held that God revealed the Pentateuch in a single act of revelation and another held that God revealed the Torah piece by piece, since the Torah itself makes no firm declaration on this issue, either view is acceptable. These examples of acceptable and unacceptable beliefs nevertheless point to a framework of belief that transcends fine points. All the ancient rabbis would agree that Judaism is strictly monotheistic and that the Torah is God’s revelation to Israel. All of the ancient rabbis would also agree that there were proper and improper modes of conduct, but the measure for this in aggadic sources might not find an echo in halakhic ones. Talmudic law might allow a behavior that a 21st century individual with a reasonably good moral compass would find unacceptable or even reprehensible. Hence, the reason that Talmudic lore is especially important, whether it is legally normative or not, is because it addresses the conscience urging it to go beyond the letter of the law. There are cases in which we can at least posit that an aggadic critique influenced the final outcome of the law. This may have influenced the tendency for Jewish law and Jewish ethics to catch up to one another over time, though this may be a tendency present in most legal systems and not only in Judaism’s.17
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The following examples should prove illustrative. There is an aggadic story about Simeon ben Shetah who purchased a donkey from a gentile. His students found a precious stone hanging from the donkey’s neck. According to Jewish law he had no obligation to return the gem to the gentile because the Jewish law of return of lost objects applies only to fellow Jews according to Talmudic law. Nevertheless, Simeon ben Shetah said, “I purchased a donkey, and I did not purchase a gem.” He returned the gem to its original owner, who declared, “Blessed is the Eternal, the God of Simeon ben Shetah.” Ultimately Talmudic law holds that if failure to return the lost object of a gentile leads to the desecration of God’s name, a Jew must return it.18 The Talmud (bKetubot ) entertains an opinion that students of Torah may leave their wives and children for as long as two to three years to go to study. They need no permission from their wives despite the fact that they owe them sexual rights as a matter of their ketubah (i.e., marriage contract) obligations. The Talmudic source also says that in fact students accepted this as the law and acted accordingly. Immediately following this statement that leads to a sense that this ruling is normative there appears a cautionary statement by Rava, an amoraic sage who lived around 350. He stated that those who did this did so at the peril of their lives. Following Rava’s warning, an aggadic story about a rabbi named Rav Rehumi appears to prove that Rava was not kidding. Rav Rehumi would leave his wife for a year at a time but would return at least for Yom Kippur and perhaps beyond. One year, however, he got caught up in study and failed to come home. His wife began to cry because he didn’t arrive as expected, and he died because of her tears, and, presumably, for remaining away from her for over a year (not even two or three years). A careful literary critical study of the Rehumi story would show the reader a progression from comedy to tragedy, but the obvious message of the story is clear: Torah study that undermines normal family life and hurts people may be more transgressive and therefore dangerous than students realize. The normative law may be that students of Torah may leave their families for extended periods of study, but that doesn’t mean that it is good for them to do so. No matter how “normative” the rule about Torah students became in the major codes of Jewish law,19 the warning from a major figure like Rava as well as the sad end of Rav Rehumi probably dissuaded more than a few such students from taking advantage of this law. Several of the later commentators on the last of these majors codes, the Shulhan ‘Arukh, restrict the right of contemporary students to leave there families for extended periods.20 Again, if one seeks to understand where Jewish religious and ethical thought comes from and what its nature is, the Talmud is a sine qua non. Even what we would call superstition-filled pieces of aggadah, which the Talmudic
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sages would probably have dubbed “contemporary scientific information,” is of value to the anthropologist or historian of religion.
CONCLUSION It is not easy to write an essay that supports the study of an ancient text in our day. There is a contemporary sense (malady?) that if a text is very old it must be irrelevant. But is it fair to make that judgment without having engaged that text? I have found that many people who begin Talmud study, usually out of curiosity about what it’s all about, become more appreciative of what it has to say to our world. The proof is in the pudding: I have taught Talmud to a group of Conservative Jewish laypeople for over ten years. The group meets on Sunday mornings and we study for about two hours, sometimes with a traditional preparation period done with study partners. The core group remains at a steady dozen and rises depending on the tractate to eighteen or so. It isn’t a crowd, but it is a sign of how addictive the Talmud can get to be. Further, in my academic career I have been invited to do more than many (certainly more than 100) speaking engagements where the Talmud and its relevance to contemporary issues was what people were looking for, and these were events held mostly but not exclusively, in Reform Jewish or other non-Orthodox Jewish settings. Anyone who would begin the study of Talmud today would not be alone. There are hundreds of groups studying a page of Talmud per day, and though most of them attract Orthodox Jews, others have joined this program that completes the entire Talmud in seven years. This phenomenon alone indicates a salutary resurgence of interest in this classic. The depth of study in these groups may not be optimal, but the breadth surely gives the student a good sense of the Talmud’s contents He or she can then judge fairly which aspects of the Talmudic tradition He or she finds relevant. I sincerely believe that there will be many, even if not every word generates ideas with contemporary significance. So, coming full circle, if one wishes to know about how Judaism developed and what it has to say to us in the present moment, the Talmud is the starting place. And that is why I believe that one who is interested in such matters should engage in Talmud study in the 21st century.
ENDNOTES 1. For example, see Jacob Neusner, Uniting the Dual Torah: Sifra and the Problem of Mishnah (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 28–31.
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2. David Kraemer, The Mind of the Talmud (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), ch. 5; David Weiss Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 77. 3. Idem., ch. 6. 4. Salo Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952–1983), p. 297, n. 7, regarding too much emphasis on the “lachrymose theory of Jewish history.” 5. Shulhan `Arukh, Hoshen Mishpat, 34:25. The Shulhan `Arukh is one of the most authoritative codes of Jewish law. The section called Hoshen Mishpat deals with torts and criminal law. 6. This may be inferred from Tur, Yoreh De`ah, 336 and from the Bet Yosef ad loc., s.v. U-mah Shekatav. The Tur is one of the three major codes of Jewish law. Yoreh De`ah is the second major section of the code. The chapter deals with expert doctors who harm a patient without intent or negligence who are free from any culpability. This applies only to certified physicians Nevertheless, one may infer that if a nonprofessional rescuer is the only available person to save an endangered person, then that rescuer is equivalent to a certified physician at that moment, since no one is permitted to hesitate when it comes to the saving of a life. See Shulhan `Arukh, ‘Orah Hayyim, 328:12–13. It is a well-known rule that one may even violate the rigorous rules of the Sabbath in order to save a life. 7. See, for example, mQiddushin 1:2 and 3 that discuss how Jewish and non-Jewish slaves are acquired . 8. For example, the traditional blessing that traditionally oriented Jewish men recite, which thanks God for not creating them women, was among the three statements of gratitude attributed by some to Thales, others to Socrates, and yet others to Plato. See Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-feshutah, Berakhot (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, reprinted 1992), p. 120. If this is so, this benediction is of Greek origin. Nevertheless, it appears to have been sufficiently appealing to the Rabbis who included it in the daily Jewish liturgy. This blessing is still recited daily and publicly in many Orthodox congregations, even when women are present. 9. Yalqut Shim`oni, Shofetim, 42, s.v. u-Devorah ‘ishah neviah. The citation states that whether one is a man or a woman, a slave or a maidservant, according to one’s sanctified actions does the holy spirit (i.e., the source of prophetic inspiration) rest upon a person. 10. R. Natronai Gaon was the Gaon of the Babylonian yeshiva in Sura. He served in this position from 583–858 CE. The gaonate was the major intellectual and legislative body of Babylonian Jewry. It continued the study of the Talmud and began to use it for the purposes of answering emerging questions regarding Jewish life in the early middle ages. 11. Mishneh Torah, Laws of Vows of Valuations and of Dedications, 6:26. 12. Ibid., 6:31–33. 13. Op.cit., Laws of Sales, 22:16. 14. Shulhan `Arukh, Hoshen Mishpat, 60:6 and Sefer Me’irat `Enayyim, #18. Sefer Me’irat `Enayyim is a commentary to the Shulhan `Arukh, Hoshen Mishpat, which
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deals with judicial procedures and criminal and civil law. Sefer Me’irat `Enayyim was written by R. Joshua Falk (Poland, 1555–1614). 15. See Yad Malakhi, Kelalei ha-Aleph, #72. Yad Malakhi is a work on phenomena in the Talmud and general principles that derive from it. It was written by R. Malakhi ben Jacob Ha-kohen in Italy in the 16th century. He notes that generally speaking one may not derive law from Talmudic lore. This, however, is only the case if the rule that might be derived from the lore directly opposes a legal statement of the Talmud. More recent circumventions of this rule can be found in those responses that cite the story of R. Hananiah ben Teradyon, a 2nd century martyr, who was burned alive. In order to increase his suffering, the Romans placed wet wool over his heart in order that the fire not destroy his vital organs, thereby prolonging his agony. A Roman soldier said he would remove the wool if the Rabbi would promise him a place in the world to come. The Rabbi did so, and according to the story, after the soldier consigned himself to the fire along with the Rabbi, both were received into the world to come together. The story has been used to address end of life issues and permission to removing obstacles to dying, even when there may be hastening of death, in the face of great suffering. This piece of lore lies on a line. It is clearly aggadic in a general sense, but the Rabbi is the one who directly allows for the removal of the wool. Should his agreement be viewed as an halakhic decision? 16. Tosafot, bYebamot 16b. 17. I use the phrase “in most legal systems” because strict legal positivists would separate law and ethics into two different categories of thought. In a legal system informed by legal positivism, law would not necessarily have to keep up with ethical developments, nor would ethics necessarily exert any influence over legislation. 18. bBaba Qamma, 113b; Mishneh Torah, Laws Governing Loss and Robbery, 11:3; Shulhan `Arukh, Hoshen Mishpat, 266:1. 19. Shulhan `Arukh,’ Even ha-`Ezer, 76:5. 20. Bet Shemuel, ad loc., #1; Helqat Mehoqeq, ad loc., #10. Both of these are commentaries to the section of the Shulhan `Arukh dealing with marriage and divorce laws. The author of Bet Shemuel is R. Samuel ben Uri Shraga Feibush, born in Poland c. 1640 and died 1698. The author of Helqat Mehoqeq was R. Mosheh b. Yitzchak Yehudah Lema, one of Poland’s most distinguished rabbinic figures. He was born in Lithuania in the early 17th century. He died in 1657 at age 52.
Why Study Talmud?* Shaye J. D. Cohen
Why study Talmud? This question is actually two questions: Why do I study Talmud? Why might anyone1 want to consider studying Talmud? The answer to the first question is easy, the answer to the second is not. Before I begin, a word of clarification. By “Talmud” I mean primarily the Babylonian Talmud, the Bavli, the canonical text par excellence of yeshiva education, but from time to time in this essay I use the term to denote all of rabbinic literature of antiquity: Mishnah, Tosefta, halakhic midrashim, aggadic midrashim, the Talmud of the land of Israel (Yerushalmi), as well as the Babylonian Talmud (Bavli). The numerous historical and stylistic distinctions among all these works do not much matter for my purposes here. Why do I study Talmud? First, I like old things, I always have. I studied Latin in high school and majored in Greek and Latin in college. For a time I even considered becoming a classicist. I enjoy classical music. I adhere to the ancient adage “older is better.”2 Second, and what is more important, I was brought up studying Talmud. I was brought up in a modern Orthodox home. I went to yeshiva from grade K through grade 16 (my undergraduate degree is from Yeshiva College). If I recall correctly, we boys were introduced to Mishnah in the fourth grade—or was it the fifth?—and began studying the Bavli in fifth (sixth?). From those days long ago until today, Talmud study has been a constant part of my life, to a greater or lesser degree. I study Talmud because I have always studied Talmud. I have never not studied Talmud. Studying Talmud is what a (male) Jew does.3 Third, because I have always studied Talmud, I’m good at it. Hence I study Talmud because I can—it’s famously difficult and yet I can do it. Many of us have mastered some skill, or possess some talent, of which we are proud. For 125
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some this special skill is playing a musical instrument. For others it might be woodworking, or cooking, or creative writing, or painting. One of the special skills that I have, and that inevitably contributes to who and what I am, for better or worse, is my ability to study Talmud. I enjoy it and I am good at it. Fourth, I enjoy it because there is much to enjoy. The Talmud is a feast for the mind. Its technical terms, abstruse subject matter, argumentative twists and turns, nonlinear logic, and contrapuntal style, make the study of Talmud difficult, challenging, and fun. I enjoy logic puzzles. I enjoy solving problems from the Dell Book of Logic Problems and brain teasers of all kinds. Some passages of the Talmud were written with the intention of being brain teasers. So, for example, in response to the implied question “can you construct a situation in which a man violates eight prohibitions of the Torah simultaneously by plowing a single furrow in a field,” the Talmud answers as follows:4 he is plowing (1) with an ox and a donkey yoked together,5 (2) the ox being temple property reserved for the altar, and (3) the donkey being temple property reserved for the upkeep of the temple;6 (4) he is plowing wheat seeds in a vineyard,7 (5) during the seventh year,8 and (6) on a holiday;9 he is (7) a priest and (8) a nazirite plowing in an area which contain human remains.10 To say in reply that this case is far fetched misses the point completely: constructing such cases is a way to sharpen the mind, to explore the limits of legal principles and to understand the effect of overlapping categories. The Talmud is full of such intentional brainteasers. For me such passages are fun. Even more common, of course, are the unintentional brainteasers, Talmudic passages in which it is not clear how a question is a question or an answer is an answer or a proof is a proof. The Talmud is filled with such passages, from one end to the other. There is hardly a page without at least several statements that have provoked debate among the great medieval commentators. In attempting to decipher such passages, we struggle with the Talmud text and also with the interpretive tradition of the past thousand years or so. Here is a particularly fun example, one from among thousands; this one is a brain teaser within a brain teaser. A man without heirs lies on his death bed and declares that he wishes to bequeath all his property to Toviah (in English we might say Tobias). Before we can inquire as to the identity of this Toviah, he dies. Two Toviahs promptly present themselves in court, each one claiming the legacy. What do we do? All the dying man said was “My property goes to Toviah.” (Perhaps had he said “rosebud” the Talmudic rabbis would have found themselves on the next train to Hollywood.) The Talmud rules as follows. If one of the two Toviahs was a rabbinic sage, and the other a neighbor, the sage takes the property. Similarly, if one of the
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two Toviahs was a sage and the other a relative, once again the sage takes the property. (These rabbinic rulings, which appear to be shamefully selfserving, are predicated on the assumption that a God-fearing Jew would, everything else being equal, of course prefer to bestow deathbed gifts on a rabbinic sage rather than upon anyone else, presumably in order to find favor with God in the hereafter.) But what if neither Toviah is a sage; what if one Toviah is a relative and the other a neighbor—to whom is the property to be given? Answer: shuda de dayyanei. The text, etymology, and meaning of the first of these words are uncertain, and as a result all the medieval commentators debate how to interpret this phrase. According to Rashi (1040–1105), the Talmud is saying that in such cases the rabbinic court attempts to divine the intent of the testator. According to Rashi’s grandson R. Jacob Tam (known as Rabbenu Tam, 12th century), the Talmud is saying that the rabbinic court may do whatever it wishes. If one Toviah is more pious or learned than the other, the court may decide to bestow the property upon him, not because we assume that this was the testator’s intent, but because the judges may act as they please. Behind these two different explanations of a cryptic Talmudic phrase are two different conceptions of judicial power and the place of the sage in society. What the Talmud really meant is not clear. So, here we have a Talmudic brainteaser (the case of the two Toviahs), compounded by an exegetical brain-teaser (what exactly did the Talmud mean by the mysterious words shuda de dayyanei?). Figuring all this out is the fun of Talmud study.11 The Talmud, then, first and foremost, is a feast for the mind. Beyond that, the Talmud is also interesting, fascinating, amazing. It contains wonderful stories.12 The stories range from the dry reportage of (real or imagined) court cases to stories about scholars in conversation to folktales to the tall tales told by sailors and travelers. From the pages of the Talmud we learn about folk medicine and superstitions, the power of the evil eye and its antidotes, the culture and values of a society that lived long ago and far away. We get an insight into the history of Jewish law and practice. We learn that once upon a time poultry could be served with cheese, because poultry was once considered more like fish than like cattle. We learn that Jewish men once upon a time did not routinely keep their heads covered, even when praying, reciting benedictions, or engaged in religious activity.13 We learn that once upon a time there was a public ritual by which a family would disinherit or “cut off” an errant member: If one of several brothers marries a woman who does not befit him, the members of the family take a cask filled with fruit and break it in the middle of the town square and say “Our brothers, the house of Israel, listen! Our brother x has married
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a woman who does not befit him. We fear that his seed might mingle with our seed. Come, take for yourselves an example for the generations, so that his seed not mingle with our seed.”14
And so on and so on. Examples like this could be easily multiplied. The downside of this cultural exploration, of course, is that inevitably we find things in the Talmud that we do not like. The Talmud (and here I mean the Babylonian Talmud in particular) is famous for logical leaps that do not land securely, for questions that we have trouble regarding as real questions, for answers that we have trouble regarding as real answers, for proofs that we have trouble regarding as real proofs, for inferences that are far fetched, if not absurd, and for explanations that are unreasonable or highly contrived. I am not referring to passages which, because of their difficulty and complexity, strain our intellect; these are a delight (see above). No, I am referring to passages which strain our credulity. Do they really expect me to take this seriously? we ask. Recent scholarship tends to attribute the worst of these excesses to the latest, anonymous layers of the Babylonian Talmud, exonerating the named authorities who were active in the main period of the Talmud’s formation, but no matter. These passages, which are found throughout the Bavli, give the text its rhetorical character and justify its checkered reputation. We are not surprised, I suppose, by the Talmud’s ignorance about the natural world. They believe that the sun revolves around the earth. They believe that pi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter) has the value of three. Their understanding of human physiology was elementary; as a friend of mine once commented to me long ago, if a woman’s body was actually put together the way the sages imagined, it would be a miracle if a woman ever got pregnant. They believe in ghosts, demons, and spirits of all kinds.15 We should not be surprised by this; the rabbis were men of their time. We should not be surprised but we can be disappointed. The Talmud is full of offensive statements about gentiles and about women. The Talmud accepts the institution of slavery.16 The Talmud accepts the validity of a marriage between an adult man and a girl of the age of three years and one day; what they call marriage we would call child abuse. In these and other areas I want the sages to be better, but I need to accept the fact that they were men of their time and place. If I believed that the Talmud was the work of God, or that the Talmudic sages were somehow speaking the word of God, then these passages would be yet more troubling. I understand that some of my fellow Jews in fact attribute to the Talmud authority akin to that of the Torah, as if the divine element were as prominent in the one as in the other. I recall an article in the New York Times many years ago (I was in high school at the time, I believe)
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about a daf yomi group that met daily in the rear car of a Long Island Rail Road commuter train.17 In explaining to the newspaper reporter what they were doing, one of the participants said (this quotation has stuck in my mind), “When we pray we talk to God; when we study Talmud God talks to us.” If this Jew and others like him believe that God speaks to them out of the pages of the Talmud, I am happy for them, and I hope that they are happy in their faith. I, however, do not believe this. The Talmud nowhere claims prophetic authority for itself and indeed seems to reject it in various places.18 For me the Talmud is the voice of men. Since it is the voice of men, I am disappointed but not surprised that they say things that I, and other modern, politically correct, progressive, enlightened Jews, find offensive. If these offensive statements and rulings came from God, I would have much more trouble with them. To return to my theme: A very attractive feature of Talmudic discourse is its multivocality, the ability to support conflicting positions on a single question. As is well known, ancient rabbinic literature is filled with disputes, usually between the proponents of two differing positions, sometimes three, and sometimes even more. What is more remarkable than the fact that the sages argue with each other is the fact that the Talmud seldom adjudicates among these rival positions. In medieval times jurists had to work out a system for deriving normative law from these fractious texts. Indeed occasionally the Talmud provides them clues to aid them in their work, but the for the most part the Talmud treats all sides to a question as equally valid. Even in those situations when it is clear that the debate has a “winner” (e.g. the House of Hillel) and a “loser” (e.g. the House of Shammai), the Talmud will treat both sides with equal respect. It poses questions to both, adduces proofs for both, and in general subjects both to the same scrutiny. Whether we should call the Talmudic stance “pluralistic,” is a fair question, the answer turning in a large part on how we define “pluralism” and whether we believe that the Talmud, contrary to appearances, in fact was interested in establishing normative law. In nonlegal matters, the Talmudic arena is even more open and freewheeling. All sorts of theological positions can be staked out, and all sorts of homilies and moral instruction can be derived from a single verse. This indeed seems to be some kind of pluralism; in theology, at least, Talmudic Judaism is multiform, and we modern Jews, including me, love to see this stance implicitly articulated in a foundational Jewish text. Before I conclude, let us study a little piece of Mishnah to see some of the good clean fun that awaits the student of ancient rabbinic literature. This passage is well known to those who pray every morning from a traditional prayerbook; it is the opening Mishnah of tractate Pe’ah:
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These are the things for which no statutory amount is prescribed [in the Torah]: (a) pe’ah, (b) first-fruits, (c) appearance offering, (d) deeds of loving kindness, and (e) study of Torah.
Our first challenge is exegetical. First, is the Mishnah speaking here of minimums, maximums, or both?19 That is, is the Mishnah speaking about upper limits or lower limits? As we shall see in a moment, the very next Mishnaic paragraph implies that we are speaking of minimums, and this seems to be the simple meaning of the text, but perhaps the Mishnah flits from one to the other. Second, what is the exact meaning of these five “things”? Three are simple, but two are ambiguous. (a) Pe’ah is the corner of the field that is left unharvested for the poor. (b) The first fruits are to be brought to the temple and presented to the priest.20 (e) Study of Torah is, well, study of Torah. These are (relatively) simple; (c) and (d), however, are ambiguous. The “appearance offering” clearly refers to the commandment of Deuteronomy 16:16 to appear before the Lord three times a year, and not to appear empty-handed, but what is not clear is whether the Mishnah is referring to the first part of the verse (appearance before the Lord) or the second (not to appear empty-handed). If the former, and if the Mishnah is referring to upper limits, the Mishnah means that Israelites may enter the temple as often as they wish during the pilgrimage festivals, and that each appearance counts as the fulfillment of the commandment of the Torah. If the latter, the Mishnah means that the commandment not to appear empty-handed can be fulfilled by an offering of the smallest (largest?) possible amount. Since (a) and (b) refer to expenditures of money, perhaps the latter interpretation of (c) is preferable. (d) is similarly ambiguous, since “deeds of loving kindness” may refer to charity, an expenditure of money, or to righteous acts on behalf of other people for which the actor has no expectation of any reward or recompense, an expenditure of time and energy. Which is intended? Perhaps both (I shall return to this in a moment). Third, the very next paragraph of Mishnah Pe’ah raises an interesting problem: Pe’ah should be not less than [one] out of sixty, although they have said that pe’ah has no statutory amount.21
This paragraph demonstrates that, at least in connection with pe’ah, the Mishnah is speaking of minimums, not maximums. The minimum amount for pe’ah is one sixtieth. But didn’t the Mishnah just say that pe’ah has no statutory minimum? The Mishnah does not hide the problem, since it explicitly acknowledges “even though they have said that pe’ah has no statutory amount.” How do we make sense out of this? The usual explanation—I
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have no better—is that paragraph 1 refers to the law of the Torah while paragraph 2 refers to the law of the sages.22 So, the Torah commands us to leave a corner of the field unharvested for the poor, but the Torah did not instruct us how much to leave; the Sages ordained that the proper fulfillment of the commandment means leaving no less than one sixtieth of the harvest. This explanation brings us from the exegetical to the historical. The Torah spells out the precise requirements and statutory amounts for various temple rituals, but does not otherwise set forth shiurim, statutory minimums for the satisfaction of an obligation or the violation of a prohibition. The Torah prohibits us from eating on Yom Kippur,23 but does not tell us exactly how much must be consumed before the prohibition is violated. The Torah commands us to eat matzah on Passover but does not tell us how much matzah we must consume in order to fulfill the obligation. The sages elaborate these minimums, determining precisely when the violation has occurred and when the obligation has been satisfied. The sages do this not just for Yom Kippur and Passover but for all kinds of actions that are mandated or prohibited by the Torah. My friend Aharon Shemesh of Bar-Ilan University has acutely observed that the Jews of the Qumran sect seem to have anticipated the rabbinic sages in this activity since they too have some references to statutory amounts in their scrolls. But what is particularly amazing is that the Qumran texts posit statutory minimums for at least three items on our rabbinic list of five! Our Mishnah, which at first glance appears to be an innocent piece of rabbinic scholasticism, is perhaps really an expression of intersectarian polemic.24 If one were homiletically inclined, one could construct a lovely little sermon based on this text. The Mishnah progresses from commandments that demand money (pe’ah, first fruits, appearance offering), to commandments that demand money as well as time and energy (first fruits and appearance offering, which must be presented in person at the temple in Jerusalem), to a commandment that demands not only money, time, and energy, but also selfless concern for other people (deeds of loving kindness). But the greatest of them all, the one that has no minimum and no maximum, which demands everything and consumes everything—this is the commandment to study Torah. Or another way to spin this homily: the first three of these five are contingent. You are not commanded to leave the corner of the field unharvested unless you are a farmer who owns a field. You are not commanded to bring first fruits to the temple unless you are a farmer who has first fruits. You are not commanded to bring your first fruits and appearance offering to the temple unless there is a temple. So these three are entirely contingent. Deeds of loving kindness are contingent too, but if you live in society, as regular people normally do, inevitably opportunities will present themselves in which
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you can assist or benefit your fellow human being, whether through charity or some other kind of assistance. But the least contingent of all is the commandment to study Torah. Here is a commandment that is incumbent upon all,25 at all times in all conditions, to be fulfilled by each according to his or her ability and attainments. This brings me to my final point. Why should you study Talmud? The Talmud is mine, and, if you are Jewish, the Talmud is yours, too. Hence, whether the study of the Talmud is really more rewarding than, say, the study of Homer and Aristotle, Vergil and Cicero, Beowulf and the Song of Roland, feudalism in medieval France, or Renaissance Italian art. I cannot say, but I can say that unlike Homer and Aristotle, Vergil and Cicero, Beowulf and the Song of Roland et al., the Talmud is mine. Not only that, the Talmud makes me—you, us—Jewish, in the sense that all of us Jews, whether we are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, New Age Spiritualist, Hassidic, Neo-Hassidic, Secular, Humanistic, Atheistic, or Socialist, no matter what kind of Jew we are, our Judaism and our Jewishness have been shaped by the Talmud and Talmudic tradition. Even if we have rebelled against Judaism, the Judaism against which we have rebelled is the Judaism shaped by the Talmud and its interpreters. The Talmud is at the base of our Jewish identity. A midrash of the early middle ages relates:26 R. Judah b. Shalom said, Moses asked of God that the Mishnah too, [just like the written Torah], be in writing. But the Holy One, blessed be He, foresaw that the nations in the future will translate the Torah and read it in Greek and say “We are Israel.”27 The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses, “I shall write out for him [Israel] the larger part of my Torah, [so that ] they [the gentiles] be counted as strangers” (Hosea 8:12).28 And why all this? Because the Mishnah is the secret password29 of God, and the Holy One, blessed be He, hands over his password only to the righteous [Israel].
This is one of the few unamibiguously anti-Christian texts in ancient rabbinic literature. The gentiles, that is, the Christians, will translate the Torah into Greek, will read the Torah in Greek, and as a result will proclaim themselves to be Israel. But the Holy One, blessed be He, foresaw that this would happen and therefore reserved part of the divine revelation for the Jews, the true Israel. This part is the Oral Torah, represented in this text by the Mishnah, the first rabbinic book and the foundation of all rabbinic literature. The Mishnah belongs to the Jews alone; the gentiles do not have it. The fact that Jews possess the Mishnah (and rabbinic literature) is proof that the Jews are the true people of God. Christians too study the Bible, but
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only Jews study the Mishnah, because the Mishnah and the Talmud and all the rest of rabbinic literature make us who we are. And that’s why we study Talmud.
ENDNOTES * An edited version of remarks delivered to “Meah” graduates at the Commencement Exercises of Hebrew College on Sunday, June 3, 2007. “Meah” is an ambitious adult education program run by Hebrew College and funded in part by the Combined Jewish Philanthropies (Federation) of Boston. Participants in the program study Jewish texts and Jewish history for a total of one hundred classroom hours over a period of two years. Many of the participants continue their Jewish studies even after completing the program. I have taught in the Meah program since moving to the Boston area in 2001. 1. I am referring to a Jewish anyone; gentiles, too, might want to study Talmud, but that is the subject of a different essay. 2. Peter Pilhofer, Presbyteron kreitton: der Altersbeweis der jüdischen und christlichen Apologeten und seine Vorgeschichte (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1990). 3. Within the past twenty years or so Talmud study for girls and women has become more common. The effects of this revolutionary development have yet to be seen but they cannot be long in coming. In any case, in my elementary yeshiva, when we boys studied Mishnah and Talmud the girls were studying Tanakh (if I remember correctly). This curricular separation was typical for yeshivot then, just as it remains typical today for yeshivot that are not “modern Orthodox.” 4. M. Makkot 3:9, in Babylonian Talmud Makkot 21b. 5. Prohibited by Deuteronomy 22:10. 6. Consequently he is guilty of trespass against the sacred. 7. Prohibited by Deuteronomy 22:9. 8. When agricultural labor is prohibited (Leviticus 25:4). 9. When agricultural labor is prohibited (Levitcus 23:7). 10. (Male) Priests and nazirites (of either gender) are prohibited from contracting impurity, consequently they are prohibited from coming into contact with human remains. 11. Bavli Ketuvot 85b (and parallels); see Rashi and Tosafot on the page. 12. An excellent introduction to Talmudic storytelling is Jeffrey Rubenstein, Rabbinic Stories. 13. Eric Zimmer, “Men’s Headcovering: The Metamorphosis of the Practice,” in Reverence, Righteousness, and Rahamanut: Esssays in Memory of Rabbi Dr. Leo Jung, ed. Jacob J. Schachter (1992) 325–352 = Olam kiMinhago Noheg 17–42. 14. B. Ketuvot 28b; the version in the Yerushalmi explains that children eat the fruit (and toasted grains) that spill out of the broken cask. In the Yerushalmi the family disapproval is prompted by a brother who has sold ancestral property.
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15. Encyclopaedia Judaica s.v. Astronomy and s.v. Mathematics. The classic study in English of Talmudic (and medieval) magic is Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition. 16. Following, of course, the Bible. 17. daf yomi means “daily page,” and refers to the program of studying one page of the Bavli per day; this program was initiated in 1923 by Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lublin. After 2,711 days one has completed an entire circuit of the Babylonian Talmud. 18. Most famously in the story of the oven of Akhnai, B. Bava Metzia 59b, every pulpit rabbi’s favorite Talmudic story. 19. This question is discussed in the Yerushalmi. 20. Pe’ah: Leviticus 19:9 and 23:22. First fruits: Deuteronomy 26:1–11. 21. The original reads “Pe’ah should be not less than [one] out of sixty; and although they have said that pe’ah has no statutory amount.” I have deleted “and” and repunctuated, to make the text smoother. 22. Of course we might wish to argue that the editor has combined different sources, but we still need to make sense of the text as it stands. 23. At least this is how the rabbis and other ancient Jews understood Levitcus 16:29,31; 23:27,29,32. 24. Aharon Shemesh, “The history of the creation of measurements: between Qumran and the Mishnah,” in Rabbinic Perspectives; Rabbinic Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls; Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium of the Orion Center . . . January, 2003. ed. S. D. Fraade, A. Shemesh & R. A. Clements (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 152–156. 25. More accurately: incumbent upon all male Jews, but nowadays the commandment is being embraced by more and more women as well. 26. Midrash Tanhuma (nidpas) Vayera 5 and elsewhere. 27. Or perhaps “We are of Israel.” 28. I have translated the verse as demanded by the midrashic context. The real meaning of the verse does not concern us here. 29. “Secret password” is my translation of musterion, “mystery.”
