Wuthering Heights

During Yom Tov, I had the opportunity to read Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. I had never read any of the works of the Bronte sisters, leading me to feel culturally deficient, so I finally bit the bullet and read this one.

At first, I couldn’t stand the book. Every character – save the twin narrators, Mr. Lockwood and Nelly Dean – is a villain, some through malevolence and some through weakness of spirit and some through caprice. Not only that; these villains are far over the top, painted in such forceful colours as to be fairly unbelievable.

But the book has grown on me since I finished reading it. I tend to agree with Rabbi Shalom Carmy's thought, expressed in a Tradition article last year last year (45:2, As We are Now is Not the Only Way to Be: On the Place of the Humanities in Contemporary Religious Culture): Our religious identities can be greatly enriched by exposure to the humanities. This book has given me much to think about along those lines.

In particular, Wuthering Heights offers a vivid portrayal of the effects of scorn on human beings.

• Experiencing even mild scorn and contempt drives certain characters to radical selfishness, to abuse of others, and to malevolence that endures across years and generations. (Think of Heathcliff's response to Hindley Earnshaw, and Isabella's son Linton's response to Heathcliff.)
• Other characters respond to scorn with equanimity, even if they are troubled. (Think of Heathcliff's responses to Nelly Dean.) 
• This is a book of villains, and so it is hard to find someone driven by scorn to deeds of greatness – but on some level this may be seen, I think, in Nelly Dean, and perhaps in Catherine Earnshaw as well.
• And then there is Joseph and his contrarian response to scorn, I suppose, but I'm not sure how to read him; he is really presented as more of a caricature.

The characters' responses vary as broadly as do the natures of the characters, and their situations in life.

At the other end of the relationship spectrum, affection at times drives a character away (Heathcliff and Isabella), and at other times has a humanizing effect (Hareton and Cathy). There is more to be said here, but in the interest of space I'll leave this be.

So how might this influence my religious identity? I'd rather leave this as a general comment, because the ideas are bigger and more abstract than any application I would give them, and applications will necessarily shrink them – but think about the various ways people response to biblical criticism [as in, criticism that leveled by the bible, not criticism of the bible...], or to harsh disapproval and mussar, particularly by parents.

Wuthering Heights is, on some level, a cautionary tale about the hazards and potential benefits of scorn; neither can promise a positive response, neither is entirely negative, and the intensity of the response to each will not necessarily be commensurate with the intensity with which they are applied. It has much more to do with the natures of the characters themselves, and their personal situations, and sensitivity to both is warranted when deciding how to instruct.

ואכמ"ל.

Should a Jew read Dostoevsky?

[Just by the way: On Chanukah, when people asked how many candles we were to light that night, was I the only person who felt an urge to respond, 'Last night we counted X'?]

There was a period, while I was in college I think, when I was very into Russian short-story writers and playwrights. I read quite a few, and was very impressed - until I came to Nikolai Gogol, and a story in which described the glory of the Cossacks. I couldn't read any further; the Cossacks were murderous butchers who slaughtered my ancestors.

Of course, if Jews were to shun all writers who hated us, we would be left with slim literary pickings; a quick thumbing through Allan Gould's "What did they think of the Jews" shows that we would lose a great deal of Western culture, including figures like Lord Byron and Joseph Conrad and Jack London. But it's hard for me to stomach reading the work of someone who views me, and my heritage, in unambiguously negative terms.

The question comes to mind now because I am considering picking up my copy of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. I've owned it for years, it's universally acclaimed as a remarkable work, but every time I look at it, it's with this ambivalence.

Dostoevsky said this of Jews:

... I know that in the whole world there is certainly no other people who would be complaining as much about their lot, incessantly, after each step and word of theirs -- about their humiliation, their suffering, their martyrdom. One might think it is not they who are reigning in Europe, who are directing there at least the stock exchanges and, therefore, politics, domestic affairs, the morality of the states...

Now, how would it be if in Russia there were not three million Jews, but three million Russians, and there were eighty million Jews -- well, into what would they convert the Russians and how would they treat them? Would they permit them to acquire equal rights? Would they permit them to worship freely in their midst? Wouldn't they convert them into slaves? Worse than that: wouldn't they skin them altogether? Wouldn't they slaughter them to the last man...

The decision to read, or not to read, is not a matter of halachah; it's personal. I have a hard time with the idea of reading his work, however insightful and creative. I should be even more horrified if I found myself admiring it.

