Velvel explains to Reb Traitle Groshkover (or a dybbuk) about a boba-ma’aseh his wife heard. Scene from "A Serious Man"

By Simon Holloway
Yiddish speakers are very polite. While English speakers might tell you to get stuffed, a Yiddish speaker only directs you to do a poo in the sea (גיי קאקן אויפן ים). While English speakers might tell you to drop dead, a Yiddish speaker will bless you that you should be like a lamp (זאלסט זיין ווי א לאמפ): hanging in the daytime, and burning through the night. In fact, even when you are speaking a load of crap, a Yiddish speaker won’t tell you so. Instead, they will most likely call it a boba-ma’aseh (באבע מעשה): an old wives’ tale.

Literally, the phrase boba-ma’aseh is understood to mean “a grandmother story”, the word ma’aseh meaning “story” and the word boba (or buba, etc) meaning grandmother. Some gender-sensitive people have even taken the added step of inventing a new genre of nonsense: the zayde-ma’aseh (זיידע מעשה), or “grandfather story”. After all, they reason, old women are not alone in their ability to spin webs of utter inanity. Unfortunately, however, this too is nonsense.

To understand the actual origin of this delightful Yiddish phrase, we instead need to cast our thoughts back to the beginning of the 13th century, with the composition of an Anglo-Norman metrical romance known in English as Sir Bevis of Butthead Hampton. His adventures, which are related in “Alexandrines” (whereby each of the 3,850 verses is comprised of lines with exactly twelve syllables), has much in common with older legends concerned with Beowulf, as well as later legends concerning Hamlet.

The son of a murdered Count, Sir Bevis finds himself an exile, sworn to avenge his father’s murder, in love with an Egyptian princess. As with the Hamlet legend, the murderer of Sir Bevis’ father is now his mother’s husband, but unlike the Danish tragedy, Sir Bevis’ mother was instrumental in facilitating her late husband’s death. Sir Bevis acts with purpose and direction, excels himself as a man of a valour, and even conquers the giant Ascaparte, whom he appoints to be his squire. He dies in the end, as all good heroes must, and there was no sequel.

The 14th century English translation of Boeve de Haumtone (“Sir Bevis of Hampton”) was made from various French versions of the epic, themselves written in decasyllables and with over 10,000 verses. The most popular version, however, was the Italian, which was titled Buovo d’Antona, and which went through over thirty editions in the 14th century. Focusing largely on the romance between Buovo and the princess, there named Druziane, it is fair to say that there is little about the story that might be deemed Jewish. Its protagonists are Christians, they pray both to God and to Mary, various individuals get baptised, and there is nary a herring in sight. And so it is a mystery, and perhaps one of the most curious things in all of Jewish literature, that this chivalric romance should have been translated from Italian into Yiddish.

Born in the second half of the 15th century, Elia Levita is best remembered today as a grammarian. He wrote a dictionary of the Talmud and Midrash (תשבי), a dictionary of Targum Onkelos (ספר מתורגמן), an alphabetical presentation of technical Hebrew words (שמות דברים), and a translation of the Torah, the haftarot and the five megillot into Yiddish. His version of Buovo d’Antona, entitled באבה ד’אנטונא, was the first non-religious text published in the Yiddish language, preceding the first Hebrew novel by almost 300 years. Known by many as the באבה בוך (Bovo Bukh, or “Bovo Book”), it is considered by some to represent the finest poetry in the Yiddish language. If you can read it, it is available as a free download here.

In Levita’s version of the story, in which he supplanted various Christological references for subject matter that would have resonated with a Jewish audience, it is the princess of Flanders with whom the exiled Bovo falls in love, and the wicked king of Babylonia who constitutes his nemesis. The Babylonian prince, Lucifer, is promised the beautiful princess, the King of Flanders is taken into Babylonian captivity, Bovo rescues him with the assistance of a magic horse, and the wicked Lucifer is put to death. Twice in the story do Bovo and his lover think the other dead, twice is she almost married to another, and in the midst of all of this excitement he finds the time to return to Antona, banish his mother to a nunnery, kill her murderous husband and become the new king. It’s a real page-turner, I am sure.

And yet, such tremendous excitement notwithstanding, it didn’t take long before many became critical of these sorts of stories. Already by the 17th century, Cervantes found much to ridicule about the chivalric urge, and while Sir Bevis’ giant might have really been a giant, the sober windmills of Quixote have received greater literary attention. Are we so fearful of the fantastic that we need to ground it in realism? Is it truly necessary for a story to be predicated on reason and logic for us to accept its premise? Cannot profound truths be disported within a nonsensical carriage?

For many, perhaps not. And so it is not entirely surprising that the very name by which Levita’s Yiddish translation came to be known in the 18th century – the Bovo Ma’aseh, or Bovo Tale – should have come to denote a piece of foolish nonsense. For my part, I think it time that its original nuance be restored. Had an exciting weekend? Found yourself subject to forces beyond your control, over which you managed to assert yourself in a manner deserving recount? Feel free to embellish it with all manner of extra, fantastical details, and be sure to hold your head up high. Let your listeners know that “it was a real boba-ma’aseh, I assure you”.

[Addendum: It is worth noting the phonological shift between באבה (= bovo) and באבע (= boba). Until a Yiddish expert can correct me, I am under the impression that Yiddish today disallows the representation of a non-aspirated /b/ with anything other than two waws (ie: bovo would be באווה). At the time when Levinas' באבה דאנטונא was first published, the typesetter employed a rafe (a horizontal stroke) above the second ב, thus indicating that it is not to be aspirated. I expect that the reference to this text being a באבה מעשה (bovo ma'aseh), spelt with a ב, contributed towards it being relexicalised as באבע מעשה (boba ma'aseh), on analogy with the English expression, "old wives' tale".]

This article was first published in Davar Akher.

Like mountains suspended on a hair

By Simon Holloway

It is no secret that the weight of our traditions, and the vast bulk of our legislation, derives not from an explicit reading of the Torah, but instead from the long and methodical distillation of rabbinic halakha. This halakha, while it is earlier given expression in various legalistic midrashim (the Midrash Halakha), is best exemplified in the 3rd century redaction of the Mishna. It is a most curious feature of this text that, unlike all other examples of Jewish literature before and since (with the exception only of the stylistically correlative Tosefta), the Mishna provides no reasons for its laws, all of which are predicated upon statements found within the Torah, but none of which are actually from the Torah itself.

It would be a mistake to assume that the earliest generations of rabbis were unaware of this problem. While many today are content with the traditional schema, which posits the origin of rabbinic legal methodologies, and even the origin of rabbinic halakhot themselves, at Sinai, the Mishna itself evinces a certain discomfort with the provenance of its own dicta. Consider the following pronouncement (Hagigah 1:8):

התר נדרים פורחין באויר ואין להם על מה שיסמכו הלכות שבת חגיגות והמעילות הרי הם כהררים התלוין בשערה שהן מקרא מעט והלכות מרבות הדינין והעבודות הטהרות והטמאות ועריות יש להן על מה שיסמכו הן הן גופי תורה

[The laws concerning] the annulment of vows are floating in the air, and have nought on which they can be based. The laws of Shabbat, festival offerings and transgressions [incurred through the misuse of consecrated goods]: these are like mountains suspended on a hair, for there is little scripture and a great many halakhot. Financial laws, sacrifical procedures, purities and impurities, and sexual transgressions have that on which they can be based. These ones are the essence of Torah.