Why Study Talmud: Wellsprings of Torah and the Individual Soul Yaakov Elman
Four hundred years ago, or even three hundred, few Jews would have asked the question that we propose to address. No European Jew would have doubted the obligatory nature of Talmud study for those capable of it. That it is now a matter for debate is the consequence of traditional Jewry’s success is institutionalizing Talmud Torah on a scale unknown in Jewish history. Currently, however, an important debate has been taking place among those interested in the future direction of Torah education, in particular, how the Torah world teaches Torah shebe’al Peh, specifically, Gemara. Why is this? Because it is clear that there is a problem: Several years ago Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, rosh yeshiva and son-in-law of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, z.l.—“the Rav”—publicly admitted what many educators have become aware of in the last decade or more: even among Orthodox yeshiva bahurim, Talmud as a subject is losing ground to areas of study that are more attractive even to those in the younger generation who are serious about Talmud Torah. Many of them gravitate to the subject of Jewish thought rather than Gemarastudy, others emphasize Halakhah, in particular halakhah le-ma’aseh. Rabbi Lichstenstein’s views are set forth most recently in a booklet published in its English version in 2007, in which he and Rabbi Yehuda Brandes debate this very subject, “Talmud Study in Yeshiva High Schools.”1 Rabbi Lichtenstein does not mince words in summing up the problem: To our grief, many students do not adjust to intensive Gemara study, and some are unable to do so. . . . Many of our students become acquainted with Gemara at a level that suffices to give rise to disgust, but fails to expose them to its profundity, intensity and beauty.2
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Actually, the problem is much broader: there is the problem of “at risk youth,” of “people off the derech,” and a perhaps more common trend, those who stay within the community, and are even active in it, but have absolutely no interest in Gemara, despite having a high school yeshiva education, and perhaps even a taste of the bet midrash. While other elements factor in for the first two groups, those who are at risk or leave Orthodoxy after having (or enduring) a yeshiva education are clearly voting with their feet against a curriculum that is top-heavy not only with Talmud study, but a particular form of it, a form that evidently does not serve many (or at least, some) teenagers and young adults very well. While there are other factors that are involved in “turning off” youngsters, an inappropriate curriculum is certainly one of them. In addition, there is an aspect that has not been considered up till now, and demonstrates that the problem encompasses more than graduates of Israel’s National Religious schools; it also involves the “right wing” yeshiva world. That is, the material rewards of remaining in Kollel, the prestige accorded to those who do so, and the scorn of those who leave—all these are evidence of the fact that Talmud Torah as currently understood would not attract even right-wing young men without such attractions, rewards, and sanctions. Many of those who stay “in learning” do so only for reasons of family pressure, material and social rewards, and not for its intrinsic attraction. Why is this so? I suggest the following reasons: 1. Basically, relatively few people are suited to a life devoted to purely intellectual pursuits. Moreover, even among such people, not all will be attracted to legal study. Compare the number of people attending law schools as compared to the number in higher education in general. Even if we posit that the distribution of Jews in this regard is different than the general population, historically, only a small percentage of Jews actually attained proficiency in Talmud study, still fewer became talmidei hakhamim, and still fewer became recognized authorities. 2. But even taking all these factors into account, there is yet another, increasingly important factor. Even among those enrolled in law schools, only a small minority will become law professors; the overwhelming majority will become lawyers. That is, most people are not interested in the purely intellectual study of the law; instead, they are drawn to its more practical applications. Law schools recognize that fact, and do not expect all their students to become law professors. But Lithuanian kollelim and yeshivot exist overwhelmingly for Talmud study, and, moreover, a type of Talmud study that is restricted to basically one text is primarily studied in a few ways, each of which is a variation on one theme, that is, a theoretical and abstract approach that has little or no relevance to real life—what is called
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the “Brisker derekh,” and its offshoots. Not only that, but it has relatively little relevance to halakhah le-ma’aseh. 3. Even in those communities that concentrate on Halakhah in the narrow sense, that is, halakhah le-ma’aseh, an area in which innovation is discouraged and rote learning encouraged, the opportunities for intellectual growth are few or narrow. For the intellectually inclined this is the less attractive possibility, but for many of those people, the abstract approach of lomdut, or legal theory, also holds less attraction than an emphasis on study that, devoid of much hiddush, or innovative approaches, is more relevant to many people’s deepest concerns. 4. Another factor to be considered is that while the Brisker method of Talmud analysis, to which Rabbi Lichtenstein alludes, has been applied to more and more of Shas (thanks in part to Rabbi Lichtenstein himself, but also to the Griz), it was classically limited to certain “yeshivishe” masekhtot, and within them, to certain issues and sugyot. And even this broadening still takes Halakhah as its central focus. The turn to “Mahshavah” reflects a yearning for a wider context, one that engages a religious person’s existential concerns. Hazal themselves emphasize the central place of Halakhah in Talmud Torah; in Shabbat 138b they equate devar Hashem—“the word of G-d” with Halakhah. But one-third of the Davli is aggadic. Rabbi Lichtenstein, however, has a different analysis of the roots of the problem. My quote above was very partial; here is the entire sentence from which I extracted the point above, and Rabbi Lichtenstein’s preceding analysis. After decrying the “instant gratification” engendered by contemporary culture, its “liberal and individualistic atmosphere,” Rabbi Lichtenstein goes on to make the following diagnosis: Most importantly, a large portion of the student body studying in the National Religious school system in Israel and its parallels in the Diaspora lack the family and social background that is saturated with the fear of Heaven, which would spur them on to cling to the mission of Gemara study by virtue of their recognition of its sanctity. The overall result is that many of our students become acquainted with Gemara at a level that suffices to give rise to disgust, but fails to expose them to its profundity, intensity and beauty.3
Somewhat later he goes on to say: The vigor of and fitness for Torah study have been impaired by liberty and affluence, with all their expressions and seductions. Shallow mass culture, perverse media entertainment, weak personal discipline, the flash of modern technology, the competition of attractive secular realms, a pragmatic and
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utilitarian atmosphere—all these have joined together to undermine the motivation to study Torah in general and Gemara in particular.4
In other words, the falling interest in Gemara represents a moral failing and is caused by “shallow mass culture” and “weak personal discipline.” But can this really be said of those who go on to a serious study of Mahashavah? In any case, he goes on to suggest—regretfully—that an alternate track of Mishnah and Rambam be established for such students. In other words, students who are not attracted to the Brisker method should not study Gemara at all, or not very much. Nevertheless, he rejects in toto alternatives to the Brisker method in teaching and studying Gemara. He describes these alternate approaches in the following terms: Any attempt to market the study of Gemara in a different wrapping risks a misinterpretation of the Torah. Gemara is not an aggregation of piquant sayings. . . . At the same time, one should not get carried away inserting historical and realia material into the learning. . . . On first contact, such material has the power— beyond its contribution to the understanding of the Gemara—to draw the heart; but it can certainly not captivate it. Anyone who does not hold fast to Bava Kamma through interest in the arba avot nezikin will not show interest in it as a source for the history of the Jews of Babylonia.5
Rabbi Yehudah Brandes, on the other hand, advocates many of the new ways that have opened up in recent years that have enhanced our understanding of the way Gemara was composed, and of the historical, linguistic, cultural, and technological background of its composition. But the crux of his criticism of Rabbi Lichtenstein’s proposal is this: Even in the present proposal, Rabbi Lichtenstein looks down upon alternative methods of study that are different than his own. He notes that we must not replace “the study of Gemara” with an “attempt to market the study of Gemara in a different wrapping,” and he argues that this involves the risk of misinterpreting the Torah. The approaches that are different from the method that is desirable in his eyes he describes with outright caricature: “an aggregation of piquant sayings,” “auxiliaries of wisdom,” “a source for the history of the Jews of Bavel.” Even “the request that is sounded from time to time that the Gemara that is chosen for study should be ‘living Torah,’ connected to the student’s world and experience,” though he concedes that it is “deserving of an attentive ear,” he qualifies with the following argument: “The notion that only such material that deals with practical matters is deserving of study is absolutely erroneous.” Thus, it is understandable that if no legitimacy is given to any other method of study, Rabbi Lichtenstein is left with nothing else to offer once one does not become adjusted to the only method of study that is possible in his eyes, but study of Mishnah and Rambam.6
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This is all well and good, but in a sense it puts the text before the meaning. To be fair, Rabbi Brandes does proceed to the question of “why learn Gemara?” He immediately rejects “tradition” as a sufficient reason, comparing it to the hasidic custom—or tradition—of wearing clothes more suited to the harsh Polish winters than the hot Israeli summers. It is clear, however, that its overwhelmingly influential role in shaping Jewish tradition means that anyone wishing to gain a grasp of that tradition must be familiar with Talmud. He then lists four reasons to study Talmud: “Jewish discourse—dispute” (Talmud study trains one “to think in a sophisticated manner and to examine ideas and issues in a complex way”), “democracy” (“anyone sitting in the Beit Midrash is entitled to take part in the discussion”), “redeeming criticism” (“there is little in the Talmud that is not up for debate. . . . [it] has special importance as an ethical source . . . on maintain[ing] free and open discussion”), and “variety” (“the Talmud is a storehouse of human knowledge”). Though these reasons may speak to Western high school students, unfortunately they range from the misleading to the anachronistic. The society of the Gemara’s bet midrash was not a democracy, even or especially not within the ranks of the amoraim. Most of the discussion is carried on by about a dozen roshei yeshiva scattered over six or seven generations, and it is they who take positions and have a say (Rav, Shmuel, R. Yehudah, R. Yosef, Abaye, R. Nahman, Rava, R. Papa, R. Ashi . . . ). And the storehouse of human knowledge of the fourth century does not compel in the way that of the nineteenth or twentieth or twenty-first does. And, frankly, the very lack of sophistication personified by at least some products of our esteemed yeshivot hardly serves to attract potential students. As an educator, Rabbi Brandes deals with the question: how can we motivate high school students to find the joy of studying Talmud, or, rather, more precisely, how can we help them find whatever joy they can. As he notes, one way is by studying the Talmud’s layers, to disentangle the contribution of its editors and redactors to the sugya with their (anonymous) comments that serve as a framework for the whole sugya, in contrast to the comments and arguments of the amoraim. Another is by studying realia, that is, the material culture with which the Talmud deals—the utensils, furniture, floor plan of the houses, and so forth, or with the historical and cultural backgrounds that lie unexpressed or explained, because it was assumed that everyone knew them—behind every word of the Hazal lie mysteries of context. Indeed, this is true of every word of every work composed by or for humans, since communication requires some common ground, and, as time and distance from the source accumulate, we find it harder and harder to get into that context. In other words, to understand the Bavli as a whole and in a
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whole sense, one must study it in all these ways, and others besides. Moreover, as both Rabbi Lichtenstein and Rabbi Brandes insist, we cannot neglect the study of Aggadah as well. All this only sharpens the question: why go to all this trouble for an ancient text written in a dead language? As Rabbi Lichtenstein himself admits, “the language is difficult, the grammar is peculiar, and the structure is confusing.” In other areas, everything is laid out in front of him, everything is clear as day, topics are presented in an orderly fashion, each idea in its appropriate place, [which is not true of Gemara]. . . . This is the Torah of our Sages, of blessed memory, and surely they had their reasons; and God forbid that we should think ill of Ravina and Rav Ashi’s redaction. It is precisely the winding and bifurcating structures that provide the Gemara with much of its dynamic vitality that astounds the eye and captivates the heart. Without a doubt, however, there are many for whom this creates difficulties that lead to confusion and frustration.7
Still, the question is an educational one, and as an experienced educator Rabbi Brandes emphasizes the importance of relevance. A living Torah must speak our language in the here and now. . . . Teachers are often accustomed by the education they had received in their Yeshivot to study that is cut off from the real world, where the interest lies in “a priori and ideal” concepts that do not correspond with the phenomena of the real world. As Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik has said: “When many halakhic concepts do not correspond to the phenomena of the real world, halakhic man’s not at all distressed” (Halakhic Man, p. 23). Many of our students, however, are very distressed by this, and quickly, their teacher also begins, in their wake, to be troubled—at least by the fact that his students do not want to learn his Torah.8
It is not only high school students who are distressed. As noted above, the truth of the matter is that within human terms there is no text without a context—even the Divine Word of Torah shebi-Khtav has a context—the Dor ha-Midbar’s time and place. In a more profound sense, even the Divine Word is intended as a means of communication to humans, at least on the level of peshat. It was therefore given in language that was understandable by its recipients, it was given in a form that they could comprehend—in narrative form, in poetry, with lists, commands, and so forth. Note that it was not given on CD or DVD or iPods! Nor was it given in “book form”—a technology that would not be invented until shortly after Hurban Bayit Sheni. The census list of Bemidbar were not given in spread sheets. Whatever form the Torah in Heaven took, that is, black fire on white fire, on Earth it was given in a form that its receivers could handle.
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The Torah shebe’al Peh, which became embodied in the oral texts of Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and perhaps reached its classical apogee in the Bavli, can be understood in a similar manner. It was compiled by human beings, using human technology—in this case, by means of oral teachings, standardization, and transmission. And those processes can be studied. Moreover, studying them can yield insight into the text we have. For example, the Gemara will often say that a particular form was used in the second part of a mishnah only because it had already been used in the first, and not to teach us anything new. Why is this? Because memorization is facilitated by parallel structures! There is no esoteric secret known only to Rebbi for the Mishnah, or Rav Ashi for the Bavli. Or take the formulaic nature of Talmudic argument. Each formula is a shorthand term that relates to and functions as a link in a chain of argumentation. For example, mahu deteima/hava amina/ve-eima. . . . qa mashma’ lan (“[Had this statement not been made,] I would have thought/said [that soand-so is the case, but I would have been wrong] . . . [and so] he/it informs us [that such-and-such is actually the case]”) explain why a text that seems redundant is really not so. Note how much verbiage is saved by a few standardized formulas. When we consider that qa mashma’ lan appears some 1,492 times in the Bavli, and that 80 percent of the time it is coupled with one of the other phrases, we begin to see how necessary the “peculiar” language of the Bavli is. The Bavli now contains some 1.8 million words; without this telegraphic stenographic language, it would have been much longer—and harder to memorize. Likewise, when the Gemara was finally written down and transmitted in writing, the means of transmission yielded its share of scribal errors, which the Rishonim had to deal with. Print brought its own problems, and the Maharshal and other Aharonim dealt with them. At the moment the Oz Vehadar project, involving some 500 talmidei hakhamim, is investigating every word of Shas by checking every manuscript and printed edition available. In a nutshell, my answer is this: The Bavli presents us with a microcosm of a Torah society in formation, indeed, the Torah society that gave the Jewish people the most important single text aside from Tanakh, the text that served as the encapsulation of Torah shebe’al Peh. Moreover, for us Jews today, that society holds up a mirror to our own, and we may learn a tremendous amount from the challenges that its leaders—the amoraim—met and overcame. In studying them in their cultural and societal context, we will learn how to overcome our own challenges, and in so doing we will observe Babylonian Jewish society in all its vivid heterogeneity, its life, its color, its social and religious tensions, its class structure, its vibrant intellectual life, its relationship to the surrounding culture, the polemics, religious and cultural,
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the different approaches exemplified by the different yeshivot and roshei yeshivot—Mahoza, Pumbedita, Sura, Neharde’a and so on. Once we have a picture of that society, we can place particular amoraim, and even more important, their shittot, views and approaches, into a framework. That means that we have to organize the data. Rava’s views on one matter are related to his views on another, both halakhically and aggadically, and they are all related to those of his rebbe, R. Nahman, both of them Mahozans. Does it matter that Rava was born and bred in Mahoza, that he was a disciple of R. Nahman, who was also a Mahozan? What does it mean to be a Mahozan? Well, Mahoza was a suburb of the winter capital of the Persian Empire, Ctesiphon. As Rashi mentions in Shabbat 59b, Mahoza was the home to a large Jewish community; it is clear from the Gemara there that it was also wealthy, as we might expect of the Jews who lived in the center of the world-spanning Persian Empire. As he does not mention, because he could not know, it was also home to a large Christian community as well. Not only did the resh galuta, the putative political head of the Babylonian Jewish community, live there, right across the River Tigris from King Shapur II (the ruins of his huge audience hall are still visible), but so did the bishop of Ctesiphon! Mahoza was an upscale, cosmopolitan city, as we might well expect of a suburb of the capital of an empire that stretched from Armenia to India, that was home to Zoroastrians, Manichaeans, Mandeans, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians of many sects, and Jews. Does it matter? Of course it does. For example, In the series of sugyot on the inyan of sheva’ mitzvot Benei Noah (Sanhedrin 56a–60a), only Mahozans take part—Rabbah b. Avuha, R. Nahman, Rava and R. Papa (Rava’s talmid muvhaq). It is clear from Eruvin 68a that Pumbeditans did not befriend Persians or non-Jews. As we know from A.Z. 65a, Rava had a non-Jewish friend, Bar Sheshakh. He also was friendly with Issar the Ger, who told him about his attitudes toward Jews before his conversion (A.Z. 70a), and whose son, Rav Mari, he befriended. Likewise, since Ctesiphon was a great commercial center, the fact that Rava is quoted some 28 times in Perek Hazahav while Abaye is quoted only 8 will not come as a surprise to us. Indeed, Abaye appears some 78 times in the entire masekhet of Bava Metzi’a, while Rava appears some 200 times. In contrast, Rava appears some 19 times in the first chapter of Eiruvin, while Abaye’s name comes up some 26 times; in Sukkah’s first chapter, Rava’s name appears 18 and Abaye’s 14. Is it then any wonder that the Halakhah generally follows R. Nahman in matters of civil law (dinei mamonot)? And, of course, to an even greater degree, this is true of Rava as against Abaye. Now we can understand why it is precisely the Mahozans who praise scholars who are dayyanim—judges, who nehat le-umqa de-dina, “descend to the profundity of the law” (B.Q. 39a, 53a, B.M. 117b, see also Ket 56a).
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In short, if we keep track of Rava and Abaye’s views, their individual natures also become apparent—just as we might expect. Is it then irrelevant that Rava tended to be mekil on matters of yen nesekh (see eight she’elot he was asked on this matter, recorded in A.Z. 69b–70b)? This does not mean that he did not take the prohibition seriously, but it is significant that he was knowledgeable about the habits and doings of non-Jews that he did not automatically prohibit all contact with them. One of Rava’s particular interests is the issue of tzaddiq ve-ra’ lo—why the righteous suffer. This was one of the burning issues of the day, of great concern to Jews, Zoroastrians, Manichaeans, Christians, and Buddhists. As the rabbi of Persia’s capital district, he had to speak out on the issue—and he does (see Moed Qatan 28a, Hulin 7a, Sotah 21a, Qiddushin 39b). In the narrative of the confrontation between R. Nahman, a son-in-law of the resh galuta, the exilarch, and representative of Mahoza’s upscale community, and R. Yehuda, founder of the Pumbeditan yeshiva, R. Nahman is criticized for using Persian words, adopting Persian attitudes and social conventions (allowing the women of his family, even his young daughter, to mingle with men). In Megillah 14a, Rava and R. Nahman debate the question of why we do not recite Hallel on Purim. According to R. Nahman, miqra Megillah serves as our “Hallel,” but Rava objects that “we are still the slaves of Ahasuerus!” Clearly, this indicates a differing view of the Persian Empire on the part of these two amoraim, rebbe and talmid. And, indeed, these differing views can be seen all _ _ through Shas. Note that R. Nahman named his daughter De na g (not Donag, “wax,” as current editions have it in Qiddushin 70a)—the name of the founding queen of the reigning Sasanian dynasty, versus Rava’s view regarding Persian taxes in Nedarim 62a. In a story about R. Nahman in Gittin 35b, he is depicted as traveling in a sedan chair, resplendent in a royalesque cape—and R. Nahman b. Yitzhak decides not to greet him, since he took him for one of the boorish “men of the resh galuta,” while Rava ran to greet him. After Rava’s death, R. Nahman b. Yitzhak returned to Pumbedita to restart the yeshiva there which had closed down upon Abaye’s death, when everyone went to study with Rava in Mahoza. But for one exception, which is actually the exception which proves the rule, it is only the Mahozan hakhamim who ask the question: “ve-khi asu Hakhamim hizzuq le-divrehem ke-shel/yoter mi-shel Torah”—did the Sages then make their enactments as severe as those of the Torah? The question of the strength of rabbinic enactments was a live one in Mahoza, as the Maharsha already pointed out in his Hiddushei Aggadah to Makkot 22b. He noticed that that Rava had to respond to Mahozans who suggested that the Sages really could not do anything that the Torah did not already lay down. Thus, the household of Dr. Benjamin challenged Rava: “What good are the rabbis to us? They can never permit a raven, which the Torah forbad [for consumption], and they can never forbid a dove, which the Torah allowed” (Sanhedrin 99b–100a). Or note Rava’s statement: “How foolish many people are who rise [in respect] before a Sefer
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Torah, but not before a talmid hakham, for [after all] the Torah states: “Forty [stripes] shall you give him” (Deut 25:3), while the rabbis reduced [the number] by one” (Makkot 22a).
Thus, Rava’s derashah: “My sons, be more careful of the words of the Soferim than the words of Torah, for the words of the Torah are negative and positive commandments, while as for the words of the Sages, whoever transgresses them is worthy of death!” (Eruvin 21b), which is otherwise paradoxical, can be seen in its proper context. Again, it is clear from Rava’s statement in Shabbat 23a, that some people in Mahoza did not light Hannuka menorahs. Why not? After all, Hannuka is a pleasant holiday, not expensive and not labor intensive. Why not observe it? In the light of the statements quoted above, we can understand that some people refused to observe Hannuka because it had no biblical basis—no biblical book mentions it. We can also understand why the Gemara asks: Esther min ha-Torah minayyin? Where is Esther mentioned (or hinted at) in the Torah? (Hulin 139b). Thus, while we can well understand Tosafot’s wonder at the question, since of course, the Rabbis do indeed have that power, the answer that they give is somewhat tenuous. While Tosafot—and we—understand that the Rabbis certainly had that power, it was not obvious to—or accepted by—a significant segment of Mahoza’s population, and thus had to be dealt with by Rava, the rabbinic leader of the community. We can also understand why Rava and R. Nahman refrained from using nidduy (the ban) in Mahoza.9 *** *** Did [the Rabbis] strengthen their words [as stringently as those of] the Torah?—Even though in several places they [strengthened their words] even more than [those] of the Torah [and so what is Rava’s question], [the answer is that they did so only] when it was relevant to fine [a transgressor] in order to make a fence [around the Torah]. But here [in the case of terumat ma’aser shel demai, which is a rabbinic enactment listed in the mishnah together with Torah laws] it was not appropriate to fine [a transgressor] a fifth [of its worth] unless the Torah said so, and so in the case of Demai such a fine should not have been made. And here too [in regard to a widow or divorced woman who marries before the three month waiting period expires] they made [the first offspring of that union] a mamzer even though it is not [really] logical, but [rather] because of [the analogy] of a married woman [who commits adultery], the offspring of [such an adulterous union] being a mamzer.10
Rabbi Lichtenstein’s assumption that historians want to use the Bavli in order to construct a history of Babylonian Jewry as though to rob it of its value
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as a guide for our time is misplaced. Understanding it in its historical context will enable its use as a guide to the challenges of modern life! The amoraim did not live in a ivory tower far from challenges similar to the challenges of modern life. The Bavli is full of their responses to such challenges—and we can learn how to meet those challenges from their methods. Thus, when the Talmud is approached in a way that ignores its strengths as a fascinating, exciting, stimulating and even captivating work, it seems irrelevant and worse, boring to some. But seen in context it is anything but. These strengths include the simple excitement of following the cut and thrust of its debates, the understanding of the issues at hand in a broader context—legal, but also sociological, economic, and technological. It is not so much that the exegetical tradition of Talmud study was blind to such issues— it was not, but for very understandable and cogent reasons these factors were not emphasized because of the need to formulate the issues in a purely halakhic manner. In the case of the Rishonim, there were indeed important legal issues to be hammered out, as for example, to what extent must negligence be taken into account in cases of torts (damages), where we can see the Tosafists taking a very different approach than the Ramban. In time, once the Rishonim had done their work, the Aharonim could concentrate on two areas in particular: either the explication of the Talmudic text, as we find in the Penei Yehoshua, or the more theoretical approach to legal issues, an approach that gained favor in the religious crises of the nineteenth century, that of the Ketzot. The latter in particular raised Talmud study to its intellectual heights—that is, heights of penetration but also abstraction. In large part the reason for this was that the challenge of modernity encouraged that approach to Jewish texts because it was perceived, and probably rightly, as a response to the challenge that the advances of the physical sciences in the second half of the nineteenth century posed to the intellectual elite of European Jewry. However, several addenda to this approach, also stimulated by those challenges, require several counterfactual, and, indeed, counterintuitive assumptions. This approach has its roots in earlier texts, in the Rishonim and even in Shas, but it never was carried out as consistently and, may I say, as brutally, as it is now. As a counterpose, I suggest the following basic principles. 1. There is not “one Talmud,” but approaches that typify individual amoraim, individual schools, problems, approaches or programs typical and particular generations, each had its own program (that is, derekh ha-limmud), interests, challenges (intellectual, sociological, religious), and programs. 2. Thus, the Talmud—and especially the Bavli with its more than 1.8 million words, contains the records of an exciting intellectual adventure carried
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on by the Babylonian sages, both those we know by name, the amoraim, and those who remain anonymous. 3. To unravel this exciting drama, we must admit that this is and was indeed the case, and that each amora’s statements must be analyzed, first of all, as part of a consistent corpus that reflect the amora’s own approach and interests, then examine his approach as part of the approach his own bet midrash, and thus reflecting the view of his teachers. These views and approaches can often be traced over several generations and examined in order to discern the way they changed over time. 4. We must thus admit that Talmud Torah is not static, but that its every aspect has a history of its own, and that the amoraim, no less than their successors (and predecessors), were alive to the challenges of their time, and did not ignore what happened outside the bet midrash. We must openly admit that its concepts, institutions, and role—shudder!—unfolded or developed over time. And that most definitely includes the stama diGemara, that layer of the Talmud that reflects the views and interests of its redactors—who themselves were divided into different schools, or at least melded the approaches of different schools into the sugyot they created, and with different emphases in different sugyot. Hence we have sugyot with opposing assumptions, as the Gaonim and Tosafot already pointed out (sugyot hafukhot, see Tosafot, Yevamot 113b, s.v. yatzetah zu, Gittin 53a, s.v. ba-rishonah, Menachot 58b. s.v. ika de-amri, Temurah 11a, s.v Rav Hisda). 5. A corollary of this is that the amoraim were human beings, not malakhim. They were proficient in the Torah of their times, but while Torah may be timeless when viewed retrospectively, it is revealed step by step. A talmid hakham’s hiddush is his, and may then be the basis upon which other, later hakhamim, build. Hazal themselves may have held the doctrine of nitqattenu ha-dorot, the “devolution of the species,” but they did so in a way that did not restrict their ability to think. For example, at times the Talmudic discussion will raise a possibility that will be contradicted at once—“but we see that it is not so!” To varying degrees, Hazal’s thought-processes were supple, flexible, and some of them, in their search for truth, could think “outside the box.” Thus, Rabbah, in his intensive investigation of the degrees of negligence that affect tort liability (Bava Qamma 26b–27a), as opposed to the Mishnah’s view of strict liability (adam mu’ad le-olam—a person is considered as always forewarned not to do damage), also created an entirely new category of liability, shogeg qarov le-mezid (inadvertence so negligent that it is considered as equivalent to intentional;—Bava Qamma 32b), while Rava investigated the role of intention both in terms of liability (Shab 72b, Sanh 61b, B.M.
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20b,, Sanh 27a) and qiyyum ha-mitzvot (R.H. 28b), and in some cases came to conclusions that were unsupported by the sources he had (see Abaye’s analyses in Sanh 61b–62a), or, for that matter, the classic sugya of ye’ush she-lo’ mi-da’at (eventual despair of getting a lost object back is considered as retrospective to the time of the loss, even though the loss has not yet been noticed) in B.M. 20a–22a, where, it is true, the decision of later generations is against him. Moreover, a fair reading of Shas will not only bear out these contentions, but will also confirm that Halakhah is a legal system, not a hard science, and can profitably be compared to other legal systems of the time, the Roman and Persian. My answer (though not the only answer) to the question of “why study Talmud” is then, that it is exciting and instructive. It only becomes boring when it is presented as a unitary work, cut and dried, produced by angels whose thoughts are so exalted that we cannot really understand them, and in a form that is so abstract as to have no relation to real existential, religious, or social problems. The preceding sketch is intended to lay out the lines along which our understanding of the urban, cosmopolitan, intellectually open, and vibrant community that is the dominant voice in the Bavli, and, in so doing, deepen our understanding of the Talmud itself. This is not to denigrate what is now understood as the more “traditional” methods of Talmud study, though 150 years ago they were considered revolutionary. The Brisker methods, the Telzer methods—all members of the conceptual school—will continue to attract their adherents, and among them the “best and the brightest” of our youth. But some provision must be made for other modes of study that are, indeed, intrinsic to the human mind, and some of those best and brightest will be attracted to other methods. And, indeed, that is what the history of Talmud Torah teaches us. The shiv’im panim ba-Torah were instituted in accordance with the biblical dictum of educating each child according to its derekh: Hanokh la-na’ar al pi darko (Educate [each] child in his own way, Mishlei 22:6). Indeed, in the end, the debate between Rabbi Lichtenstein and Rabbi Brandes is really less sharp than it seems. In a related article, Rabbi Lichtenstein suggests that in the future even proponents of the Brisker method will include other approaches in their learning and teaching. I believe that the conceptual method will continue, for the foreseeable future, to be a dominant force in the world of serious Torah learning. However, I also believe that its status will recede somewhat. And this, in several respects. First, the method itself is likely to be modified. Instead of pure, distilled Brisk, we are likely to see more blended models—hopefully enriched rather than adulterated,
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but diluted nonetheless. . . . We can anticipate greater awareness of factual points and recourse to a wider arc of sources.11
Elsewhere in the same article, Rabbi Lichtenstein suggests that: Admittedly, there are classes of information, especially literary and historical, that may bear more directly and substantively upon the structure and essence of a sugya. Full discussion of this element would, however, open up issues that lie beyond the scope of this paper. Here I shall content myself with stating again that this aspect likewise probably deserves more attention than the Torah world currently assigns it, but that it hardly deserves center court.12
The exact mix of these methods, and others, will of course depend on the teacher, the students, and general societal conditions. It is to be hoped that within that mix, however, that every capable student will be able to find a derekh that is both true to the pure wellsprings of Torah and to the roots of his or her own soul. ENDNOTES 1. Notes from Atid: Talmud Study in Yeshiva High Schools, Jerusalem: Academy for Torah Initiatives and Directions, 2007. 2. Ibid., pp. 11 and 15. 3. Ibid., p. 15. 4. Ibid., pp. 17–18. 5. Ibid., pp. 21–22. 6. Ibid., p. 33. 7. Ibid., p. 13. It may not be out of place to point out that one reason for this structure is the oral nature of the Bavli; it was compiled for oral transmission, and, indeed, it shares some of the characteristics of oral literature, such as ring structures, where the discussion ends with its beginning, where questions or deductions are arranged in threes and sixes, fives and tens, so that sometimes a question is added as “filler,” sometimes questions are arranged in ascending order of difficulty, and so on; see my “Orality and the Redaction of the Babylonian Talmud,” Oral Tradition 14/1 (1999), pp. 52–99. Surely, if this was explained to students they could more easily take these characteristics in stride, and the teacher might not have to pray that they adopt a pious attitude and not “think ill of Ravina and Rav Ashi.” Since the Brisker approach does not countenance these explanations, this method of analysis is closed to its proponents. However, see Rabbi Lichtenstein’s prediction quoted at the end of this article. 8. Ibid., p. 45. 9. For details, see my article, “The Socioeconomics of Babylonian Heresy,” Jewish Law Association Studies XVII, (2007) pp. 80–126. 10. A philological note: the phrase asu hizzuq, literally “made a strengthening,” is somewhat awkward Hebrew. In Hebrew we would expect a verb hizzequ. The
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compound is a reflex of the Persian penchant for constructing such verbs, e.g., “to hear” is “to make hearing,” etc. This is just what we would expect in bilingual situations, such as the Yinglish: “efen di vinda” instead of “efen di fenster.” 11. See “The Conceptual Approach to Torah Learning,” in Yosef Blau, ed., twdmwl: The Conceptual Approach to Jewish Learning, New York: The Michael Scharf Publication Trust of Yeshiva University Press, 2006, p. 40. 12. Ibid., p. 33.
Why I Study Talmud1 Richard Kalmin
Why study Talmud in the 21st century? I can’t answer that question; the closest I can come is to address the question of why I study Talmud in the 21st century.2 Why I do so now is not at all what drew me to it when I began studying as a graduate student in the fall of 1975. I had made a conscious decision to give up fiction writing, which had been my passion throughout high school and college. I had come to the conclusion that the exercise of fiction writing, with the value it placed on ambiguity and evocation rather than precision and logical analysis, was not healthy for me. It was as if by creating imaginative universes I was detaching myself from the universe of everyday experience. The fictional character I created in my final year of writing sat in his chair all day and thought out loud. He was all mind and no body; it never occurred to me to describe what he or the world around him looked like. I came to the Jewish Theological Seminary as a graduate student because several of my professors and many of the authors I was reading in college had either taught or studied there. I enrolled in an intensive Talmud course because everyone seemed to think it was so important, but my only access to it was in translation and it seemed to be forbidding and bizarre. I wanted to study it intensively and in the original because I wanted to learn firsthand what the fuss was about. I had virtually no Jewish background, lacking both basic Jewish knowledge and the rudimentary Hebrew and Aramaic skills necessary to understand the text. I was totally unfamiliar with the modes of Talmudic thought and argumentation, and the conceptual framework that the Talmud presupposes of its readership. The concreteness of the Talmud was exactly what I needed. The Talmudic passages I was studying dealt with an issue both conceptually rich and 151
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fundamentally grounded in the world of everyday experience: the laws of returning lost objects, and I felt myself more and more anchored to the physical world. Studying these texts made me think about marvelously concrete problems, like the meaning and ramifications of “despair without knowledge,” which I struggled with for hours every day during my first full month of study. The concept “despair without knowledge” refers to the fact that when someone comes upon a lost object, he or she may not be able to take possession of it since he/she does not know yet whether or not the object still has an owner. Abaye and Rava, two of the greatest rabbis who ever lived, have a classic dispute about this issue, with Abaye ruling that such despair is true despair, meaning that under certain circumstances, the finder can presume that when the owner discovers he misplaced the object he will despair of ever getting it back, thereby renouncing ownership. The finder, therefore, can proceed as if the owner has already despaired and claim the object as his own. Rava, on the other hand, rules that such despair is not true despair, and therefore the finder cannot behave as if the owner has already despaired. He must wait to take the object until he knows for certain that the owner has despaired and therefore renounced ownership. I was deeply invested in the classical rabbinic exercise of training myself to think like an ancient rabbi. Often the exercise failed and I was unable to make complete sense of the argument, but enough of the texts were understandable, and all were intellectually challenging, in fact daunting, and unapologetically foreign and therefore fascinating from an anthropological perspective. And while the Talmud consists, among many other things, of legal texts that are extremely complex and technical, it routinely injects into the discussion popular proverbs, folk sayings, medical lore, magical formulae, scriptural commentary, and stories, brilliantly outrageous stories, that vividly display the rabbis’ likes and dislikes, passions and prejudices, fears and fantasies, extraordinary senses of humor, and larger-than-life personalities. It made it somehow more precious to me that all of these riches were hidden in a code, expressed in an idiom that was startlingly foreign to the uninitiated, and no book sufficed to unlock its secrets. Despite the fact that the Talmud has existed in written form for centuries (having been transmitted orally its first eight centuries or so), a teacher, a living, breathing human being, was still necessary to mediate it to the student. The Talmud maintained a richly oral dimension despite its character as a written text. I found the Talmud compelling also because it allowed me to live in one of the largest, fastest-paced, sophisticated cities in the world, and yet to vividly experience the sights and sounds of antiquity, a world in many ways similar to but in many other ways totally unlike my own.