What do you think?

What Diax's Rake omits

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading Neal Stephenson's Anathem. It was mostly a good read, although there were definite portions in which I wondered where the editors had gone; dragging is not a strong enough word.

Stephenson's depiction of a universe (or, to use his term, cosmos) in which theoretical science advances without a practical arm, in which the nature of the laws of reality is itself a debate between schools, and in which theoretical science is conducted with what we would recognize as religious discipline and devotion (complete with a sort of monkhood, savants in place of saints, and rituals which would be at home in a church), is fascinating.

[I did think his Ita were an attempt at a Middle Ages European caricature of the Jew, with the relationship between the Ita and the avout throughout the story approximating what may/should have happened between Jew and Christian when the walls of the ghetto came down in the 18th and 19th centuries. Not sure how I feel about that.]

I have many thoughts on the book and its ideas, but right now I'm thinking about Diax's Rake, which is a stark and challenging rule: One should not believe a thing simply because he wishes it were true. [I see that this site links it to an idea of Thucydides.]

The book presents conflict between those who believe what they can prove (theors), and those who believe what they wish (enthusiasts). Diax's Rake (named for the rake used by the legendary Diax when chasing enthusiasts out of a shrine to logic and science) amplifies Stephen Hawking's recent pronouncement that heaven is a "fairy story" for people who are "afraid of the dark." As Diax would have put it: You can't prove there is a heaven – so you lack the right to believe it.

Left with this binary system, dividing the universe into proven and unproven, I would be forced to drop my belief in Judaism. I cannot prove most of the 'facts' set forth by Judaism – the existence of Gd, the creation of the world ex nihilo, the presentation of Torah at Sinai, the validity of the prophets, the existence of an afterlife, and so on.

But there is a third possibility, beyond logic and desire: Received tradition, believing in something because another person, whose account you trust, was able to prove it and relayed it to you. I believe in Sinai because the story of its experience [and I equate experience with proof] has been passed down in a chain of tradition I trust. I believe in prophecy because the stories about it have been passed down in a chain of tradition I trust. And so on.

I'm not proving anything, but I'm also not believing on the basis of a wish. I'm believing the accounts of others.

In a sense, believing in the accounts of others isn't really different from the theor believing in an idea that was already proved by some great thinker, without needing to demonstrate the proof himself. But I see it as different, because in the realm of theors it is given that the theory could be replicated today, and in the realm of religious tradition it could not.

Much to think about here. On the whole, a very interesting and challenging read. I recommend it.

Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decide not to know about

In my last post I mentioned agnatology (aka agnotology), which may be rendered as "the study of ignorance", geared toward answering the question of why we don’t know certain things. One of the lessons of this field is that ignorance is often intentional.

I was introduced to this field by a congregant of mine a few years ago, and it occurred to me that several areas of halachah depend on agnatology:
We are agnatological when a court opts not to hear testimony which might throw off the calendar, or not to accept testimony which might cost a defendant his life.
We use agnatology when a woman is told not to investigate a stain which could well be dam niddah.
Agnatology holds sway in kashrut, when utensils of unknown usage may be assumed to be lav bnei yoman, or when dealing with safek arlah outside of Israel, and in similar cases. Ignorance is halachic bliss (or, in Yiddish, shailah macht treif).

In a sense, theology incorporates agnatology as well. Many of us claim to be non-dogmatic, and to be interested in the rational analysis of our deepest beliefs, but we always reach points at which our reasoning must stop. “If Gd knows the future, do we have free choice?” “If Gd wants the best for us, how could He allow the brutal massacre of six million?” And so on – the statement of, “Only Gd knows” is fundamentally an acceptance of ignorance and a decision to investigate no further.

And let's not forget the realm of daily debate and discussion; how many Peace Now-niks ignore the rights of Israelis, telling themselves that there is no other side to the story? And how many on the right do the same, in reverse?

So how do we decide what not to know, or what to have others not know? Is it about practicality, or philosophy, or something else? An interesting question.

When I first heard of agnatology, I was reminded of a great passage in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Volume 5. It’s available here, but I’ve decided to reproduce it here anyway, in case that site ever goes down. The most explicitly agnatological part is toward the end, but I believe that the whole piece is intended to be on that theme. It’s long, but it’s a great read:

The last village Arthur visited consisted entirely of extremely high poles. They were so high that it wasn't possible to tell, from the ground, what was on top of them, and Arthur had to climb three before he found one that had anything on top of it at all other than a platform covered with bird droppings.