The translation above, which is slightly idiomatic, is my own. Where the Hebrew notes that הן הן גופי תורה , I have understood the repetition of the demonstrative pronoun as noting that “these ones” – the latter category – are the essence of Torah, to the exclusion of those that came before. Support for this can be found within the Tosefta (Hagigah 1:11; also Eruvin 8:17), which in this instance is clearly a commentary upon the mishna in question. Consider its conclusion:

הדינין העבודות הטהרות והטמאות והעריות מוסף עליהן הערכין וחרמים וההקדשות מקרא מרבה מדרש והלכות מרבות יש להן על מה שיסמכו אבא יוסי בן חנן אומר אלו שמונה מקצעי תורה גופי הלכות

Financial laws, sacrificial procedures, purities and impurities, and sexual transgressions, to which can be added valuations [of people and property], that which is banned, and that which is consecrated – a great deal of scripture, a great deal of midrash and a great many halakhot – have that on which they can be based. Abba Yose ben Hanan says, “These are the eight corners of Torah, the essence of halakhot.”

It is evident in the Tosefta’s reformulation that these eight things mentioned last (which number only four or five in the Mishna’s formulation) constitute the essence of Torah, while that which came before, although important and constituting the bulk of rabbinic legislation, is not of the essence. Those are the areas of the halakha, concerning which the rabbis could find no justificatory basis within the explicit wording of the Torah itself, and concerning which they were aware of their inability to do so.

It goes without saying that while so radical an idea might have found expression within certain examples of early rabbinic literature, later examples of the same disavowed it. Consider the terse response of the gemara to this problem (Hagigah 11b):

הן הן גופי תורה הני אין הנך לא אלא אימא הן והן גופי תורה

“These ones are the essence of Torah”? [Meaning] these ones are and these ones aren’t? Rather, say that “these and these are the essence of Torah”.

In other words, rather than suggesting that only these latter examples ( הן הן ) are the essence of Torah, which is what the Mishna does suggest, declare instead that all of these examples (הן והן) are the essence of Torah, whether or not they have anything on which they can be based, or whether they have only very little on which they can be based, within the explicit phraseology of the Torah itself.

That the gemara finds the Mishna’s assertion so problematic only serves to underscore the philosophical rift that divides the two. Prof. Menahem Kahana of Hebrew University refers to the statement in the mishna as being one that “frankly reveals the problematic nature of finding biblical support for numerous halakhot in several realms of Jewish law.”

Nonetheless, the recognition of this problem is one that comes fraught with all manner of ideological baggage. Were one to suggest that certain realms of halakha indeed lack textual basis, might not the individual halakhot that they comprise be called into question?

Consider a recent guest post at Hirhurim. Rabbi Yonatan Kaganoff proposes a model for comprehending Orthodox Judaism (although the model applies beyond Orthodoxy as well), in which he divides it into two different philosophical approaches.

One of Rabbi Kaganoff’s approaches is the one that sees of Judaism a masorah, or tradition. By believing his practises (however erroneously) to be constitutive of historical practises, and by perceiving a clear line of development from the earliest texts to the most recent, the adherent of such a philosophy must surely feel uncomfortable with any indication that there might be discontinuation between one stage in the process and the next. That the earliest generations of rabbis may have been originating ideas, the better to derive practical halakha from the little that the Torah gives them, is anathema to such a perspective. As a result, the mishna’s assertion that the “real Torah” lies with those things that possess a scriptural basis is in need of the sort of emendation that the gemara provides.

The first of his approaches, however, and the one to which I assent, is the approach that sees of Judaism a system of legal exegesis. While we might remark upon the ways in which it operates, we seek to appraise it rather than to lend it justification. Or as I have heard Rabbi Raymond Apple note on a number of occasions, our objective is to understand the literature and not to judge it. Were the rabbis ever responsible for innovating halakhot? Both then and now, and throughout all of Jewish history, this has been the modus operandi. While innovation was and is conducted in line with both the content and the principles of the rabbinic literature, it stands to reason that the earliest examples of this literature testify to innovation made on a more subjective basis.

Indeed, the introduction to the tosefta that I quoted (Hagigah 1:11) makes this abundantly clear for itself:

היתר נדרים פורחין באויר ואין להם על מה שיסמכו אבל חכם מתיר לפי חכמתו

[The laws concerning] the annulment of vows are floating in the air, and have nought on which they can be based, but the wise one will permit things in accordance with his wisdom.

While later generations came to understand the Mishna as being the faithful representation of a memorised body of law, rather than the results of a dynamic process of creative legislation, so much of the information that we have at our disposal belies this assertion. The abundance of disagreements within the early rabbinic literature, the honest appraisal of this particular passage in the Mishna, and the assertion made by the corresponding tosefta that “the wise one will permit things in accordance with his wisdom” all testify to a certain state of elasticity in the earliest days of the halakha.

Jewish law may have become inflexible in many respects, permitting change and development when in line with a particular methodology only, but this has not always been the case. Recreating the rabbis of the past in our own image does nobody any favours: neither those earliest generations, so anachronistically represented, nor ourselves, divested of an appreciation as to our ideological roots.

Another meditative Jew. Image source: Belarome.ca

By Simon Holloway

Recently, I attended Vipassana: a ten-day, silent meditation retreat that was held in Blackheath, NSW. (For those who are interested in it, I reviewed it on my blog a little while ago.) And wandering through the bushland, I got to thinking. Sure, the material that they bombarded me with was of a strictly Buddhist nature, but was the practise really so foreign to Judaism? Do Jews meditate? Is it okay to meditate? And, between the clamour of the Bet Midrash and the hubbub of the shul, what might Jewish meditation look like?

When mining the classic literature for material of a meditative nature, the prime text to continually surface in this regard is a well-known and oft-quoted passage from the Tosefta (the body of literature that, according to tradition, was left over after the third century redaction of the Mishna). The passage is quoted in both the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, and concerns four rabbis who either enter an, or the orchard – depending on how one vocalises the text. Their names are Yonatan ben Azzai, Yonatan ben Zoma, Elisha ben Abuya, and Akiva ben Yosef, but they are referred to simply as Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, “Acher” (“somebody else”) and Rabbi Akiva. They each meet a nasty fate.

Ben Azzai dies, Ben Zoma goes insane, “Acher” apparently loses his faith, and Rabbi Akiva, while he does escape the orchard in peace, was subsequently tortured to death by the Romans: a fate that would have been in the forefront of the minds of all those who read this story originally. Yet even if we take the narrative at face value, and assert that Rabbi Akiva “departed in peace”, we are still forced to question why it is that his companions should have suffered. What on earth was in this orchard? Or if the orchard is a metaphor for something more sinister, what actually is it?

There is a theory, and one that sometimes seems inseparable from this story, that needs to be properly dismissed. The theory states that the Persian word for orchard in this narrative (pardes – from whence the English “paradise”) is actually an acronym, and that it stands for four levels of textual exegesis. According to this theory, the four rabbis were studying the Torah from the simple level (“peshat”) through to the most mystical level (“sod”). But this theory, that there are four such levels of textual analysis, does not achieve written expression at any time prior to the 13^th century, and is actually based explicitly upon passages in the Zohar.  What is more, to read the story as though it is denoting Torah study would be to rob the passage of its rightful import. What did it signify in its original context?