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Today I study the Talmud in part because of its tolerance of diversity. I like the fact that for every “Yes” in the Talmud there is also a “No”; for every rabbi who says “Forbidden” there is another who says “Permitted.” This tolerance of dissent, this insistence on preserving the voice of the loyal opposition along with the majority, or of preserving equally valid alternatives, is entirely the Talmud’s innovation in the ancient world. What might be for me the most attractive feature of Conservative Judaism, its commitment to pluralism, has its roots in the rabbis’ belief that elu ve-elu divrei Elohim hayyim, both the words of Beit Hillel, whose opinion is authoritative, and the words of Beit Shammai, whose opinion is usually, but not always, rejected for practical purposes, represent the authentic word of God. Pluralism has its roots in the Talmud’s claim that even though Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai disagreed with each other in basic laws of marriage, divorce, and ritual purity they nevertheless got along with one another, and were even able to marry into one another’s families and socialize together. This portrayal is an idealized picture masking some very real bitterness and hatred (witness the Talmud’s depiction elsewhere of tension between the two groups that at one point flared into bloodshed), but I think it’s significant that the Talmud chose this particular idealized picture to portray. This is certainly not to say that anything goes as far as the Talmud is concerned. The Talmud recognizes as legitimate only a finite number of alternatives. It preserves more than one view, for example, but often makes it clear that only one of the views is authoritative. Often it preserves two or three legitimate views and makes it clear that everything else is beyond the pale. Those who abide by the limited set of options specified by the rabbis are insiders; everyone else is not. Nevertheless, the debates that are so basic to rabbinic literature do not stop with the text of the Talmud, since the commentators printed on the sides of the page: Rashi, Tosafot, R. Hananel, R. Akiva Eger, the Vilna Gaon, and so on, as well as many other commentators who did not make it onto the page but are preserved in separate books, carry the argument through the Middle Ages and into the modern period. The authority to interpret allows later generations to reverse the decisions of their predecessors in the guise of commentary, to be radical while appearing traditional. And the multiplicity of possibilities and legitimate alternatives is even greater when we take the manuscripts of the Talmud into account. Just to give one example, we find a mishnah that states: Kol ha-mekayyem nefesh ahat mi-yisrael, ke-ilu kiyyem olam malei: “Anyone who sustains one Jewish life, it is as if he sustained an entire world.” This statement seems to be a clear example of Jewish particularism: “Whoever saves one Jewish life,” with non-Jews obviously counting for less than Jews in the rabbinic scheme
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of things. But several versions of this mishnah lack the word mi-yisrael, according to which the statement reads: “Anyone who sustains one life, it is as if he sustained an entire world.” This version of the statement affirms the ultimate worth of every individual, Jew and non-Jew alike. Which version is the real rabbinic view? Which version is the original rabbinic view? The fact that the mishnah speaks about Adam, the first human, and that the statement is one of several answers to the question of why God first created only a single individual, makes it almost certain that the version of the mishnah without the word mi-yisrael, “Jewish,” is correct, since Adam is the father of all humankind rather than the father specifically of the Jewish people. In one sense, the question of which version is original is of crucial importance, but in another sense it is totally beside the point. As Saul Lieberman has argued, manuscript variants are very often not merely scribal errors, but reflect the active and conscious participation of later generations in the composition of the text.3 They reflect the perceptions of Jews living long after the classical rabbinic period about what the text had to be saying, sometimes in defiance of what the text actually said. So the multiplicity of legitimately Jewish views that can invoke the authority of the Talmud goes far beyond the borders of the Talmudic text, and Jewish communities separated by centuries and living at opposite ends of the earth have all left their imprint on this text in some form or other. They are all participants in an ongoing debate, along with Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, Abaye and Rava, and Rashi and Tosafot. Why, then, have I made it my life’s work to engage in the critical, scholarly examination of the Talmud? I do so in part because I find antiquity endlessly fascinating. And I find extremely appealing rabbinic Judaism’s view that study for its own sake (i.e., for no ulterior motive) is the loftiest religious duty, an act of redemptive significance that does no less than hasten the coming of the messiah. The ancients interest me not only because I can enlist them in support of my theological beliefs or choice of lifestyle. I use the ancients not only as ammunition for or against a particular ideology or political persuasion. I try to respect and empathize with them for who they are and not for whom I want them to be. It matters to me that they are interesting and present me with intellectual challenges. In fact, I often enjoy the rabbis precisely because they are outrageous, because they are so unlike me, because they expand my notions about what is possible in a human being. I like the fact that they speak freely without fear of censure by enlightened, Western, 21st century, polite society. One can talk all day about the Talmud, but unless one encounters an actual Talmudic discussion, or a sugya as it is traditionally called, it is impossible
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to experience its full flavor. In the ensuing discussion I translate and explain one sugya, which will hopefully motivate some readers to encounter the Talmud firsthand rather than settle for “kissing the bride through a veil.” In this translation, brackets serve to mark off words and phrases that are not explicitly written in the original but which need to be supplied for the passage to make sense. The frequency of these explanatory glosses reveals the extent to which the Talmud is a “gapped text,” and depends on the reader for fuller comprehension. Obviously some of these gaps can be filled in more than one way, which is one reason why commentaries on the Talmud disagree so frequently. The Talmud’s ability to mean different things to different people accounts in part for its “staying power” over the centuries, its ability to thrive in so many different cultures in so many different times and places. The sugya below is taken from Bavli Berakhot 20b, a section of the Talmud dealing with blessings and prayers: (1) Ravina said to Rava, “Are women obligated to say the blessing after meals by biblical law or by rabbinic law?” (2) [An unattributed question based on part 1]: What practical difference does it make? (3) [An unattributed response to the question in part 2]: [It pertains to whether or not a woman can] fulfill the obligation of the community [gathered together at a meal]. If you say [that women are obligated] by biblical law, then [someone subject to a] biblical obligation can fulfill the obligation of [others subject to a] biblical obligation [and a woman can act as “prayer leader” on behalf of the community]. But if you say [that women are obligated only] by rabbinic law, then [she] is not [fully] obligated to [say the blessing], and all who are not fully obligated to do something cannot fulfill the obligation of the community. (4) What [is the answer to Ravina’s question in part 1? Is a woman’s obligation to say the blessing biblical or rabbinic]? (5) Come and hear [the following Tannaitic tradition that can serve as an answer]: “Indeed they said, ‘A son can bless on behalf of his father, and a slave can bless on behalf of his master, and a woman can bless on behalf of her husband, but the sages said, “May a curse come upon a man whose wife or sons bless for him.”’” If you say [that a woman] is obligated [to say the blessing] by biblical law, [then it makes sense that someone] obligated biblically [i.e., a woman] can fulfill the obligation [of someone] obligated biblically [i.e., her husband]. But if you say [a woman] is obligated [to say the blessing only] rabbinically, can [someone] obligated [only] rabbinically [i.e. a woman] fulfill the obligation [of someone] obligated biblically [i.e., her husband]? (6) [An alternative interpretation of the Baraita, according to which the answer proposed by Rava in part 5 need not be accepted]:4 What case are we dealing with here [i.e., in the Tannaitic tradition quoted in part 5]? With a man who ate a small quantity [of food such that he is only] obligated [to say the
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blessing] rabbinically [since the Torah specifies that a person “eat, be satisfied, and bless,” i.e. one is only obligated to bless biblically when one has eaten enough food to satisfy one’s appetite], [in which case] one obligated rabbinically [i.e., the woman] can fulfill the obligation of another who is obligated only rabbinically [i.e., a man who ate a small quantity of food]. [Therefore it may well be that a woman is only obligated rabbinically to say the blessing after meals.]
It will be helpful to explicate this discussion, which is a typical Talmudic sugya but which is full of assumptions that are unfamiliar to the uninitiated. In part 1, Ravina asks his teacher, Rava, whether women are obligated to say the blessing after meals (birkhat ha-mazon) by Torah law or only according to the rabbis. To answer this question, it is not enough to simply open a Bible and see whether or not the obligation for women is stated there. The fact is that most readers of the Bible today would agree that the text obligates neither men nor women to say the blessing after meals. The rabbis, however, have their own techniques of reading the Bible, called midrash, and they consider laws derived from the Bible via rabbinic techniques of exegesis to be authentically biblical. Ravina’s question, therefore, means: Are women obligated to say the blessing after meals according to rabbinic methods of biblical interpretation, as men are, or is their obligation a rabbinic innovation with no roots in scripture? It bears emphasizing that Ravina’s question presupposes that women are obligated to say the blessing; the only question is its origin. Part 2 of the sugya inquires about the practical, legal implications of Ravina’s question, and part 3 responds that Ravina wants to know whether or not women can fulfill the obligation of men, who must recite the blessing according to the Torah. Our sugya views obligation according to the Torah as of a different order than rabbinically based obligation, and only someone who is biblically commanded can fulfill the obligation of another who is biblically commanded. In rabbinic prayer and blessings, one person fulfills another person’s obligation by reciting the blessing out loud, enabling the other person to hear the words and respond “Amen.” If a woman is biblically obligated, she can recite the blessing out loud and others who are biblically obligated can fulfill their obligations by listening and responding “Amen.” In response to Ravina’s question, Rava in part 5 quotes a Tannaitic tradition introduced by the technical term “Come and hear,” which signals to the reader that a tradition will be quoted in an attempt to answer Ravina’s question. The Tannaitic tradition asserts that a woman can bless on behalf of her husband, and thus appears to provide a clear answer to Ravina’s question. The fact that the Baraita wishes a curse on a man whose wife blesses on his behalf establishes unambiguously that the Baraita works within a hierarchical system that presupposes that men are superior to their wives, masters are superior to their slaves, and fathers are superior to their sons. The Baraita sees nothing wrong
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with this hierarchy; in fact it works to maintain it and perhaps to fortify it and help construct it. In other words, it is likely that reality was much messier than this Baraita would have us believe, that Jewish society was more fluid than this Baraita admits, and women occasionally were socially superior to their husbands and sons were occasionally socially superior to their fathers. If the sugya stopped here the conclusion would be that a woman is obligated to say the blessing according to the Torah. The sugya would be very straightforward, asking whether or not a woman can bless on behalf of a man and quoting a Baraita that states explicitly that she can. The discussion continues on, however, suggesting in part 6 an alternative, and very forced, interpretation of the Baraita, according to which a woman may fulfill the obligation of her husband only when he has a lesser, merely rabbinically based obligation to say the blessing. The interpretation of the Baraita in part 6 is very forced, since it is very unlikely that the Baraita, when it says “A woman blesses on behalf of her husband,” is referring only to a man who ate a small quantity of food such that he is only “rabbinically” obligated. Most likely, asserts the Baraita, a woman can bless on behalf of her husband irrespective of the quantity of food he consumed. In any event, the sugya ends without legal resolution, offering two interpretations of the Baraita that yield two opposing answers to the legal question. What is the point of this sugya? If its point is to decide the law, then we face a difficult question: Why did the sugya not conclude after Rava’s straightforward interpretation of the Baraita in part 5, which answers the opening question, but instead conclude with the forced interpretation in part 6, according to which the question cannot be answered? Part 6 of the sugya may have been uncomfortable with Rava’s interpretation because it puts the woman’s obligation on the same level as the man’s, even though the Baraita frowns on putting this equality into practice. Perhaps part 6 was not willing to concede even this much equality between the sexes. Part 6 therefore reinterpreted the Baraita such that a woman’s obligation was on a lower level than that of a man, reducing to a triviality the Baraita’s area of applicability. If this alternative understanding of part 6’s motivation is correct, then perhaps we have uncovered an important bit of information about rabbinic attitudes toward women in late antique Mesopotamia. And since the Baraita itself purports to derive from first or second century CE Palestine, we may have uncovered an important difference between early Palestinian and later Babylonian attitudes toward women. As noted, according to the first interpretation of the Baraita, the obligations of men and women are biblical. The Baraita discourages a woman from leading the blessing because of sociological factors, namely the inappropriateness of society’s normal hierarchy being disrupted. In 21st-century Western society,
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however, where at least in many circles what the ancients conceived of as the normal hierarchy is either obsolete or is becoming obsolete, those who wish to adhere to the Talmud’s legal rulings but are not prepared to accept as eternal all of its cultural and societal assumptions, can accept part 5’s interpretation of the Baraita and can rule that the husband and wife are equally obligated. The Talmud, which definitely does not view egalitarianism as a virtue to be promoted, can therefore be used to promote an egalitarian agenda. In this and in many other instances, it is possible for a modern reader of the text to break down part of the logic of the sugya and look afresh at its component parts, maintaining one’s allegiance to the tradition but searching through it to find a usable past. One can remain within the system of rabbinic Judaism without slavish devotion to all of its prejudices, and can unearth old traditions that are authentically Jewish even though they have been suppressed, ignored, or papered over by hundreds of years of commentary by people with agendas radically different than our own. It is likely, however, that the sugya has another motive for concluding with part 6’s alternative to Rava’s interpretation. For as noted, part of the Talmud’s purpose is to train people to think like rabbis, to cultivate the ability to look at every question from diametrically opposing points of view. According to the Talmud, any judge worthy of appointment to the highest court, the Sanhedrin, should be able to devise 150 arguments in favor of the proposition that a reptile is ritually pure, despite the fact that the Torah says explicitly that it is impure.5 And in order to understand arguments found in virtually every page of the Talmud one must be able to make sense of logical arguments that demonstrate that proposition X is true, followed immediately by logical arguments that demonstrate that X is false. The Babylonian Talmud delights in finding reasons not to draw conclusions, to the point where the Talmud presents as a problem in need of solution the possibility that a tradition enables us to decide between two competing points of view. Many of us moderns would perhaps prefer a Talmud that drew conclusions more often; if our sugya, for example, accepted the straightforward interpretation of Rava and ended the sugya with part 5. This is the route chosen much more often by the Yerushalmi, the Babylonian Talmud’s close relative, produced in the land of Israel between the third and fifth centuries CE. For the rabbis of Babylonia, however, settling for the simple and straightforward interpretations and answers of the Yerushalmi betrays a lack of serious engagement in the study of Torah, the most important commandment for a Jew and therefore the summum bonum of human existence. I can certainly understand why someone might think differently, but personally I prefer the Babylonian model of disciplining my mind to follow
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discussions that proceed in one direction, and then do a sudden 180 degree turn and proceed headlong in the opposite direction, only to reverse course again just as suddenly, and so forth, until, almost inevitably, the Talmud finally comes to rest temporarily, concluding that the opposing sides of the debate have no choice but to agree to disagree. It is this open-endedness, this emphasis on the way one thinks at least as much as what one thinks, this compulsion to examine every issue from perspective X and the opposite of perspective X, that many find infuriating about the Talmud, but which I find exhilarating and endlessly rewarding.
ENDNOTES 1. I am delighted to thank my friend and colleague, Professor Judith Hauptman of the Jewish Theological Seminary, who read an earlier version of this essay and made several helpful suggestions. I alone, of course, am responsible for any remaining errors of fact or judgment. 2. When I use the word “Talmud” throughout this essay, it is shorthand for “rabbinic literature of late antiquity.” For while I derive most pleasure from the Babylonian Talmud, it would be artificial to distinguish too sharply between the study of Talmud and the study of ancient rabbinic literature in general. 3. Saul Lieberman, introduction to Tosefet Rishonim, vol. IV (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1939), pp. 12–15. 4. The printed text of the Talmud contains the following clause: “But according to your reasoning there is a problem [since the Tannaitic tradition you cite also says, ‘A son blesses on behalf of his father.’ But how can this be?] Is a minor [i.e., the son] obligated [to say the blessing according to the Torah]?” I follow the reading of R. Moshe ben Nahman in his commentary, Milhamot Hashem, who argues convincingly that this clause is not an integral part of the discussion but rather was added by a later hand. 5. See b. Eruvin 13b; and b. Sanhedrin 17a and 17b.
The Meaning and Significance of New Talmudic Insights Ephraim Kanarfogel
I vividly recall the day toward the beginning of my freshman year in high school year when our (very bright and learned, and sometimes irreverent) rebbe announced that “everyone should like learning (=lernen) because as we know, learning is fun.” Although at that point, I would not have been able on my own to formulate this sentiment in quite so bold a fashion, I resonated to my rebbe’s words because I believed them to be essentially correct. Serious Jewish learning, and the study of the Talmud and its interpretation in particular, can and should be great fun. Indeed, what my rebbe went on to say was that although the study of Torah is among the most venerated (and spiritually compensated) mizvot, it is perfectly acceptable to engage in Talmudic study (as part of the larger precept of Torah study) because one really likes to do so, and because it provides enjoyment.1 In a more formal construct, the simhah that can be engendered through Torah study is precisely what leads to its prohibition during intense periods of mourning.2 This then is the very short and partial answer to the question of why I study the Talmud. What I should like to do in this essay is to try to quantify what in fact is so enjoyable about the study of the Talmud, at least to my own (idiosyncratic) way of thinking. As with certain puzzles or logic problems, much of the fun lies in figuring out or decoding the system and the meaning behind the material that is presented. This process begins by getting the individual or local Talmudic sugyot right. The challenge here, however, is to be able to decipher difficult words and texts from the linguistic and literary standpoints as well, and not only from the conceptual side. You don’t have a sugya right (and that part of the larger picture decoded) until you have interpreted and accounted for the specific words and phrases of the Talmudic text as vehicles 161
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and representations of the reasoning and halakhic or rabbinic dicta that are at the sugya’s core. Adding to the challenge, sugya interpretation depends not only on uncovering or discovering the most logical or reasonable approach to the text at hand. Proper interpretation is achieved only by understanding both the text and the concepts behind it in accordance with or against the backdrop of the broader teachings of the Oral Law as a whole. As the late twelfth century Tosafist (and student of Rabbenu Tam) R. Hayyim Kohen noted, pure logic or rational thinking is not necessarily able to account for the specific parameters, requirements or penalties that each Torah precept generates.3 On the other hand, the Talmudic corpus allows for and encourages not only the raising of questions or problematics that emerge from new circumstances or developments over time within the history of human existence (e.g., “selling chametz,” using a “Shabbos clock,” employing breakthroughs in medical technology),4 but also the development of new overarching methods of study, such as the “Brisker derekh” of R. Chaim Soloveitchik (d. 1918), or the different, but no less systematic approach of R. Chaim’s younger contemporary, R. Shimon Shkop (d. 1939).5 Tracing and appreciating the relationship (in terms of both the similarities and the changes) between the approaches of leading medieval Talmudic commentators (rishonim), and those of the commentators in the early modern and modern periods (‘aharonim), as well as the points of interface or engagement between them, sometimes has the quality of catching a chemical reaction or a biological phenomenon at the instant at which it actually occurs. These interactions are palpable and suggestive, and can be traced back to the original Talmudic or rabbinic text(s) under discussion as an integrated continuum or whole. Also, the ability to find something really new to say in the midst of so much that has come before, to put forward a real hiddush, is truly exciting. The process of locating and understanding a hiddush can be comparable (depending upon your taste) to a thrilling roller coaster ride, or to the various parts of an intricate symphony coming together.
II Rather than trying to continue to diagram these points of satisfaction or enjoyment in descriptive terms, I would like to present an example of a sugya and its development, a veritable Talmudic puzzle, that encapsulates much of what I have just described, and more. Although markedly more discursive than the remarkably apodictic Mishnah, the Gemara is similarly a work of
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legal theory and illustrative cases, not a complete record of case law. Any established decisor of Jewish law or judge sitting on a beit din (rabbinic court) will encounter myriad cases or situations that are not described or even mentioned explicitly in the Talmud. Through application and reasoning, the decisor must be able to identify relevant Talmudic passages and constructs (as well as applicable post-Talmudic precedent).6 On a more theoretical or preemptive level, it is also fascinating to consider the halakhic possibilities according to Talmudic law in larger (and more complex) kinds of cases that the Talmud does not specifically address. This is the type of situation that we will now proceed to discuss. R. Aryeh Leib ha-Kohen Heller (d. 1813), author of the highly regarded Qezot ha-Hoshen commentary (published in Lemberg in 1788 and 1796) to Shulhan ‘Arukh, Hoshen Mishpat,7 zeroes in on just such a “missing” case, one that appears to have “fallen through the cracks” of the Talmud. Can an agent (shaliah) who was appointed to deliver a gift (matanah) appoint another agent to perform this task?8 Jewish law very much recognizes the possibility of appointing an agent to execute or to perform the wishes of the one who sends him. In rabbinic parlance, sheluho shel ‘adam kemoto, an agent is considered to be “just like the one who has appointed (or sent) him.”9 Agency (shelihut) can be employed in a wide range of purposes, for example, to acquire or to sell objects, to effect an halakhic berothal (qiddushin), to deliver a bill of divorce, to pay off a debt, to give charity, and so on. Indeed, one of the few limitations of the powers of an agent is that he cannot perform a religious obligation that is incumbent upon the individual (sender) himself, in a personal (or bodily) manner, such as the donning of phylacteries.10 The Talmud deals explicitly (in Gittin 29a) only with a related question to the one raised by the Qezot ha-Hoshen. Just as an agent who has been appointed to deliver a bill of divorce may appoint a second agent to complete this mission, so too an agent who was appointed to deliver a gift deed (i.e., a deed for a field that is being given as a gift) may appoint a second agent to do so. In discussing this issue, however, the Talmud notes an important distinction, which leads to a disagreement in interpretation between Abbaye and Rava (and between the earlier Amoraim Rav and Shmu’el). According to the Talmud, if the husband instructed an agent (or two agents) to first write the bill of divorce and then to give it in addition, they may not appoint someone else to do the writing. For Abbaye (and for Rav), the problem with this second appointment is that it would lead to additional embarrassment for the husband. The husband may not have been capable of writing the get himself (even though the Torah instructs him to do so), and so he appointed an agent (or agents) to do this. If that agent appoints someone else, an additional (outside) person now knows that the husband is incapable of writing the get.
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Abbaye’s line of reasoning here would not apply, however, to the writing of a gift deed, since there is no requirement that the giver of the gift write his own document. Hence, if he assigns this task to one agent and that agent then assigns this task to another, the giver incurs no embarrassment whatsoever. Rava, however, holds (as does the Amora Samuel) that an agent who was assigned to write (and then to give) a get may not appoint another agent to write the get because of a larger limitation of agency. An agent can be charged by his sender directly to make a particular statement or verbal declaration. But this agent cannot be properly authorized to issue an instruction (alone) to another agent, on behalf of the one who had appointed him initially. Literally, “words [alone] cannot be given over to an(other) agent” (milei lo mimseran le-shaliah).11 If the second agent’s assignment is to give the get, his appointment by the first agent is for more than just words. (As Rashi notes, ‘it beh meshasha, “there is substance to his appointment.”) If, however, the second agent is charged by the first agent to initially write the bill of divorce, such an appointment is “for words” (le-milei, a verbal instruction) alone. There is no palpable object at this point, such as an existing get, over which (or through which) the agency assignment can be properly transferred from the first agent to the second. Moreover, this larger principle concerning agency would apply equally to an agent who was assigned to write a gift deed, as it would for the writing of a bill of divorce; the assignment to write a gift deed (as opposed to the giving of an already written deed) is also considered milei, and cannot be transferred by one agent to another. The Talmud typically rules that the law is decided according to the position of Samuel when he disagrees with Rav in cases of monetary and related laws (dinei, which includes agency; the law is like Rav, on the other hand, in matters of ritual law, issur ve-heter).12 Thus, the conclusion that agency may not be assigned, for either the writing of a get or for the writing of a gift document, is codified by both R. Jacob b. Asher in his Arba’ah Turim, and by R. Yosef Caro in the Shulhan ‘Arukh.13 All would agree, however, that where a get or gift document already exists, and the husband or the gift giver assigns an agent only for its delivery (shaliah le-holakhah) and not for its writing, that agent may appoint another agent in turn, since this is not an instance of milei. As mentioned above, the point of inquiry of the Qezot ha-Hoshen (Hoshen Mishpat 244, comment 2) is about how this sugya and these rulings would apply to an agent appointed not to deliver a gift deed, but rather to an agent appointed to deliver the gift itself. At first blush, we would think that there should be no question (or point of contention) whatsoever. The first agent who appoints a second agent to deliver an actual gift is authorizing him to deliver an existing object (such as a get); this is surely not a case of milei at all.
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R. Aryeh Leib Heller, however, begins his inquiry with a suggestive observation. Although the Talmud derives that an agent for the husband (a shaliah le-holakhah) who was appointed to deliver a bill of divorce to the wife (or her agent), may appoint a second agent to do this (since there is no problem of milei here, as we have seen), one of the Tosafists, R. Solomon b. Judah of Dreux (known as ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux),14 maintains that this would not be the case for an agent who was appointed to give a ring for betrothal (qiddushin) to a women. Even if this agent cannot continue his mission due to an accident or another unavoidable occurrence (‘ones, and not owing to any malfeasance or mistake on his part), he is unable to appoint another agent in his stead. Although this agent was appointed to deliver an existing object, a ring, which should be akin to an agent appointed to deliver a get (that is certainly not considered to be mere milei), ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux holds that the assignment of delivering a ring for betrothal is nonetheless considered to be akin to milei, based on the following distinction that emerges from the relevant Talmudic sugyot. Once the husband hands a get to his agent for delivery, the agent, like the husband himself, can put forward the bill of divorce even against the will of the woman (or more precisely, without requiring her acquiescence at that point).15 If the woman refuses to (extend her da’at and to) accept a ring of qiddushin, however, the qiddushin is not valid. As such, the ring, unlike the get, has (or should be assigned) the status of milei, and therefore cannot be transferred from one agent to another. The initial agent received the ring from the potential bridegroom himself and he was authorized directly to attempt to effect the qiddushin; the validity of his appointment is beyond question (even if the woman does not accept the ring from him in the end). The second agent, however, is not authorized as directly by the bridegroom, and the object in question, the ring, also does not convey full authorization in this situation, since the woman may reject it. In the case of a get, however, the second agent is just as powerful (and as authorized) as the first since he, like the first agent (and like the husband himself), can present the get (and complete the mission of the shelihut by accomplishing the divorce), regardless of the intention of the person receiving it. Qezot ha-Hoshen further refers to the gloss of R. Moses Isserles (Ramo, d. 1572) to Shulhan ‘Arukh, Even ha-’Ezer 35:6, which cites two views on this question: the view just discussed (held by ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux), that a second agent cannot be appointed for (the) marriage (ring), and another view (which originated with a German Tosafist contemporary of R. Solomon of Dreux, R. Barukh b. Samuel of Mainz, d. 1221), that as long as the potential bridegroom actually gives the first agent the ring or the money to be used for the qiddushin (so that an object for transference exists), and does not
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instruct the agent to lay out his own money in order to betroth the woman on the groom’s behalf, a second agent can be appointed by the first agent and there is no problem of milei.16 Qezot ha-Hoshen reasons that since according to the position of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux, the person who is meant to receive a gift from another surely has the prerogative to reject the gift and to refuse to receive it, a second agent in that case is comparable to the qiddushin case (where the woman can reject the qiddushin), rather than to the case of a get (where the get is not subject to her will). As such, there is also a milei problem or aspect in the instance of giving an actual gift via an agent, which effectively undermines the appointment of a second agent, providing a (somewhat unexpected) resolution to the original query of the Qezot ha-Hoshen. In presenting his analysis, the ba’al Qezot ha-Hoshen notes that his approach also resolves a significant question that had been posed by R. Jacob Joshua Falk (d. 1756) in his Pnei Yehoshua. R. Falk was best known for formulating penetrating, large-scale questions, of the sort that had not been in evidence since medieval times (with the possible exception of R. Samuel Eidels, the Maharsha, d. 1631). This line of questioning sought to get to the heart of the sugya in a fundamentally meaningful way, in order to open new avenues of discussion.17 Pnei Yehoshua had raised just such a question with regard to the related sugya in Gittin 29a. According to the Talmudic discussion, a certain man appointed an agent to deliver a bill of divorce to his wife. The agent reported that he could not identify her; he simply did not know who she was. The husband then instructed the agent to give the get to a rabbinic scholar named Abba bar Manyomi, who did know the woman in question. The agent could not locate Abba bar Manyomi, and instead desposited the get with a group of Amoraim that included R. Abuhu, R. Haninah bar Pappa, and R. Yizhaq Nafha. The Amora R. Safra was sitting near them. This group asked R. Safra to let them know when R. Abba bar Manyomi arrived, so that they could give him the get (and R. Abba would then give it to the woman in question). R. Safra objected, on the grounds that the agent in this case was not authorized to do what he did. Rashi understands R. Safra’s point of objection to mean that this agent had last been instructed by the husband to give the get to R. Abba bar Manyomi (rather than to give it himself to the woman). As such, since the agent was no longer fully in the place of the husband with respect to giving the get (by virtue of the fact that he could not complete the divorce by delivering the get to the woman), he was not authorized to give it to anyone other than R. Abba bar Manyomi. Pnei Yehoshua, however, questions why this is so. Although this agent was indeed no longer responsible for giving the get itself, why could he not appoint another agent to give it
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to R. Abba (which was his current mission), just as any shaliah instructed to deliver a get typically can? Qezot ha-Hoshen explains, in accordance with the reasoning of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux, that since Abba bar Manyomi could theoretically refuse to take on this assignment to deliver the get when and if the husband’s agent ultimately presented it to him, the situation becomes akin to one of milei even though a get is involved. In a word, this is a case of get that takes on the characteristics of qiddushin/matanah, since the authority of the agent (who seeks to appoint another agent) cannot guarantee that the final goal (or transaction) will be accomplished. Qezot ha-Hoshen has additional discussions about the implications of the position of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux in other unusual cases involving the transference of a get. Nonetheless, his initial line of inquiry has borne fruit. According to the view of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux, an agent for the delivery of a gift is akin to an agent for qiddushin, rather than to an agent for the delivery a get (the fact that he has the gift in his hand notwithstanding). Therefore, any attempt on the part of an agent appointed for the delivery of a gift to appoint another agent in his place raises the problem of milei, which is not (typically) a problem in the case of an agent appointed to deliver a get, according to an explicit Talmudic ruling. A new point of Jewish law has been made by the ba’al Qezot ha-Hoshen, owing to his ability to isolate and productively analyze a suggestive view of one of the Tosafists, that initially appears only in a different sugya and realm.
III If we step back in order to assess the accomplishment of the Qezot ha-Hoshen against the backdrop of the development of Jewish law through the Talmudic and medieval periods (which can also, in and of itself, be a source of great satisfaction, at least to me), we note that at the base of R. Aryeh Leib Heller’s analysis is a dispute between two contemporary Tosafists, one from Rhineland Germany (R. Barukh of Mainz) and the other from northern France (R. Solomon ha-Qadosh of Dreux). This dispute, however, is not found anywhere within the standard Tosafot to the Baylonian Talmud, nor is it found in any variant Tosafot texts.18 Rather, the respective positions appear as two disparate formulations, in two different places within the Sefer Mordekhai (and its glosses), which were first brought together by R. Moses Isserles. Although Qezot ha-Hoshen does not explicitly discuss R. Barukh of Mainz’s position, it is clear that R. Barukh’s view would allow an agent assigned to deliver a gift the ability to authorize another agent to undertake this task. Simply put, R. Barukh holds that any case of agency in which the transfer of an object is
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involved (be it a get or a gift, or be it a wedding ring or the money of qiddushin) obviates the problem of milei. Moreover, matters of agency in qiddushin are derived and learned from those in gittin (as per Qiddushin 41a), and these two institutions should generally not be separated or split.19 Qezot ha-Hoshen preferred to focus instead on the more nuanced view of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux, precisely because it singles out the giving of a get and its agency in this instance, in accordance with specific parameters of Talmudic law. Agency for a get does have some unique properties and prerogatives as we have seen, owing mostly to the relatively one-sided giving of the get, which does not require the ongoing acquiescence of the women (mi-da’atah). A gift object, however, no less than the ring or money of qiddushin, can be rejected, and these items cannot be transferred to a second agent, because of the milei problem. This is the essential appeal of the position of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux that Qezot ha-Hoshen develops further and presents in a new light, in order to answer his initial query. Indeed, this was also the view of the Italian Tosafist, R. Isaiah di Trani, of which Qezot ha-Hoshen (and others in his day) were apparently unaware.20 RID, who studied in the Rhineland at the turn of the twelfth century with R. Simhah of Speyer (and also became familiar with the teachings of Rabbenu Tam, via his German students),21 writes in his Tosafot RID that when the Talmud (in Qiddushin 41b) equates the rules for an agent in both get and qiddushin, it does so only with respect to the first or initial agent. A second agent cannot be appointed by the first for qiddushin because of milei, even if an object is given for the qiddushin. The first agent can appoint a second agent to deliver a get, on the other hand, without any problem. In cases of divorce, the get is the davar ha-megaresh, the instrument of divorce. Thus, if a get is lost, the agent cannot do anything without it, and has no option but to return to his sender without having accomplished his mission. If, however, the object of qiddushin is lost, an agent appointed for this purpose can take money out of his own pocket (if he wishes to do so) on behalf of the bridegroom who has sent him, and can thereby successfully complete his mission. As such, the main role for an agent for qiddushin is milei; he is given an instruction (that he can accomplish in different ways, with an object of worth or with funds provided by his sender, or with his own money). At the same time, he cannot transfer this instruction over to another agent, because it is quintessentially defined as milei. An agent for divorce, however, can accomplish his mission only by handing the woman the bill of divorce for her that was given to him by the husband. If this get is lost, the mission cannot be completed. On the other hand, a second agent who is designated by the first to give this get to the woman may do so, since this is the original (and only) instrument of divorce that can be effective.