Not an easy task. You went up the poles by climbing on the short wooden pegs that had been hammered into them in slowly ascending spirals. Anybody who was a less diligent tourist than Arthur would have taken a couple of snapshots and sloped right off to the nearest bar & grill, where you also could buy a range of particularly sweet and gooey chocolate cakes to eat in front of the ascetics. But, largely as a result of this, most of the ascetics had gone now. In fact they had mostly gone and set up lucrative therapy centers on some of the more affluent worlds in the Northwest ripple of the Galaxy, where the living was easier by a factor of about 17 million, and the chocolate was just fabulous. Most of the ascetics, it turned out, had not known about chocolate before they took up asceticism. Most of the clients who came to their therapy centers know about it all too well.

At the top of the third pole Arthur stopped for a breather. He was very hot and out of breath, since each pole was about fifty or sixty feet high. The world seemed to swing vertiginously around him, but it didn't worry Arthur too much. He knew that, logically, he could not die until he had been to Stavromula Beta, and had therefore managed to cultivate a merry attitude toward extreme personal danger. He felt a little giddy perched fifty feet up in the air on top of a pole, but he dealt with it by eating a sandwich. He was just about to embark on reading the photocopied life history of the oracle, when he was rather startled to hear a slight cough behind him.

He turned so abruptly that he dropped his sandwich, which turned downward through the air and was rather small by the time it was stopped by the ground.

About thirty feet behind Arthur was another pole, and, alone among the sparse forest of about three dozen poles, the top of it was occupied. It was occupied by an old man who, in turn, seemed to be occupied by profound thoughts that were making him scowl.

"Excuse me," said Arthur. The man ignored him. Perhaps he couldn't hear him. The breeze was moving about a bit. It wasn't only by chance that Arthur had heard the slight cough.

"Hello?" called Arthur. "Hello!"

The man at last glanced around at him. He seemed surprised to see him. Arthur couldn't tell if he was surprised and pleased to see him or just surprised.

"Are you open?" called Arthur.

The man frowned in incomprehension. Arthur couldn't tell if he couldn't understand or couldn't hear.

"I'll pop over," called Arthur. "Don't go away."

He clambered off the small platform and climbed quickly down the spiraling pegs, arriving at the bottom quite dizzy.

He started to make his way over to the one which the old man was sitting, and then suddenly realized that he had disoriented himself on the way down and didn't know for certain which one it was.

He looked around for landmarks and worked out which was the right one.

He climbed it. It wasn't.

"Damn," he said. "Excuse me!" he called out to the old man again, who was now straight in front of him and forty feet away. "Got lost. Be with you in a minute." Down he went again, getting very hot and bothered.

When he arrived, panting and sweating, at the top of the pole that he knew for certain was the right one, he realized that the man was, somehow or other, mucking him about.

"What do you want?" shouted the old man crossly at him. He was now sitting on top of the pole that Arthur recognized was the one that he had been on himself when eating his sandwich.

"How did you get over there?" called Arthur in bewilderment.

"You think I'm going to tell you just like that what it took me forty springs, summers and autumns of sitting on top of a pole to work out?"

"What about winter? Don't you sit on the pole in the winter?"

"Just because I sit up a pole for most of my life," said the man, "doesn't mean I'm an idiot. I go south in the winter. Got a beach house. Sit on the chimney stack."

"Do you have any advice for a traveler?"

"Yes. Get a beach house."

"I see"

The man stared out over the hot, dry, scrubby landscape. From here Arthur could just see the old woman, a tiny speck in the distance, dancing up and down swatting flies.

"You see her?" called the old man, suddenly.

"Yes," said Arthur. "I consulted her in fact."

"Fat lot she knows. I got the beach house because she turned it down. What advice did she give you?"

"Do exactly the opposite of everything she's done."

"In other words, get a beach house."

"I suppose so," said Arthur. "Well, maybe I'll get one."

"Hmmm."

The horizon was swimming in a fetid heat haze.

"Any other advice?" asked Arthur. "Other than to do with real estate?"

"A beach house isn't just real estate. It's a state of mind," said the man. He turned and looked at Arthur.