In both the Palestinian (Hagigah 2.1, 77b-c) and Babylonian (Hagigah 14b-15b) Talmuds, this story appears with the intention of explaining why Elisha ben Abuya came to be known as “Acher”. In both accounts he is guilty of some form of apostasy, but the two versions differ in regards to the reasons why. According to the Babylonian Talmud, Elisha is said to have lost his faith after having witnessed Metatron, the mouthpiece of God, behaving in a fashion that differentiated him from the rest of the divine retinue. This would convey to us already that the “orchard” is either not an actual orchard, or was a mundane place from which the four rabbis travelled somewhere supernal. But the biggest clue as to what might be going on lies within the original version, found in the Tosefta.

It is there (Tosefta Hagigah 2.2) that the narrative is framed by two laws that forbid mystical speculation. The first (2.1) disallows people from teaching various matters to more than a specified number of people at a time, and in one instance (teaching “the work of the chariot”) even forbids teaching it to anybody, save only the most discerning pupil. The second passage (2.3) opines that one who contemplates mystical matters (“what came before and what comes after, what is above and what below”) should never have even been born. For a contemporary utilisation of this passage, Rav Aharon Schechter of Yeshivat Chaim Berlin referred to it in a public condemnation of Rabbi Natan Slifkin in 2006.

That the story of the four rabbis should be sandwiched between two laws that forbid teaching and meditating upon mystical realia only reinforces the mystical nature of this orchard, and the story seems to function as a cautionary tale. In fact, Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak (“Rashi”) comments upon this passage as it appears in the Babylonian account, by noting that “entering the orchard” means “ascending to the firmament by means of a [divine] name”. This accords with an extra detail found in the Babylonian version (although found in neither the Palestinian Talmud nor in the Tosefta), in which Rabbi Akiva warns his comrades about what to say when they “reach the stones of pure marble”. It also accords with a genre of extra- and post-Talmudic literature that is known as Heikhalot (“palace chambers”), in which Rabbi Ishmael guides the reader through the various chambers of God’s divine palace, before arriving at the throne room and beholding his majesty.

So much for Rashi’s interpretation; significantly, the “Tosafot” disagree. Nobody knows with certainty which of these scholars were responsible for Tractate Hagigah, but with the majority of the Baalei haTosafot being from France, there may be good reason for suggesting one of the French academies. They stress in their commentary that the four sages didn’t really ascend to the firmament, but that “by means of a divine name” they made it appear to themselves as though they had. And so it is worth asking the important question: were the Tosafot suggesting that Rabbi Akiva and his three colleagues were meditating?

This question is not so strange. Contemporary with the later generations of the Tosafot was a rabbi in south-eastern France known as Yitzhak the Blind (Yitzhak “Sagi Nahor” – “Too Much Light”). The son of Rabbi Avraham ben David (“the Raavad”), Yitzhak the Blind contributed greatly towards early kabbalistic philosophies that pertain to the sephirot: divine emanations that bridge the distance between the transcendent godhead and his finite creation. Unsurprisingly for a man who was completely blind, Yitzhak believed that one could ascend these sephirot and approach his creator through mystical contemplation. This idea was to prove very influential amongst later generations of kabbalists – most notable Nachmanides, whose teacher was Yitzhak’s disciple.

But it wasn’t until the expulsion from Spain that these ideas gained widespread currency. Almost grudgingly, European scholars admitted the sanctity of a 13^th century Iberian text called Sefer haZohar, which was attributed to the authorship of a second-century Palestinian rabbi named Shimon ben Yohai. Ben Yohai’s transformation is recorded in Tractate Shabbat of the Babylonian Talmud, and served Jews of the sixteenth century with an origin story for the Zohar. A collection of mystical midrashim on the Torah, the Zohar not only constitutes a development of the sephirot philosophy of Yitzhak the Blind, but a profound testament to the development of experiential, introspective Judaism.

Today, when people refer to the kabbalah, they are most oftentimes referring to the Zohar, particularly as it came to be interpreted by a sixteenth century Palestinian rabbi named Yitzhak Luria (“the Arizal”). In many instances, they are referring to his philosophy as it is presented by the teachings of Hassidic rebbeim, for it was the Hassidic movement that saw the extreme popularisation of this doctrine, to the intense chagrin of the rabbinic establishment of the time. And it is no surprise that many Hassidic practises, therefore, have much of a meditative nature to them.

Rhythmically rocking back and forth, their peyot keeping the tempo, are Polish Hassidim aware that their davening is taking on a mantric quality? Sitting in silence before shacharit and focusing on the ascension of prayer as explained by the Rebbe Rashab, Lubavitchers make no apologies for the fact that they are meditating. And when Breslov Hassidim go into the woods for hisbodedus (“self-isolation”), and pour out their heart in spontaneous prayer, they must know that it is no less an act of catharsis than when Sufis spin, when Christians count beads, and when Buddhists sit and think. Are they attaining “enlightenment” through such a practise? Is hisbodedus a form of hisbuddhadus?

At the end of the day, while there is much to compare about these different practises, there is even more by which they can be contrasted. But the presence of warnings like that found in the Tosefta and the Talmuds demonstrates that, while it took a long time before experiential Judaism became a force to be reckoned with, Jews have been practising forms of meditation from the very beginning. Today, large numbers of Israelis (and Jews from all over the world) attend Vipassana retreats. For many amongst them, embracing Buddhism is a way of running away from Judaism. To an extent, however, I wonder if they ever realise that running away by sitting still is just another way of coming home.

A Karaite Jew in Jerusalem. Source: IllCallBaila.blogspot.com

By Simon Holloway

It was about two years ago now. I was having lunch with a friend and fellow contributor to Galus, when he asked me the big question: “What’s your background?” Well, my mother is from Hungary and she moved here with her family after the Hungarian Revolution, which followed swiftly on the heels of the Holocaust. ” And your father?” My father is a fourth or fifth-generation Australian. His parents were proud Anzacs and his ancestors were Poms. “Were they Jewish?” he asked me. At some point no, although we don’t know when that changed. One of his father’s forebears married a Jewish lady and, while he bequeathed his name, she bequeathed her religion. “Ah,” he tells me, having obviously misunderstood. “You’re half-Jewish.”

Now, I’m not sure which part of the story he didn’t understand, but it doesn’t really matter. Who is a Jew remains today a deeply complicated question, and an incredibly interesting one. What makes it especially fascinating is the fact that a significant portion of the world’s Jewish population don’t think it’s complicated at all. A Jew, quite simply, is somebody whose mother is Jewish, or who converted to Judaism. Simple. But here’s a question: how do you know that your mother is Jewish? Well, it’s a simple question and it has a simple answer. Somebody’s mother is Jewish if her mother is Jewish, or if she converted to Judaism. You can see where I’m going with this.

There’s an inane assumption, floating around and continually resurfacing in this context, that the terminus a quo of the whole business is Abraham. My mother is Jewish because her mother is Jewish, and she is Jewish because her mother is Jewish, and I have it on faith that this matrilineal progression goes all the way back to Abraham’s wife, Sarah, or to somebody who converted. I refer to this as an inane assumption because a literal reading of the story that I am referencing would lead me to brand half of this planet with the epithet “Jew”, and I think that we can all agree that would be missing the point.

On the contrary, while Jews do traditionally consider themselves to be descended of Abraham (both ideologically and genealogically), the starting point of this development is actually sixth century Judah. It is around this time, according to the literature that we have at our disposal, that being Judean started to mean being Jewish, and that Jewishness became Judaism. References to “Jews” in the books of Kings, Isaiah and Jeremiah (for example) are more properly references to Judeans. References to the same people in the books of Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah are references to Jews. With their most defining feature being a focus on their own pedigree, early Judaism was a faith built less around living in Judah than it was around being descended of other Judeans. Jewishness, in its origin, was more ethnically than philosophically determined from the outset, which may have informed the current halakhic impossibility of departure from the faith.