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Thus, the position of R. Isaiah di Trani is fundamentally the same as that of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux.22 It should be noted that much of the halakhic jurisprudence in the centuries prior to the Qezot ha-Hoshen tended to favor the view of R. Barukh of Mainz over that of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux. Although R. Yosef Caro (d. 1575) makes brief mention in his Beit Yosef only of the view of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux,23 Ramo, in his Darkhei Mosheh glosses to the Arba’ah Turim,24 cites the view of R. Barukh of Mainz (without attribution, as a yesh ‘omrim), and the somewhat more limiting view of the Shiltei ha-Gibborim (c. 1550, which Ramo refers to imply as “glosses to the Alfasi”).25 Shiltei ha-Gibborim follows the view of R. Barukh for the most part, but makes a distinction between a situation in which the agent was authorized to give the woman an object or money for qiddushin that had been given to him by the bridegroom (in which case he can appoint another agent) and an instance in which the agent is instructed by the bridegroom to use his own money, in which case he cannot appoint another agent to accomplish this due to the problem of milei. Ramo does not refer at all here to the position of haQadosh mi-Dreux. In his Mappah glosses to the Shulhan ‘Arukh (Even ha-’Ezer 35:6), Ramo, as noted above, again cites the (more lenient) position of R. Barukh of Mainz first as a yesh ‘omrim, together with the caveat of the Shiltei ha-Gibborim, and then concludes with a second, more stringent yesh ‘omrim that is the position of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux. R. Yo’el Sirkes (d. 1640), in his Bayit Hadash (Bah) commentary to the Arba’ah Turim (in what also appears to be a response to the passage in the Beit Yosef) specifically critiques the view of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux by name.26 R. Solomon Luria (d. 1573) had also criticized the view of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux in similar terms (and quite harshly), albeit without mentioning him by name.27 Qezot ha-Hoshen helps to shift the perception that was put forward by these leading Ashkenazic commentators to the Arba’ah Turim and Shulhan ‘Arukh in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by forcefully, yet elegantly, bringing to the fore the Talmudic details and logic that stand behind and support the position of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux. By raising the new scenario that he does with respect to the giving of a gift, Qezot ha-Hoshen has not simply proposed and addressed a situation that was not discussed by the Talmud. He has shown that ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux has logical staying power and attractiveness over the course of various Talmudic sugyot. The status of these acts that are assigned to a shaliah cannot be determined solely by looking at physical or structural categories (since it would seem, prima facie, that an actual gift is certainly comparable to a get). Rather, the purpose or function of the object in question is most crucial. Thus, the solution
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proposed by Qezot ha-Hoshen is both new and old at the same time,28 and it succeeds in answering the important question of the Pnei Yehoshua as well.29 Finally, R. Jacob Lorberbaum of Lissa (d. 1832), in his Netivot ha-Mishpat (published in Zolkiew, 1809–1816) argues, as is his wont, against the reasoning of the Qezot ha-Hoshen on the basis of another sharp distinction that emerges from both the logic and the details of the Talmudic system.30 A gift does not, in fact, typically require a bona fide shaliah to effect its transfer. As long as the gift ends up in the hands of its designated recipient, the mode through which it is transferred is largely irrelevant. Thus, for example, if a trained (or even an un-trained) animal was used to bring the gift from its original owner to the recipient (ma’aseh qof), no one would question the validity and propriety of the recipient now benefiting from the gift. This is not the case, of course, for gittin or qiddushin, where a new halakhic status is being assigned based on the transference of a get or of a ring of betrothal. In these situations, the manner in which the object gets from the husband or bridegroom to the woman in question is crucial. The will of the husband or bridegroom, together with the actions of a proper agent, come together to create the new status (or halot, in rabbinic parlance). The same holds true for a situation in which the deed for a gift is being transferred. There as well, the authorization and status of the agent are instrumental in helping to affect the qinyan that is at stake. With regard to the actual giving of a gift, however, the manner in which a gift is transferred from the giver to the receiver is, as indicated, largely irrelevant (unless the giver had specified that his gift must be acquired by the receiver through a particular mode or qinyan), and there can be no doubt that one agent can assign this task to another. A get requires a formal act of giving (a ma’aseh netinah) and an authorized person to perform this act. The husband or the agent may be required, for example, to instruct the woman to pick the get up off the floor and to acquire it. Giving a gift, however, inherently requires no such formal authorization. Once the receiver has the gift in hand, it belongs to him, as long as it has been made clear that the giver truly wishes him to have it. Moreover, even if an agent was appointed to ensure that the gift reaches the receiver, the agent can also fulfill his mission via an “unauthorized” or improperly appointed agent, as the long as the gift finds its mark. There is no problem of milei here whatsoever. While Qezot ha-Hoshen worked hard to locate the giving of a gift via agency within the Talmudic categories of agency for a get and agency for qiddushin (and demonstrated that agency for a gift is much more akin to the latter), Netivot ha-Mishpat maintains that the giving of a gift is completely
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removed from the Talmudic systems of get and qiddushin. Logic suggests that agency for the giving of a gift (as opposed to the giving of a gift deed) may well be in a category of its own. Although Netivot ha-Mishpat appears to be completely reactive here to the strategy of the Qezot ha-Hoshen, R. Jacob Lorberbaum rejects as unnecessary the structural and categorical extensions put forward by the Qezot. The ba’al Qezot ha-Hoshen (who was able to respond in his lifetime to the critical observations of his good friend R. Lorberbaum on earlier sections in Hoshen Mishpat) might argue here that one cannot go “out of system” purely on the basis of a logical observation. The gist of the discussions from both the medieval and early modern periods certainly suggests that cases of agency of this type do in fact emerge from the Talmudic structures concerning gittin and qiddushin, even as there are disputes about the particular applications. In any case, both Qezot ha-Hoshen and Netivot ha-Mishpat have contributed startlingly new insights, which at the same time cause a review and rethinking of prior positions and approaches. To my mind, the identification and formulation of this kind of a new-old cycle is the goal and the hallmark of Talmud study at its best.31
IV All of this textual and logical intrigue, together with the insights and implications for the textual history of the Oral Law, and topped off by the outright hiddushim that emerge, are why studying the Talmud and its interpretations is so enjoyable to me. The Talmud itself presumes that “there can be no house of study without innovation.”32 Similarly, the Zohar remarks (in its idiom) that “at a moment when a word of Torah is made anew (mithadesh) in the mouth of man, the word ascends and stands before the Holy One blessed be He, who takes it and kisses it and crowns it with seventy decorated and engraved crowns.”33 In our own day, Rav Yosef Dov ha-Levi Soloveitchik of blessed memory wrote that “halakhic man is a man who longs to create, to bring into being something new, something original. . . . The dream of creation is the central idea in the halakhic consciousness.”34 The study of the Talmud may be compared to both a puzzle and a treasure map. It allows students to invest their time and creativity with the hope of glimpsing and ultimately mastering things that matter, both old and new, and perhaps even contributing to the ongoing mosaic of study, be it an insight or a full-fledged interpretation, that can be appreciated by fellow travelers on this always noble and uplifting journey.35
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ENDNOTES 1. In the introduction to his Eglei Tal (repr. New York, 1968), R. Abraham Bornstein of Sochaczew (d. 1910) strongly criticizes (as a ta’ut mefursam) the view that one who finds enjoyment in the study of Torah and in the setting forth of hiddushim is thereby diminishing the coveted goal of studying Torah lishmah, for its own sake. Quite to the contrary, according to R. Abraham, the enjoyment that is experienced actually reflects the essence of Torah study: wadrba ky zh hwa xyqr mxwt tlmwd twrhlhywt çç wçmj wmt[ng waz dbry twry nbl[yw bdmw. wmajr çnhnh mdbry twrh hwa n[çh dbwq ltwrh...abl hlwmd lçµ mxwh wmt[ng blymwdg blymwdw hry zh lymwd lçmh wkwlw qwdw ky gµ ht[nwg m[wh. See also Seder Eliyyahu Rabbah, ed. Meir Ish-Shalom (repr. Jerusalem, 1960), 92 (chap. 18, s.v. teda lekha): kdŸ amr lh˜ hqb|h lçral bnyy mh çmjh yç lw ladµ b[wlµ hzh ala dbry twry twrh blb⁄d, and cf. Norman Lamm, Torah Lishmah in the Works of R. Hayyim of Volozhin and his Contemporaries (New York, 1989), 84–85, 114–119. Note also the permissibility of writing down hiddushei Torah on Hol ha-Mo’ed as understood, e.g., by Taz to Shulhan ‘Arukh, Orah Hayyim 545, sec. 13, and by Birkei Yosef le-R. Hayyim Yosef David Azulai [Hida] (repr. Jerusalem, 1969), Orah Hayyim, ad loc., sec. 3, citing She’elot u-Teshuvot min ha-Shamayim le-R. Ya’aqov mi-Marvege. 2. See, e.g., Ta’anit 30a, where the prohibition of Torah study on the ninth of Av is based on Psalms 19:6, “the orders of the Almighty are upright and gladden the heart” (pqwdy hò yçrµ mçrjy lb). Although the Talmud in Mo’ed Qatan 15a derives the prohibition of Torah study for a mourner during the shiv’ah period from a different verse (Ezekiel 24:17), Tosafot to Mo’ed Qatan 21a, s.v. ‘asur rectifies these verses and presumes that the “gladness” that is generated by Torah study is the cause of the prohibition for one who is mourning a personal loss as well. Related to this discussion are whether mourners (personal or national) may study devarim ha-ra’im, works or sections within the Tanakh (and the Talmud) that are of a sad or somber nature (such as the book of Job or that discuss the destruction of the Beit ha-Miqdash; the extent to which the mourner may delve into these subjects (and potentially reach new or deeper understandings within them); and the possibility of the mourner teaching these materials to others. See, e.g., Beit Yosef, Arba’ah Turim to Orah Hayyim, at the beginning of 554 (esp. whròòp[r≈] ktb [çqwryz] bpyò aykh abl la bayò aywb mçwµ dhwy [mwq fpy wamryò qwry˜ dwqa abl sbra aswr [kòòl); Shulhan ‘Arukh, loc cit. secs.1–2, and Taz, sec. 2; Shakh to Yoreh De’ah 384, sec. 1; and Shi’urei ha-Rav [Yosef Dov ha-Levi Soloveitchik] ‘al ‘Inyanei Avelut ve-Tish’ah ba-Av, ed. Elyakim Koenigsberg (New York, 1999), pt. 1, 71 (sec. 23), and pt. 2, 39–40 (sec. 20), and 44–46 (sec. 22). 3. See ms. Florence (Laurenziana), Plut. II.20, fol. 251v, and cf. my “Torah Study and Truth in Medieval Ashkenazic Literature and Thought,” in Study and Knowledge in Jewish Thought, ed. Howard Kreisel (Beer Sheva, 2006), 101–120 (and esp. 111, n. 18). Note also the statement of Maimonides in his Guide for the Perplexed, 3:26, that any attempt to understand or to account philosophically for the specific (halakhic)
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details or requirements of the precepts will lead to “prolonged delusion” (shigga’on ‘arokh). Cf. Jacob Katz, Halakhah ve-Qabbalah (Jerusalem, 1986), 52–55. 4. See, e.g., I. M. Ta-Shma, Creativity and Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), 87–101, and my “Halakhah and Mezi’ut (Realia) in Medieval Ashkenaz: Surveying the Parameters and Defining the Limits,” Jewish Law Annual 14 (2003), 193–224. Cf. R. Moses Feinstein, Igrot Mosheh, Yoreh De’ah, vol. 1 (New York, 1959), #101, sec. 5 (p. 186, cols. 1–2). 5. See, e.g, S. Y. Zevin, Ishim ve-Shitot (Jerusalem, 1958), 39–85; Elyakim Krumbein, “Me-R. Chaim Brisk veh-R. Yosef Dov Solovetichik ve-’ad Shiurei R. Aharon Lichtenstein: ‘al Gilgulehah shel Mesoret Limmud,” Netu’im 9 (2002), 51–94; and Shai Wozner, “Hashivah Mishpatit bi-Yeshivot Lita bi-Re’i Mishnato shel ha-Rav Shim’on Shkop,” Ph.D. dissertation (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005). 6. See, e.g., Teshuvot R. Avraham ben ha-Rambam, ed. A. H. Freimann (Jerusalem, 1937), #97, and cf. my “Progress and Tradition in Medieval Ashkenaz,” Jewish History 14 (2000), 287–316. 7. R. Aryeh Leib’s two other seminal works are Shev Shemateta (Lemberg, 1804) and Avnei Millu’im to Even ha-’Ezer (Lemberg, 1816). 8. See Qezot ha-Hoshen to Hoshen Mishpat 244, comment 2. 9. See, e.g., Berakhot 34b, Hagigah 10b, Qiddushin 41b, Nedarim 72b, Nazir 12b, Bava Mezi’a 96a, Menahot 93b; and cf. Rashi’s Torah commentary to Exodus 12:6. Whether an agent is considered to be an extension (a “third hand,” lit., mishum yad) of the one who has activated him, or whether the agent is considered to be a fully authorized yet distinct representative of his sender (n[çh kb[l dy˜) is a matter of intensive discussion. See, e.g., Qezot ha-Hoshen to Hoshen Mishpat 105, comment 1, and to Hoshen Mishpat 188, comment 2. 10. See, e.g., Tosafot Rid to Qiddushin 42b, s.v. shani hatam (Jerusalem, 1968), fol. 10b, and cf. Qezot ha-Hoshen to Hoshen Mishpat 182, comment 1. Note that Gershon Hundert, “On the Problem of Agency in 18th Century Jewish Society,” in Studies in the History of the Jews in Old Poland in Honor of Jacob Goldberg, [=Scripta Hierosolymitana, vol. 38], ed. Adam Teller (Jerusalem, 1998), 82–89, deals with agency in the context of cultural transformation, and has nothing to do with the concept of agency being discussed here. 11. See also Gittin 66b, 71b, 72b. There is discussion as to whether the authorizer can say initially, “I want your shelihut to be to tell another person to do something on my behalf,” but this cannot be presumed. Cf. below, n. 22. 12. See, e.g., Bekhorot 49b, Niddah 24b, and cf. Tosafot Gittin 60b, s.v. vehashta. 13. See Hoshen Mishpat 244. 14. R. Solomon b. Judah of Dreux was a student of R. Isaac b. Samuel (Ri) of Dampierre (d. 1189). On R. Solomon (including his designation as ha-Qadosh) and his teachings, see E. E. Urbach, Ba’alei ha-Tosafot (Jerusalem, 1980), 1:337–340, 515–516, and Norman Golb, The Jews in Medieval Normandy (Cambridge, 1998), 399–410. R. Solomon’s position with respect to agency for qiddushin is cited
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in (a marginal gloss to) Sefer Mordekhai ‘al le-Massekhet Qiddushin, sec. 504 (to Qiddushin 41b) [=ed. H. Z. Dimitrovsky and J. Roth (Jerusalem, 1990), 179–180]. On Sefer Mordekhai (and the marginal notes and glosses to it) as a repository of little-known or otherwise unknown Tosafist positions from both northern France and Germany, see, e.g., Urbach, Ba’alei ha-Tosafot, 2:556–561, and Simcha Emanuel, Shivrei Luhot (Jerusalem, 2007), 9–12, 321–323. Indeed, like R. Shabbetai b. Meir ha-Kohen (d. 1662, author of the Shakh commentary to the Shulhan ‘Arukh), Qezot ha-Hoshen mined the Sefer Mordekhai in order to locate the fullest range of positions of Tosafists and other Ashkenazic rabbinic figures available, a technique not always practiced by other ‘aharonim. I hope to return to this theme in a separate study. 15. In his Gilyonei ha-Shas (Vienna, 1924) to Gittin 29a (s.v. u-milei), R. Yosef Engel (d. 1920) discusses how the herem de-Rabbenu Gershom (d. 1028), an enactment which mandates that a woman cannot be forced to accept a bill of divorce against her will, might impact the approach of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux. His conclusion is that while (overall) a woman cannot be divorced against her will, the process does not require her assent or acquiescence at each point (dhayswr rq çla lgrç [l krjh la çla lgrç ala md[jh). Qiddushin, on the other hand, requires her da’at and her positive will throughout. As such the halakhic approach and reasoning of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux need not be adjusted in any way. 16. This second view is found in Sefer Mordekhai le-Massekhet Gittin, sec. 420 (to Gittin 66b) [=ed. H. Z. Dimitrovsky and M. A. Rabinowitz (Jerusalem, 1990), 684–685], in the name of R. Barukh and his no longer extant Sefer ha-Hokhmah. On R. Barukh and his work, see Urbach, Ba’alei ha-Tosafot, 1:425–29; Emanuel, Shivrei Luhot, 104–146; and my “The Development and Diffusion of Unanimous Agreement in Medieval Ashkenaz,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, vol. 3, ed. I. Twersky and J. Harris (Cambridge, Mass., 2000), 26–28, 39–40. 17. See Ta-Shma, Creativity and Tradition, 166–174, and idem., “Devarim Ahadim ‘al Sefer Pnei Yehoshua ve’al Mehabreo,” in Mehqarim be-Toledot Yehudei Ashkenaz [Sefer Yovel li-Khvod Yizhaq Zimmer], ed. G. Bacon et al. (Ramat Gan, 2008), 277–285. 18. Indeed, R. Barukh b. Samuel’s name does not appear at all in the standard Tosafot (although some suggest that he was the compiler of Tosafot Sotah; see Urbach, Ba’alei ha-Tosafot, 1:428–29, 2:637–639), while R. Solomon of Dreux’s name is mentioned a total of twelve times. See Urbach, Ba’alei ha-Tosafot (above, n. 14, and cf. 1:344), and see also Peretz Tarshish, Ishim u-Sefarim ba-’Tosafot’, ed. Simon Neuhausen (New York, 1942), 67 (#254), and 69 (#261). 19. Cf. R. Isaac bar Sheshet, She’elot u-Teshuvot ha-Rivash (repr. Jerusalem, 1968), #228. 20. Qezot ha-Hoshen does not cite Tosafot ha-RID as far as I can tell. It does cite Pisqei ha-RID on a number of occasions, although always from another source, especially Arba’ah Turim (or from commentaries associated with this work). See, e.g., Hoshen Mishpat, 49, comment 5; H. M. 70, comment 6; H. M. 92, comment 10; H. M. 121, comment 3; and H. M. 351, comment 2. Cf. I. Ta-Shma, Knesset Mehqarim, vol. 3 (Jerusalem, 2005), 24–26, and above, n. 10.
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21. See, e.g., Ta-Shma, ibid., 20–21, 24, 40–43. 22. See Tosafot RID le-Masskhet Qiddushin 41a, s.v. ‘ashkehan be-gerushin: wapyò aµ msr lw çwµ jp≈ [lqydwçy˜] la dmy lgf çhgf hwa dgr hmgrç çaµ nabd hgf ay˜ kj lçlj lgçh abl jp≈ hqdwçy˜ aµnabd ykwl lqdçh mçlw nm[a ç[yqr hçlyjwt myly whlb˜ la mmsr˜ lçlyj. A point of difference between RID and ha-Qaodosh mi-Dreux might be seen in the case of an agent who was given a document by the bridegroom through which to betrothe the woman, a specific shetar qiddushin. That assignment is perhaps akin to an agent assigned to deliver a get, and it might therefore be possible, according to RID, for the first agent to appoint a second in this limited instance of qiddushin bi-shetar. Cf. the similar view of (the Italian work) Shiltei ha-Gibborim that follows (at n. 25), as well as Beit Shemu’el, Even ha-’Ezer 35:15. 23. See Beit Yosef to Arba’ah Turim, Even ha-’Ezer 35 (end), s.v. katav haMordekhai. R. Yosef Caro does not mention any of this in the body of the Shulhan ‘Arukh in Even ha-’Ezer 35. He does, however, cite in the name of an uncontested yesh mi she-’omer in 36:5 (in the following unit, which deals with a women’s ability to appoint an agent to receive qiddushin for her), that her agent cannot appoint a second agent because this would be a case of milei, which cannot be given over to a shaliah. Cf. Hiddushei ha-Rashba to Qiddushin 41a, s.v. melammed, and Tosafot Rid, ad loc., s.v. ha-’ish meqaddesh. 24. Even ha-’Ezer 35:10. Darkhei Mosheh was composed prior to Ramo’s glosses on Shulhan ‘Arukh (Mappah), and are generally a bit lengthier than the Shulhan ‘Arukh glosses. Cf. I. Twersky, “The Shulhan ‘Arukh: Enduring Code of Jewish Law,” Judaism 16 (1967), 141–158. 25. These glosses on Rif’s Halakhot Rabbati known by the title Shiltei haGibborim were composed by the sixteenth-century Italian rabbinic scholar, R. Joshua Boaz b. Simeon Barukh. See Hida, Shem ha-Gedolim (Warsaw, 1876), ma’arekhet sefarim, fol. 51a, sec. 76. 26. See Bah to Arba’ah Turim, Even ha-’Ezer, 35, s.v. katav ha-Mordekhai. R. Yo’el wonders where ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux came up with this distinction, since it is not found in the Talmud. R. Yo’el is thus more comfortable with the view of R. Barukh of Mainz, since the Talmud derives agency in qiddushin (completely) from the parameters of agency in gittin (la açkj˜ dgr zh btlmwd wgµ pçf hhyqç dlgmry mqçyghwyh ly[yah l[g˜ çlyjwt w[ryd [yw˜.). 27. See Yam shel Shelomoh to Qiddushin, ch. 2, sec. 1 (end): wawmr jny daπ dgpqmpwyh dgbra rba la [yytyg˜ lh dha bryyta dwçlj wçljh dmlmd vhvlyj [wçh çlyj myyjy bswgya dhka l[gy˜ qydwçy˜ wamdwyò akwlh mylta raçkj˜ gyrwçy˜ qydwçy˜ mgl˜. wmsq wamr qra whlkh wkwy whòòf dkl hyka ççljw l[çwt m[çh wkgmr çlyjwtw ngmr hm[çh la hwy myly mçaòòk bktybt hgf wjtymtw ktb mrdky swπ prq htqbl. On Maharshal’s use of the phrase lo zeitinan leh (‘we do not listen to him’), cf. Twersky, “The Shulhan ‘Arukh,” 114–115, n. 13, and my “Progress and Tradition,” 290. 28. Two Shulhan ‘Arukh commentaries appear to go in same direction as the Qezot ha-Hoshen in highlighting the significance of the view of ha-Qadosh mi-Dreux (albeit in much more muted terms). They are R. Moses of Vilna/Brisk in his Helqat Mehoqeq (Even ha-’Ezer 35, n. 16), who briefly notes that R. Yosef Caro seems to
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favor this view (above, n. 23), and R. Yo’el Sirkus’ son-in-law, R. David ha-Levi, in his Turei Zahav (Taz), ad loc., sec. 8. 29. Pnei Yehoshua (Qiddushin 41a, s.v. de-tanya ve-shilah) also analyzes the question (and dispute) of whether an agent appointed by the women to receive a get for her may appoint another agent, or whether this is considered to be milei. Cf. above, n. 22. For a somewhat less creative approach to many of the issues discussed by Qezot ha-Hoshen, see the responsa collection of R. Jacob Reischer (d. 1733), Shevut Ya’akov, pt. 2 (Offenbach, 1711), sec. 139. 30. Netivot ha-Mishpat, 244:1 (mishpat ha-’urim/be’urim). 31. For a brief assessment of R. Jacob Lorberbaum’s penetrating style of reasoning, see Ta-Shma, Creativity and Tradition, 174. The ba’al ha-Netivot finds support for his view based on Shulhan ‘Arukh, Even ha-’Ezer 141:35; even in the get process, some opinions allow a non-Jew to be relied upon to transfer a get between the husband and his properly designated agent, who will then actually give the get to the woman. See also Shakh to Hoshen Mishpat, 358:1, who speaks to the fact that a gift can be given without any formal statement by the giver to the receiver, as long as it is known by convention or by sign that this is the will of the giver of the gift, and cf. Taz, above, n. 28. 32. Hagigah 3a, ay apr lbt hmdrç bla jydzç. 33. Zohar, vol. 1 (repr. Jerusalem, 1984), fol. 4b (introduction). 34. R. Joseph Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man (Philadelphia, 1983), 99. For these citations in fuller context, cf. Jonathan Sacks, “Creativity and Innovation in Halakhah,” in Rabbinic Authority and Personal Autonomy, ed. M. Sokol (Northvale, 1992), 146–147. 35. Cf. Michael Rosenzweig, “Personal Inititative and Creativity in ‘Avodat haShem,” The Torah u-Madda Journal 1 (1989), 77–83.
Talmudic Stories and Their Rewards Jeffrey L. Rubenstein
I study Talmud for a great many reasons. The incredibly complex legal discussions pose a great intellectual challenge. The relentless search for the sources and origins of laws testifies to a passion to probe to ultimate truths and to set matters straight that I admire and strive to emulate. The rich discussions of Jewish beliefs and practices help me to understand and appreciate my faith. Among the over two thousand folios of Talmud one finds topics that range from the most prosaic to the most sublime and that cover almost every aspect of human experience. Apart from this diversity in content, the Talmud student encounters a dizzying diversity of genres: scriptural interpretation (midrash), stories, folklore, tall tales, liturgical compositions, homilies, poetry, maxims, dream interpretations, magical spells, genealogies, medicinal recipes, and more. For good reason, some scholars compare the Talmud to an anthology or an encyclopedia. Yet such characterizations do not really do justice to the range of material that the student of Talmud encounters. When I turn the page and begin to study a new folio of Talmud, I never know quite what to expect. That excitement at the Talmud’s potential to produce yet another surprise keeps me coming back for more. Above all, I am fascinated by the Talmud’s rich repertoire of stories, especially the biographical anecdotes about the sages, the same sages whose legal traditions appear throughout the Talmud’s discussions of law and ritual. I would guess that there are close to 1,000 such stories in the Talmud; most are terse accounts of an event or two, though some present more extended narratives that depict a series of episodes in a sage’s life. Even these longer narratives, however, rarely exceed a few hundred words. Like the rest of the Talmud, they were composed and transmitted orally until the middle 177
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ages and therefore formulated very tersely to facilitate memorization. The acting characters were generally historical figures, and some of the stories undoubtedly have historical kernels. But in their current forms the stories are closer to what we would call didactic fiction. They aim not to communicate “what actually happened” out of some dispassionate interest in the historical record, but rather to teach values, beliefs, and ideals. For this reason many of these stories appear in multiple versions in different rabbinic compilations as different storytellers changed and embellished the stories they received for their own purposes. Many of the stories display a sophisticated narrative art, involving reversals, wordplay, irony, symbolic names, tripartite structures, and other literary devices, which adds an aesthetic dimension to the reading. Some of the more complex stories express tensions of the rabbinic worldview for the rabbinic audience to ponder, providing sages a means to consider and evaluate significant difficulties of their culture. In most cases these stories still have much to teach and offer us a great deal to meditate upon. I would like to illustrate the richness of Talmudic stories with two readings, first a short discussion of a brief story and then a longer and sustained analysis of a more complex narrative. The brief story appears in Tractate Bava Qama, folio 50b. “Once a man was removing stones from his field [and putting them] into the public domain. A certain Hasid (Holy Man) came upon him and said, “Scoundrel! Why do you remove stones from a domain that does not belong to you [and put them] into your domain?” He [the man] laughed at him. After some time that man was in need and he sold his field. He was walking in that very place and he stumbled on those very stones. He said, “That Hasid (Holy Man) spoke well to me when he said, ‘Why do you remove stones from a domain that does not belong to you [and put them] into your domain.’”
When the reader first encounters this story I think he or she inevitably does a double take at the Hasid’s words: “Wait a minute! That is not what the man was doing at all. He was removing stones from his domain and throwing them into a domain that did not belong to him, the public domain.” Thus we begin by sharing the same perspective as the protagonist. And perhaps we would be inclined to do the same thing, to cast litter out of our back yards so as to be rid of the nuisance and thereafter to be able to enjoy the grass and plant flowers (though hopefully we would not laugh derisively at a Hasid). Only after we read the ending and decode the story do we realize that the Hasid’s words are true; in this way the storyteller effectively leads the audience to the same shift in perspective as the protagonist. When the man repeats the
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Hasid’s words to conclude the story, this time with understanding and appreciation, the audience likewise shares his new insight. The use of Sophoclean or dramatic irony makes the story particularly entertaining: seeking to avoid a particular situation (stumbling over rocks in his domain) the man ends up bringing it about (stumbling over rocks in his [true] domain). The storyteller could have had him learn the lesson in many different ways—slipping on a banana peel that someone else had thrown into the street. But the irony of stumbling on those very stones he discarded entails classic poetic justice: measure for measure—in rabbinic terms, middah keneged middah—the punishment perfectly fits the crime. This compact story communicates a number of lessons. Most simply, littering is a nuisance, and ultimately affects litterers, too. Put more generally, what goes around, comes around. Yet the core message derives from the words of the Hasid, emphasized by their repetition at the end. We naturally feel that our lawfully acquired property, especially real estate, is ours. Our land, our house, and everything in it are our possessions. They belong to us, and no one can take them away. Yet in truth circumstances can change rapidly. We are always vulnerable to swings in fortune. What we possess one day can be lost the next. Some things, however, can never be taken away from us—that which we share with all others. Public spaces, public parks, all public areas, paradoxically, are our true possessions, for we never can be deprived of them. The protagonist learns “the hard way” that wealth is ephemeral, but that which we own together with others endures. The story thus teaches a deeper insight into reality, into the true nature of things, over against superficial appearances. Many Talmudic stories have a similar dynamic, moving characters—together with the audience—from the conventional, simplistic view of reality to a deeper spiritual insight, often articulated by a sage, rabbi, Hasid, or wise man. Narratives provide a particularly effective—and enjoyable—way of communicating and receiving such insights of the sages. For it is one thing to have someone state or assert a lesson, and quite another to accept and believe it oneself. Through the process of decoding the story and learning along with the character, the audience comes to absorb the didactic point in a much more direct manner. In this way Talmudic stories help mold the readers’ moral and spiritual characters. In the remainder of this essay I will analyze a longer and more complex story from a variety of perspectives. The story appears in Tractate Menahot, folio 29b, in a section of Talmud that deals with the laws of writing Torah scrolls.The Talmud describes the calligraphy scribes must use, and requires that seven of the twenty two Hebrew letters (and two final forms of the seven, making nine total) be written with decorative marks or tags above them, which have the appearance of crowns, as can be seen in Figure 13.1.
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Figure 13.1. The Hebrew letters with “crowns.”
We then find the following story: [A] Rav Yehuda said that Rav said: At the time when Moses ascended on high [to receive the Torah] he found the Holy One, Blessed be He, sitting and tying crowns to the letters. He said before Him, “Master of the Universe! Who restrains your hand (from giving the Torah immediately, without the crowns)?” [B] He said to him, “There is a certain man who will live in the future at the end of some generations, and Akiba b. Yosef is his name, who will, in the future derive heaps and heaps of laws from all the tips [of the crowns of the letters].”
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[C1] He [Moses] said to him, “Master of the Universe! Show him to me.” He said to him, “Turn around.” [C2] He [Moses] went and sat at the end (sof) of eight rows of students, but he did not understand what they were saying. His strength failed him. When they came to a certain matter, his [Akiba’s] students said to him, “Master, how do you know this?” He said to them, “It is a law [given] to Moses at Sinai.” His [Moses’s] mind was settled. [C3] He [Moses] returned and came before the Holy One, blessed be He. He [Moses] said to him, “Master of the Universe! You have such a one in your world and you give the Torah by my hand?” [C4] He said to him, “Silence! Thus I have decided.” [D1] He [Moses] said before him, “Master of the Universe! You showed me his Torah. Show me his reward.” He said to him, “Turn around.” [D2] He [Moses] turned around. He saw them weighing his [Akiba’s] flesh in the meat-market. [D3] He said to him, “Master of the Universe! This is Torah and this is its reward?” [D4] He said to him, “Silence! Thus I have decided.”
