Stranger than Fiction: I had Naches from Gideon Levy

I'm sure that he didn't mean to provide anyone of my ilk with pleasure. However, his remarks here prove that my sense is correct. This country is becoming ever more Jewish. (Now, PLEASE, let the official representatives of religion not mess it up).

Sex and The Single Orthodox Jew: A MUST READ

In his usual sensitive and learned fashion, QED opens up a much needed discussion on a pressing and tragically avoided subject: the inability of the Modern Orthodox community to address Sex and Sex education.

Rav Soloveitchik on Coeducation

Some issues just won't go away. One of these is whether Rav Soloveitchik זצ"ל was in favor of co-education, ab initio, or only ex post facto. A friend recently sent me this discussion of the issue by R. Shmuel Eliyahu, the Chief Rabbi of Safed (and a leader of the Hardali communuty).

Essentially he makes two points. First, the Rav nowhere wrote that co-education was permissible, halakhically. Second, unnamed students of the Rav were interviewed by Shaul Schiff of the late, lamented HaZofeh. His findings were, not surprisingly for a Hareidi publicist, that co-education at Maimonides was a concession to the times.

With all due respect, R. Eliyahu is wrong. First, his argument from the lack written sources discussing the issue is, at best, disingenuous. Anyone who knows anything about Rav Soloveitchik knows that he hardly ever wrote (never mind published) his halakhic decisions. This might be regrettable. It is, however, a fact. Similarly, the Rav never wrote a programmatic essay on the positive need for a broad secular education. Yet can anyone, save the most extreme revisionists, deny that (as Professor Twersky זצ"ל once wrote) that such a need was self-evident?

As far as Shaul Schiff's article (which is no longer on line), since I don't know who he asked, there's no way of knowing how reliable his sources were. I can only repeat what I know from close family members (as reported by Seth Farber here). The Rav and Rebbetzin never considered co-education an halakhic issue. For them it was an educational question. They were convinced that separate classes would deprive the girls of the same level of Torah and academic excellence as the boys. Therefore, co-educational classes, ipse facto, were self-justifying.

Since Rav Shmuel Eliyahu and his followers oppose equal education for girls, obviously such considerations are of no import.

[As for his claim that co-education is in violation of the Shulchan Arukh, hasn't he ever heard of the Levush?]

UPDATE: Check out the comments.

My Back Porch: So Much for Human Rights and the Obama Jive

The news is full of Netanyahu's decision to capitulate to Obama, and freeze construction in Judea and Samaria. This move is, ostensibly, in order to give the Palestinians an opportunity to return to the negotiating table. Everyone know this is a non-started, which the Palestinians rejected even before it was announced. The reasons for this rejection are beautifully laid out here. So the only thing that Bibi's freeze will do is to deny tens of thusands of people, most of whom voted for Bibi, their rights to live where they choose and to do as they wish with their homes. In addition, Obama and Bibi have now denied thousands of Israelis and Palestinian workers their ability to earn a living, since if there's no construction, there are no jobs.

Now that's alot of people, a number that's hard to comprehend. So, I'll make it easier. I'll provide a human interest example, mine.

We moved to Gush Etzion thirteen years ago. For years, we had hoped to renovate it. The trouble was that the zoning laws allowed for very limited expansion, certainly not enough for a family of seven, very tall people. Finally, the zoning laws were changed and we got the legal ok to add on in the back, so that we'd have room for our family. Now come Obama and Bibi and inform us that we can't fix our home, which is fully paid for, sits on land that was never owned by Arabs, and lies in the heart of a settlement bloc that everyone knows will always be part of Israel (even Jimmy Carter said as much). In addition, the Arab and Jewish craftsmen, suppliers, and builders will be out of work. this, in a bad economy, to boot.

My outrage at this move, more than the personal inconvenience, is my native outrage (bred in me as a Bostonian) at anyone telling me what I can or can't do with my house (as long as I comply with building ordinances). How comes Jews have no right to build legally, while Arabs build illegally on both sides of the 1949 border? What right does a foreign potentate have to interfere with the internal affairs of a sovereign state and ally? (Except that he knows that he can bully us but not righteous states like Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Korea.)

Bibi, unfortunately, will pay the electoral price of bowing low to Obama (as Obama will be haunted in 2012 by the picture of him bowing to the Saudi King). In the meantime, I feel violated. As well I should.

[UPDATE: Jameel confirms the above and adds some trenchent thoughts.]

American Academics in Israel: Misfits in the Promised Land (Part III)

In the introduction to his translation of R. Bahya Ibn Paquda's Hovot ha-Levavot, R. Judah Ibn Tibbon sets out the three key criteria for responsible, accurate translation:

1) Total mastery of the language of the original
2) Total mastery of the language of the translation, and
3) Total mastery of the subject matter of the work being translated.

The same criteria could easily be applied to academics, generally, and Jewish Studies, in particular. One must be thoroughly fluent in the languages of one's sources and in the subject matter. Since the language in which one is writing mediates between the sources and the reader, then absolute precision in translating concepts, modes of thought and sources is so critical as to be obvious.