Oddly, the man's face was now only a couple of feet away. He seemed in one way to be a perfectly normal shape, but his body was sitting cross-legged on a pole forty feet away while his face was only two feet from Arthur's. Without moving his head, and without seeming to do anything odd at all, he stood up and stepped onto the top of another pole. Either it was just the heat, thought Arthur, or space was a different shape for him.

"A beach house," he said, "doesn't even have to be on the beach. Though the best ones are. We all like to congregate," he went on, "at boundary conditions."

"Really?" said Arthur.

"Where land meets water. Where earth meets air. Where body meets mind. Where space meets time. We like to be on one side, and look at the other."

Arthur got terribly excited. This was exactly the sort of thing he'd been promised in the brochure. Here was a man who seemed to be moving through some kind of Escher space saying really profound things about all sorts of stuff.

It was unnerving, though. The man was now stepping from pole to ground, from ground to pole, from pole to pole, from pole to horizon and back: he was making complete nonsense of Arthur's spatial universe. "Please stop!" Arthur said, suddenly.

"Can't take it, huh?" said the man. Without the slightest movement he was now back, sitting cross-legged, on top of the pole forty feet in front of Arthur. "You come to me for advice, but you can't cope with anything you don't recognize. Hmmm. So we'll have to tell something you already know but make it sound like news, eh? Well, business as usual, I suppose." He sighed and squinted mournfully into the distance.

"Where you from, boy?" he then asked.

Arthur decided to be clever. He was fed up with being mistaken for a complete idiot by everyone he ever met. "Tell you what," he said. "You're a seer. Why don't you tell me?"

The old man sighed again. "I was just," he said, passing his hand around behind his head, "making conversation." When he brought his hand around to the front again, he had a globe of the Earth spinning on his up-pointed forefinger. It was unmistakable. He put it away again. Arthur was stunned.

"How did you --"

"I can't tell you."

"Why not? I've come all this way."

"You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know because they are not of the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself."

"Hang on, can I write this down?" said Arthur, excitedly fumbling in his pocket for a pencil.

"You can pick up a copy at the space port," said the old man. "They've got racks of the stuff."

"Oh," said Arthur, disappointed. "Well, isn't there anything that's perhaps a bit more specific to me?"

"Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you."

Arthur looked at him doubtfully. "Can I get that at the space port, too?" he said.

"Check it out," said the old man.

"It says in the brochure," said Arthur, pulling it out of his pocket and looking at it again, "that I can have a special prayer, individually tailored to me and my special needs."

"Oh all right," said the old man. "Here's a prayer for you. Got a pencil?"

"Yes," said Arthur.

"It goes like this. Let's see now: `Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decide not to know about. Amen.' That's it. It's what you pray silently inside yourself anyway, so you may as well have it out in the open."

"Hmmm," said Arthur. "Well thank you --"

"There's another prayer that goes with it that's very important," said the old man, "so you'd better jot this down, too."

"Okay."

"It goes, `Lord, lord, lord...' It's best to put that bit in just in case. You can never be too sure. `Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer. Amen.' And that's it. Most of the trouble people get into in life comes from leaving out that last part."

"Ever heard of a place called Stavromula Beta?" asked Arthur.

"No."

"Well, thank you for your help," said Arthur.

"Don't mention it," said the man on the pole, and vanished.

Shh! The Rabbi's Coming!

First: A reader has started a new website, Mi Yodeya, posting questions and answers about Judaism on a Wiki-style site. The site just opened for business last week, and is particularly interesting for the types of questions it has gathered - Did Rav Moshe Feinstein pronounce his last name “Feinstain” or “Feinsteen”? and Kosher accommodations in out-of-the-way US places are two recent examples.

-

Almost two years ago (I actually mentioned it in my post here), my Rebbetzin recommended Marilynne Robinson's Gilead to me as a book with both great writing and a compelling story. I never got past the opening chapters; Death is a major theme in the book, and I shy away from that topic when I can. But yesterday I finished my current reading and decided to pick it up again.

I'm glad I did; the words of the book's narrator, an aging preacher, resonate with my own experience. In particular, an incident on pages 5-6 grabs me, both for its writing and for its authenticity:

The preacher talks about walking past two young men and seeing them laughing at some joke. As he nears, they stop laughing. He says to himself, I felt like telling them, I appreciate a joke as much as anybody. There have been many occasions in my life when I have wanted to say that. But it's not a thing people are willing to accept. They want you to be a little bit apart.