This is one of my favorite Talmudic stories, one that I find fascinating and disturbing, enlightening and perplexing, in some respects straightforward and at the same time deceptively profound. Above all, I sense that it is a very, very honest text, where the rabbis essentially reveal to us their deepest feelings about two critical theological issues. It is also a very rich text that exemplifies many of the engaging characteristics of Talmudic stories. I will discuss this story from six different perspectives: (1) genre, (2) poetic and aural qualities (that is, how it sounds when read aloud), (3) literary structure, (4) the content, namely the theological issues it addresses, (5) biblical resonances, and (6) rabbinic intertexts, that is other Talmudic stories with which it shares ideas or language in common. (1) The genre, that is, the type or category of story. This story is unusual when compared to most Talmudic stories in that it stars both a biblical figure, Moses, and a rabbinic sage, Rabbi Akiba. There are two types of rabbinic stories: first, sage-stories, the biographical anecdotes telling of the lives and deeds of the sages that I mentioned above, and second, exegetical-stories, narratives constructed mainly from biblical interpretation that feature biblical characters as the protagonists. One rarely finds a story that involves both biblical and rabbinic figures as we have here. In other words, the story does not fall neatly into the two standard categories of Talmudic stories, which causes the alert reader to pay close attention. Now in order to bring together a biblical and a rabbinic figure the story resorts to a form of time-travel: Moses is transported into the future to two
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points in Rabbi Akiba’s life. He first takes a seat in R. Akiba’s academy and then witnesses Akiba’s martyrdom. So we could categorize this story as science fiction or fantasy or surreal, if we wished to be somewhat anachronistic. At all events, we have a very unusual story when considered over against the typical types of rabbinic stories. (2) The poetic and aural effects. Talmudic stories, like the rest of the Talmud, were originally transmitted orally. These stories, like the oral literature of most cultures, include repetitions, alliteration, rhyme, and other such techniques that we today tend to associate with poetry. Our story of Moses and R. Akiba has a particularly high density of these devices. Although it is always difficult to represent such effects in translation, one can get a general sense of some of them at least. The opening line (A) offers prominent repetition of the “sh” sound: be-sha-a she-alah Moshe lamarom, metsa-o lehaqadosh barukh hu she-yoshev ve-qosher . . . (At the time when Moses ascended on high, he found the Holy One, Blessed be He, sitting and tying . . . )
This sound in fact recurs throughout the story. Line C2 begins: halakh veyashav besof shemonah shurot. . . . tashash kokho (He went and sat at the end of eight rows. . . . his strength failed him.)
We also find a few rhymes: tashash kokho . . . nityashva da’ato (C2; his strength failed him /his mind was settled) shoqlin besaro bemequlin (D2; weighing his flesh in the meat-market)
There are a number of words repeated in different lines, sometimes in different linguistic forms, so as to create a type of literary cohesiveness by what we might call “verbal echoes.”2 (a) The story begins: “in the hour Moses ascended” (alah; A). It ends with God stating “thus it ascended (alah) in thought before me (translated as: thus I have decided; D4). (b) Moses finds God “sitting (yoshev) and tying crowns” (A); He goes and “sits (yoshev) behind eight rows” (C2). When he hears Akiba respond to the students that the law derives from Moses on Sinai “his mind was settled (nityashva),” from the same root (C2).
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(c) God tells Moses that there will be a man “at the end (sof) of some generations” (B). Then Moses sits “at the end (sof) of eight rows” (C2). (d) God tells Moses, “There is a certain man” (adam ehad) (B). In Akiba’s academy they come to “a certain matter” (davar ehad) (C2). (e) Moses first asks God “who restrains your hand,” (meakev al yadekha; A). And God says “there is a man” (adam . . . yesh) (B). When Moses sees Akiba, he asks why, if “there is such a man” (yesh . .adam), that God gives the Torah “by my hand” (al yadi; C3).
These alliterations, repetitions, and rhymes almost transform the story into a type of poetry, or at least create a poetic effect when reading it, and I think this contributes to the impact of the content, as I’ll explain later. (3) Literary Structure. Apart from these literary features, the story has a neat, two-part structure, which can be diagrammed as follows. [A] Rav Yehuda said that Rav said: At the time when Moses ascended on high . . . [B] He said to him, “There is a certain man . . . Textbox 13.1 [C1] He [Moses] said to him, “Master of the Universe! Show him to me.” He said to him, “Turn around.”
[D1] He [Moses] said before him, “Master of the Universe! You showed me his Torah. Show me his reward.” He said to him, “Turn around.”
[C2] He [Moses] went and sat at the end (sof) of eight rows of students...
[D2] He [Moses] turned around. He saw them weighing his (Akiba’s) flesh in the meat-market.
[C3] He [Moses] returned and came before [D3] He [Moses] said to him, “Master of the Holy One, blessed be He. He [Moses] the Universe! This is Torah and this is its reward?” said to him, “Master of the Universe! You have such a one in your world and you give the Torah by my hand?” [C4] He said to him, “Silence! Thus I have [D4] He said to him, “Silence! Thus I have decided.” decided.”
Note the parallel structure in sections C1–C4 and D1–D4, including the repeated language in C1/D1 and C4/D4: Moses requests to see R. Akiba twice, makes two visits to the future, asks God two questions in reaction to his visit, and receives two answers. And the two visits are recounted in much the same words.
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Clearly, then, we have a very deliberately organized and formulated story, where the form and content join to express the story’s meaning. (4) Content. The heart of the story grapples with two critical problems for rabbinic theology—and one of the reasons the story is so powerful is that it brings these two unrelated issues together in the same story. The first problem is the gap between the original revelation on Mt Sinai and the contemporary Torah of the rabbis of the Talmudic period. The storytellers are keenly aware that Torah has expanded and developed as each rabbinic generation has added interpretations, legal pronouncements, and explanations to the corpus of tradition. Because thousands of rabbinic sources include a name or attribution, such as “Rabbi So-and-so said,” which locate them in a specific historical era, any Talmudic sage would be conscious of the growth in the amount of rabbinic sources over time. The obvious fact of the expansion of Torah presents a theological difficulty in light of the rabbinic claim that the Oral Torah was revealed to Moses along with the written Torah. How can a tradition be part of the Torat Moshe, the “Torah of Moses,” and at the same time be attributed to a given sage. If “Rabbi Meir said suchand-such,” that would imply that no one made the statement until Rabbi Meir, and therefore it cannot go back to Moses. At the root of this issue lurks the problem of legitimacy: if rabbinic traditions originate in a sage, not with the Sinaitic revelation, what makes them authoritative? 3 The story gives concrete and almost literal expression to this difficulty by depicting Moses in a later rabbinic academy unable to understand the Torah being discussed. In very vivid terms, terms with which I think all rabbis could sympathize, the story imagines Moses sitting in the back of the room, eight rows behind the real action, far from the most respected and erudite rabbis. The storyteller describes a hierarchically ordered academy where students sit according to their abilities, the most knowledgeable sages towards the front, those knowing less Torah towards the back, a structure well known from other Talmudic sources. Since all sages presumably started out, at the beginning of their academic careers, as aspiring students seated in those very back rows, straining to understand the brilliant arguments of the most senior scholars at the front of the room, they all would probably feel a certain kinship with the Moses of the story. Just as they themselves used to experience frustration, perplexity, lack of self-confidence, anxiety, despair during their debut in the academy, so too Moses “did not understand what they were saying,” and consequently his “strength failed him.” But for Moses the problem is even more acute than for the beginning student, as his failure to follow the discussion is not a function of youth, or inexperience, or need to accumulate the requisite breadth of knowledge, but results from the fact that the Torah he now hears simply does not exist in his own time. This incredible scene is in
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part why I see the story as being so honest. The rabbis candidly and explicitly concede here that the Torah of their times—the “Torah of Moses” they know and love—would be unintelligible to Moses himself. And they don’t just acknowledge this idea in some theoretical way, but portray it in real flesh and blood, so to speak. The story resolves this theological difficulty by insisting that the expanded and developed Torah of the rabbinic era somehow inheres in the original Torah revealed to Moses. Although Moses cannot understand the subject, R. Akiba asserts that the matter is nonetheless a “law revealed to Moses on Sinai.” Now the text does not use the term “paradox,” but I think that it gives expression to that idea. Rabbinic Torah is Moses’s Torah, on the one hand, although, on the other, it is also not Moses’s Torah. Moses can’t understand it, but it devolves from him. The paradox is embodied in the figure of the crowns that God attaches to the letters, illustrated above. Though purely ornamental, the storyteller imagines that R. Akiba is able to find meaning in the linear markings and base new teachings upon them. The crowns, therefore, are both part of the original revelation, adorning the letters of the Torah that Moses receives, and at the same time constitute the foundation for R. Akiba’s “heaps and heaps” of laws. Later rabbinic interpretations inhere in the Sinaitic revelation, the Torah of Moses, even though Moses has no knowledge of them when he receives the Torah. Moses’s Torah, in other words, contains both original Torah and potential Torah, and Akiba, together with later rabbis, flesh out the potential of Moses’s original. Yet this attempt to moderate or rationalize the paradox simply leads to a different paradox. For we could fairly ask, as Moses almost explicitly does, why should God put the crowns there in the first place? Something “restrains God’s hand,” from giving the Torah without the crowns, without the potential, namely the rabbis who will expand and interpret Torah in their own way. So we are not dealing with a case like that of a tree that has the potential to grow out of an acorn, where we might say that the tree, though not present in the original creation of the acorn, somehow inheres in it. Nor are we dealing with a case like geometry, where a limited set of axioms give rise to all sorts of complex theorems. Here we might fairly say that the theorems inhere in those axioms, and potentially can be derived from the axioms by later thinkers who generate proof after proof and so expand the corpus of geometrical knowledge. In our case, by contrast, God essentially acknowledges that he adds the crowns because Akiba will expound heaps of new laws. The crowns are not placed to provide rabbis the opportunity to generate new laws, but are a result of the expanded corpus of Torah that God knows the rabbis will formulate. This, I believe, is the sense of the question, “who restrains your hand”—who prevents you? R. Akiba and other rabbis prevent God from giving
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the Torah without the crowns due to the nature of their activity. If we see this story as about the Torah’s potential, it is a very odd type of potential, for the potential is a function of the end, not the other way around, and we are back to our paradox. From another point of view, this paradox devolves from the paradoxical relationship between God and time. For God, who transcends time, the past, present, and future are one.4 So Akiba and his activity are already present in the transcendent divine purview, even though they do not yet exist for Moses and the Torah as revealed to him. God knows the (future) rabbinic Torah and feels compelled, me’akev—“prevented or constrained” as it were, to produce a Torah for Moses that accommodates Akiba. Like all matters of time travel— what if a man travels to the past and kills his grandfather?—we confront a type of paradox. The story seems to be keenly aware of the temporal paradox in its conflicted use of tenses: “There is a certain man, who will live in the future at the end of some generations, and Akiba b. Yosef is his name, who will, in the future derive . . . (B).” There is a man, now, in God’s meta-temporal view, who “will live, in the future, at the end of many generations” (in our time-limited perspective), and Akiba b. Yosef is his name, for God, for whom the future is present, “who will, in the future, derive heaps and heaps—the future for Moses again.5 From this perspective it makes little sense to see the issue in terms of potential Torah or the expansion and development of Torah, for Akiba’s Torah is as present as Moses’s, and we can understand the need to add the crowns. But we have simply replaced one paradox with another, and remain as befuddled as Moses, who, when, momentarily allowed to transcend time, found himself perplexed by R. Akiba’s discussion. At all events, up to this point the story has a happy and somewhat playful tone. Moses seems satisfied when Akiba attributes the authority of the law to him, even if he cannot understand the details—“his mind was settled.” The students appear to be satisfied with Akiba’s claim. I imagine Akiba is satisfied to have parried the students’ challenge. And perhaps the audience would have been satisfied to have an important theological issue addressed and grappled with in a fascinating way. If only the story ended here, everything would be well. Alas, Moses cannot let it rest at that. He asks another question: why did God give the Torah through him, if he does not even deserve to sit in the last rows of Akiba’s academy? With this question the story shifts to the question of reward or merit, and therefore inevitably, of the opposite, punishment: sekhar ve-onesh, theodicy (the question of God’s justice), a second, and quite different, theological issue. And the tenor of the story immediately starts to shift. If I could speak to Moses I would say, “Moses, why did you have to do it? No, you couldn’t be satisfied with one answer. You had to push onward. You never know when to stop, do you? You just had to ask. Now look what
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you’ve done. Everybody was happy. Everything was fine. And you went and messed it up.” God’s answer to the new issue, “Silence! Thus I have decided,” literally, “thus it came up in thought before me,” marks the shift in the tenor of the story. As opposed to his answer to Moses’s first question, the rather detailed explanation of Akiba and his activity, God gives no answer. Indeed, his response, shtok, “silence!” with the sense of “shut up,” is mean-spirited and cold. No longer are God and Moses the partners they seem to be at the beginning of the story, with God inviting Moses in to see his work-in-progress: now they are master and slave, the master owing his slave neither explanation nor courtesy. Once again, Moses cannot leave it at that, and proceeds to make another demand and ask another question. And I would say much the same things to him that I said before, in a much stronger fashion, as here he really goes too far in asking to see Rabbi Akiba’s ultimate fate. The vision of Akiba’s agonizing, tortured death clearly draws on the famous rabbinic tradition of Akiba’s martyrdom, that the Romans flayed him to death with iron combs, tearing off his flesh, to which it adds the ultimate ignominy, that they then sold his flesh in markets, presumably as food for dogs. With Moses’s third question the tenor of the story shifts once more: “This is Torah and this is the reward?” We feel a palpable sense of astonishment tinged with anguish, objection, perplexity, perhaps even anger. When God again answers Moses shtok, “silence!” the image of master and slave is nuanced as that of a capricious master who coldly watches the death of one slave with no care to explain why to the others. For this reason the ending is so chilling. Not only does Moses receive no answer, but he—and with him, we—are left to wonder whether the same thing could just as easily happen to us. The inscrutability of theodicy is underscored by the parallel language and structure that I delineated above—Moses’s two questions and God’s two responses, C1–C4 vs. D1–D4. Despite Akiba’s greater mastery of Torah, God gives the Torah through Moses. Therefore merit or reward (sekhar) is arbitrary and undeserved. Despite Akiba’s greatness in Torah, he endures horrible suffering and a degrading death. Therefore punishment is arbitrary and undeserved. God simply decides and gives no explanation. The story thus fails to provide a satisfactory answer, or really any answer, to the second theological problem it raises, that of theodicy. We have then a pointed contrast between the way the story addresses the two theological issues in the two halves of the story. The first half of the story provides an elegant and creative, if paradoxical, resolution to the issue of the expanded rabbinic Torah as opposed to its original Sinaitic form. The second half provides no solution to the problem of theodicy. And consider
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how different the depiction of God in the two halves. In the first half God explains to Moses why he adds crowns. And God’s reason, the interpretations that Akiba will produce, embodies a deep respect for the human intellect, recognizing that humans participate in a type of partnership with God in producing new Torah. In the second half, we have the unresponsive, apparently arbitrary, deity who commands Moses to shut up. This leaves us with a second paradox in that both halves of the story show sides of the same God. How can the caring, thoughtful, respectful God who adds the crowns be the same as the capricious and unresponsive God who silences Moses? And what are we to make of the myriad biblical and rabbinic passages contained in that very Torah God now reveals to Moses about God being the God of justice, rewarding the good and punishing the evil, to say nothing of the sources about God’s mercy, his rahamim. Yet somehow, paradoxically, it is the same God. And this is where I see the literary structure and poetic qualities delineated above enhancing the content. For the precise, balanced structure and repeated language unifies the halves of the story into a single account, emphasizing that these are two sides of the same God, two moments in the ongoing relationship between Moses (and Moses’s people) and the Almighty. (5) Let me shift now to what I call biblical resonances. This story can be seen as a midrash of sorts, a rabbinic retelling, of Exodus 33:12–23, one of the brief conversations Moses has with God in the aftermath of the affair of the molten calf, just before God carves the second set of the tablets.6 The biblical verses (with some ellipses) are on the left, the corresponding parts of the story on the right.
Textbox 13.2 (Exodus 33:12–13) Moses said... “Pray let me know Your ways, that I may know You and continue in Your favor.”
(A) Who restrains your hand? (=why do you attach crowns?) (C1)...Show him to me!
(14) And He said, “My face will go and I will lighten your burden....”
(C2) God shows Moses Akiba’s academy.
(17) For you have truly gained My favor and I have singled you out by name.”
(C3) You have such a one in this world yet you give the Torah through me (=Moses’s merit).
(18) He said, “Oh, let me behold (hareini) (D1) Show me (hareihu) his reward. Your presence!”
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[D2] He saw them weighing his (Akiba’s) (19) And He answered, “I will make all flesh in the meat-market. My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim before you the name of the Lord, and I will grant the grace that I will grant and show the compassion that I will show. (20) But, He said, you cannot see My face, for man may not see Me and live.”
(C4/D4) Silence, Thus I have decided.
(23) Then I will take My hand away and you will see My back (ahorai); but My face must not be seen.
(C1/D1/D2) Turn around (literally: turn to your back; hazor le-ahorekha).
We are not dealing with a true exegetical narrative, that is, a rabbinic story generated through interpretation of the biblical verses, but with a much looser relationship to the biblical text. Yet the two narratives have many elements in common: both are set on Mt. Sinai; in both Moses makes two requests of God: in Exodus Moses asks, first, “Pray let me know your ways, that I may know you” (33:12–13) and second, “Oh, let me behold (hareini) Your presence!” In the Talmudic story Moses asks, first, about the crowns, and second, about merit/reward: why he merits being the agent of revelation while Akiba suffers such a death. In both accounts Moses’s second request is not answered, or at least not in the form he would like: he does not see God’s face in the Bible and gets no answer in the Talmud. Both stories thematize the issue of seeing/ showing: in the Bible Moses asks to see God’s face: hareini, “show me / let me behold.” In the Talmud Moses twice asks to see Akiba: “Show him to me” heraihu li, and “Show me his reward,” heraihu sekharo. And in both a response to Moses mentions the “back” or “behind”: in the Bible God tells Moses he can see God’s back (ahorai), whereas in the Talmud God thrice tells Moses to “turn around,” literally, turn to your back, hazor le-ahorekha. In the biblical account God also mentions that he has “singled Moses out,” the same idea implicit in Moses’s question in the Talmudic story: “You have such a one in your world and yet you give the Torah through me?” that is, you singled me out for this task. So I think we have grounds to see a type of rabbinic retelling, where the biblical text has influenced the Talmudic storyteller, providing the skeletal framework or deep structure of the Talmudic account. Yet there is additional reason to see the Talmudic story as a transformation of the biblical story. For some of the direct rabbinic commentaries (midrashim) on the biblical passage interpret Moses’s questions to relate to theodicy. The desire to “know” God’s “ways,” (derakhekha), easily can be interpreted as a desire to understand God’s way of governing the world, of
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reward and punishment. Moreover, in verse 19, when God mentions he will pass before Moses, he adds “and I will grant the grace that I will grant and show the compassion that I will show”—an obscure phrase, but one that may have to do with God’s mercy, hence theodicy. Let us look at one of these rabbinic traditions found elsewhere in the Talmud, in Tractate Berakhot 7b, a midrash interpreting Moses’s first request in Exod 33:12, Pray let me know your ways: R. Yohanan said in the name of R. Yose: Moses requested three things of the Holy One, Blessed be He, and He [God] granted them to him. . . . . [Third,] He requested that [God] make known the ways of the Holy One, Blessed be He, and He [God] granted it to him, as it says, Pray let me know your ways (Exod 33:12). He [Moses] said to Him: “Master of the Universe, Why do some righteous prosper and some righteous suffer, some wicked prosper and some wicked suffer?” He said to him, “Moses: A righteous man who prospers—this is a righteous man, the son of a righteous man. A righteous man who suffers—this is a righteous man, the son of a wicked man. . . .” And He [R. Yose] disagrees with R. Meir. For R. Meir said, “He [God] granted him [Moses] two, and refused one, as it says, And I will bestow the grace that I will bestow (Exod 33:19)—even if he is not deserving, and show the compassion that I will show (Exod 33:19)—even if he is not deserving.”
In this interpretation of the biblical account, Moses asked God three questions while on Mt Sinai, the third concerning the suffering of the righteous and the prospering of the wicked. For R. Yose, God answered this question by pointing to the deeds of the father as a relevant factor. The suffering of the righteous is vicarious punishment for the sins of their fathers, and so forth. For R. Meir, God did not answer Moses’s questions but simply stated that he takes mercy on whomever he likes, despite the fact that the person does not deserve such kindness. By implication God likewise punishes individuals though they do not deserve it. This response clearly has a great deal in common with our story’s perspective: God refuses to answer Moses’s question about reward and punishment, stating that he simply decided the fates. Similarly, the second question of Exod 33:18, “Oh, let me behold your presence,” is interpreted by certain rabbinic sources in terms of theodicy. Some rabbis, I believe, recoiled from the blatant anthropomorphism and preferred to understand the request to see God’s face (and the vision of God’s back) as a metaphoric “seeing” or comprehending of God’s ways. For example, we find in Midrash Tehillim #25:6: Thus said Moses to the Holy One, blessed be He: “Pray let me know your ways (Exod 33:12).” And He made them known to him, as it says, He made known
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his ways to Moses (Ps 103:7). [Moses said,] “Oh, let me behold your presence (Exod 33:18). Show me the method (middah) that you direct the world.” He said to him, “You are not able to comprehend my methods (middot).”
Moses can understand God’s ways, derakhav, as attested by another biblical verse found in Psalms, but cannot comprehend God’s middot, his methods. For this midrashic tradition, God denied Moses not a vision of his face, but an understanding of the methods by which He conducts the world. These methods (middot) in most rabbinic sources refer to middat ha-din and middat ha-rahamim, “the attributes of justice and mercy,” and therefore to reward and punishment.7 Our story may plausibly be seen along the lines of these traditions, as a retelling of Exod 33:12–23. While the midrashic traditions frame the question in general terms—for example, Moses asks why the righteous suffer in the source attributed to R. Yose in Tractate Berakhot 7b—the story concretizes and personalizes the question in terms of the specific reward of Moses and suffering of Akiba: why did these individuals receive the fate they did? In both the midrashic traditions and our story, Moses receives no answer. Awareness of the biblical framework, I believe, deepens our appreciation of the Talmudic story. The biblical passage embodies the climax of the revelatory experience. There is no more direct experience of the divine in all the Bible than Moses’s encounter, in the cleft of the rock, when Moses asks to see God in all his glory, and at least sees God’s back as he passes by. That the rabbis translate Moses’s request into a request to comprehend theodicy suggests that this was the most elusive aspect of God’s providence and embodied, for them, the climax of the revelatory experience. In the story, then, Moses is not asking about one of the many theological issues that may have concerned the rabbis; rather he asks about the most critical and confounding issue that comes closest at getting at the divine mind. And that he gets no answer in the rabbinic version—he at least sees God’s back in the Bible, whereas in the story he is basically turned back—to me indicates a deep rabbinic frustration over understanding theodicy. (6) Finally, let me mention a few of the many other rabbinic passages that share themes or ideas in common with the story. The rabbinic audience for whom the story was intended would have had many of these traditions in mind, and the awareness of these traditions would have enhanced their appreciation, and sharpened their interpretations, of the story. The opening to the story, “At the time when Moses ascended on high . . .” is the same formula we find in four other stories that imagine conversations between Moses and God, sometimes with the angels, too, when Moses
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received the Torah up on Mt Sinai.8 One of these stories begins almost in identical fashion to ours, though takes quite a different tack.9 At the time when Moses ascended on high he found the Holy One, blessed be He, tying crowns to letters
. He [God] said to him: “Moses, is there no peace in your land?” [I.e., why do you not greet me and say, “Peace / Shalom?” Is there no peace where you are from?] He said before Him, “Should a slave extend greetings to his Master?” [Rather, a slave should wait until spoken to.] He [God] said to him, “You should have helped me” [by wishing me success in my work]. Immediately he [Moses] said, “And now, let the Lord’s strength be great” (Num 14:17).
Here, too, Moses ascends Mt Sinai and finds God attaching crowns to letters. But he says nothing, explaining, when God asks after his silence, that he, a lowly slave, has no business initiating conversation with the Almighty. A later version of this text reads explicitly, “and Moses kept silent,” which I have set in the pointed brackets above.10 From God’s response—“you should have helped me”—we learn that God has a much higher opinion of Moses than he has of himself, and Moses takes the message to heart, assisting, as it were, in the production of the Torah. This theme of Moses’s great stature and God’s respect for Moses runs through the other three stories in Tractate Shabbat. In our story, however, we have a substantially different depiction of Moses and of God’s relationship to him. The first half of the story depicts Moses as somewhat simple, perhaps naïve, unable to understand the complex discussions of Torah. He stands in contrast with the great R. Akiba and admits his inferiority. And in the second half of the story God tells Moses to keep silent, diametrically opposite to the tradition in Tractate Shabbat, where God objects to Moses’s silence and encourages him to speak. In our story Moses is the slave who has no business speaking before the Master, the very idea that the tradition in Shabbat rejects. I believe our audience would take note of the contrast and sense once more the highly unusual nature of our story. Another Talmudic tradition that our story evokes is that of the martyrdom of R. Akiba: the picture of Akiba’s gruesome death draws almost directly on that account. But there is also a more subtle allusion to the martyrdom tradition. For the Talmud’s version of Akiba’s martyrdom, found at Tractate Berakhot 61b, concludes with the angels protesting to God, “This is the Torah and this is its reward?” the same protest Moses makes in our story. However, in that story God answers the angels by citing Psalms 17:14 “his portion is life,” and then a bat qol, a heavenly voice, states, “Happy are you Rabbi Akiba, for you are invited to life in the world to come!” This ending raises the theodicy issue but immediately resolves it
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in a straightforward and standard way: R. Akiba indeed receives reward for his Torah, and God makes known that fact both to the angels through his answer to their question, and to humans through the heavenly voice. This solution is standard rabbinic theology: rewards and punishments materialize in the next world; hence the suffering of the righteous and flourishing of the wicked in this world should not occasion surprise, and perhaps should be expected. The righteous suffer in this world to pay off their few sins so as to receive consummate reward in the next world, and vice versa for the wicked. How sharp the contrast presented by our story! The same objection to R. Akiba’s unjust death receives no answer, and the problem of theodicy remains acute. God shuts off the question and provides neither explanation nor comfort. Let me sum up and say that above all, I like this text because I feel it presents an honest expression of the rabbinic bafflement at the problem of theodicy. The rabbis can offer some insight into the theological conundrum of the ever-expanding rabbinic Torah over against the Torah revealed to Moses, but they can make no sense of theodicy. They don’t give us facile solutions or stock answers, as in the tradition of R. Akiba’s martyrdom found in Tractate Berakhot, of the sort I imagine they would have preached to the public. Here I feel we are privy to the dark worries and inner theological crises that the rabbis would have only shared with their peers. In fact the poetic qualities noted above—the alliterations, rhymes, and repetitions—give the sense of a liturgical composition or prayer of sorts. I would even venture to suggest that the story be seen as a type of protest, as we find in some of the Psalms,11 perhaps the rabbis are sharing their dismay at the suffering of the righteous to God himself. They don’t like it, and can’t explain it, and express their perplexity in this fascinating narrative. In this way they provide generations of rabbis and rabbinical students a way to confront, ponder, and grapple with the problem of theodicy as they strive to interpret this story among the other rabbinic traditions that bear on the same issue. Talmudic stories are extremely rich texts that provide a wonderful portal through which to enter the world of the sages. They offer a good sense of Talmudic ideas, values, perspectives, fears, desires, and preoccupations, and also of the theological, moral, and political tensions with which the rabbis grappled. These stories, as I have tried to show here, are by no means simple or straightforward. To interpret them always poses a challenge, and demands that one view them from several different angles and in light of other biblical and Talmudic passages. As the rabbis say, “According to the labor is the reward.”12 For those who rise to the challenge and engage the stories in all their complexity, the reward is proportionately great.
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ENDNOTES 1. This famous story has been analyzed by many scholars, and I have drawn a great deal from these previous studies. See in particular Yonah Fraenkel, “Hermeneutic Problems in the Study of the Aggadic Narrative,” Tarbiz 47 (1978), 139–172 (Hebrew); Nachman Levine, “Reading Crowned Letters and Semiotic Silences in Menachot 29b,” Journal of Jewish Studies 53 (2002), 35–48. 2. See Levine, “Reading Crowned Letters,” 37–38. 3. This issue, to a certain extent, applies to many religions that locate revelation or foundational teaching in the distant past but inevitably have changed and developed over the course of history. Are the current teachings of the Church identical to the teachings of Jesus and the apostles, and if not, what gives contemporary pronouncements their authority? Does the instruction of later clerics deviate from the original revelation to Mohammed contained in the Koran, and how can such tensions be explained? Of course many a reform movement throughout history has been born out of precisely this contention and zeal to return to a way of life more consonant with the authentic teachings of their founder. 4. See e.g. the prayer, Adon Olam, “He is, and He was, and He will be in glory”; and the Additional Prayer (musaf amida) for Rosh HaShana: “Everything is revealed before you, Lord our God. You perceive and foresee the generations to the end of time.” 5. See Fraenkel, “Hermeneutic Problems,” 166. 6. In seeing the Talmudic story as a midrash on Exodus 33 I am following a suggestion of Menahem Fisch in his book, Rational Rabbis: Science and Talmudic Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 192–95. 7. The term middotai (my “methods” or “attributes”) is sometimes shorthand for middat ha-rahamim and middat ha-din (“the attribute of mercy” / “attribute of justice”). Thus the phrase, “to question my methods” (hirher ahar midotai), means to question God’s justice. See e.g. Bava Batra 15b–16a. 8. Three of the stories appear within a lengthy aggadic passage in Tractate Shabbat 88b–89a, together with a story that begins with a variation of this formula, “At the time when Moses descended before the Holy One, blessed be He.” The fourth story appears in Sanhedrin 111a. On the stories in Shabbat see the analysis of Joshua Levinson, The Twice Told Tale (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005), 282–290 (Hebrew). 9. Cited by Fraenkel, “Hermeneutic Problems,” 172. 10. Midrash Aggadah to Num 14:17, ed. Salomon Buber (Vienna, 1894), 2:109. 11. See e.g. Psalms 13:2–4 “How long, O Lord: will you ignore me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long will I have cares on my mind, grief in my heart all day.” (NJPS translation); Psalms 22:2–3; 44:10–16, etc. 12. Mishnah Avot 5:25.
The Shiva Barry Wimpfheimer
As a child, I secretly loved Shiva houses. From an early age my father would take me to weekday morning minyan in synagogue. Services at synagogue took forty-five minutes on Mondays and Thursdays and thirty minutes the rest of the week; the extra fifteen minutes on Monday and Thursday was a function of Torah reading and the recitation of a longer version of tahanun. Shiva house services represented a break from the monotony of synagogue routine, the elimination of tahanun and, invariably, a pastry secreted into my possession by one of the relatives assigned kitchen duty. The Shiva houses of my youth bequeathed me a perpetual passion for apricot Danish and chocolate babka. Shiva houses are remarkable for the intimacies they both preclude and promote. The rituals of Shiva deny grieving mourners the familial intimacy that loss encourages while encouraging a communal intimacy that is forced and, sometimes as a result, uncomfortable. Shiva transforms private salons into public spaces, in effect bringing the synagogue into the home. The metamorphosis of living room into synagogue exposes a family’s aesthetic taste and displayed photographs to voyeuristic friends and neighbors. Parties to a Shiva conversation are sometimes barely acquainted; such conversations feel forced. And then there are the chairs. Designed to keep the mourner low to the ground, they also situate the mourner’s ear at mouth height, encouraging the privacy of a whisper. In adulthood, I have found visits to Shiva houses anxiety-provoking and stressful, fraught with concerns over my relationship with the mourner. The intimacy provokes within me a self-examination regarding my standing in the room: “Does the mourner want me here?”—“Why did I come?” And then there are the complicated customs that govern all manner of interactions at a 195
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Shiva. Though I am an Orthodox rabbi whose studies for ordination included a specific exam on the laws of mourning, I visit Shiva houses with the fear that I have forgotten one of the particulars or that I will be asked to perform some basic rite that’s technique eludes me. Even when I remember the rules and the rites, I often fail to appropriately take the pulse of the room. In college, I once attended morning services at the Shiva house of a friend who had regularly hosted me while I was a student in Israel. Eager to repay the warmth of his hospitality, I sat down after services to console the mourner. I failed to notice either the looks of incredulity that graced me or my exclusive seated position. When one of the relatives leaned over and whispered in my ear, I finally realized. As this was the last day of the week, the mourners would be permitted to end their Shiva as soon as the comforters, myself included, had gone. A Shiva house was the setting for a fascinating conversation I had about Talmud. For much of my adult life I have lived on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and attended Congregation Ramath Orah (CRO), a synagogue that’s name reflects its heritage as the synagogue of Luxembourg refugees. In my college years, CRO could barely sustain its morning minyan, held in a narrow vestibule to avoid high energy bills; the few of us in attendance tried to stay warm while avoiding the hot air blowers that singed if you accidentally found yourself in their paths. Around the time I graduated college, the insolvent synagogue was forced to sell its air rights to Columbia University. During the difficult years, CRO cycled through rabbis on a near annual basis. The new rabbis were unable—in the eyes of the old-timers—to live up to the legacy of founding Rabbi Serebrenick, and the synagogue was unable—in the eyes of young rabbis to properly compensate those who took on the impossible task. In my first year of rabbinical school, CRO hired another new rabbi—Rabbi Steven Friedman—as its spiritual leader. Steve was a real estate lawyer in a small law firm. A graduate of Columbia Law School, he was trying the rabbinate while still maintaining his day job. The demands of his schedule often forced Rabbi Friedman to extemporize in his speeches and divre Torah. Sometimes the content was brilliant and sometimes less so, but it was always said with a smile that projects an undeniable inner love for Judaism, Jews, and Torah. It was difficult for Rabbi Friedman to juggle his two positions, but bachelorhood, smoking, and a fierce commitment to exercise gave him boundless energy and the essential rabbinic quality of making time for anyone who needed it—or even just wanted it. The synagogue was magically transformed under Steve’s leadership and a few years later the rabbi met and married his wife, Nechama, whose father, Rabbi Joshua Fishman, was then the executive vice president of Torah U’Mesorah—the Orthodox umbrella organization that promotes Jewish day schools.