If I wish, I can choose to embrace the belief that I am saved from biblical law by the grace of God, who affected my salvation through the sacrifice of his son, Jesus. And, with a quick and public bath, I am a Christian. But I am still a Jew. Alternatively, should I be so inclined, I can acknowledge, with almost tautological simplicity, that Allah is the only Allah, that Mohammad was a true prophet of his, and that the revelation that comprises the Qur’an is the final revelation. All I need do is accept this, declare it publically and in Arabic and, voila: I am a Muslim. But I am still a Jew.

Indeed, there is no philosophical system that I can embrace, nor creed that I can recite, that will erase the simple fact that I am descended of sixth century Judeans, or of somebody who converted into Judaism under rabbinic law. I can deny the truth claims of my literature, I can deliberately subvert or ignore the halakha, and I can reject a belief in any number of gods, but I have it on reliable tradition that my matrilineal ancestor either stood before three judges, whom she satisfied with her intention to join the Jewish people, or dwelt within one of the many Israelite towns in the southern kingdom of Judah. That is not something that I can change. As the Talmud states, “a Jew who sins is still a Jew” (bSan 44a).

Nonetheless, there is a significant number of people who have the same familial tradition that I have, but who are told that it doesn’t count. In 1983, in an attempt at reaching out to such people, the Central Conference of American Rabbis produced one of their most controversial decisions. Ruling that Jewishness can be conveyed through the father as well as through the mother, this remains almost thirty years later one of the most abrasive sources of tension between Orthodox and Progressive Jewish communities around the world. Does anybody know why?

In Tractate Kiddushin of the Mishna (3:12), we are presented with a series of four cases, each with distinct examples and distinct rulings. All that the four cases have in common is the fact that they are each concerned with the status of a child:

1. Whenever there is kiddushin (meaning, the possibility of an halakhic marriage) and the two partners are permitted to one another, the offspring assumes the status of the father. The example given is that of a priest, a levite or a regular Israelite who marries the daughter of a priest, a levite or a regular Israelite. Should the father be a priest, irrespective of whether or not he has married the daughter of a priest, his sons are priests and his daughters are entitled to various priestly privileges, like the consumption of consecrated food.

2. What happens when there is kiddushin but the two are not permitted to one another? The example given here is of a high priest who marries the daughter of a regular Israelite, or of a priest who marries a divorcee. In such an instance, rather than assuming the identity of a specific parent, the child is said to adopt the status of whichever parent is “lower” than the other. Should a high priest marry the daughter of an Israelite, his sons are not priests and his daughters obtain no priestly privilege.

What happens, however, when there is no kiddushin – no possibility of an halakhic union? Focusing specifically on women, the Mishna gives a further two examples:

3. Should she have the potential of an halakhic marriage with somebody else, just not with this man, the offspring is a mamzer: a Jew who is without certain basic rights, like the ability to contract kiddushin later in life, but a Jew nonetheless. An example of a union that could produce a mamzer would be the incestuous union of a Jewish man and his sister. She has the potential for kiddushin with another man, but she has chosen to marry a man with whom there is no possibility of an halakhic union at all.

4. Finally, what if she is somebody who has no potential for kiddushin with anybody? This is the Mishna’s fourth and final case, and the examples that are given of this are the non-Jewish woman and the female slave. While we know from biblical law that the children of slaves, born in captivity, are slaves (Exodus 21:4), the Mishna is here introducing something that we could not have deduced from the Bible alone. In the event that a non-Jewish woman, who cannot contract an halakhic marriage with anybody, should marry a Jewish man, the offspring is said to follow her in status and to not be Jewish. There are dissenting voices to this outside of the Mishna (in one case, even as late as the extra-canonical tractate of Avot deRebi Natan), but the halakha follows the opinion that I have detailed here.

As for the sociological basis of this particular halakha, which stands out in contrast against the various patrilineal laws of the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern literature, there are various theories. One particularly well-known (and possibly well-founded) hypothesis is that it lies in the fact that identification of one’s father proves more difficult, in several circumstances, than identification of one’s mother. In a world before DNA testing, the simplest solution is to deny admission to all children whose mothers are not of the Jewish community.

If this is so (and of course it may not be so) then we have another clear example of where the halakha becomes immutable, even in the face of innumerable reasons to reject it. I know many Jews, and have met a great many Jews, but have never once met one who did not know the identity of his or her father. If the essence of Judaism is simply to be descended of Judeans (or of those who converted), then should not a child born with certainty to a Jewish father be accepted? Is it not the same thing?

Of course, it is not the same thing, and for a very simple reason. Judaism is no longer just a culture. It is now also a religion. And, like all religions, Judaism professes immutable claims to truth, and inflexible parameters of faith. Should any item of law become unnecessary, the law remains standing, for it is no longer built upon practical exigency but upon the authority of its own antiquity. What happens when individual groups decry this?

On a strictly political level, the State of Israel deems Jewish for the purposes of aliyah anybody who suits the Nazi definition: one grandparent, either side. Yet even so relaxed a definition comes fraught with complications, as has been evident in the influx of Jews who know nothing of rabbinic Judaism (many Ethiopians being a case in point), or who reject it outright (many Egyptians being another). Indeed, the Egyptians are of particular interest. In rejecting rabbinic law, members of the Karaite community emphasise strictly patrilineal descent. After all, a Jewish sola scriptura would lead you to no other conclusion.

Tensions between rabbinic and non-rabbinic Jews have always been fraught (despite the fact that Karaites once comprised some 40% of the total Jewish population), which makes all the more surprising certain recent halakhic developments. In 1973, former Sephardi chief rabbi Ovadiah Yosef declared Karaites to be Jewish and, despite the objections of prominent Ashkenazi rabbis (notably the Tzitz Eliezer), even permitted marriages between Karaites and Orthodox Jews. While the Karaites might fall under a “grandfather clause” (or a great-grandfather clause, with “great” being to the power of ten), might this decision serve as the harbinger of more solid ties between Orthodox and Progressive Judaism in the future? Or is Progressive Judaism too young and too presumptuous for this to be envisaged?

On November 7th, this coming Sunday, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz will be completing his forty-five year project of translating the entire Babylonian Talmud into Israeli Hebrew. Abigail Leichman, writing for the New Jersey Jewish Standard, notes that completion ceremonies (siyyumim) are going to be held in several locations around the world, including Mumbai, Miami, Rio de Janeiro, Washington, Moscow, and Melbourne, Australia. But as Sue Fishkoff of JTA notes, there has been a great deal of attendant controversy.

Most important among the various criticisms of Rabbi Steinsaltz is the fact that, in June of 2005, he accepted an appointment to the post of Nasi on Israel’s fledgling Sanhedrin. As TheSanhedrin.org makes very clear, this is a body that expects to usher in the redemption of the Jewish people with a return to the state of play two millennia ago. It is fascinating to read their account of various of the other rabbis who make up the Sanhedrin and who were voted on for Nasi, which is a list that includes the founder of The Temple Institute in Jerusalem (an organisation that has already started building vessels for the third temple), the founder of Nachal Hareidi (a branch of the army that allows for participation from ultra-orthodox youth), and the brother of Rabbi Meir Kahane. For a considerably less positive view of them, Kobi Nahshoni reports at Ynet on their attempts to impose Torah law upon the Israeli population, their public boycotting of the Beijing Olympics, and their continued agitation for war with Hamas.