Very true - but even more true is the piece on the next page:

That's the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject when they see you coming. And then sometimes those very same people come into your study and tell you the most remarkable things. There's a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn't really expect to find it, either.

This has certainly been my experience; the same people who won't make an inappropriate joke within my earshot will tell me about experiences that reflect on them in a far worse light, or will divulge inner feelings and doubts and struggles, personal pain and loss, that are far closer to the reality of their souls than some email humor.

It is, as Robinson writes, a remarkable thing. Here's my own take:

Telling a 'dirty' joke is lighthearted fun, and is not a serious source of temptation; it simply says I am corrupt. In divulging personal weakness, though, I can portray myself as struggling, working to perfect myself or to overcome a challenge.

There is no shame in telling the rabbi I am having trouble dealing with an addiction, if the message is that I am trying to deal with it.

Shades of מתחיל בגנות ומסיים בשבח at the Pesach Seder; we don't mind portraying ourselves as fallen heroes, so long as we can add that we are picking ourselves up and aiming for glory.

Barack Obama, Kenneth Wherry and the Nobel Prize

I don't want to be yet another humbug, rain-on-the-parade blogger bashing the choice of President Barack Obama for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Nonetheless: I believe that the President, like most of Washington, is naive about the world's foreign policy issues. He's intellectually sharp, he's well-read, but he is also naive.

It's more complex than that, of course; President Obama's presentation is actually something of a paradox. His words are wonderful, displaying a sense of how the world works, honoring the fact that cultures are truly different from each other in values and not only in language and dress.

But, at the same time, his actions in the Middle East, in the Persian Gulf, in Russia, in China, in North Korea, betray an inability to translate that understanding into action. He acts with the whole world as though they were Westerners, offering them the same incentives and disincentives one would offer a Westerner and anticipating a Westerner's reaction, without any sensitivity to the nuances involved.

* Example: Promises of economic incentives don't move someone whose highest value is his honor and self-respect (China, and trade protectionism; not to mention the fact that the US needs China in a major way. See The Economist here.).

* Example: Incremental assistance doesn't gain the support of people who, because of their cultural values, will settle for nothing less than 100% of the pie (Hamas; see Khaled Meshaal's June 2009 interview with Time's Joe Klein here).

* Example: Threats of economic sanctions don't impress governments who believe their citizens are best-served by leaders who will not bend - and whose own citizens parrot the same (Iran; see CNN's pre-election report here).

* Example: Arguments from law are meaningless to nations who believe the law, or at least its application, is wrong (Israel - see Obama's reference to "the occupation" in his Cairo speech).

The President's practical naivete reminds me of the same trait in Senator Kenneth Wherry, Republican of Nebraska, who said in 1940, "With Gd’s help, we will lift Shanghai up and up, ever up, until it is just like Kansas City.”

See David Brinkley's Washington Goes to War for more examples of pre-WWII Washington's provincialism. A lot of it rings true in Washington today.

If the Nobel is meant to reward good intentions, then I agree - they found someone who is well-intentioned. But I think the standard should not be desire, but success.

Book Review: Have a Little Faith, by Mitch Albom

[Note: This is a review of a book that is available for sale starting September 29. I was given a free copy to review, but I will receive no remuneration for this write-up; I just think the book deserves a review.]

I would guess that I’ve buried between 200 and 250 people. For each I tried to develop a eulogy that spoke to the person’s nature and character, and to his impact on family, on friends, and the world.

This approach of telling the person’s lifestory, reading his heart aloud to friends and family and the curious, transcends the classic nature of the Jewish eulogy, the הספד. Traditionally, the הספד was a speech that tugged the heartstrings, delivered with the aim of drawing tears from the mourners. As the Talmud teaches (Shabbat 105b), there is merit in reaching a state of mourning, in crying for a good person, and so Jews of millenia past would hire professional eulogizers whose task it would be to bring the listener to tears (Moed Katan 8a). (Noteworthy: This is the type of eulogy prohibited on dates marked for festivity on the Jewish calendar, as in Taanit 15b.)

Today, in our unsentimental society, the norm is to eschew the explicit tearjerker (although the tears often happen naturally, at least for me). Instead, we go for a cross between biography and ethical will: The ways in which the deceased influenced my life, the lessons I learned, the experiences for which I am grateful. The speaker introduces his audience to the deceased, as he knew him, and, hopefully, presents an educational and inspiring message along the way.