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When Steve lost his mother, I paid a Shiva visit at his sister’s house in Teaneck. I had received my Ph.D. and was on faculty at Penn State, a fourhour drive from the Upper West Side. On Mondays, I would drive to State College, Pennsylvania, before class in the morning, and I would return on Wednesdays after class ended around noon. I stopped in Teaneck on a Wednesday afternoon after having driven for three and a half hours. As my eyes adjusted to the absence of vehicular motion, I sat quietly in the second row listening to a conversation about the deceased; I had never met Steve’s mother and was intrigued by stories of her charm, energy, and inner strength. The room was not overly full, but that was to be expected on a weekday afternoon. Most of the people in the room were unknown to me; a couple of Ramath Orah congregants dotted the front row. After a few minutes, most of the visitors seated in the first row uttered the formula that functions as secret code for departing a Shiva house: “may God comfort you among those who mourn Zion and Jerusalem.” With the departure of the first row, conversation responsibilities fell to the second row, where I sat next to Rabbi Fishman and one of his sons, a rabbi who teaches at a yeshiva in the Haredi outpost of Waterbury, Connecticut. Both of the rabbis Fishman donned the black hat and dark blazers that signals their ultraOrthodox community affiliation. I was returning from lecturing at Penn State in my black knit kippah, fashionably fitted suit, and blue oxford with no tie. I had been raised an Orthodox Jew within an idiosyncratic German Jewish community whose identity is torn between modern and ultra Orthodoxies. I attended ultra-Orthodox summer camp and ultra-Orthodox elementary school, but my high school was affiliated with Yeshiva University, the flagship institution of modern Orthodoxy. During my two post-high school years in an Israeli yeshiva I managed to become, after the Israeli fashion, both more fundamentalist in all senses of personal observance, and more explicitly identified with modern Orthodoxy. Modern Orthodoxy in Israel has itself evolved a different type of Haredism—what Israelis call “nationalist Haredism.” Members of this group are punctiliously observant to the formal letter of the law and are equal to their Haredi counterparts in their commitment to lerning as one’s paramount activity. My years in Israeli yeshiva triggered within me an obsession to study Talmud whenever possible; time not spent on Talmud was time wasted. Bittul Torah was Bittul Zman. During the years of my post-Israel Haredi period, I was ambivalent about American Haredim. Obsessive Talmud study and an iconoclastic teacher had given me an outsized confidence in both my own abilities to study Talmud and the breadth of my scholarly knowledge. Though I often found myself drawn to Haredim for their similar attention to observance and Talmud, I invariably left such encounters unsatisfied, feeling as though my own commitment was
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under question; I was always an outsider seeking approval and the approval I received was never total. What disturbed me more than the failure to receive total approval was the very notion of judgment that seemed the basis of all such encounters; Haredi culture, as any reader of The Jewish Observer or Jewish Press is aware, can be profoundly judgmental. One of Steve Friedman’s remarkable traits is his refusal to judge. It is this refusal to judge that has allowed Steve to open Ramath Orah’s doors to those marginal folks who usually feel excluded prima facie from Orthodoxy. Women rabbis of other denominations, intermarried couples, gay men and women have all graced CRO’s heavily lacquered red pews over the years, and none has been excluded (beyond the ordinary exclusion of women) from either ritual participation or public speaking opportunities. Ever the rabbi, Steve strove to break the silence in the Shiva house by facilitating a conversation between his male in-laws and me. With his nonjudgmental smile and his curiosity for all learning, Steve gleefully told his wife’s family that I was a professor of Talmud. He recited a brief version of my vita, particularly highlighting the Orthodox components of that list: my ordination at Yeshiva University, my years in Yeshivat Shaalvim in Israel, my summers in Camp Munk, my time in the rabbinate. Gone were my association with Partnership Minyanim—the latest feminist challenge to Orthodox ritual—or the fact that I had recently ceased to wear the “jacket and hat” Haredi uniform to synagogue. The contours of this conversation scared me. It was avoiding these moments that had encouraged me to shift professional course from the rabbinate to academia. Academic life offers (at least in theory) complete freedom from the kinds of religio-political encounters I was presently having. Years of small cuts experienced while operating within the Orthodox world have left deep scars, and I am fearful of entering a dialogue in which my identity—intimately tied up with my work—can be called into question and judged. Though the rabbis speak pluralistically of multiple divine truths and seventy different ways to study Torah, I had rarely encountered such acceptance in contemporary Orthodoxy. The conversation began, naturally, with some Jewish geography. Rabbi Fishman knew my father, a board member of Torah U’mesorah. Connections were made with my doctor-vater, Rabbi Dr. David Weiss Halivni, who had long ago studied in Yeshivas Chaim Berlin, a Haredi yeshiva in Brooklyn where Rabbi Fishman had also been a student. But the pleasantries soon gave way to more serious conversation. The serious conversation began, naturally, with a joke. Rabbi Fishman asked me if I knew the difference between traditional and academic study. Without awaiting my reply, Rabbi Fishman related the familiar joke that “we study what Rava and Abaye said, while they study what
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Rava and Abaye wore.” The third person plural “they” was a politeness on his part; in this conversation, the “you” was implied. Like all joking observations, there is merit behind the comedy. Academics take a much broader interest in rabbinic culture than traditional scholars. There is a small subset of academics, of which Daniel Sperber is the most notable contemporary author, who specialize in the material aspects of rabbinic culture sometimes called by the shorthand term “realia.” The joke accurately reflects the greater interest among traditional scholars in the ideas of the Talmud rather than its history. The traditional disinterest in amoraic wardrobe issues is of a piece with a widespread deliberate ignorance among traditional readers of a host of historical questions: the respective dating of individual scholars among the tannaim or amoraim, the cultural context of Palestine or Babylonia, and the various lower critical concerns that complicate a contemporary scholar’s relationship with any ancient text. The deliberate ignorance about this last point—the problem of establishing the very text of the Talmud itself—receives imprimatur from a well-circulated responsum of the twentieth-century rabbinic authority Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, the famed Hazon Ish, that justifies this refusal on theological grounds. The text of the Vilna Shas (the dominant print edition of the Talmud), Hazon Ish claims, is a function of divine providence; attempts to recover variant readings from medieval manuscripts or earlier editions undermine one’s faith. In our conversation the joke was told with a smile; it was a joke after all. But I interpreted it as passive-aggressive and hostile. My partner in dialogue was letting me know through the joke that my knowledge and lerning were irrelevant to him. The joke bespeaks the palpable danger of proximity. As any Chaim Potok reader knows, insiders can be quite fearful of the knowledge just beyond communal boundaries that they refuse to acquire. I responded to his hostility by increasing the proximity of academic study to traditional study. I conceded that academics take an interest in material culture, but confessed that the joke actually oversells what we know. We would love to know more about rabbinic wardrobe issues. The problem for academics who study the Babylonian Talmud is that we do not have enough external data. Almost all of our knowledge of the period comes from reading the Talmud for its internal evidence. The upshot is that traditional scholars and academics are basically studying the same texts. When we study those texts, I noted, we invariably encounter many of the same problems that traditional readers, especially medieval commentators, do. While we occasionally have different solutions available to us than those at the disposal of traditional readers, we often draw support for our project from the questions and insights of traditional readers and many of our works of scholarship (here I identified
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the work of my two mentors, David Weiss Halivni and Shamma Friedman) are structured as commentaries akin to traditional ones. The joke highlights an area of Talmudic research—realia—that seems vapid to the yeshiva student because it is antithetical to the depth of conceptual thought that Talmudic analysis is traditionally presumed to entail. But even the seemingly vapid, I observed to my interlocutor, can be invaluable. Any reading of Sperber’s scholarship—I am thinking most specifically of his work on the historical difference in the relative markets of gold and silver in Rabbinic Palestine that completely resolves a fundamental problem in a Mishnah in Bava Metzia—demonstrates the degree to which understandings of material culture can be necessary for basic understanding of certain debates and discussions. One could struggle, as traditional scholars do, to reconcile the Mishnah that elevates silver over gold with an opposite tradition that considers gold more valuable, but without understanding historical commodity values in the period, it is an impossible struggle to make these sources cohere. The insights of material culture clear away distractions, enabling stronger conceptual analysis of the Talmud. By this token, I continued, traditional students should be interested in what Abaye and Rava wore since that assists our understanding of the laws of Tzitzit, Shaatnez, or carrying on Shabbat. I was familiar with Rabbi Fishman’s joke long before our conversation at the Shiva, and had long marveled at its targeting of realia. If I could invent my own coming-of-age-in Talmud biography I would gravitate toward a conversion experience in which a piece of material culture opened my eyes to Talmud criticism. Realia work is, in my mind, so game changing that it lends itself to that kind of narrative. Unfortunately for me, my own transformation from traditional yeshiva bohur to academic critic is a less sudden and more circuitous story. As a child I was a voracious reader and my literary diet consisted of an alternating pattern of Western literary classics and Artscroll hagiographies; Tale of Two Cities was followed by Chofetz Chaim which was followed by Les Miserables (not the musical version) which was followed by Reb Elchonon. The Artscroll hagiographies of great rabbis from the last generations of preShoah Europe have long been parodied for their patterned narrative: the great rabbi is identified as brilliant in youth and becomes widely recognized Talmud scholar by early adulthood, using that position as a platform for community leadership. While the pattern leaves something to be desired in terms of historical accuracy, it is a perfect vehicle for communicating cultural values. As a child I internalized their valuing of the Talmud as the benchmark of true knowledge and, perhaps disturbingly, true value. These were the narratives presented to us as beginner students of Talmud in primary school in order to encourage the tedious drilling of Aramaic key phrases that helped us
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achieve the goal of reading the Talmud by our bar mitzvahs. As with much of the content taught in Orthodox primary school, these narratives were neither eclipsed by nor replaced with more mature fare as we grew older. Yeshiva University High School exposed me for the first time to higher level Talmud analysis. I had no intellectual critique of the traditional interpretations we were fed in high school, unless boredom counts as critique. After high school I went off to study Talmud at a yeshiva in Israel primarily because that was expected. During most of my first year in Yeshivat Sha’alvim, I slogged through the tedium of studying Talmud without either serious challenge, engagement, or the plan of continuing to study after the year was over. I was looking forward to Ivy League college and, finally, my freedom from Talmud study. My yeshiva in Israel had us studying Talmud three Sedarim (periods) a day. Each period was at least two hours long and most of them were dedicated to the study of a single passage. The older students who had stuck around the yeshiva for a second year were inexplicably (to my mind) unsatisfied with the mandatory study time and would stick around after closing time (10:30pm) until they were too tired to continue. During that first week, I envied a peer who had gotten a stomach bug upon arrival and was holed up in the dormitory reading old novels and sports magazines. Towards the end of my year in Israel I began studying with Rav Shmuel Nacham, an iconoclastic teacher whose reputation for fostering insularity and loyalty among his students preceded him. One of the central features of Rav Nacham’s class culture was an intellectual elitism that made remaining in the class a psychological struggle for those not specifically recruited by the teacher; the psychological warfare Rav Nacham engaged in with a peer who had come to the yeshiva specifically to study with him was both inexcusable and sadistically entertaining. Before he recruited me for his class, Rav Nacham tested me. After inviting me to join his family for a home-cooked dinner one Friday night, Rav Nacham pulled out tractate Bava Metzia and asked me to make sense of the opening Rashi. When I successfully demonstrated both careful attention to precise wording and a refusal to speak in the patterned jargon of higher level traditional Talmud study, I was in. For the duration of the year I began for the first time to appreciate the exercise of Talmud study and to find it satisfying. The beauty of Rav Nacham’s methodology, to my mind, was its insistence (directly connected to the iconoclasm) of clearing the mind of preconceptions and reading the texts on the page. This seemingly simple and even banal approach was novel in comparison with the traditional approaches I had been fed up to that point in both high school and yeshiva. Rav Nacham’s approach was historical not for ideological reasons but because it makes sense to comprehend a complicated
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rabbinic legal literature by beginning with the earliest and most compact of its texts before progressing to successive levels that build on top of one another. The use of parallel Rabbinic texts likewise makes sense as a solid way of illuminating what an ambiguous Talmudic text means. When Rav Nacham was able to use this approach to parse the various medieval commentaries that form the basic fare of traditional study, I was hooked. Things that had always seemed random, scattered, and without rigor within the traditional approach now presented themselves to me as ordered, logical, and having a complexity worth working to appreciate. My satisfaction in Rav Nacham’s class encouraged my return for a second year at yeshiva before college. While in college I attended a traditional Talmud shiur at Yeshiva University but always studied with another Rav Nacham student with whom I continued to approach the Talmud as I had been taught; I was sometimes unprepared for the approach of the traditional shiur, and sometimes the analyses proffered offended my sensibilities. After college, I returned to study with Rav Nacham for a third year and a remarkable convergence took place. While my wife was enrolled as an undergraduate in Hebrew University’s Talmud department and I was studying in yeshiva I began to notice that many of Rav Nacham’s Israeli students were the sons of academics in Rabbinics and Mishpat Ivri (Jewish Law). These students and other savvy Israelis were secretly reading Halivni, Friedman, and Sperber either in the basement library or beneath their beit midrash shtenders. As I, too, began reading these materials, I belatedly discovered that the methodology which Rav Nacham claimed as the patrimony of his Haredi Rebbe, R. Nachum Portzovitz at Yeshivas Mir in Jerusalem, overlaps considerably with the methodology of academic Talmud critics. My monologue about the similarities of traditional and critical study seemed to catch Rabbi Fishman off guard. I interpreted the look on his face as one of confusion. In the Talmud the kind of verbal jousting in which we were engaged is ubiquitous. After pondering my comments for a moment, Rabbi Fishman turned to me and asked a rather unexpected question: “When you study the Talmud, and you come up with a Hiddush (insightful reading), do you have a ‘Eureka’ moment?” The content of the question was not the cause of my surprise; I had long associated the moment of profound insight with the idea of studying Talmud out of joy. The Artscroll hagiographies of my youth and Orthodox theology elevate the notion of joyful study to one of the paramount religious experiences. During my childhood and adolescence of enforced Talmud study, the notion of study as joy mocked me. But from the moment I began, with Rav Nacham, to achieve intellectual satisfaction from Talmud study, I began to think of joyful study as a desideratum within reach. The “Eureka” moments
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I have experienced studying Talmud represent for me that notion of studying out of joy. My first “Eureka” moment happened sometime toward the end of my first year in yeshiva. I had already begun studying with Rav Nacham, but still spent one period a day rapidly devouring pages of Talmud in large quantities. In one such session I grasped an implicit conceptual understanding that undergirded an extensive Talmudic discussion; the realization clarified many of the smaller problems I had identified while reading the passage initially. The feeling of satisfaction in the moment was exhilarating and joyful. I tried to share the feeling by explaining it to a fellow student who comprehended my analysis but did not share or even understand my exhilaration. The glow of that moment was to repeat itself in my remaining time in yeshiva. One sleep-deprived afternoon I woke up from a mid-day nap with a new perspective on a dilemma I had been struggling with in the morning. I was increasingly drawn to the thorny Talmudic challenges that generated the feelings of relief and satisfaction at first comprehending and then resolving a challenging question. While the content of Fishman’s question did not surprise me, I was thrown both by his choice of rhetoric and by the brazenness with which he claimed joy as a uniquely traditional component of Talmud study. Legend has it that Archimedes uttered “Eureka” (“I have found”) upon realizing that he could compute the volume of irregular objects via displacement as he was stepping into a water-filled tub. A term of scientific discovery hardly seemed the property of traditional Talmudists. The academic study of the Talmud originated in a nineteenth-century movement called “The Science of Judaism” predicated on applying scientific method to Judaism. If anyone could claim a “Eureka” moment, it would be academics. Mathematics was the closest I came to science in college, and my experiences in number theory make me question the Talmud’s exclusive claim to joyful study. Number theory is an area of mathematics in which often elemental mathematical theorems are proved via inductive logic. During my freshman year, a Princeton number theorist named Andrew Wiles announced that he had proven Fermat’s last theorem, a problem that had vexed mathematicians for over three and a half centuries. Homework in my number theory course often consisted, maddeningly, of a few short proofs that one could write in a matter of seconds but that took hours to produce if one could produce them at all. I enjoyed the challenge of proving a given theorem, of attempting to analyze and reanalyze a given problem from different vantage points until—suddenly—the answer presented itself. When I was able to solve a given problem, I was often conscious of possessing the answer long before I had worked out the precise details. That momentary insight which
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cracked the puzzle, often coming when I had taken a break from actively thinking about the problem, was a moment of sheer intellectual joy. But if Talmud and mathematics share in their possibilities for intellectual joy, do they count for traditionalists equally as lerning? Rabbi Fishman never elaborated upon his sense of the Eureka moment and its value, but for me there is something otherworldly about that moment of insight. The moment of realization is profoundly satisfying, and I can even understand why someone would claim for that moment the term “spiritual.” And yet, this romanticized notion of intellectual creativity could transpire in math, science, literature, or any other academic discipline. During my rabbinical school years, I taught a Talmud class to female undergraduates at Columbia University. The subjects of the class were chosen based on my own interests and were generally taken from the classically dominant mishnaic order of Neziqin. After a few weeks in her second semester of torts, a student approached me and asked me why we were studying this material. She made it clear that her participation in the course was predicated on her commitment to the religious study of Torah, but she was now baffled by the enterprise. Was there anyone, she asked, who made this material—oxes goring other oxes—spiritually meaningful? I answered her at the time that I was peripherally aware of Hasidic commentaries to the Talmud that allegorized Talmudic torts for ethical or even mystical purposes but that I had never studied them. I was struck by her question and attempted to convey to her my sense of joy in studying the material and achieving new insight but I was unsatisfied by my own answer. My personal study of the Talmud is heavily motivated by a joy to which my students often have little access. It requires the ability to process Talmudic data with an eye toward identifying challenges and developing sophisticated new ways of meeting them. I can hope their commitment does not flag before they have assimilated the necessary skills or that they discover joy at a lower level. Now that my primary teaching context is a university in which the vast majority of my students have not hitherto encountered the Talmud, I often struggle to determine goals for my teaching. The secular context of the university makes it difficult to privilege the religious component of this material. Many of my students are either not Jewish or have no background or future in observance. I am unable to presume the religious value of the Talmud or its study in the classroom. The Talmud is incredibly foreign to most of my students and its comprehension often requires a great deal of background preparation. Much to my surprise, I have discovered that even with these reservations, there is something edifying in studying Talmud. The Talmud, it turns out, provides an amazing intellectual playground. I am perpetually surprised by the fact that my students are most engaged when
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we set about analyzing a Talmudic passage in the classroom. The style of the Talmud’s composition and the way it forces a critical conversation to ensue both within and around it is quite special. Remarkably, what unifies the study of Talmud in a wide variety of settings is the way it forces reading minds to really work. The unifying feature of Talmudic learning, it turns out, is a pleasure of reading. Rabbi Fishman’s question turned out to be a perfect way to end the conversation, since it set out a bottom line, and one which many traditional scholars and academics could share. When I told Rabbi Fishman that academics also shared “Eureka” moments, he warmly nodded his head and smiled, a gesture that indicated for me that he could concede ours as one of the sixty-nine other paths of Torah study. I nodded back and also smiled as we simultaneously turned to the mourners and recited together: “May God comfort you amongst the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.”
Engaging Rabbinic Literature: Four Texts Azzan Yadin
Why study Talmud in the 21st century? Though phrased in the interrogative, the theme of the present collection is ultimately prescriptive, a question that is at the same time a statement of advocacy: one ought to study Talmud in the 21st century, and here are a few reasons for doing so. The question reflects both the empirical rupture that has occurred within the Jewish (and particularly Ashkenazi) world, the gap that has opened between the classical rabbinic texts whose study was once ideologically axiomatic (though only few did so in practice) and whoever their modern readers might be, and the desire to somehow overcome that gap without in any way diminishing the importance of being “in the 21st century.” I suspect some contributors to this volume will face the broad issues head on, taking up themes such as Jewish identity, cultural continuity, modernity versus tradition—themes that I do not consider myself competent to address. The contribution I can offer is more modest: a series of encounters with classical rabbinic texts drawn from the years between my time in high school and my graduate studies. During those years the study of rabbinics became a possibility for me, and in recounting these formative textual encounters I hope to show, at the very least, why I study Talmud in the 21st century. I was a high school senior in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, when I began a weekly study session with Baruch, a yeshiva bocher from nearby Telse Stone Yeshiva. My family had lived in Israel for several years and, having attended Israeli schools for first through fifth grade and spent the previous summer in Israel, I had a reasonable command of Hebrew. I also attended a Jewish day school until eighth grade. But my family was not observant, I did not belong to a Jewish youth group, and it had been years since I attended a Jewish summer camp. Still, my father was a Jewish educator and first suggested, then 207
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arranged, my meetings with Baruch. We read the Babylonian Talmud, which seemed to be the only Jewish book of any import in Baruch’s eyes, with the Mishnah and even the Torah brought into the discussion only to the extent that they shed light on the Bavli’s argument. (Years later, I was working on my dissertation in the Mt. Scopus library and met a doctoral student from the Hebrew University Talmud Department. He asked me about my research and, when he heard I was working on midrshei halakhah, asked: “And how are you going to connect these findings to the Bavli?” I was not sure how to respond since I had not mentioned the Bavli at any point, so he clarified his question: “Look, it’s obvious that in the end you’re going to have to discuss how this all plays out in the Bavli, and I’m wondering how you’re going to do it.” The idea that I might be interested in thematic questions within Tannaitic sources for their own sake—without tracing them through the Talmud—did not occur to him). Baruch and I read the tractate Bava Qama, rabbinic laws of damages, including the famous interpretation of Exodus’s “an eye for an eye” as referring to monetary compensation: ‘ayin tah.at ‘ayin mammon. I was not comfortable with this interpretation, since I felt the biblical text was fairly explicit: “If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Exodus 21:23–25). Really, what more could the Bible say to emphasize that the punishment meted out was to be based on the victim’s bodily injury? Yet the Babylonian sages and my teacher alike insisted that the punishment was a monetary fine and, moreover, that this is what the Bible intended all along. I found the Talmudic text odd, the arguments insuperably alien, though the cultural enterprise of Talmud study did fascinate me, if only for its counter–counter-culture chic—the sense that I was engaged in something that transcended the concerns of my classmates. The study itself was not ultimately meaningful, but at least it held out the possibility of meaning. Still, “an eye for an eye” was becoming a problem. No matter how many times I read the text or how forcefully Baruch affirmed the fundamental correctness of the Bavli’s logic, I could only accompany him part way. I had no difficulty with the idea that corporeal punishment should be replaced by monetary compensation, and found the rabbinic formulation to be quite refreshing in what I took to be its open rejection of the biblical instruction. Baruch, of course, did not share my sentiment and grew frustrated with my inability to grasp the plausibility—no: the inevitability—of the rabbinic argument. As the school year began drawing to an end, the tone of our meetings shifted. Baruch took a persistent and eventually discomforting interest in the state of my yiddishe neshomoh. Did I not yearn to immerse myself even more fully in God’s commandments? Did I not feel the difference between my own soul and the souls of the non-Jewish students in my high school? It was clear from
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this line of questioning that Baruch assumed I was more observant than I was, and more alienated from those parts of my life that did not involve the Bavli. The situation grew awkward. I remember stating quite plainly that I did not feel my soul was any different from those of my non-Jewish friends, but I did not have the heart (or perhaps the spine) to tell him about Pam, my girlfriend, who was, I believe, Episcopalian. As part of his campaign, Baruch invited me to spend shabbos at Telse Stone. At the Friday night services, the rabbi gave a fiery talk about the importance of Torah (i.e. Talmud) study. The Torah, he reasoned, is the Torah of life and from it we draw our vitality, therefore one who studies Torah—only one who studies Torah—is truly alive. At this point, doubtless responding to some simmering conflict of which I knew nothing, the homily grew darker: if Torah study is life, then a person who prevents or even impedes a Torah scholar in his studies is momesh, a murderer; the state authorities are not governed by Torah law and so will not prosecute the murderer, but Hashem, who maintains a precise reckoning of all merits and demerits, will most certainly do so; by establishing the world such that the still unnamed transgressor will avoid earthly punishment, Hashem paves the way for much harsher punishment in the world to come. The rabbi’s voice grew shrill and his face reddened—his fury becoming more apparent with each passing moment. It was clear that he considered Torah study the only meaningful activity a person (or a Jew, the distinction was never fleshed out in his homily) could perform, and that his use of “murder” was not figurative—the criminals keeping young Jewish men from Torah study would ultimately be punished as murderers. I glanced over at Baruch, who was seated next to me. He was gazing at the rabbi with rapt attention, vigorously nodding in assent. It would be several years before I returned to Talmud study.1
II My undergraduate studies followed a circuitous route. I had spent one year at the Hebrew University, during which time I abandoned my original plan to study international relations (with philosophy as a second major, “for the soul”), having felt too strongly the draw of Jewish thought. I then took an extended leave for my army service, returning to the university four years later to complete my B.A. Since I had been a philosophy major from the outset, during my final undergraduate year I had earned all my credits in that department and was registered as a part time student while I completed my Jewish Thought requirements. Knowing that I had some time on my hands, a friend suggested I look into studying at the Hartman Institute (then in a much more
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modest building on Rachel Imenu Street). I walked down to the Institute, where I was interviewed and then warmly welcomed by Prof. Aharon Shemesh, one of the teachers in Hartman’s Bet Midrash program that year, Shelomo Naeh being the other. Our classes, five mornings a week, began with h.evruta study (b. Berakhot with Geoffrey Herman, who has since completed his Ph.D. in the history department of the Hebrew University), followed by the entire class convening and Shelomo and Aharon presenting their readings. The Mishnah opens: “From what time does one recite the evening Shema? From the time the priests enter to eat of their heave offerings, up until the end of the first watch—thus Rabbi Eliezer” (m. Berakhot 1.1). According to Rabbi Eliezer, the starting point of the evening Shema corresponds to the time that the priests enter the temple to eat their elevation offerings, that is, the temple offerings that are for the personal consumption of the priests and their families. This is an interesting answer for a number of reasons. First, Rabbi Eliezer links the Shema to the timetables of the temple cult, suggesting that prayer is intended as a replacement for the now defunct temple cult: whereas once the day was divided by the priestly practices of the temple, today it is divided by (among other things) the obligation to recite the Shema. But the link to the temple rituals makes Rabbi Eliezer’s saying potentially unhelpful for people living after the destruction of the temple and without immediate access to any priestly circles that might still preserve its ritual timetable. In one sense, then, Rabbi Eliezer’s answer acknowledges that the temple no longer exists and that new practices—here the recitation of the Shema—are taking the place of the sacrifices. In another sense, he offers a time marker that does not make sense for people several generations removed the destruction without precise knowledge of its cultic rhythms. There is another, more fundamental dynamic at work here. The Shema is generally described as a biblical commandment, based as it is on Deuteronomy 6. But consider the relevant biblical passage: Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you travel on the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. (Deuteronomy 6:4–7)
What is the plain sense of this passage? First of all, in Deuteronomy Moses commands the Israelites to recite the words God commands to their children, that is, to teach them to the following generations. But Moses does not instruct them to recite a particular phrase on a daily basis. This is an important shift in the meaning of the word “recite” that the Mishnah passes over in silence. But there is a deeper shift at work here. Let us look closely at the religious
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ideal that the Book of Deuteronomy here endorses: It commands to love God with all one’s heart and soul and might and, moreover, to “Keep these words . . . in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise up.” Love of God is not an abstract emotion, but active meditation on God’s commandments. And when does this take place? At home, and away; when you lie down in the evening and when you rise up in the morning. The plain meaning of these verses is that one should meditate on God’s laws always—when you are at home and when you travel on the way, in the evening they should be the last thing on your mind, in the morning the first. The religious ideal of Deuteronomy is all-encompassing and absolute—you should be meditating on God’s teachings at all times. And how does the Mishnah interpret these verses? As a commandment to recite this very passage (along with others) at fixed times during the day, in the morning and in the evening. The irony is palpable. Deuteronomy 6 is extolling a religious ideal of total, consuming religious devotion to God, while the Mishnah takes these very verses and transforms them into a clearly demarcated and altogether manageable instruction. Since we know where the process concludes, we can recreate a hypothetical argument leading up to it. For example, the statement “talk about them . . . when you lie down and when you rise up” was interpreted to mean “only when you lie down and rise up,” that is, twice daily and no more. And “Recite them to your children and talk about them” came to mean “recite to yourself these very verses.” But the Mishnah does not make these steps explicit. Its opening question, “From what time does one recite the evening Shema?” assumes a religious obligation to recite the Shema, and to do so specifically in the evening, when in fact this is in no way obvious. (I note parenthetically that if the Mishnah were addressing lay readers, it would probably have to preface the question of the time of recitation with an argument for the existence of a religious obligation to recite the Shema as such, suggesting the Mishnah was not written for the general public, but rather for a group that already shares these assumptions.) Some of these questions were floating in the air of the Bet Midrash, though it would be years before I had the tools to understand their full implications. But alongside the intellectual experience, there was also a powerful emotional component. One example stands out in my mind: Rabbi Eliezer states that the limit for reciting the evening Shema is the first watch, a phrase that sets the Bavli on a discussion of whether Rabbi Eliezer holds that there are three or four watches in the course of a night. In support of the three-watch hypothesis, the Bavli cites another tradition according to which Rabbi Eliezer assumes the existence of three nocturnal watches, and provides markers for each: “The first watch—the donkey brays; the second watch—dogs bark; the
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third watch—a baby suckles on its mother’s breasts and a wife converses with her husband” (b. Berakhot 3a). I cannot give a full account of my internal response, but I was moved by the sudden shift from the technical (and, for someone like myself who does not recite the Shema daily, abstract) discussion of the temporal boundaries of the evening Shema to the intimate portrait of the nursing baby and conversing couple. Part of my reaction involved simple surprise. My Talmud study with Baruch had focused on the legal minutiae of rabbinic tort law, texts that gave scant indication of the broader human concerns of their authors. In many ways, my study of Baba Qama had conformed to the stereotypes that surround the Talmud—dry, legalistic,2 exasperatingly dialectical. I could not help but wonder if I had stumbled upon a passage that was somehow irregular or nonrepresentative. Perhaps, I thought to myself, Rashi would force the nonlegal discussion back into halakhic channels, but Rashi explains the Bavli’s image as follows: “Daybreak is near, and people are awakening from the night’s sleep. And those who lay down to sleep together are conversing.” The tenderness and intimacy of these words was overpowering. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that I was living with a woman who was an early riser and we would often lie in bed discussing the day ahead or some other matters that we had on our minds, I cannot say for certain. But to come across such an intimate scene in the Talmud was startling; I felt the historic chasm that separated me from the Talmudic sages collapse. Yes, of course I knew the rabbis were human beings, I just never thought they were human beings so similar to me, or that this similarity would be thematized in the Bavili’s discussion of the morning Shema. Where was that famous rabbinic legalism? All I could see were men (always men) who were suddenly closer than I had ever imagined. (I experienced the same collapse of historic distance only once since that morning. My friend and former colleague Andrea Berlin was excavating at Tel Kedesh, a Phoenician outpost located near Kibbutz Malkia in the Upper Galilee, and had uncovered a trove of bullae (ceramic seals) from the time when the region served as an important border crossing between the Seleucid empire to the north and the Hasmonean kingdom. Andrea handed me a few of the bullae along with a powerful magnifying glass so that I could examine the artistry of the seal, which was, indeed, exquisite. But my gaze wandered to the back of the bulla in my hand, where the craftsman held the still soft clay while he engraved the front. There, clearly visible, were the craftsman’s thumbprints. More than any historical reconstruction or archaeological report, the thumbprints of the craftsman made present for me the overwhelming community we share with those who came before us, even if they have been dead for two millennia.)