And in the midst of all of this, Rabbi Steinsaltz is translating the Babylonian Talmud. We would none of us doubt that he is a pious man, but that he is also tremendously learned is beyond reproof: he has published fifty-eight books on a wide range of topics, and has been releasing tractates of the Talmud as he has been producing them. Simply vocalising and punctuating the Aramaic text would have been an incredible achievement in itself (if not a slightly audacious one), but his translation is both lucid and precise. He lost much in the way of support in the early days, when he made the decision to visually replace Rashi’s commentary with his own translational commentary, and to move Rashi in with the Tosafot. Since causing a stir, new editions of Rabbi Steinsaltz’s “Vilna Edition” maintain the traditional typesetting, with the rabbi’s translation and commentary on the facing page. As it stands today, despite whatever opposition it may receive from certain circles, his translation is the best translation on the market: it significantly supersedes Artscroll for both its readability and its precision, and it is no surprise that it is being celebrated in so many locations around the world. Given the tension caused by his election to the head of Israel’s “self-appointed supreme court”, it is unsurprising that not one of those locations is in Israel.

Rabbi Yosef Blau of Yeshiva University, while supportive of the project, notes that one must expect controversy when a single individual wishes to translate a vast and variegated corpus of literature, composed by multiple authors over the course of a few centuries. But an appreciation of Rabbi Steinsaltz’s perspective indicates that he not only sees himself as fitting for the task, but as a kind of 21st century Ezra, returning Torah to the people and laying the groundwork for the rebuilding of the temple. In an interview given to JTA, Rabbi Steinsaltz has the following to say:

“The Talmud is the central pillar of Jewish knowledge, important for the overall understanding of what is Jewish… But it is a book that Jews cannot understand. This is a dangerous situation, like a collective amnesia. I tried to make pathways through which people will be able to enter the Talmud without encountering impassable barriers. It’s something that will always be a challenge, but I tried to make it at least possible.”
[JTA]

This simple statement is a profound indicator of Rabbi Steinsaltz’s governing philosophy. For a start, he perceives the Talmud as “the central pillar of Jewish knowledge”. We can all of us agree that the Talmud is a central pillar, although some of us might prefer the indefinite article to the definite. Is the Talmud truly at the centre for all Jews, or have there always been Jews who elevated other corpora? As the man whose most popular publication was The Thirteen Petalled Rose, Rabbi Steinsaltz is undoubtedly aware of the existence of Jews throughout history who have venerated the mystical tradition over and above the halakhic; were he adamant that the kabbalah can only be understood by Talmudic scholars, it is unlikely that he would have composed a popular introduction to Jewish mysticism.

And yet, he here describes the Babylonian Talmud as crucial for “the overall understanding of what is Jewish”. Well, what is Jewish? For Rabbi Steinsaltz, over and above every possible manifestation and expression of Judaism, there is one application of the faith that possesses authority. Delineated by a strict interpretation of the Talmud, and governed by a rigorous application of Torah law, Rabbi Steinsaltz’s Judaism is anything but pluralist.

But then, as Rabbi Meir Kahane once noted, democracy is not a Jewish phenomenon. Any Jew who hearkens for a return to the monarchy, a re-establishment of the temple and a resumption of sacrificial offerings must reckon with the crucial reality of life under theocracy. No amount of wishful retrojection changes the very real and very nasty images that the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah provide for us. The forced exile and execution of religious dissidents, the expulsion of non-Jews from Judea, the repeated and deliberate confrontation with Israel’s enemies, the cursing and the spitting and the tearing out of hair. These are all phenomena, whether good, bad or ugly, that heralded in the era of second temple Judaism, in all its sectarian glory. For those of us who shudder at the thought of such a contemporary revolution, it is fortunate that Israel’s infant Sanhedrin has enemies on every side of the religious divide. Nonetheless, it goes without saying that their establishment, like the Nasi‘s translation of the Talmud itself, says much as regards the expectations of many. If they were ever to succeed in their aims of uniting the religious parties beneath their authority and of establishing themselves as the upper house of Israel’s Knesset, we will have more than words from Rabbi Steinsaltz. And more than words from his detractors as well.

[Addendum: It has recently been drawn to my attention that the list of locations that was published by the Jewish Standard was not exhaustive. Those who are interested can have a look at the exhaustive list. I apologise for the unintentionally misleading remark that I made, concerning Israel's absence from the list of countries that are celebrating Rabbi Steinsaltz's incredible achievement. There are no fewer than nine such locations in Israel, four of which are in Jerusalem.

You will also be pleased to note (I know that I was!) that, in addition to Melbourne, there will also be siyyumim in both Cairns and Sydney! The Sydney siyyum is being organised by a friend of mine, and will be held on Sunday evening at Coogee Synagogue.]

In Genesis 49:13-15, Jacob blesses the eponymous ancestors of the tribes Zevulun and Issachar and, although the content of the blessings might be a little prosaic to our ears, it has inspired a certain degree of commentary. Zevulun is told that he will dwell by the sea, that he will have many ships, and that he will share his border with the Phoenician seaport of Sidon. Issachar is compared to a crouching donkey with strong bones, which toils hard and pays tribute. In a midrash to the text (Genesis Rabbah 99:9), the rabbis comment upon the fact that Issachar, by virtue of his age, should have been mentioned before Zevulun, and conclude (on the basis of Deuteronomy 33:18) that Issachar’s toil was in the realm of Torah and that Zevulun was being honoured above him for having used his wealth to provide for his brother’s needs.

Like most examples of exegetical midrashim, this one has been largely inconsequential to the majority of Jewish history. And yet, in 1943, when Aharon Kotler founded a large yeshiva in Lakewood, New Jersey, this midrash was on everybody’s lips. In order that married men be able to devote themselves to a life of learning, somebody needs to foot the bills and cover all of their expenses. Taking its mandate from this midrash, and its name from those European funds that enabled religious Jews to study in the Land of Israel before the British Mandate, the “kollel” system is ostensibly a great success. From the perspective of its original aims, however, it is a sad failure.

The first kollel was built in 1877 by Yisroel Lipkin, the founder of the Mussar movement. It was limited to ten students and for a maximum of four years. Today, however – thanks to the work of individuals like Aharon Kotler and Elazar Shach, there are thousands of men in Israel and the United States whose life’s work is to sit and learn. They contribute virtually nothing to their surrounding environment, produce little in the way of novellae that can enrich the corpus, evidence a decidedly skewed perspective on what constitutes Torah (most of these institutions are in the Lithuanian tradition, in which students, for the most part, only study the Talmud and the halakhic codes), and have shown nothing but contempt for the broader Jewish and non-Jewish world. In the US, there is sufficient financial support for them to be tolerated. In Israel, their days are numbered.

The largest kollels in Israel are Ponevezh, in Bnei Brak, and Mir, in Jerusalem, both of which are modelled on yeshivot from Lithuania and Poland, respectively. There are no official publications on the number of non-fee-paying students at these institutions, although there is over a thousand in attendance at Ponevezh, and the enrollment at Mir is close to six thousand. As Noah Efron noted in his highly recommended “Real Jews: Secular vs Utra-Orthodox and the Struggle for Jewish Identity in Israel” (2003), ascertaining the amount of money that the government pays these institutions is beset with many difficulties. Given their complete and emphatic rejection of secular and academic life in Israel, can they be said to receive a sum disproportionate to the entitlement of other groups?