I think R’ Albert Lewis, head of a congregation in southern New Jersey for decades, had that sort of presentation in mind when he asked Mitch Albom to deliver his eulogy. Based on the story Albom unfolds in Have a Little Faith, Lewis meant for him to capture the essence of his life and teachings. A man of more grandiose vision might have asked for a full biography, but Albert Lewis does not present himself as someone worthy of, or seeking, the immortality of publication. He only wants one more educational, inspirational moment, to come at a time when he will not be able to personally deliver it (although he does try – but I won’t spoil it for you), and so he hand-picks Albom, a congregant if somewhat estranged, a writer of considerable success, and someone who could, perhaps, use some education and inspiration himself, to do the job.

Have a Little Faith tells, in brief snapshots, the story of Albom’s years-long attempt to get to know his childhood rabbi. Modern-day meetings are mixed with reminiscences from Albom’s childhood, snippets of old sermons, questions of theology and pieces of Albom’s own mind. Along the way, Albom also introduces the life of a Detroit pastor, Henry Covington, whose biography is far from that of Lewis, whose pastoral milieu and methods are far from those of Lewis, but whose ideals and generous nature dovetail nicely with those of Albom’s rabbi and deepen the book's themes of faith and service. [Indeed, at some point I might write a separate post on Pastor Covington, whose story raises so many issues of its own.]

There is humor here, as well as wisdom - "Getting old, we can deal with. Being old is the problem." There are gut-wrenching moments, perhaps none more painful than when R' Lewis delivers a speech eulogizing his own young daughter, Rinah. We watch the rabbi age, reaching a Yom Kippur when he no longer stands on the pulpit. And stories, stories and more stories, a few of which I have put away to use for myself in the future.

Of course, there is much more in this story, which is as much Albom’s as it is Lewis’s or Covington’s, and which also tells the tale of two very different communities. But what I find most rewarding in this read is its peek into the life of a career rabbi. My twelve years in the rabbinate began toward the end of Lewis’s decades, and I am Orthodox where he was Conservative, but often, when Lewis speaks, I hear my own voice.

Certainly, there were great differences between Lewis’s rabbinate and my own – the leadership of halachic institutions, the role of בעל קריאה (Torah reader) and the constant flow of classes on my end, as opposed to the trend of metamorphosis in his movement, and the social demands and religious school demands he faced – but, as with the Lewis/Covington comparison, we are similar in our basic drives, that underlying theme of the music of our lives. To bring people close. To create community. To educate and inspire. To communicate a faith we only glimpse ourselves. To give.

The author of Tuesdays with Morrie has created a satisfying work here, no small task when dealing overtly with death. I’d recommend Have a Little Faith for anyone who wants to get inside the mind of a pulpit rabbi, for anyone who wants to see what faith looks like from an insider’s perspective, and for anyone who wonders what would happen if he would ask a stranger, “Will you do my eulogy?” I think you’ll get something out of it.

The Michael Jackson I knew and admired

Names give the illusion of identity; in the Torah, to know someone's name is to know his characteristics, his basic nature.

Think of the angel asking, "Why do you need to know my name?"
Think of Gd changing a person's name to signify a change in her basic nature.
Think of the sanctity, as well as multiplicity, of the Divine Names.
And think of the mishnah in Pirkei Avos that says the "name of Mashiach" was created before the universe.

But names, certainly in our world, are not the same as identities. Names can be changed, and names can be shared. And so it is that as the world remembers one man named Michael Jackson, I am reminded of another - Michael Jakubowics Jackson, a man who endured the horrors of the Holocaust, then came to the US and settled in Allentown, Pennsylvania until his death in January of 2004.

Beyond eyes, nose and a mouth, there wasn't much in common between the two Michael Jacksons, at least in terms of their public personas. My Michael Jackson was tall, dignified, a curious and deep thinker, a man of complex faith, a man who knew both suffering and survival, a loving family man.

Michael wrote extensively, from notes on books he read to letters to Yiddish and English-language newspapers, to his autobiography, Head of the Line. I'm glad he wrote so much, so that he will be able to inspire others posthumously; he was and remains a role model for me.

For whatever it's worth, here are excerpts from the הספד (eulogy) I delivered at my Michael Jackson's funeral. Perhaps it will inspire someone to learn more about him, through his book.