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III As an undergraduate (and beyond), I was quite interested in literary theory, but had some qualms about the applicability of theoretical models to premodern texts—to what extent were these readings providing new insights into the rabbinic world? Or were the rabbinic texts unwitting vehicles for the interpreter’s theoretical pyrotechnics? It was with great excitement that I discovered that some rabbinic passages give themselves freely to—almost demand—such readings. For example, the second chapter of Mishnah Sanhedrin deals with the proper treatment of a king—essentially a list of exceptions and prohibitions aimed at preserving the crown’s authority. Mishnah 5 reads: It is prohibited to ride on [the king’s] horse or to sit on his throne; it is prohibited to use (mishtamshin) his scepter; it is prohibited to observe him getting his hair cut, or when he is naked, or in the bathhouse, as it is written, “you must indeed set over you a king whom the Lord your God will choose” (Deut 17:15)—i.e., that you be in awe of him. (m. San 2.5)
Does the modern reader even need recourse to Freud to suggest the Mishnah is linking the king’s political authority to his distinct sexual status? The Mishnah makes this point explicitly when it prohibits seeing the king’s naked body and anchors this prohibition in the assertion that one is supposed to be in awe of a king. The issue is not, then, the response—embarrassment, most likely—of the king, but that of the viewer who, seeing the king’s naked body, can no longer maintain the sense of awe that undergirds royal political authority. Note that the Mishnah does not suggest that the king in question suffers from any physical ailment or inadequacy, so presumably the gazing (political) subject sees no more and no less than the king’s bare body—what makes this sight a political problem? The Mishnah does not discuss this matter in detail, but it seems to me the correlation between nakedness and a loss of the awe that constitutes political authority is best understood in light of the distinction between the penis and the phallus. In this distinction, which has its roots in Lacan (though it is used here in a much looser, less technical sense) the phallus is understood as the site of symbolic power, of the mechanisms that endow the king’s reign with an air of historic or theological inevitability by removing the person of the king from the contingent realm of human existence and forging an essential bond between it and the royal office the king’s body has come to occupy. The penis, on the other hand, is the physical member that is part of the king’s irreducibly corporeal existence. The phallus is a constant, symbolic mark of power; the penis a wayward, sometimes uncontrollable mark of mortality. The separate existence of the phallus can only be maintained so long as the institutional trappings of the
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phallus (physical inaccessibility, royal entourage, porphyry robes, etc.) overpower the physical reality—the limitations and vagaries—of the penis, and here lies the political danger of the naked royal body: the political symbolism of the phallus cannot be maintained when the all-too-human penis is in plain view. In the language of the Mishnah, it is prohibited to see the king naked because the Bible commands “that you be in awe of him.” This much, it seemed to me, was clear. Is the prohibition against seeing the naked king a singular case in which male sexual anxiety is associated with the loss of political authority? It would appear that, to the contrary, this anxiety permeates the mishnah in question.3 Drawing on the rabbinic principle of illuminating the obscure (satum) by means of the explicit (meforash)—as well as the productive suspicion that animates psychoanalytic hermeneutics—we can juxtapose the explicit case of the king’s nakedness with the (only slightly) obscured prohibition against seeing the king’s hair being cut. On one level, the issue has to do with the performative aspect of kingship, the pomp and ritual that usually attend the king’s appearance serving as what Goffman calls a “front,” that is, the fixed elements that help define the situation for the viewers.4 Seeing the king in the intimate and very unceremonious context of a haircut is tantamount to the king “breaking character,” and thus undermines the authority of the throne. But Freud offers another (not mutually exclusive) interpretation, one that understands hair as representing the genitals and hair-cutting as a symbolic representation of castration.5 On this reading, the juxtaposition of the two prohibitions—against seeing the king’s hair cut and against seeing the naked king—is warranted by the fact that both deal with the connection between male sexual vulnerability and the loss of political power. Equally obvious Freudian interpretations of the remaining prohibitions in m. Sanhedrin 2.5 present themselves. The subjects’ awe of the king, and with it the king’s political power, will be diminished if others use the king’s scepter— where the verb “use,” mishtamshin, is also a standard rabbinic euphemism for sexual relations.6 And it is similarly diminished if others ride the king’s horse or sit on his throne, that is, seat themselves in places reserved for the king—a reference, in Freudian terms, to intercourse with the king’s wife.7 Stepping back, then, to examine m. Sanhedrin 2.5 as a whole, we find a series of prohibitions that seek to elevate the standing of the king by isolating him from actions that highlight his sexual vulnerability: seeing him naked, seeing him getting a haircut, and others using his scepter, riding his horse and sitting on this throne; the last four understood as symbolic references to castration (the haircut) and to the king being cuckolded (the final three). My teacher, Daniel Boyarin, has argued at length that classical rabbinic literature offers a model of “soft” masculinity that represents a cultural
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alternative (and gendered resistance) to the “hard” Roman masculinity constituted by physical strength, military prowess, political domination—that is, to “the phallus.”8 (A wonderful example of the two ideals occurs in the Babylonian Talmud Avodah Zarah 18b, which tells of Rabbi Meir’s journey to Rome to redeem his sister-in-law from prostitution. There, he approaches her disguised as a Roman cavalryman, but is later chased by the Roman authorities and takes shelter in a brothel. In other words, in approaching a female character defined by her sexuality Rabbi Meir is portrayed as a “phallic” Roman, but once (authentic) Roman men, wielding political power and presumably physical might appear on the scene, Rabbi Meir becomes a trickster who finds shelter among the women.) What is striking about our mishnah is that the king—who is represented as a Jewish king rather than the Roman emperor for Deuteronomic law is applicable to him—is defined in largely phallic terms, not as a projection of the softer rabbinic masculinity. It may be that the rabbis so thoroughly identify power with Roman phallic masculinity, that they have “transposed” the Jewish king into the same key, or perhaps this represents an internal distancing from the cultural memory of Jewish (=Hasmonean) kingship.
IV As excited as I was about discovering these theoretically interesting texts, I was (and remain) nervous about the fuzzy border between using theoretical insights to shed light on rabbinic sources, and using rabbinic sources as a backdrop against which to argue a theoretical issue, one that almost inevitably encounters these texts after having its genesis and formative years elsewhere. To be clear: the former certainly exists and the study of rabbinic texts is better off for it—but sometimes it is hard to be sure where to classify a particular reading. Take the analysis just offered of m. Sanhedrin 2.5. The prohibition explicitly links the king’s naked body with the loss of awe and attendant political power, and I take the distinction between the anatomical penis and the symbolic phallus to be, in some sense, the translation of the rabbinic idiom into a more reflective and theoretically robust terminology. Now, I have been working as a translator since the early nineties and have a thorough and immediate knowledge of how difficult this task can be, and how much changes in the process. But I am also aware that there remains (or should remain) a mutual intelligibility of sorts: if Abraham Joshua Heschel’s God in Search of Man were to learn Hebrew, it would recognize ‘Elohim Mevakesh ‘et ha-’Adam as a version (albeit not the only
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possible version) of itself. And I am not sure this is the case with the rest of the Mishnah passage. Would the rabbinic prohibition against sitting on the king’s throne recognize “do not have intercourse with the queen” as a version of itself? Or would it have to undergo such dramatic changes in order to do so that it could no longer be said to be a rabbinic (or late antique) text? It is a difficult question, especially since so much of the power of Freudian readings stems precisely from the author’s blindness to the deeper meaning of his words, so perhaps mutual intelligibility is a red herring from the outset. Be that as it may, I was uncomfortable with some of the “theory” readings being applied to (or foisted on) the rabbinic corpus, and was very interested in the question of rabbinic reflexivity. Still in the last year of my undergraduate studies, and even though I had taken all the credits I needed in Jewish Thought, I audited Moshe Halbertal’s course on legal midrash. In one of the first classes, Moshe presented the following text: “And they shall spread the garment before the elders of the city” (Deut 22:17): The witnesses must make their accounts as clear as if the garment itself were exhibited. This is one of the instances in which R. Ishmael interpreted the Torah symbolically [as a mashal]. Another instance is: “If the sun has risen on him, there is bloodguilt in that case” (Exod 22:2). Does the sun rise only upon him? . . . [Rather] just as the sun has peaceful intentions toward the entire world, so, too, if the householder knew that the thief had peaceful intentions toward him, yet slew him nevertheless, he is liable. Another instance is: “If he gets up and walks outdoors upon his staff [his assailant shall go unpunished]” (Exod 21:19), meaning, if he is restored to health. Accordingly, “And they shall spread the garment” means that they must make their words as clear as if the garment itself were exhibited. Rabbi Aqiva says: “And they shall spread the garment before the elders of the city” indicates that the husband’s witnesses are shown to be false. “And they shall spread the garment”: The witnesses for each side must come forward and give their testimony before the elders of the city. Rabbi Eliezer ben Jacob, however, says: The matter is to be taken literally. (Sifre Deuteronomy §237).9
Deuteronomy 22:17 details the procedures to be followed when a groom challenges the virginity claim of his newlywed bride. The Deuteronomic resolution is straightforward: the woman’s nightgown is produced and displayed to the elders of the city: if it is bloodied the woman was presumably telling the truth, and vice versa. There are at least two reasons the rabbis might be uncomfortable with this procedure. The first is anatomical: what if the woman does not bleed? After all, the Mishnah recognizes the possibility of a woman’s hymen breaking not through intercourse and even coins a term
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for such a woman—mukkat ‘etz (“one who suffered a blow of a stick”). The second is jurisprudential: Deuteronomy’s procedure does not conform to the rabbinic commitment to a witness-based trial.10 The derashah opens with Rabbi Ishmael, who interprets Deuteronomy 22:17 as a mashal, a term that is functionally identical with “parable” in many aggadic contexts. Here, however, mashal is not exactly a parable, since “the garment” does not correspond to anything in the “parabled” narrative (i.e. the nimshal) as, say, a parable about a king and his son stands for God and Israel. Rather, it suggests that the elders debate the matter so thoroughly as to attain the same level of certitude they would feel if they had spread the garment, as per the biblical injunction. In other words, the biblical garment and the rabbinic garment are both material entities; they differ only in that the former is an exhibit in the trial, the latter is not. The derashah then presents the view of Rabbi Aqiva, which differs from that of Rabbi Ishmael. The difference may be difficult to recognize, since Rabbi Ishmael refers to witnesses, as does Rabbi Aqiva. The latter, however, interprets the garment allegorically. For Rabbi Aqiva, then, there is no material garment and no legal procedure employs such a garment; “garment” refers to a legal procedure by which the husband’s witnesses are shown to be bearing false witness. Finally, the third view of Rabbi Eliezer ben Jacob is not an interpretation but a meta-interpretive assertion: ha-devarim ki-khetavam, “the matter is to be taken literally.” What was so striking about this passage—and this was precisely Halbertal’s point—is the extent to which the rabbinic discourse was reflective, even “theoretical.” This is already apparent in the opening lines, which both provide a technical name for Rabbi Ishmael’s interpretation (mashal) and asserts that he strictly limits the employment of this hermeneutic approach to three instances. The derashah does not provide the reasons for this view, but it does indicate a reflective approach to the interpretive process on the part of Rabbi Ishmael. Rabbi Aqiva, in contrast, is strikingly unreflective, considering the derivation of “the husband’s witnesses are shown to be false” from “they shall spread the garment” does not appear to have any textual or linguistic support. Indeed, I remember being stunned by Rabbi Aqiva’s willingness to brazenly overturn the plain meaning of the biblical text—especially in a matter of law—and to do so with little or no hermeneutic justification: no “one of three instances,” no technical terminology—simply the assertion that it is so.11 Perhaps most interesting of all is Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov’s statement that “the matter is to be taken literally”— a call for interpretive restraint and even inaction (understood as an asymptotic ideal, not a realizable course of action). Though yielding no new interpretation, Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov offers a clear indication that the far-reaching readings of Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Aqiva were not culturally self-evident. This was a very important insight for me,
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because it held out the possibility of a theoretical or at least reflective perspective: to think through questions of meaning and interpretation together with the rabbinic texts themselves. ENDNOTES 1. A postscript to my study with Baruch: a few years later I ran into him at the central bus station in Jerusalem as I was heading back to my army base. I had taken Joseph Dan’s survey of Jewish intellectual history the previous year and was very taken by the material, and was carrying a sefer I was planning on reading during my bus ride to base. I approached Baruch and, after greeting him, told him about my university studies and future plans. I know it’s a different approach, I said, but I think our time together helped me to see how interesting this material is. I meant it (naively, perhaps) as a compliment, an indication that despite the differences between us, I was, in my own way, integrating Torah study into my life. But Baruch was visibly dismayed. He excused himself, hurried off, and I haven’t seen him since. 2. The best statement I know of on rabbinic legalism is a throwaway comment in Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 BCE to 64 CE (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004) who writes (I am quoting from memory): “The only proper response to the charge of rabbinic legalism is, ‘Yes, and what of it?’” 3. A fuller survey of this association would surely include the commands that prevent any “compromise” in the king’s sexual freedom (e.g., by suggesting he be forced to marry the childless widow of his brother) and deny sexual access to his widow (m. Sanhedrin 2.2): “[The king] may not submit to h. alitzah [the ceremony that exempts a man from levirate obligation] nor do others submit to h.alitzah at the hands of his widow; may not contract levirate marriage nor may his brothers contract levirate marriage with his widow . . . none may marry his widow.” 4. See Erving Goffman, The Representation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Doubleday, 1959), 22–30. 5. “The dream-work represents castration by baldness, hair-cutting, the loss of teeth, and beheading,” Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, translated by James Strachey (London: Wordsworth, 1997), 236. Freud’s comment is developed more fully by Charles Berg, The Unconscious Significance of Hair (London: Allen & Unwin, 1951), which posits that head hair is a universal symbol of the genitals and so the conflict between the different parts of the psyche plays out in society’s attitude toward hair. 6. See, e.g., m. Nedarim 2.1: “If he said to his wife, ‘Konam if I have sexual intercourse with you (meshamshekh).’” 7. See the reference to m. Sanhedrin 2.2, above note 3, where the king’s wife remains sexually off limits even after his death. The minority view is cited in the name of Rabbi Judah that “the king may marry the widow of a king” further confirms the Mishnah’s association of privileged sexual access and political power of the monarch.
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8. See, inter alia, the first part of Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), especially chapters three (“Rabbis and their Pals”) and four (“Feminization and its Discontents”); and Daniel’s essay “Tricksters, Martyrs, and Collaborators: Diaspora and the Gendered Politics of Resistance” in Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin, The Powers of Diaspora: Two Essays on the Relevance of Jewish Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). 9. The translation is from Reuven Hammer, Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 245–246. 10. A view that finds biblical support in Deuteronomy 17:6 (“On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses he that is to die shall be put to death”), though that refers specifically to capital cases. The problem of a trial (or ordeal) without witnesses also arises in the case of the suspected adulteress. 11. I have since come to the conclusion that Rabbi Aqiva is not primarily engaged in interpretation, but rather in the ex post facto association of already established extra-scriptural tradition with biblical verses, though I cannot discuss this in any detail here.
Part IV
A PHILOSOPHER’S APPROACH
The Talmud as a Source for Philosophical Reflection David Novak
The first methodological question any philosophical reflection must deal with is: What am I reflecting on? The second is: Why am I to reflect on it? The third is: How can I reflect on it? Among the ancient Greeks, who were the first to designate their intellectual discipline as “philosophy” and themselves as its practitioners—philosophers— the proper object of the philosopher’s reflection is nature (physis), which is the unchanging and perpetual order underlying the changing and ephemeral things of human experience. This order is to be the object of philosophical reflection because it alone can be understood as what is beyond the reach of anyone’s change, control, or invention (techne). As such, it is the general object that is alone truly worthy of human respect. It is seen as the final standard to which everything and everyone is ultimately referred. The highest norm is to become “like nature” (kata physin). Philosophical reflection, then, is the study of nature, not at the level of its appearances (phainomena) inasmuch as their changeability does not command respect, but rather at the level of its most basic components, its “first things” (archai). They alone are sufficiently transcendent so that no one can ever conceive of changing, controlling, or inventing them. They themselves are unchangeable, uncontrollable, uncreated. They are eternal being. They are truth itself by which anything beneath them is true only by participation. Consequently, the only proper medium of philosophical reflection on nature is reason (nous). It alone is considered to be the most distinguishing capacity of humans, namely, the capacity to separate the true from the false. And reason consistently separates humans who exercise it from the animals. Human reason is what is truly attracted by nature per se and thus perpetually interested in it. 223
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But what happens when there are attempts to practice philosophy within a tradition in which the primary datum for consideration is not nature per se but the word of God? Is it possible to practice philosophy in this kind of context? Does revelation lend itself as an object (noema) to the same kind of rational inquiry that characterized philosophy as a meditation on the first things of nature in its original Greek habitat? Can there be a science of revelation as there is a science of nature? Some students of either philosophy or religion or both have denied the possibility of there being anything like a religious philosophy precisely because the data of revelation seem to call for obedience, whereas the data of nature seem to call for wonder and rational consideration. In the case of Judaism, especially, as the original religion of revelation, they have argued that the Bible is a decidedly non-philosophical—even antiphilosophical—work. But other students of religion and philosophy have argued that, although the Bible is not a philosophical book itself, its message is so coherent and its concerns so profound that it can be the object of philosophical reflection. In other words, like nature it both transcends philosophical reflection as an object transcends a subject interested in it, and yet it attracts that subject with whom it has something (but not everything) in common. That “something in common” is “wisdom” (chokhmah), which the Bible predicates of both God (Psalms 104:24) and humans, especially those humans who are properly related to God (Deuteronomy 4:6). Without this assumption, the Bible is only the expression of a totally inscrutable divine will, a will that calls for a similarly inscrutable response on the part of its human addressees. The view that emphasizes the primacy of divine wisdom in revelation, however, is further buttressed by the teaching that the same divine wisdom that created the world is that by which the Torah is written (Proverbs 8:22). Thus philosophy can be the love of wisdom, whether that wisdom is natural (sophia) or revealed (chokhmah). That wisdom can, to a certain extent, be the subject of human speech; thus the Hebrew davar easily translated into the Greek logos (see LXX on Isaiah 2:3). Indeed, both nature and revelation are characterized by the wisdom inherent in them, wisdom that is discoverable by those who are wise. Hence nature is relevant for the understanding of the Torah, and the Torah is relevant for the understanding of nature. For both the ancient Greeks and the ancient Hebrews, then, the wisdom that philosophers love and seek, although never of their own making, nevertheless still gives some of itself to them (see B. Berakhot 58a). Accordingly, there can be Jewish philosophers as much as there can be Greek philosophers, despite great differences between them as to where philosophical attention should be primarily directed.
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In the Hellenistic Jewish tradition, there were certainly philosophers of the Bible; the name of Philo need only come to mind. But that tradition was one that came into direct contact with Greek philosophy; Philo read and confronted Plato and some of the Stoics. He and some others like him had the benefit of the intellectual legacies of both Jerusalem and Athens. But what about the other biblically based Jewish tradition, that of the rabbis? There is no evidence that they had any real intellectual contact with Greek philosophy, much less that they were actually influenced by it. Can they be considered philosophers of the Bible in the same way that Philo was? Can any philosophy be discerned in their greatest and most comprehensive work, the Talmud? (By “the Talmud” I mean both the larger and better known Babylonian Talmud—the Bavli (hereafter “B”)—and the smaller and lesserknown Palestinian Talmud—the Yerushalmi (hereafter “Y”). At first glance, the answer to this question would seem to be no. Unlike Philo, who approached the Bible in a recognizably philosophical way by seeing it as the datum of universal truth, the rabbis seem to have approached the Bible (and the rest of Jewish tradition) as jurists and homilists of a decidedly particularistic bent. The main thrust of their legal discussions (halakhah) is concerned with how biblical and traditional rules are to be applied to the life of the Jewish people at various points in its history. The main thrust of their speculative discussions (aggadah) is to expand biblical and traditional narratives imaginatively and to draw various moral exhortations from them. Although Jewish philosophers of later periods did use Talmudic materials in their own recognizably philosophic discussions, this use was highly selective. Thus, unlike the Bible which the tradition took to be the work of the one, coherent, totally consistent divine mind, the Talmud clearly presents itself as the edited transcript of discussions among a variety of human minds, who often disagreed with each other more than they agreed (see B. Sanhedrin 88b). Not only is the Talmud, like the Bible, not a philosophical work, but, unlike the Bible, it does not even seem to lend itself to ever becoming the object of philosophical meditation. How then can anyone make a philosophical connection with it? COMMANDMENTS AND THEIR REASONS In order to pursue this necessary question, one must now make a further philosophical distinction; one must distinguish between theoretical reason and practical reason. Heretofore in our discussion of philosophy, we have seen it as theoretical reason. Its concern is the truth and knowledge for its own sake. As systematic rational inquiry, there seems to be very little of this type of philosophy in the Talmud. However, what about practical philosophy, whose concern
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is the good and knowledge for the sake of action? Is there systematic discussion of that in the Talmud? If so, where is it to be located, and how is it to be understood as influencing more recognizably philosophical reflection by Jewish thinkers who came after the rabbis and who looked to them as authorities? The way to locate this inquiry into practical philosophy in the Talmud, and as a source for further philosophical reflection by Jews, is by carefully analyzing the use and development of the term ta’am, which in later rabbinic Hebrew came to mean “reason,” as in “ta’amei ha-mitzvot”—”the reasons of the commandments.” Here we will see how philosophy grew up within the Jewish tradition itself even before it came into real intellectual contact with the philosophical tradition of the Greeks. Accordingly, Jewish philosophy cannot be regarded as the result of a synthesis with aspects of another tradition, however much there have been similarities and cross-influences between these traditions (the Jewish and the Greek) that did subsequently come about. The word ta’am is found in later biblical Hebrew and in biblical Aramaic. It means a “decree,” as for example, “Everything that is by the decree [min ta ‘am] of the God of heaven is to be done diligently” (Ezra 7:23). In the Talmud, however, its meaning developed. It now came to mean the reason of a decree. Thus one of the most frequently asked questions in the Talmud is “what is the reason” (m’ai ta’ama) of this decree? Yet this question itself is not a philosophical one. For most frequently, it is an inquiry into the authoritative basis for a decree confronted by someone in the present. That is, it is an inquiry for a past cause of a presently normative rule. It is, then, mostly a question of where the source of the rule is located in older and more authoritative texts, and how the present rule was actually derived from the designated source (see, for example, B. Qiddushin 68b on Deuteronomy 21:13). Thus, in a well-known Talmudic legend (Menachot 28b), Moses is portrayed as being disturbed that he could not understand the intricate legal interpretations of Rabbi Aqibah, into whose second-century CE academy he had been miraculously transported incognito. But, as the legend continues, he felt better after Rabbi Aqibah answered a student’s question—“Rabbi, what is your source?”—by saying, “It is a traditional law [halakhah] from Moses at Sinai.” Nevertheless, as this text indicates, the student’s question was, in fact, “where is the authority of this law?” not “why—for what reason or purpose—was it so decreed?” Only this later question, which was not asked here, could be taken to be philosophical.
THE AQIBAN AND ISHMAELIAN SCHOOLS The answer of Rabbi Aqibah is especially illuminating precisely because it is quite atypical of him. For the answer is a direct reference to an authoritative
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source, albeit not a written one but one from the oral tradition (torah she-b’al peh). In this case, then, the student had to trust Rabbi Aqibah’s reliability as an accurate transmitter of a tradition that the student himself could not verify by referring to a written work. Much more often, however, Rabbi Aqibah’s answer to such a question would be the result of a highly intricate exegesis of a biblical passage. In this process, the connection between the authoritative source (the biblical, usually pentateuchal, text) and the actual normative ruling would be quite indirect. In fact, his exegesis was at times so intricate that it frequently appeared contrived to many of his colleagues (see, for example, B. Pesachim 66a), who could see no real connection at all between his conclusions and the biblical text upon which he claimed it was really based. At this point, it would seem that the exegetical methodology of Rabbi Aqibah is counter-philosophical. For if philosophy is seen as the attempt to discern simple order underlying complex chaos, then the methodology of Rabbi Aqibah, appearing more intricate than the biblical text it was dealing with, would seem to be diametrically opposed to philosophy. Nevertheless, a careful examination of the assumptions underlying Rabbi Aqibah’s exegesis will show how by theological means it laid the groundwork for indigenous philosophical reflection within the rabbinic tradition itself, and this was long before rabbinic thinkers actually studied the books of the Greek philosophers. Furthermore, it should be emphasized here that Rabbi Aqibah was undoubtedly the single most important and influential thinker in the rabbinic tradition in its formative period (see B. Qiddushin 66b; B. Eruvin 46b). Since the rabbinic tradition is so highly dialectical in substance and style, Rabbi Aqibah’s exegetical theology is best understood when seen in contrast with that of his most consistent intellectual opponent, Rabbi Ishmael. The most important assumptions of Rabbi Ishmael’s exegetical theology are summed up in two of his dicta: first, “the Torah speaks by means of the language [ke-lashon] of humans” (B. Sanhedrin 64b; cf. Y. Sotah 8.1/22b); second, “the general principles [kelalot] of the Torah were spoken at Sinai, but the specifics [peratot] were spoken in the Tent of Meeting” (Zevachim 115b; cf. B. Eruvin 54b). Both of these assumptions are seen by the editors of the Talmud as being contrary to the views of Rabbi Aqibah. Careful examination of these fundamental theological differences will show that the theology of Rabbi Aqibah, rather than that of Rabbi Ishmael, lays the foundation for a philosophical approach to the Torah. By “the language of humans” Rabbi Ishmael means that one cannot press the verses of the Torah for any meanings that would ignore its ordinary stylistic features, especially the repetition of words that are easily seen as being put there in order to add emphasis to the point being made in that overall context. But since the Torah’s ordinary sense does not seem to deal with the abstract issues of theory and practice that one associates with philosophical reflection, it would
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seem that these issues are therefore precluded from any authentic theological interpretation of the Torah. In Rabbi Ishmael’s disputes with Rabbi Aqibah, he often objects to Rabbi Aqibah’s interpretations of Scripture that seem to read more into the biblical text than out of it (for example, B. Sanhedrin 51b). For Rabbi Aqibah, however, the Torah is not comparable to a human text. As such, each of its words—even each of its letters—must be seen as having its own unique function. There are no words just for added effect, or for purposes of illustration. Like nature, the object of philosophical reflection, nothing in the Torah is seen as being superfluous or of arbitrary significance. The Torah is wholly and consistently intelligible (ratio per se), even if that intelligibility is only partially grasped by finite human intelligences (ratio quoad nos). Therefore, the underlying meaning of the text must be worked out speculatively. The ostensive meaning of the text is only its appearance; the deeper reality of the text is what is gained by refusing to be bound by the surface of the text with all its seeming limitations (and contradictions). This point is even more philosophically significant in the second major theological dispute between Rabbi Aqibah and Rabbi Ishmael. For Rabbi Ishmael, the general principles of the Torah are clearly of greater importance than the specifics. That is why they are given as the foundational revelation of Sinai, whereas the specifics are worked out in the Tent of Meeting. In Rabbi Ishmael’s exegesis, specific statements are subordinate to general statements, whereas in Rabbi Aqibah’s exegesis no such distinction is made. For him, there is no subordination but interaction between words of equal value (see B. Shevuot 26a). Therefore, in the theology of Rabbi Ishmael, there is no more generality to the Torah than the ostensive text of the Torah itself. But in the theology of Rabbi Aqibah, questions of generality are, in effect, meta-questions, that is, they are models developed to recontextualize the text rather than actual data located within the words of the text itself. Consequently, there is much more latitude for the type of increasingly abstract conceptualization that characterizes philosophical reflection. Indeed, following this line of thought, it is evident why the whole process of the structure of the Mishnah, which recontextualizes Jewish law according to conceptual categories rather than following the seemingly random order of biblical verses (midrash), is considered to have been the primary achievement of Rabbi Aqibah (see Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, chapter 18; Y. Sheqalim 5.1/48c; cf. B. Pesachim 105b).
RABBINIC ANTI-TELEOLOGY If the beginnings of philosophical reflection by the rabbis are seen more in the area of practical reason than that of theoretical reason, then one must look
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not only at the increasingly abstract methods of conceptualization begun by Rabbi Aqibah, but especially at efforts to develop a teleological conceptuality by the rabbis. Practical reason is primarily concerned with the ends or purposes (tele)¯ of human action. Philosophical reflection on human action, as both Plato and Aristotle consistently emphasized, is primarily a concern with what are the goods that human beings seek by their actions when they are fully aware of what they are doing and why. For the Ishmaelian school of thought and those akin to it, there would seem to be little prospect for developing a teleology of the commandments, inasmuch as the Torah text itself rarely presents specific reasons for observing any of the commandments. The Torah usually only presents two general reasons for observing any of the commandments: the authority of God and the benevolence of God. Thus when God offers the Torah to Israel at Sinai, the people accept it on his authority alone: “Everything that the Lord has spoken, we shall do” (Exodus 19:8). And when Moses reiterates the Torah to the people of Israel forty years later on the plains of Moab, he emphasizes that it is “for our good” (Deuteronomy 6:24; see B. Berakhot 5a on Proverbs 4:2). However, the text there seems to mean that the good result of observing the commandments of the Torah overall will be a benevolence brought about by God as a reward. The use of the term “good” there does not seem to be an argument for the inherent good of the respective commandments themselves. As such, in this view, one cannot evaluate the commandments of the Torah in relation to each other because one does not know what the final rewards will really be (Mishnah [hereafter “M.”]: Avot 2.1; see B. Chullin 142a). Indeed, one passage in the Talmud argues against the effort to find reason for the commandments as follows: Rabbi Isaac asked why the reasons of the Torah [ta’amei torah] were not [usually] revealed. [He answered by saying that this is] because there are two commandments whose reasons are revealed, and the greatest man in the world was misled by them. [As for the first of them], it states [regarding the king], “He shall not take for himself many wives [lest they turn his heart away]” [Deuteronomy 17:17]. Solomon said, “But I shall take many and I shall not be turned away [ve-lo asur] [from God].” Yet Scripture writes, “And at the time of Solomon’s old age his wives turned [hitu] his heart” (I Kings 11:4). B. Sanhedrin 21b
This rabbinic argument builds upon the text of I Kings itself, where the prohibition of Deuteronomy that Solomon so arrogantly violated is paraphrased (I Kings 11:2). So, in other words, the search for the reasons of the commandments is seen as being motivated by a desire to escape the
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observance of the commandments by discovering what their ends are and then devising other means to fulfill them that are more personally attractive. The very use of reason, according to this view, seems to be based on the desire (whether conscious or unconscious) to escape the authority and benevolence of God and to constitute the relationship with God on one’s own human terms. According to this view, then, God’s commandments very likely have no other reason than to test human will by the greater will of God (see, for example, M. Avot 2.4; Bereshit Rabbah 4.1; Bemidbar Rabbah 19.1).
THE BEGINNINGS OF RABBINIC TELEOLOGY The prohibition of the king taking many wives, for which the Torah atypically does give a reason, is used to make the anti-philosophical point about the religious danger of giving reasons for the commandments altogether. Yet there is another rabbinic discussion of this biblical text that can be seen as making an important pro-philosophical—or perhaps pre-philosophical—point. Careful analysis of this text might show just how the theology of the Aqiban school of thought does lay the groundwork for a Jewish philosophy. Such a philosophy, as we have already seen, must primarily be a philosophical meditation on the practices mandated by the Bible. The Mishnah states: [When Scripture prescribes] “He shall not take for himself many wives” [Deuteronomy 17:17], that means no more than eighteen. Rabbi Judah says he may take as many [as he desires] provided [bilvad] they do not turn his heart away [from God]. Rabbi Simeon says that he should not marry even one were she to turn his heart away. [But Rabbi Simeon was queried] if so, then why does Scripture say, “He shall not take for himself many wives”? [He replied] even if many wives were like Abigail. M. Sanhedrin 2.4
In the Mishnah, which is the early rabbinic text upon which the subsequent discussions in the Gemara are based (thus the Mishnah and the Gemara make up the Talmud), there are three opinions. In the opinion of the first anonymous authority (tanna), the number of wives, not their character, is the issue. Hence “many wives” means more than eighteen. Here the meaning of an unclear general statement in the Bible is simply stipulated (cf. B. Yoma 8oa), although the Gemara does attempt to find some biblical basis for the insistence on this number (B. Sanhedrin 21a). In the opinion of Rabbi Judah, the character of the wives and their number is the issue. Up to eighteen wives may be taken
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by the king regardless of their character, but after these eighteen, character is the criterion for addition. Finally, in the opinion of Rabbi Simeon, the point of the biblical proscription pertains to the preclusion of unsuitable wives for the king (cf. B. Qiddushin 68b on Deuteronomy 7:4) among the eighteen he may take. And no more may be taken even if they are like Abigail, the wife of King David, whose great virtue is praised by Scripture (I Samuel 25:3). The discussion of this mishnaic text in the Gemara (B. Sanhedrin 21a) concentrates on the difference of opinion between Rabbi Judah and Rabbi Simeon. The point of difference between them is located at the question of how one interprets the reasons given in the Bible itself (ta’ma de-qra) for the restriction of the king’s marriages. Rabbi Judah is seen as holding that the reason explicitly given in the biblical text, itself an unusual procedure, should be interpreted literally because such an unusual addition is in the text for a definite function. That is an opinion with strong affinities to the Ishmaelian school of thought (see B. Sotah 3a). The function of the reason added to the biblical text is to qualify teleologically the rule concerning the number of wives the king may marry. Since the reason for the proscription of a limitless number of royal wives is that they will very likely turn the king’s heart away from God (as did the wives of King Solomon), the explicit mention of the reason overrides the numerical limitation of eighteen if it can be shown that the additional wives are indeed of good character and, therefore, they will not turn the king’s heart away. (Such, of course, was not the case with the women whom Solomon married, inasmuch as his interest in them seems to have been lust or for the purpose of cementing relations with foreign powers by dynastic means, as the text in I Kings 11:1 implies; see Y. Sanhedrin 5.6/20c.) But Rabbi Simeon is seen as holding that this reason could have been inferred without any explicit mention of it in the biblical text. Therefore, the “reason” given in the text is not a reason at all, for we could already infer the reason ourselves (see, for example, B. Pesachim 18b for a similar premise and its exception). What ostensibly appears to be a reason is really an additional rule instead. That additional rule is that even one extra wife, one even as virtuous as Abigail, will in effect turn the king’s heart away. The implication is that it is not the character of the wives that is at issue but their number; too many wives will be too distracting to the king as the moral leader of the people (see Deuteronomy 17:18–20). As for the first eighteen wives being morally suitable, that is hardly a requirement only for kings (cf. B. Qiddushin 70a). In the view of Rabbi Simeon, the Bible does not have to waste its words by giving reasons for commandments; rather it leaves that task to the human intellect of its interpreters. Not encumbered by a reason already given, the human intellect of the interpreter has wider range to speculate. This wider
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range for speculation can certainly be seen as a precondition for philosophical meditation, which in the area of practical reason is teleological. For within the biblical text itself, there is very little teleology given for the specific commandments themselves. Outside the biblical text, however, much teleology can be proposed. And to make this process applicable throughout the interpretation of Scripture, even the little teleology within the biblical text has to be reinterpreted deontologically precisely so that teleological interpretation will not be confined to these exceptional cases alone (cf. B. Qiddushin 24a). All this is conceptually akin to the thought of the Aqiban school. Furthermore, it should be noted that Rabbi Simeon [ben Yochai] was one of Rabbi Aqibah’s closest disciples (see B. Pesachim 112a).