It would appear on a sober analysis of the numbers that they do not. And yet, the fact that they accept handouts from the state while openly condemning it has created an environment in which Torah itself is being reviled, and in which there is tremendous resentment of Haredi Judaism. And so, we have to ask: is it worth it?

The philosophy that underpins the modern kollel system suggests that much has been lost in recent years and that, if we are going to combat the pervasiveness of secular society and rebuild the edifice of Torah scholarship, what we need is a radical change of pace. The strikingly innovative nature of the kollel system is not overlooked by its proponents: in order to develop a culture of full-time study and students who have no distractions impinging on their time, such an innovation is deemed to be necessary. This argument is deeply flawed for several reasons.

For a start, there are more Torah students today than have ever existed in the past. Even if one is prepared to take at face value the Talmud’s hyperbolic assertion that Akiva had twenty-four thousand disciples, there is no other period in Jewish history in which the number of scholars even approximates what we find today.

Secondly, the quality of Torah scholarship is of a much higher level today than the proponents of the kollel system give it credit. The assertion that no scholar will ever again attain the greatness of Maimonides or of Joseph Caro is a lie, based on a lie. The perspective that the generations are in decline might find mandate in the rabbinic literature, but is continually belied by reality. To suggest that Joseph Caro was of a lesser stature than Maimonides, or that Maimonides was of a lesser stature than Akiva, is a perspective that finds no justification outside of faith. What is more, the so-called “gedolim” of today – the “great ones” of our present generation – know quantitatively so much more Torah than was known by many of their more illustrious forebears.

Torah grows in every generation. For Akiva, Torah was biblical scripture and the traditions that made their way into the Mishna, the Tosefta and the halakhic midrashim. For Maimonides, Torah was also both of the Talmuds, the exegetical and the homiletic midrashim, and the philosophical and halakhic writings of the early Middle Ages. For Caro, Torah was also the works of Maimonides and his contemporaries, the writings of the Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi codifiers, and the Zohar. To achieve mastery of all of these things, and so much of the literature that has been composed since the 16th century, is to know so much more than anybody in the past, but to utilise so much less.

Today, it is inconceivable that anybody may attain the status of the “Rishonim” (those who lived between the time of the Geonim and the publication of the Shulchan Arukh; c. 1040-1550 CE). This is despite the genius and the charisma of later generations of scholars like the Vilna Gaon, Akiva Eger, Schneur Zalman, the Rogatchover Gaon, the Brisker Rav, Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, the Chofetz Chaim, the Chazon Ish, Moshe Feinstein and the Lubavitcher Rebbe. To suppose that the clarity of their insights was less bright, or that the novellae that they constructed were less sharp, solely by virtue of their having been born at a greater distance from the revelation at Sinai would be to ignore both their insights and their novellae, and to focus only on a dogmatic appraisal of their place in history.

If it were the case that paying for an entire community to do nothing but learn might produce more scholars of their calibre, nobody could argue against it. Instead, there is every indication that it does not. The kollel system has yet to produce a single scholar worthy of either praise or emulation. Their rejection of both the Enlightenment and the information revolution has meant that they are crawling along at a far slower pace than their scholastic contemporaries in the university and the non-Haredi yeshiva, which is where the real developments are taking place today. While several of the great scholars of our past and present have received generous stipends from benefactors, the kollel as a system of mass-education has produced only lazy and belligerent individuals, who feel entitled to the money that they are receiving, and who evidence great contempt for those in the community who do not support them.

They are a testimony to the simple fact that a life of scholarship suits only certain people, and that others are better adapted to different tasks. To rob future generations of their doctors and poets, their musicians and engineers, for no other reason than the faulty premise that “the study of Torah is equal to them all” is not just a bastardisation of our tradition. It is also a crying shame.

Image source: YeshivaCollege.com

By Simon Holloway

Most people who use the word “midrash” don’t know what it means. To them, “midrash” simply denotes a convoluted and nonsensical commentary to a text: a tract composed with the intention of obfuscating a point, of inventing a wild fantasy, or of replacing the biblical literature with arcane trivia about first millennium rabbis and their views on the science of the day. To open any casual guide to Judaism, such as grace the shelves of bookstores throughout this country, is to be vindicated in this suspicion. These authors, whose noble aim is to educate people in the broadest strokes possible, could not possibly be more incorrect.

While the genre of Midrash is homogeneous in respect of the fact that it is, 100% of the time, a commentary upon the biblical literature (unlike the Talmud, for example, which comprises a commentary upon the Mishna), it is also held together by its utilisation of a particular methodology. According to one source, this methodology was first adumbrated by Hillel, who ostensibly determined seven rules of exegesis. According to another source, it was Rabbi Ishmael who created the concept of Midrash, and who defined it with a total of thirteen rules. A third source has Rabbi Eliezer propounding thirty-two rules of midrashic exegesis, and a fourth (attributed to Samuel ben Hofni) places the total number at forty-nine.

For those of us who are not accustomed to actually spelling out the methodological principles that underscore our immediate comprehension of a text, the very existence of such rules is enough to inspire a headache. And for those of us who subscribe to the various hermeneutical principles of the modern era (that a text must be understood in its immediate context, in relation to other similar texts, and in light of the society that produced it), the nature of the midrashic methodology that underscores this particular genre is abstruse to the point of appearing ridiculous.

To read a collection like Midrash Rabba (perhaps, more than any other, the collection to which people unintentionally refer when they say that “the Midrash says…”), none of this is particularly problematic. Like several other examples of midrashim and collections of midrashim, Midrash Rabba is homiletic in its import. The rabbis, concerned with making sense of the anomalies of the text, together with the various silences of the text, used the intellectual tools at their disposal in order to provide the stories with a more profound meaning. The overwhelming majority of them could not be taken literally even if one were so inclined, and it is reasonable to suggest that none of them were meant to be taken literally in the first place. By removing verses from their immediate context, and by understanding them on the basis of verses elsewhere within the Tanakh, the rabbis turned the Hebrew Bible into a single, comprehensive rabbinic text.

But what happens if one is to derive messages from this text? What occurs when, instead of dealing with the narratives of Genesis or the poetry of Psalms, the text is dealing with the pronouncements of Numbers, or the stipulations of Deuteronomy? What happens, in other words, when the text, rather than being homiletic in nature, is halakhic instead? Is halakhic midrash any different to narrative midrash? And does this difference have any impact upon Judaism today?

The means by which academic midrash becomes practical law was a bone of contention between two second century rabbis: Akiva and Ishmael. While Ishmael is traditionally credited with a halakhic midrash to Exodus (“The Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael”), Akiva’s students are credited with the halakhic midrashim to Leviticus (“Sifra”; also called “Torat Kohanim”), Numbers and Deuteronomy (“Sifrei”), as well as the anonymous sections in both the Tosefta (that which was, purportedly, left over after the crystallisation of the Mishna), and even the Mishna itself.

Rabbi Ishmael, whose approach to text is best exemplified by a statement of his that “the Torah speaks in human language”, was a strict applicator of midrashic methodology. Rabbi Akiva, whose approach appears to have had a more mystical bent, was apparently inclined to derive laws from obscure features of the text (such as an additional letter), and with less regard for the conventional midrashic tools. A discussion that the two have in a Talmudic passage (Sanhedrin 51b) is particularly illustrative.