Unfortunately, in many places, it is not obvious. Now, shoddy scholarship is not limited to any one group, or to any geographic location. It happens in Israel, as much as the Diaspora. ( Film historian, Shlomo Zand's obscene excuse for historiography is a recent case in point among Israelis. Zand embodies the exact opposite of Ibn Tibbon's sober assertion. He doesn't understand his sources and he isn't trained.)

However, as an American trained historian, it pains me to see that the most egregious situation is to be found in North America (and, to a lesser extent, Europe). It's not just a question of individual writers. As time goes on, the problem becomes increasingly structural (justifying manuscript boy's bottom line).

Briefly put, far too many PhD's in Post-Biblical Judaism and Jewish History lack basic Jewish literacy both in languages and Jewish Literature (broadly conceived). The result is nothing less than tragic. Some simply produce shoddy, 8th rate studies that may show awareness of other fields, but which scream ignorance of the sources that they are, prima facie, explaining. (I recently came upon a published paper on liturgy by a professor of Jewish Studies who didn't know the difference between חצי קדיש and קדיש תתקבל. Similarly, a study of Nachmanides was recently issued that was so egregious that a reviewer had to really stretch in order to find something positive to day about it. In other words, the number of academics to whom Haym Soloveitchik's strong words of protest apply is ever increasing. These, then become the mentors of the next generation, with all too foreseeable results.

Alternatively, aware of their deficiencies (or, being simply uninterested in the more substantive areas of Jewish Studies) scholars of Judaica opt to teach and undertake research in which Jewish literacy is less of an obstacle. In such cases, students are instilled with a less than total, or balanced, view of what Jewish civilization and experience comprehends.

Now, there are wonderful, brilliant, creative, responsible and broadly read scholars of Jewish Studies in the Diaspora. Many could teach the Israelis a thing or two about scholarship, and how to go about it (e.g. here, here, and here). Over all, though, the American scene appears (increasingly) to be the mirror-image of its Israeli counterpart. Thus, the Israeli foundation is sound, while the superstructure is weak (if one ever gets to building beyond the foundation). Abroad, elaborate buildings are constructed on severly compromised foundations.

The weight of the future, therefore, lies in teaching Israeli-trained scholars to build, and to build with vision. After all, כי מציון תצא תורה.

Thanksgiving Break

I'm not going to rehash the arguments in favor of celebrating Thanksgiving. My distinguished friend, and colleague, Rabbi Michael Broyde, has done a yeoman's job on that count (here). I would like to add one footnote to the position associated with Rav Soloveitchik.

Rabbi Broyde writes:

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik also agreed that Thanksgiving was not a Gentile holiday, and ruled that it was permissible to eat turkey on Thanksgiving. Rabbi Hershel Schachter, in his intellectual biography of Rabbi Soloveitchik, Nefesh HaRav, writes:

"It was the opinion of Rabbi Soloveitchik that it was permissible to eat turkey at the end of November, on the day of Thanksgiving. We understood that, in his opinion, there was no question that turkey did not lack a tradition of kashrut and that eating it on Thanksgiving was not a problem of imitating gentile customs. We also heard that this was the opinion of his father, Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik."

Others have also recounted that Rabbi Soloveitchik ruled this way, and that he found it difficult to comprehend how one could consider Thanksgiving a Gentile holiday or that it was prohibited to celebrate it. Indeed, there were instances when Rabbi Soloveitchik implied to his students that he and his family celebrated Thanksgiving, although shiur [class] was always held on Thanksgiving.

There is no need to imply that the Soloveitchik family celebrated Thanksgiving together. In Boston, this was a well known fact. Indeed, anyone who was in the Rav's class knew that shiur on Thanksgiving morning was moved up to 9AM in order to allow him to return to Boston in time for dinner at one of his sisters' homes.

[On a personal note, we're having Thanksgiving Dinner tonite (Shabbat). You see, in Israel we work on the last Thursday of November. Plenty to be thankful for, however.]

American Academics in Israel: Misfits in the Promised Land (Part II)

I recently heard the following story from a colleague: A student, specializing in one department, submitted a research proposal that involved subject matter that is generally identified with different department. The proposal was rejected on the grounds that topics associated with other specialties don't belong in that specific department.


Now, if the argument had been that the student did not possess the skills to deal with the two areas under discussion, there might have been room to talk. Even then, why not require the student to take 'x' courses or, in some other manner, gain the necessary expertise to undertake the project?
There is something fundamentally wrong with this type of academic 'territorialism.' Why, for example, was a prominent scholar of Halakhah once pilloried for having the temerity of addressing the interface between Halakhah and mysticism, on grounds that were reminiscent of R. Eleazar b. Azariah's retort to R. Aqiva (B. Sanhedrin 38b): 'Akiva, what have you to do with Aggadah? Confine yourself to Nega'im and Ohalot!' If one acquires the necessary skills, why not?