AQIBAN ONTOLOGY The discernment of the reason for a commandment cannot be the means for its elimination. That would only be the case if we were absolutely sure that the reason we have discerned is in truth the original intent of the divine lawgiver. However, the Talmud indicates that all interpretation of the commandments is secondary to the normative status of the commandments themselves (see B. Berakhot 19b on Proverbs 21:30). Human wisdom cannot usurp divine wisdom. On the surface, this might seem to be a dogmatic limitation placed on human reason and thus be anti-philosophical. Yet, when seen in the light of the theological premises of the Aqiban school of thought, it has considerable philosophical value. In the Aqiban point of view, the words of the Torah are to be taken as data rather than dicta. In other words, precisely because the Torah does not speak by means of human language, its words must be seen as one would see the entities of nature. Being given rather than devised, the entities of nature can only be explained by humanly devised theories, theories that are always only about them, never above them. Therefore, they cannot be eliminated by these theories and replaced by something else in their stead. Such would only be the case in humanly devised projects in which means are subordinate to ends and thus contingent upon them for their very existence. In other words, in the Aqiban way of understanding the nature of the Torah, the words—even at times the letters—of the Torah have an ontological status that they do not have in the Ishmaelian way of understanding. The Ishmaelian view strikes one as being somewhat akin to the type of ordinary language analysis so prevalent in Anglo-American analytical philosophy since the later work of Wittgenstein. Conversely, the Aqiban ontology of the Torah and its connection to human action have some
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intriguing similarities to Plato’s constitution of a bilateral relation between theoretical reason and practical reason, that is, that practical reason has theoretical intent and theoretical reason has practical application. As such, it is dissimilar to Aristotle’s constitution of the ultimate transcendence of ethics by metaphysics. In the Aqiban view, the Torah is a perfect harmony with nothing lacking and nothing superfluous in it. This comes out in the following interpretation of a younger contemporary of Rabbi Aqibah, Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah, of the verse “The sayings of the wise are like goads, like nails [u-khe-masmerot] planted in prodding sticks. They were given by one shepherd” (Ecclesiastes 12:11): “They are like nails that are planted, which are neither too little nor too much” (Tosefta:Sotah 7.11). But then this rabbinic interpretation emphasizes the word “planted” (netu’im) in the biblical text: “Just as what is planted is fruitful and multiplies, so are the words of the Torah fruitful and multiplying” (cf. B. Chagigah 3b). By “multiplying” he does not mean that the original text of the Torah is subsequently augmented; rather he means that the words of the Torah are intelligible and thus they stimulate humans to devise continually new and satisfying interpretations and applications of them. This emphasis on expanding interpretation was the hallmark of Rabbi Aqibah and his disciples. With this theological stimulus to intellectual speculation, it is not surprising that the historical preconditions for the emergence of philosophy were being simultaneously prepared.
NORMATIVE TELEOLOGY Throughout the Talmud one finds numerous examples of the rabbis’ speculating on what the reason for a commandment is (see, for example, Niddah 32b). Nevertheless, these interpretations can usually be seen as functioning ex post facto, namely, they are subsequent, imaginative speculations on the value of the commandments. But as such, they do not play any real constitutive role in the normative interpretation of the commandments themselves. In other words, they do not function as essences that determine the structure and application of the specific commandments at hand. They are “reasons” in the sense of the other etymology of the word ta’am that means “taste” (see Job 34:3). Just as taste is not part of the essential nutritional function of food but only attracts us to eat it, so are these “reasons” given only to attract us to the commandments. In other words, they are like homilies (aggadah) that are attractive to the masses (see B. Shabbat 87a), but which themselves do not function normatively (see Y. Pe’ah 2.4/17a).
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Therefore, it is difficult to see these interpretations as having import for a philosophy of Jewish practice. Occasionally, however, one does find interpretations of the reasons of the commandments that do have a determinative function in the legal reality of the commandments themselves. Thus they can be taken as examples of philosophy of law and not just surmisals about the law. This comes out in the following later rabbinic text: Mar Zutra and Rav Adda Sabba the sons of Rav Mari bar Isur were dividing his estate among themselves. They came before Rav Ashi and said to him that the Torah prescribes “by the testimony of two witnesses” [yaqum davar—“a legal matter shall be established”] [Deuteronomy 19:15]. Does this apply only to cases where one person wants to back out of a legal agreement he made with another person, and he may not do so [because the witnesses will testify to the original agreement]? [If that is the reason], then we would not do so. Or, perhaps, no legal matter whatsoever is valid without the presence of witnesses. Rav Ashi answered them that witnesses are selected only when there is concern about the parties denying [an agreement]. B. Qiddushin 65b
The sons of Rav Mari bar Isur are asking a fundamental question about the purpose of the law requiring witnesses at a contractual proceeding. Are the witnesses only a requirement if there is the likelihood that there will be contesting claims by the two parties involved in an agreement, or are the witnesses a requirement for there to be any legally valid agreement at all, irrespective of the likelihood or unlikelihood of contesting claims? Rav Ashi’s answer, then, is his judgment about the purpose of the biblical commandment requiring witnesses, at least as regards commercial proceedings. This judgment of the why of this commandment determines how it is to be applied and how it is not to be applied. And following Rav Ashi’s conclusion here (for the great authority of Rav Ashi in Talmudic jurisprudence, see B. Bava Metzia 86a), the important twelfth-century Franco-German authority Rabbenu Tam made the general conclusion that commercial proceedings have no inherent requirement for the presence of two witnesses, although such presence is customarily the case (Tosafot on B. Qiddushin 65b, s.v. la ibru sahaday). The question raised in this Talmudic case is of philosophical import since it ultimately involves the larger question of the relationship of the individual to society. (Certainly since the seventeenth century, this has been the central question of political philosophy in the West.) In this particular context the question is about what the role of witnesses, being the agents of society itself, is to be in the private agreements between individuals. If, on the one hand,
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individual persons are essentially defined as being the constituents of society, then it would seem that society in the person of witnesses should be present in any agreement made between two parties. After all, both the status of the persons agreeing and the very value of the commodities that are the subject of the agreement are themselves socially determined. But, on the other hand, if persons are essentially defined as individuals even before they have any relationship with society (what Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau called “the state of nature”), then the role of society is only that of a mediator in the case of disputes between the parties themselves. For these persons are in society but not of it. So, if they can mutually agree among themselves, then the presence of society in the person of witnesses is unwarranted. And, furthermore, unlike many social contract thinkers who see the usual relationship of individuals among themselves to be a predatory one (homo homini lupus), this Talmudic text seems to regard the usual social situation to be one of mutual cooperation and trust (cf. M. Avot 3.2). Following this type of philosophical analysis, it would seem that the opinion of Rav Ashi as to the essential function of witnesses is basically in accord with the view that restricts the role of society to that of adjudication in the event, or the likely event, of disputes. At least in the realm of commercial activities, individuals are not to be burdened with unnecessary social interference (see B. Sanhedrin 32a). Society itself must trust the basic integrity of its citizens. Indeed, without such trust, ultimately the only remaining options are either anarchy or tyranny, that is, society has to become either absent or ubiquitous. On the other hand, though, when it comes to marital covenants the same Talmudic text we have just looked at insists upon the presence of witnesses in a foundational capacity. There the Talmud distinguishes between marital relationships that have greater meaning for the rest of society and commercial transactions that have less meaning for it. This, of course, reflects the view that the family is a more basic component of society than individuals as property holders and traders, indeed, that persons themselves are more interested in familial relationships than they are in commercial transactions. The society that the Talmud deals with and intends to preserve and enhance is more concerned with status than with contract.
LAW AND SOCIETY The question we have been examining about the role of society in human disputes also comes out in an early rabbinic debate about the legitimacy of arbitration in lieu of formal legal litigation. Here again, the philosophical import of the debate concerns the fundamental purposes of civil law:
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Rabbi Eliezer the son of Rabbi Yose the Galilean said that it is forbidden to arbitrate . . . but let the law [ha-din] pierce the mountain, as Scripture says, “for the judgment [ha-mishpat] is God’s” [Deuteronomy 1:17]. Rabbi Joshua ben Korhah said that it is meritorious [mitzvah] to arbitrate as Scripture says, “a true and harmonious judgment [u-mishpat shalom] you shall judge in your gates” [Zechariah 8:i6]. But is it not so that where there is justice [mishpat] there is no harmony [shalom] and where there is harmony there is no justice? So, what kind of justice contains harmony? That is arbitration [bitz’ua]. B. Sanhedrin 6b
The philosophical point being debated here seems to concern the relation of law and society. Is society for the sake of the law, or is law for the sake of the society? The answer seems to depend on what one sees the essential function of society to be. If society is simply to reflect a higher order and implement it on earth, then one will agree with Rabbi Eliezer in the above debate. However, if society is to be a communion of persons, a covenantal entity not just implementing divine authority but participating in the harmony of divine care for the universe, then one will agree with Rabbi Joshua ben Korhah in the debate. Moreoever, it is clear that arbitration involves more independent human reasoning than formal adjudication based on written law (see Y. Sanhedrin 1.1/18b). The tendency of the later Jewish legal tradition was to follow this latter view of the relation of law and society. And that tendency has some important philosophical affinities to Aristotle’s insistence on the priority of friendship (philia) over strict justice in the truly human community (koinonia), although the theological component in the rabbinic view makes for essential differences from Aristotle’s view. This affinity helps explain why Aristotelian ethical and political concepts became so attractive to a number of medieval Jewish philosophers who were rooted in the rabbinic tradition before they approached the work of Aristotle and the Aristotelians.
THE LATER EMPHASIS ON HUMAN LAW In the early rabbinic sources, there is no real distinction made between divine law and human law. The Torah is the divine law that is given to be interpreted by humans. It is from God, but not in heaven, that is, its meaning is determined by exegesis and learned consensus, not by any further oracular revelation (see B. Bava Metzia 59b on Deuteronomy 30:12). This proved to work out quite well as long as the rabbis were convinced that any new problem that arose could be related to the authority of the Torah by
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exegetical means. The exegetical bridge between the Torah and the human situations it is to judge was constituted through a number of hermeneutical principles. In the earlier rabbinic sources, it seems that conclusions derived by means of these principles are logically compelling, especially the principle called qal va-chomer, which is an inference a fortiori. Yet already in these sources there are questions that suggest that even this type of reasoning is more analogical than deductive, hence not totally compelling after all (see, for example, M. Bava Qamma 2.5; M. Yevamot 8.3). By the time of the later rabbinic sources, the logical weakness of even qal va-chomer reasoning had been further exposed (see B. Qiddushin 4b). What growing dissatisfaction with the complete sufficiency of formal exegetical reasoning accomplished was to make room in the realm of rabbinic normative discourse for more teleological reasoning. As we have already seen, that opens the door for practical philosophy. The rabbinic authority who did more in this area than anyone else is the fourth-century Babylonian sage Rava. By the time of Rava, the distinction between the divine law of the Torah (d’oraita) and the human law of the rabbis (de-rabbanan) was already in place. The human law of the rabbis is not seen as independent of the divine law of the Torah; rather it is seen as being mandated by that law (B. Shabbat 23a on Deuteronomy 17:11). In this theological view of the nature of the Torah, the rabbis are given authority by the Torah itself, not only to interpret its law and adjudicate cases based on their interpretation, but also to augment the law of the Torah with their own legislation. The formal distinction between these two kinds of law, however, was constantly emphasized in the later rabbinic texts to distinguish between direct revelation and human wisdom (albeit seen as inspired), and to give normative priority to divine law over human law (see B. Berakhot 19b; B. Betzah 3b). What, then, is the essential difference between the earlier and the later rabbinic views of the relation between the divine and the human in the realm of law? The difference seems to be as follows. In the earlier view, all law is seen as coming from God, however tenuous the exegetically constituted relation between divine ground and normative consequent in fact is. But in the later view, there is a considerable body of Jewish law that is not seen as specifically coming from God, but only the general authority to make it is seen as coming from God. Instead, its essential methodology is that it is made for the sake of God. Its function, then, is to enhance the quality of human life, the pinnacle of which is the covenantal relationship with God (see M. Makkot 3.16 on Isaiah 42:21; B. Bava Qamma 6b). Thus its very nature is teleological.
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How does one know what is for the sake of God? In the narrower sense, of course, that was discovered by justifying human legislation as an enhancement of specific laws of the Torah so that the usual careless violation of the law would more likely be violation of the humanly constructed “fence around it,” rather than the divinely given core within that fence (M. Avot 1.1; M. Berakhot 1.1; M. Betzah 5.2). But this explains only the function of restrictive rabbinic decrees (gezerot). When it comes to the more innovative rabbinic enactments (taqqanot), where the rabbis devised new legal institutions, then what is for the sake of God involves a philosophical reflection on what are the more general overall ends of the Torah itself. It is in the area of these positive rabbinic enactments that the legal philosophy of Rava is most evident. For example, the rabbis were interested in what is the actual scriptural warrant for including the book of Esther in the canon. Prima facie, the story told in this book is a secular one. In fact, the name of God is not mentioned anywhere in the book. Nevertheless, the book had long been accepted by the Jews as Scripture, and it became the basis for the popular holiday of Purim. Earlier rabbis had tried to find a specific scriptural text from which to deduce a warrant for the inclusion of this book in the biblical canon and thus justify the religious celebration of Purim. After reviewing various early attempts to locate such a specific scriptural warrant, the second-century Babylonian authority Mar Samuel stated, “Had I been there, I would have been able to give a much better interpretation than any of them [of what it] says [about the introduction of Purim] in the book of Esther [9:27], ‘They upheld it and accepted it,’ [namely,] they upheld in heaven what had already been accepted on earth” (B. Megillah 7a). Rava then states that all of the earlier interpretations could be refuted, but that the interpretation of Samuel is irrefutable. The reason is that Samuel’s interpretation is not derived from a biblical verse at all. Instead, it takes a biblical verse as a description of a human enactment that is for the sake of God because it celebrates an event perceived to be especially providential. The reasoning described in the verse is teleological. The divine approval it receives is not ab initio but ex post facto (cf. B. Shabbat 87a). In order for such approval to be won, the enactment itself had to be based on a consideration of the purposes of the Torah in general. These purposes are explicated by a process of philosophical reflection. Rava’s emphasis on teleology appears in numerous of his opinions recorded in the Talmud. In one text, he explicitly rejects earlier exegetical reasoning and insists that the reasoning involved in the interpretation of a rabbinic law be conducted according to “the canons of reason” (be-torat ta’ama), that is, by teleological rather than by deductive logic (B. Berakhot 23b). In another text, he accepts one earlier rabbinic legal opinion over a rival opinion because the first opinion is more rational (mistabra), even though the biblical
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exegesis used in the second opinion is sounder (B. Arakhin 5b). The rationality of the first opinion consists of its better grasp of the original purpose of the law under discussion. Thus even though Rava did not himself develop what we would call a “systematic” philosophy of Jewish practice, he did lay the groundwork for a teleological approach to the Jewish tradition. Without his achievement, teleological analysis by Jewish thinkers who came after him could be attributed to their exposure to Greek, especially Aristotelian, philosophy. The truth is, however, that by the time these Jewish thinkers were exposed to Greek philosophy they were already prepared for teleological thinking by the Talmud. Hence they could not only appreciate the insights of Greek philosophy but critically appropriate them as well. Rava’s achievement was possible because of the later Talmudic recognition that large portions of Jewish law were really rabbinic decrees and enactments. In fact, in a number of these later texts, even laws supposedly based on biblical exegesis are judged to be rabbinic laws in essence and only biblical by subsequent association (asmakhta—see, for example, Chullin 64a–b). That being the case, teleological analysis of rabbinic laws is at a considerable advantage over similar analysis of biblical laws. The advantage is that in the case of biblical laws the reasons of the divine lawgiver for prescribing or proscribing as he did are more often than not unknown. The assumption is “My thoughts are not your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8). Therefore, teleological analysis here can only be speculative, although, as we have seen, it can sometimes have normative effect. In the case of rabbinic law, conversely, the reasons for the humanly made law are almost always explicitly stated (see B. Gittin 14a); and, in fact, when they are absent, subsequent commentators were quick to surmise what they are. Human minds are much more able to understand the reasons of other human minds than they are able to understand the reasons of the divine mind. As such, the more law that is considered rabbinic the more room there is for the teleological analysis that characterizes practical reason. Thus rabbinic law, at least in principle although rarely in practice, was subject to repeal, unlike biblical law for which the suggestion of overt repeal would be considered blasphemous (see M. Eduyot 1.5; B. Avodah Zarah 36a–b; cf. B. Sotah 47b). All this might well be why the Mishnah designates Jewish civil law as the discipline one should engage in if one “wants to become wise” (she-yahkim— M. Bava Batra 10.8). For even in early rabbinic times, Jewish civil law was already based on a minimum of biblical verses and a maximum of rabbinic decrees and enactments (see, for example, M. Gittin 4.3 and the extensive discussion thereof in both Talmuds; also B. Yevamot 89b on Ezra 10:8). Rava’s emphasis on the importance of human reason in the religious life itself is most succinctly expressed in his statement that, when a person is brought before the throne of divine justice after one’s life is over, one will be
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asked (among other things), “Did you reason wisely [pilpalta be-chokhmah]? Did you infer [hevanta] one thing from out of another?” (B. Shabbat 31a). It seems that Maimonides, the most important Jewish philosopher to emerge out of the rabbinic tradition, basing himself on this text and another in the Talmud (B. Qiddushin 3oa), located an actual religious duty to philosophize (Mishneh Torah: Talmud Torah, 1.12)—of course, for those both able and inclined to do so.
Bibliography
TEXTS Babylonian Talmud (1935–48), translated by I. Epstein (London: Soncino). Mishnah (0933[ce1]), translated by H. Danby (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Montefiore, C. G. and H. Loewe (eds) (1963) A Rabbinic Anthology (New York: Meridian).
STUDIES Halivni, D. W. (1986) Mishnah, Midrash, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justified Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). ———. (r99i[ce2]) Peshat and Derash: Plain and Applied Meaning in Rabbinic Exegesis (New York: Oxford University Press). Lieberman, S. (1962) Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 2nd ed. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America). Schechter, S. (1936) Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (New York: Behrman). Urbach, E. E. (1971) The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, translated by I. Abrahams, z[ce3] vols. (Jerusalem: Magnes). Wolfson, H. A. (1929) Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), esp. pp. 24–9[ce4].
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Biographies
Elizabeth Shanks Alexander is an associate professor of Talmud and rabbinics in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, where she has taught since 2008. Prior to coming to University of Virginia, she taught at Smith College and Haverford College. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1998. Her first book, Transmitting Mishnah: The Shaping Influence of Oral Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2006), examines how contemporary theories on oral tradition illuminate ancient transmission of rabbinic tradition. Her current work explores how rabbinic law becomes a vehicle for articulating and affirming differences between men and women. Judith R. Baskin, Knight Professor of Humanities, head of the Department of Religious Studies, and director of the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies at the University of Oregon, grew up in Hamilton, Ontario. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1976. Her books include Pharaoh’s Counsellors: Job, Jethro, and Balaam in Rabbinic and Patristic Tradition (1983), Midrashic Women: Formations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature (2002), and the edited collections Jewish Women in Historical Perspective (2nd Edition, 1998) and Women of the Word: Jewish Women and Jewish Writing (1994). Dr. Baskin, who is the subeditor for post-biblical commentary for The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, Union for Reform Judaism Press (2007), served as president of the Association for Jewish Studies, the learned society for scholarly researchers and academic teachers of the Jewish experience, from 2004–2006. Tsvi Blanchard is director of organizational development at CLAL—The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. Blanchard is an expert 243
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in community and leadership development, and helps steer the organization programmatically. An early leader in the Jewish healing movement, he directs CLAL’s prestigious Internship Program. An ordained Orthodox rabbi, he holds Ph.D.s in psychology and philosophy, has taught philosophy and Jewish studies at Washington, Northwestern, and Loyola Universities and Jewish and comparative law at Humboldt University School of Law in Berlin and Fordham Law School. He is the author of academic articles addressing contemporary problems using Talmudic sources, a participant in Psychoanalytic Perspectives: A Journal of Integration and Innovation’s 2006 roundtable discussion on psychoanalysis, spirituality, and religion, and the 2003 Reisman Award winner for “Article of the Year” (Journal of Jewish Communal Service), co-author of Embracing Life & Facing Death: A Jewish Guide to Palliative Care (CLAL, 2003), and writer of the introduction for photographer Frederic Brenner’s acclaimed book, Diaspora: Homelands in Exile (Harper Collins, 2003). Rabbi Michael Chernick is Deutsch Professor of Jewish Jurisprudence and Social Justice at the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion. He received his ordination from the R. Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University and his doctorate in Talmud from Yeshiva University’s Bernard Revel Graduate School. His scholarly work has centered on rabbinic methods of interpreting Scripture, the history of the Halakhah, and the interface between the Talmudic tradition and contemporary issues. Rabbi Chernick has lectured widely in the United States, Israel, and Europe to both scholarly and lay audiences. His most recent work is A Great Voice that Did Not Cease: The Growth of the Rabbinic Canon and its Interpretation (Hebrew Union, 2009). Rabbi Chernick is an Orthodox Jew who firmly believes that Torah belongs to anyone who wishes to study it. His conviction that halakhah guides all aspects of his Jewish life has provided the impetus for his active support and teaching of the Jewish tradition and his pursuit of social justice. Shaye J. D. Cohen is the Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of Harvard University. Before arriving at Harvard in July 2001, Prof. Cohen was the Samuel Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University. Prof. Cohen began his career at the Jewish Theological Seminary where he was ordained and for many years was the dean of the Graduate School and Shenkman Professor of Jewish History. He is perhaps best known for his From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (1987; second edition 2006), which is widely used as a textbook in colleges and adult
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education. More recently he is the author of The Beginnings of Jewishness (1999) and Why aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Covenant in Judaism (2005), which won a National Jewish Book Award. He has also appeared on educational television, including From Jesus to Christ and Nova on PBS and Mysteries of the Bible on A&E. He and his wife Miriam May are the parents of Ava, Jonathan, Ezra, and Hannah. Yaakov Elman is professor of Judaic Studies at Yeshiva University and an associate at Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies. He is the author of Authority and Tradition, Living Torah, the editor of other volumes, and of dozens of studies in Jewish intellectual history, from Talmudic times to nineteenth-century hasidic and nonhasidic thought. Rabbi Dr. Pinchas Hayman Born in Los Angeles, California, in 1952, Rabbi Dr. Hayman received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Los Angeles in classics, semitic civilizations and Philosophy, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude. After preparatory studies in rabbinics at Yeshivat Hakotel, Jerusalem from 1973 to 1975, he completed rabbinical ordination at the Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University, New York in 1978 and, concurrently, a Master of Arts in Talmudics and semitic languages from the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Yeshiva University. He completed his doctoral degree with honors from the Revel Graduate School, specializing in comparative studies of Babli-Yerushalmi. His dissertation, “Development and Change in the Teachings of Rabbi Yohanan ben Nafha through Transfer from Israel to Babylonia,” focused on the controversial issue of the “fictitious sugya,” and shed new light on the thesis of Tzvi Dor regarding the integration of Israeli Amoraic material in Babylonian academies. After serving as Rabbi of Congregation House of Jacob, Mikveh Israel in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, from 1980 to 1987, Dr. Hayman came on aliyah to Israel, and lectured in the Department of Talmud and the School of Education at Bar Ilan until 2005. From 1989 to 1994 he served as the University’s dean of students, and from 1994 to 1997 as director of the Joseph H. Lookstein Center for Jewish Education in the Diaspora. After intensive research into the difficulties in the teaching of Mishnah and Talmud, Dr. Hayman founded a consulting firm named “Bonayich Educational Services, Ltd.” which is engaged in the production of curricula and teaching and learning materials for the teaching of Mishnah and Talmud in primary, secondary, and post-secondary educational institutions. He is now engaged full time in consultation with over 150 educational institutions in Israel and around the world. He resides in Elkana, Israel, with his wife, Shoshana, and they are proud parents of six children and grandparents of eight.
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Biographies
Richard Kalmin holds the Theodore R. Racoosin Chair of Rabbinic Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he has taught since 1982. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on the interpretation of rabbinic stories, ancient Jewish history, and the development of rabbinic literature. His most recent book, Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine, was published in 2006 by Oxford University Press. Jane Kanarek received her rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She is an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship. Dr. Kanarek is currently Assistant professor of rabbinics at Hebrew College in Boston. Ephraim Kanarfogel is the E. Billi Ivry Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University. He teaches at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies and at Stern College for Women. A recipient of the National Jewish Book Award and a member of the American Academy for Jewish Research, his latest book is The Intellectual History of Medieval Ashkenazic Jewry: New Perspectives. David Novak holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies as professor of the study of religion and professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto since 1997. He is a member of University College, the Centre for Ethics and the Joint Centre for Bioethics there. From 1997 to 2002 he also was director of the Jewish Studies Programme. In 2006 he received the Deans Award for Excellence. From 1989 to 1997 he was the Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia. Previously he taught at Oklahoma City University, Old Dominion University, the New School for Social Research, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Baruch College of the City University of New York. From 1966 to 1969 he was Jewish chaplain to St. Elizabeths Hospital, National Institute of Mental Health, in Washington, D.C. From 1966 to 1989 he served as a pulpit rabbi in several communities in the United States. David Novak was born in Chicago in 1941. He received his A.B. from the University of Chicago in 1961, his M.H.L. (Master of Hebrew Literature) in 1964 and his rabbinical diploma in 1966 from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Georgetown University in 1971. David Novak is a founder, vice president, and coordinator of the Jewish Law Panel of the Union for Traditional Judaism, and a founder and faculty member of the Institute of Traditional Judaism in Teaneck, New Jersey. He
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serves as secretary-treasurer of the Institute on Religion and Public Life in New York City and is on the editorial board of its journal First Things. He is a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the Academy for Jewish Philosophy, and a member of the Board of Consulting Scholars of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. In 1992–93 he was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. In 1995 he was Distinguished Visiting professor of religion and Business Ethics at Drew University. In 1996 he delivered the Lancaster/Yarnton Lectures at Oxford University and at Lancaster University. In the fall of 2004 he was the Charles E. Test, M.D. Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Princeton University. In the spring of 2006 he was Visiting Professor of Religion at Princeton. In 2007 he was appointed a member of Assisted Human Reproduction Canada, a federal agency by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. David Novak is the author of thirteen books, the last two being The Jewish Social Contract: A Essay in Political Theology (Princeton University Press, 2005), and Talking with Christians: Musings of a Jewish Theologian (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005). His book Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory (Princeton University Press, 2000) won the award of the American Academy of Religion for best book in constructive religious thought in 2000. He has edited four books and is the author of over 200 articles in scholarly and intellectual journals. Since 1963 David Novak has been married to Melva Ziman. The Novaks have two grown children and four grandchildren. Jeffrey L. Rubenstein is a professor in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies of New York University. He received his B.A. in religion from Oberlin College, his M.A. in Talmud from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he also received rabbinic ordination, and his Ph.D. from the Department of Religion of Columbia University. He has taught at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Jewish Theological Seminary in addition to New York University. His first book, The History of Sukkot in the Second Temple and Rabbinic Periods, was published in the Brown Judaica Series (1995). In 1999 he published Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition and Culture with the Johns Hopkins University Press. Rabbinic Stories was published in the Classics of Western Spirituality Series in 2002, and The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2003. Dr. Rubenstein has written numerous articles on the festival of Sukkot, Talmudic stories, the development of Jewish law, and topics in Jewish liturgy and ethics.
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Paul Socken (Ph.D., University of Toronto) has been on the faculty of the University of Waterloo (Canada) since 1973 and is a former Chairman of the Department of French Studies. He is the author of nine books, including Myth and Morality in Alexandre Chenevert by Gabrielle Roy, The Myth of the Lost Paradise in the Novels of Jacques Poulin, The French They Never Taught You and Intimate Strangers: The Letters of Margaret Laurence and Gabrielle Roy. He has published numerous scholarly articles on French-Canadian literature in journals in Canada, the United States, and Europe. He is the founder of the Jewish Studies program at Waterloo and serves as Chairman of the Dean’s Advisory Committee on Jewish Studies. Devora Steinmetz has authored articles about Bible, rabbinic literature, and Jewish education as well as two books: From Father to Son: Kinship, Conflict, and Continuity in Genesis and Punishment and Freedom: The Rabbinic Construction of Criminal Law. She has taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Drisha Institute, and Havruta: A Beit Midrash at Hebrew University. Dr. Steinmetz is the founder of Beit Rabban, a day school in New York City that is profiled in Daniel Pekarsky’s book, Vision at Work: A Portrait of Beit Rabban. Barry Scott Wimpfheimer is director of undergraduate studies in religion and assistant professor of religion and law at Northwestern University. Wimpfheimer received rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University and a doctorate from Columbia University’s Department of Religion. Wimpfheimer’s doctoral dissertation, “Legal Narratives in the Babylonian Talmud,” received the Salo and Jeanette Baron Prize in Jewish Studies. A book derived from that research is forthcoming in the Divinations Series of the University of Pennsylvania Press. Azzan Yadin is associate professor of rabbinic literature at Rutgers University. He earned his B.A. at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the relationship between scriptural interpretation and oral tradition in early rabbinic literature. In addition to his work on rabbinics, Prof. Yadin has published on the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and Homeric epic, Nietzsche’s influence on the Hebrew poet Bialik, and Ronald Dworkin’s jurisprudence. He is currently working on a book-length study of Rabbi Akiva. He serves on the editorial board of the book series Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism (Mohr Siebeck) and heads the rabbinic division of the Association for Jewish Studies. His first book is Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash.
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Devorah Zlochower is Rosh Beit Midrash and Talmud and halakha instructor at Drisha Institute in New York. Ms. Zlochower is a graduate of the Scholars Circle, the institution’s 3 year advanced program in Talmud and halakha. Ms. Zlochower has published a number of articles related to halakha as well as articles related to Jewish women’s leadership. She is a member of the board of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance. She is also on the editorial advisory board of Sh’ma.
Index
Abaye, 14, 17–18, 51, 58, 69, 139, 142–143, 147, 152, 154, 198–199, 200 Aggadah, 94, 109, 120–121, 140, 143, 194, 225, 233 Aggadic, 25, 39, 40, 98, 101, 109, 120–121, 124–125, 137, 142, 194, 217 R’Akiva/Akiba, 26, 51, 57, 60, 153, 248, 180–183, 185–189, 191–193 Amoraic, 65, 96–97, 101–102, 109, 118, 121, 199, 245 Amoraim, 43, 101, 139, 141–143, 145–146, 163, 166, 199 Aristotle, 12, 132, 229, 233, 236, 241 Ashi, Rav, 101, 140–141, 148, 234–235 Baba Kamma/Bava Kamma/Qamma, 46, 85, 88, 124, 138, 146, 237 Baba Metzia/Bava Metzia, 18, 24, 67, 134, 200–201, 234, 236 Berakhot/Bekhorot, 5, 26, 41, 46, 57–58, 66, 117, 123, 155, 173, 190–193, 210, 212, 224, 229, 232, 237–238
Daf Yomi, 47, 62, 67, 129, 134 Deuteronomy/Devarim, 83, 91, 100, 130, 133–134, 172, 174, 210–211, 216–217, 219, 224, 226, 229–231, 234, 236–237 R’Eliezer/Eleazar, 41, 51, 81, 210–211, 216–217, 233, 236 Erubin/Eiruvin, 28, 30–32, 40, 142 Exodus, 15–17, 65–66, 173, 188–189, 194, 208, 229 Gittin/Gitin, 51, 66, 69, 100, 143, 146, 163, 166, 173–174, 239 Hagiga/Chagigah, 69, 79, 173, 176, 233 Hillel, 70, 129, 153–154 Hulin, 143–144 Isaiah, 16, 26, 224, 237, 239 Jeremiah, 35, 44–45, 50 Job, 29, 32, 60, 172, 196, 233, 243 R’ Judah, 32, 36, 88, 132, 165, 173, 218, 230–231
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Kant, 78, 97 Ketubot/Ketubah, 116, 121 Kiddushin/Qiddushin, 44, 46, 79, 113, 122, 143, 168, 173–176, 226–227, 231–232, 234, 237, 240 Leviticus, 27, 70–71, 111, 133–134 Maimonides/Rambam, 5, 65, 92, 118–119, 138, 172–173, 240 Makkot, 133, 143–144, 237 R’ Meir, 27, 51, 117, 134, 172, 174, 184, 190, 215 Menachot/Menahot, 6, 146, 173, 179, 194, 226 Mo’ed Katan/Qatan, 117, 143, 172 Moses, 15–16, 29, 83, 132, 165, 167, 180–189, 190–194, 210, 226, 229 Nedarim, 143, 173, 218 Plato, 12, 83, 123, 225, 229, 233 Psalms, 172, 191–194, 224 Rabbeinu Tam, 69, 234 Ramban/Nachmanides, 48–50, 65, 145 Rashi, 53, 62–63, 69, 127, 133, 142, 153–154, 164, 166, 173, 201, 212 Rav, 57, 163–164, 180, 183 Rava, 14, 17–18, 43, 51, 61–63, 69, 109, 110, 121, 139, 142–144, 146, 152, 154–158, 163–164, 198–200, 237–239 Ravina, 101, 117, 140, 148, 155–156 Sanhedrin, 48, 65, 89, 97, 109–110, 142–143, 158–159, 194, 213–215, 218, 225, 227–231, 235–236 Shabbat, BT, 26, 37, 43, 61, 66, 76, 78, 137, 142, 144, 192, 194, 233, 237–238, 240 Shammai, 70, 129, 153–154 Sotah, 24, 60, 143, 174, 227, 231, 233, 239
Index
Tanna/Tannaim/Tannaitic, 43, 48–49, 65, 86, 94, 96–102, 118, 155–156, 159, 199, 208, 219, 230 Tosafot, 46, 53, 124, 133, 144, 146, 153–154, 167–168, 172–175, 234 Tosafists, 45, 145, 165, 167, 174 Tosefta, 98, 100, 123, 125, 141, 233 R’ Yehuda/Yehudah Ha Nasi, 98, 100, 139 Yevamot/Yebamot, 64, 114, 124, 146, 237, 239 R’ Yochanan, 50–51, 60–61, 80–81 R’ Yosi/Yose, 70–71, 101, 190–191, 236