There, the debate concerns the fate of a priest’s daughter who has committed adultery. The discussion concerns a passage in the Torah (Lev 21:9), which stipulates that she should be burned, but which fails to make clear whether it is adultery of which she is guilty, or whether it is premarital sex. Based on a comparison with two other biblical verses (Lev 20:10 and Deut 22:21), and utilising at least two different midrashic principles, Rabbi Ishmael determines that the young girl in our verse is only betrothed to be married, and that if she were actually married already, her punishment would be stoning instead. Rabbi Akiva disagrees.

According to Rabbi Akiva, the daughters of priests merit burning both for premarital intercourse as well as adultery. Despite the fact that the Torah does not make this clear, and despite the fact that Akiva is unable (or unwilling) to answer the objections of Ishmael, or even to provide an alternative rationalisation, this is his final word. His reason is that the word “daughter” in the particular verse under discussion has a vav attached to it, and he explains this extra letter – for reasons that are unclear – as alluding to the fact that she is burned despite her marital status at the time of her crime. Famously, Rabbi Ishmael cries out, “And because this word has a vav attached to it, you would take her out to be burned??”

Sadly, the Talmud furnishes us with very little that can really indicate the relationship of these two scholars. As with Hillel and Shammai, the tradition is predominantly recorded by those who favoured one over the other, and in this instance the majority of the literature venerates Rabbi Akiva. It is worth noting, however, that the texts that do so tend to lionise him in mystical terms. To give but two examples, Moses is granted a vision of Akiva, expounding halakha from the “crowns” appended to the Torah’s letters (Menahot 29b); and Rabbi Akiva, alone of four venerable sages of his day, succeeds in both ascending to the supernal realms and descending from them in peace (Tosefta, Hagigah 2:2). Rabbi Ishmael, on the other hand, is depicted in far more mundane and logical terms than his contemporary.

In the field of halakhic studies, a major question concerns the relationship between the Mishna and the halakhic midrash. Alone of all of the halakhic texts, the Mishna presents the law without any justification for the law. Rather than referencing its opinions in other texts (as the Talmud does), or even with an appeal to logic, the Mishna presents the law, which is the law because the Mishna presents it. This is in sharp contradistinction to the halakhic midrash, which presents law as the results of a methodological analysis of the literature of the Torah.

This gives us two possible options. Either we can suggest that the Mishna holds primacy, and that the halakhic midrash developed as a means of demonstrating to those Jews who rejected the Mishna that its laws were all contained within the Torah itself, or we can argue that the midrash held primacy and that the Mishna is simply a codification of the results of such hermeneutical exegesis. In the event of the former option, halakhic midrash remains speculative and the difference of opinion between Akiva and Ishmael is thoroughly academic. Irrespective of the means by which one reaches his conclusion, the conclusion is already established by the Mishna and is not the subject of debate.

In the event, however, of the latter possibility, the difference of opinion between Akiva and Ishmael is most profound. If the Mishna constitutes the crystallisation of halakhic midrash, then the methodology employed by the midrash has a tremendous bearing upon the practical realia of law. Approximately three centuries after the completion of the Babylonian Talmud, Rav Sherira – the head of a prestigious academy in Babylon – wrote a letter, in which he clearly explained the origins of the Mishna, the Tosefta, the two Talmuds and the halakha. In this letter, he makes it very clear that the anonymous sections of the Mishna were composed by Rabbi Meir, whose teacher – Rabbi Akiva – was the source of his every opinion.

Had the methodology of Rabbi Ishmael so captivated the hearts and minds of his disciples that he instead had been venerated over the charismatic Rabbi Akiva, and had the Mishna been composed in accordance with his views, what might the halakha look like today? In a world in which competing rabbis debate each other in relation to halakhic criteria that derive in essence from Akiva, perhaps the simplest solution for those who wish to read the passages more literally is to simply say, “I have it on tradition from the school of Ishmael.”

This article was first published on BenAbuya.com

Image source: filmup.leonardo.it/posters

By Simon Holloway

As some readers may be aware, the St Ives Jewish community has been petitioning the construction of an eruv for over two years now. A symbolic perimeter around an area, the building of eruvim dates back at least to the early third century, when their construction and maintenance was detailed in the Mishna. By allowing a public domain to be construed as a private domain (even if only in a purely symbolic fashion), the carrying of objects on Shabbat from one’s home into the street, and vice versa, ceases to be problematic.

The many and complex laws that pertain to these prohibitions, and the many and complex laws that pertain to the construction and maintenance of eruvim, have been such that many religious Jews continue to refrain from carrying on Shabbat, despite the presence of an eruv. Nonetheless, for many Jews in St Ives, the construction of a symbolic perimeter would be of tremendous benefit. Kuring-gai Council has been slow to approve it.

Those who wish to view a recent article in the North Shore Times about this eruv can find it here. The comments are, for the most part, appalling. Unable to draw a distinction between supporting local Jews and funding “Israel’s holocaust against the Palestinians”, several individuals (many of whom have wisely, if not cheekily, opted for anonymity) have decried the barbarous religious practises of rabbinic fanatics, and vociferously condemned the usage of public space for the construction of a ghetto.

Let me make this very clear. The eruv will not be noticeable. The eruv will not drive away people who are not Orthodox Jews. The eruv will not even attract additional religious Jewish people into St Ives. Orthodox Jews move to an area on the basis of the density of its community, the location and number of its synagogues, the availability of kosher food and mikva’ot, and the presence of a Jewish school. The existence of an eruv, while a bonus feature (and one that makes life better for those religious Jews who already live there), is not in itself a drawcard. To suggest that Jews will move to St Ives in greater numbers if the eruv is constructed, implies that they might otherwise favour an alternative suburb on the North Shore.

At the end of the day, this should never have been made public. Most of the decisions that the council makes get made without recourse to the knee-jerk opinions of the broader community. I emphatically do not watch TV, but my opinion was never sought as regards the construction of Foxtel cables throughout my neighbourhood. They are an eyesore and they required both the trimming of trees and disruptive construction work. It is absurd that the constituency of Kuring-gai needs to be heard as regards whether or not these cables may now serve a dual purpose. Shame on Kuring-gai council for their insensitivity, and shame on the North Shore Times for their deplorable “moderation” of comments.

Old and rare Jewish books*

By Simon Holloway

I don’t care how popular the iPad becomes, or even the ubiquitous E Ink devices: nothing will ever replace the joy of holding a book. The tactile and olfactory feast that is an ancient tome cannot possibly be exchanged for the cold glare of a lifeless screen. While carrying a library in my backpack might be handy on vacation, I hope that I will always be able to come home to a house filled with books.

At the time of writing this, I am in possession of well over a thousand texts, some of which are very old. The oldest volume that I have is a Hebrew Bible from 1701, but I also own large facsimile editions of the two oldest Hebrew Bibles ever written: the Aleppo Codex (10th century) and the Leningrad Codex (11th century). It is a guilty pleasure of mine to point to my large and densely packed Primary Literature shelf and to tell visiting non-Jews, “these are just the important ones”. To people unaccustomed to the Judaic reverence for printed literature, the sheer number of books that Jews hold dear must seem mind boggling and bizarre.

And yet, so many shake their heads. To many of the Christian faithful, Jews have it all wrong. Obsessed with the nuances of the language, we supposedly miss the spirit of the law. Being “religious”, they say, is all about one’s moral character. Do I reveal myself, then, as a bad person if I say that nothing strikes me as more vague and insipid? Sure, I’m not in the practice of defrauding my neighbour or slandering my peers, but what has that got to do with my religion? If the only reason that you don’t kill, rape or steal is because there’s a book that tells you not to do so, then I truly fear for your moral compass.