Specialization is a fact of contemporary academic life. However, there is a difference between specialization and compartmentalization. When I was growing up, a well known piece of advice was: 'Be a Jack of All Trades, and a master of one.' I believe that this should be the guiding principle of scholarship. This was one of the most important lessons that I learned from the late Prof. Isadore Twersky ז"ל. Knowledge is unified, and thus inter-related. Typically, he based this contention upon the encyclopedic nature of the writings of Maimonides (along with other medievals, to be sure). The central point is well taken. Jewish literature and history are fundamenally inter-textual and inter-contextual, respectively. Similarly, the the lines between genres of writings that Jews created, and between the Jewish and Gentile societies that they inhabited, were eminently permeable. While a person certainly needs to specialize, he equally needs to acquire as wide an awareness of the broader historical and intellectual context of his subject. Moreover, if one writes about Rashi and Ramban, for example, that should require learning the basics of medieval Hebrew poetry (and, or, piyyut). Or, perhaps, a dip into contemporary French and Catalan poetry too.


This lesson was driven home to me recently when I ended up finding something (not yet published) of significant Halakhic and historucal significance, in a collection of medieval poems. I was able to read and crack the poems because I spent a year studying medieval Hebrew poetry with the unforgettable, Prof. Yisrael Levin (a recent israel Prize winner), when he was on sabbatical in Boston. Literacy, yes. Specialization, not necessarily. It is enough, though, to undertake a study of halakhic implications in the poems of certain medievals. On the other hand, the article would have been rejected as a thesis topic because of כלך לך אצל נגעים ואהלות.

And that, in fact, is why I described myself and many of my American compatriots, as 'misfits.' It's not just a question of responsible scholarship obliging one to 'think out of the box.' It's that we take such broad view, intellectual history as a given. (In a sense, it's an academic חומרא). Unfortunately, far too many of our colleagues here don't really understand what we do, never mind the methodologies we employ (e.g. History of Ideas). Instead, because we are a bit less centered upon manuscripts and archives, we can be made to feel, well, inferior and dismissed as such.

This situation can certainly be rectified, to the benefit of all involved. That, however, requires another posting.

American Academics in Israel: Misfits in the Promised Land (Part I)

I've long considered writing about, what I see as, a central frustration that I've encountered in my professional life in Israel. I've held off, I suppose, out of a mixture of professsional anxiety mixed with the feeling that I need to 'get it right' before I 'put it down' in writing. Yesterday, though, a heartfelt conversation with a fellow Harvard expatriate made me realize that I should start putting the issue on the table. Clarity will, hopefully, follow repeated attempts at expression.

There is, it seems to me, a fundamental disconnect between the way that Israeli and American trained historians go about their business. Israeli scholars, at least those in Jewish Studies, are trained to be first rate philologians. Manuscripts, text reconstruction, and philological analysis are their bread and butter. That, surely, is as it should be. After all, how can one possibly say anything about the past if the supporting evidence is not firmly determined? In other words, if you don't know what the past said, how can you report it, much less evaluate it?

That having been said, I can't shake the feeling that many of my Israeli colleagues (who I hold in the highest regard) pay a very high price for their heavy emphasis upon manuscript work. Somehow, it seems to manacle them. So much effort goes into philology, that there is not enough time to acquire other, equally important, skills that would allow them to properly interpret the sources over which they pore. To begin with, there is not enough of a sense that one must read widely and deeply in order to develop the kind of literary and historical sensitivity that texts require. That demands fluency in languages other than Hebrew (and a bit of English). For medievalists, it requires German, French, Italian and Latin (at least). The reading material requires primary sources in those languages, not only skimming some scholarly articles.

In other words, one needs to cast a wide net, in order to comprehend the text in front of you. One needs intellectual and cultural perspective, openness to other disciplines. If one confines oneself, to iron-clad time frames and specific literary genres, one runs the risk of being trapped in a methodological box, when scholarship actually demands that one think out of the box, in an attempt to see the larger picture. That type of box also leads to less than deep thinking and analysis, and a subsequent misrepresentation of the past. [Everything, of course, has its limits and those who go to the opposite extreme (e.g. nefarious PoMo'ists like Shlomo Zand) also miss the point. Media aurea, you know.]

Now, obviously, no one can know everything. That does not, however, excuse scholars from becoming literate in field outside of their area of specialization. Yet, that it exactly the problem with the way that Israeli scholarship is organized, to everyone's detriment. Talmud is not allowed to mix with History; Literature with Philosophy; Economics with Education and so on. Whoever organized this system forgot that while one must obviously pick one's focus, life itself is integrated and complex. The result is very much like the Indian fable of the Blind Men and the Elephant. The only difference is that scholars with blinders don't really share ideas and insights. So they're not only blind, but deaf and mute, as well.

I believe that the Israeli academic emphasis on text is essentially sound. It certainly is better than the abject lack of Hebrew literacy and textual skills that mark far too many Jewish studies professionals abroad. Nevertheless, it's time to remove the blinders, open our ears and mouths.

The ones to help with this, are those of us who were trained abroad and moved here. Of that, I will write, IY"H, next time.