What makes the Judaic literature so marvellous is not its insistence on the ethical life (although yes, yes, that’s all very fine) but its complexity. Jewish literature is abstruse. It is esoteric. It is not something that can be picked up, one-handed, and casually mined for information while munching on a tuna sandwich. Unlike other examples of literature, it cannot idly be read. It demands to be studied, if its esoteric pronouncements are to be at all understood.

There are those who have suggested that this is the reason underlying the overwhelming Jewish presence on several major chess teams, physics and mathematics faculties, and lists of Nobel laureates. For myself, I find this rationale a little glib, if only because the overwhelming number of such people were not raised on Talmudic analysis and halakhic arbitration. Is the Jewish penchant for this literature another symptom of collective genius, alongside aptitude at chess, physics and maths? As somebody who neither plays chess, understands physics, nor is able to work out the change that he is owed without pulling a face, I am not so sure. What is more, assertions of Jewish intelligence have come from those who hate us so many times that I do not even know if they are necessarily a good thing.

What I do know is that, despite all of its complexity, its self-referentiality and its esotericism, Jewish literature is not the property of academics. It does not belong to the learned, nor to the devout. It is not owned exclusively by anybody: neither scholars, nor rabbis, nor even (we are pleased to discover) men. There is no correct way to understand it. There is not even a correct way to prioritise it. And contrary to what some will tell you, there is no injunction to agree with any of it, accept any of it or believe in any of it. Sure, some of the texts contain such injunctions, but that’s okay: you don’t have to agree with those bits either.

In the current climate of neo-atheism, too many confuse a rejection of traditional belief with a wholesale rejection of the traditional literature that testifies to it. While those who do believe in the truths of the tradition might be secure in their admiration for it, what is to be done with the growing number of disillusioned, disenfranchised Jews, who find neither the answers nor the questions in the books that “we” revere? Should they leave them all behind, in the spirit of the reconstructionists, and start again from scratch? Should they modify them willy-nilly, in the spirit of the reformers, and keep only that to which they don’t object? If they cannot believe in them wholesale, in the spirit of the very orthodox, and force themselves to accept what their minds otherwise cannot, then perhaps they should abandon them altogether and construct their identity from something else?

In our electronic world, where that which doesn’t have the immediate answer to our questions is neither worth downloading nor looking up, more and more Australian Jews are taking the latter path. This is a terrible shame, for as we become less secure with figuring out the answers for ourselves by wrestling with something difficult and abstruse, so our questions are fated to become simpler and simpler until these complex books truly are irrelevant. And no gadget in the world will ever replace the loss.

* Image source: lubavitch.com

Are there 'dirty words' in the Tanakh?

By Simon Holloway

In a Sydney synagogue, a local rabbi delivered a sermon in which he criticised foul language as essentially not Jewish. I will not question the fact that classical Jewish literature eschewed scatological and sexual innuendo, but many are unaware of the prevalence of such language within the Tanakh itself. I would like to look at one particular example, which can be found in Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Zechariah. This word made people so uncomfortable that, believe it or not, the generation of scholars known as the Masoretes (c. 7^th-11^th centuries, CE) edited it out and replaced it with a gentler term.

Etymology is fascinating and, for that reason, I would like to present the origin of this particular word. Doing so should enable us to better appreciate the precise range of meaning that this word came to have in Biblical Hebrew.

First of all, what is the Hebrew word for palace? Well, that depends on whether you were living in the south of the country (scholars refer to “Judean Hebrew”) or the north of the country (“Israelian Hebrew”). In the south, the word was quite simply בית (house), or בית המלך (house of the king). In the north, where the language was heavily influenced by Aramaic, and even in southern texts that describe palaces in the north of the country, the word used was היכל (heikhal).

This word comes directly from Aramaic, but the origin of the Aramaic word is a little more complex. It derives from the Akkadian ekal, which in turn derives from two Sumerian words: É and GAL. In Sumerian, É means “house” and GAL means “big”. A “big house”, the house in which the king and his royal entourage lived, was a feature of Ancient Near-Eastern monarchic society, and the word itself made its way from Sumer, via Akkad, to Aram and, thence, to Israel. In other words, from Sumerian, via Akkadian, to Aramaic and “Israelian Hebrew”. In later years, היכל (heikhal) became the standard Hebrew word for palace, and the name of a branch of Jewish mysticism that focused on the heavenly palace of God.

Part of the royal retinue that lived in the palace was the king’s harem. This was made up of women, whose sole purpose was to gratify their august monarch. Reading the book of Esther, we are vouchsafed a glimpse into the lives of these “women of the palace”, who beautify themselves in expectation of their night with the king, and live to serve his every need. The job may have come with some very desirable perks, but it’s fairly safe to suggest that the actual occupation was not so highly sought – and was not the sort of job that one would hope for their daughters.

“Woman of the palace”, in Akkadian, is ishi ekal, but in Aramaic and Hebrew, this becomes contracted to שיגל (sheigal). As a noun, this occurs five times in the Hebrew Bible, both in Hebrew (Psalms 45:10 and Nehemiah 2:6) and in Aramaic (Daniel 5:2, 3 and 23), but it also occurs four times as a verb. What does it mean as a verb? Can you royally concubine somebody? I am almost certain that readers of Galus can come up with an appropriate English collocation to express this particular word, and I am positive that the word they alight upon will not be the sort of word that they would expect to find in an English translation of the Tanakh.

The prophet Isaiah (13:16) speaks, for example, of the terrible things that will happen on the “day of the Lord”. Children will be smashed to pieces before the eyes of their parents, houses will be plundered, and women will be… royally concubined. Likewise, Jeremiah 3:2 features the prophet’s indictment of the Judeans who sought allies from amongst the foreign nations. Likening them to whores who are prepared to have sexual intercourse with anybody, the author lambasts them: “Lift up your eyes to the high places! Where have you not been ‘royally concubined’?” Again, I am sure that we can all come up with more appropriate translations.

The problem is, nobody feels particularly comfortable with using more appropriate translations: the Tanakh is great literature, not a source of lewdness! Well, fear not: it would seem that the earliest scholars of the Hebrew Bible had a problem with it as well. One of the many things that these scholars did was determine where words were to be read in a manner that differed from the manner in which they were to be written. This is known as Qere / Ktiv (which is Aramaic for “read” / “written”), and anybody who has ever chanted from the Torah in a synagogue would be well aware of the phenomenon.

Modern printed editions differ as regards how to represent these, but generally you find an asterisk over the word in question, which links you to an alternate word in the margin, with which you are supposed to replace it. Most of the time, this is the simple result of an error in transmission: words lack the final heh to denote the feminine, or feature an extra vav, etc. Sometimes, however, the alteration is made on stylistic or theological grounds.

If you would like to look these passages up, there are four of them. Two are mentioned above (Isaiah 13:16 and Jeremiah 3:2), but the others are Deuteronomy 28:30 and Zechariah 14:2. In each of these instances, the Masoretes replaced the offending word with a verb that possesses the root שכב (to lie down). While “lying somebody down” may have similar connotations, it is markedly gentler than the original term. The original term could not be removed, for the Tanakh already enjoyed a sacred status at this point in its history, but it could be marked as something not to be read aloud.

The Hebrew Bible is by no means a “dirty book”, but to suggest that its language was never vulgar would be to never bother reading it. Whatever your feelings are concerning appropriate discourse, it’s interesting to know that they weren’t necessarily shared by those who actually composed Judaism’s most sacred texts in the first place.