“ויבא אל הר האלקים חרבה, ” And Moshe came to the mountain of Gd, to Chorev, also known as Sinai. “וירא מלאך ה' אליו בלבת אש מתוך הסנה,” “And an angel of Gd appeared to Moshe from the flames of the fire, from the middle of the bush.” “וירא והנה הסנה בוער באש והסנה איננו אוכל.” “And he saw, behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed.”

Michael ben Avraham Zalman, you were that burning bush. You were surrounded by fire!
Mr. Jackson was daily and nightly beset by visions of the Holocaust, memories of family and friends; it made its way into all of his conversations.

Last night _____ told me about Mr. Jackson’s Pesach Seder. At the Seder we all sit with our families at our tables and laugh and reminisce and talk blithely about the way Jews were once, so long ago, slaves in Egypt, and now we are free - but Mr. Jackson knew all too well what it meant to be a slave, he suffered the torture and did the hard labor, he knew exactly what Avadim Hayyinu meant, and he never escaped it, he never got to be free. It was in his mind always.

Mr. Jackson was the סנה בוער באש, the burning bush.


But at the same time, והסנה איננו אוכל – Mr. Jackson was not consumed by that fire, he never let it destroy him. Try for a moment to imagine what it’s like to lose one’s entire family, to suffer brutal beatings, illness and degradation, fear that one may lose his life at any moment - and then realize that Mr. Jackson, together with _____ who he loved so much, made a life here in Allentown, raised two children _____ and ____, and saw grandchildren, and even started their own company, Nina Sportswear. We shouldn’t only remember Mr. Jackson for his survival of the Holocaust – we should also remember the way he and ____, against all odds, built a life for themselves afterward.

Mr. Jackson, you never let the fire consume you.


How was it that you survived? Moshe asked that same question, regarding the Burning Bush which was not consumed. Moshe saw this burning bush, and he said, “אסורה נא ואראה את המראה הגדול הזה, מדוע לא יבער הסנה.” “I will go see this giant sight” – like Mr. Jackson, a large, physically imposing sight – “I will go see it.” And Moshe asked, “Why won’t this bush burn? Why isn’t this bush consumed by the flames all around it?”

I asked myself the same question, regarding Mr. Jackson, Michael ben Avraham Zalman. Why wouldn’t you burn?


I came up with a three-fold answer, all from your own writings and expressions: The answer lies in your Gevurah (might), your Emunah (faith), and your sense of Klal Yisrael, of the Jewish people as a single unit.

Gevurah – this is a Hebrew word referring to strength, specifically strength of will, the ability to overcome and conquer not merely one’s environment but to overcome and conquer one’s self.

On page 223 of his Holocaust memoir, Head of the Line, Mr. Jackson wrote, “A mensch ist schvacher vun a flieg, en shtarker vun eisen.” “A human being is weaker than a fly and stronger than steel.” This is the essence of a Gibor, a powerful person – the ability to persevere, and to find unearthly resources of strength on which to draw.

You were a Gibor in overcoming your pain, both physical and psychological. You and ____, both Giborim, both powerful people, shook off the ashes and built a Jewish home here in Allentown. והסנה איננו אוכל, the bush was not consumed.

Second, your Emunah, your faith. How many times did you say to me, “גם זה יעבור,” “This, too, shall pass?” You had a powerful Emunah, a powerful faith that whatever happened, there was a Gd watching over the world.

Certainly, you challenged and you questioned. You couldn’t bring yourself to come to Shul on Simchas Torah each year, because of the memory of your brother Tzvi, who was shot and killed on Simchas Torah 1944. You had your קושיות. You understood well those who could not accept the existence of a Gd who could tolerate the Holocaust. But for yourself, you maintained your Judaism. You went to Shul whenever you could, you learned through the Parshah with Rashi every week, you loved to quote Mishnah, Midrash and Gemara. Somehow – I can’t understand it – you managed to continue a Jewish life, a life of Emunah. והסנה איננו אוכל, the bush was not consumed.

Third, your belief in the Jewish people as a single unit. In the beginning of “Head of the Line” you wrote of your fears for the future of the Jewish people, and you wrote that the only hope for the Jewish community would be in unity, would be in hanging together. You always stuck with other Jews – during the war, and after. You continually expressed frustration at the rifts between different parts of the Jewish community.

The Sneh, the burning bush, survives because it is not a lone branch – it is a Sneh, a bush, a group of branches united together.


Mr. Jackson, you survived the worst the world could throw at you, and you came through. You were like the burning bush, which was located at Mt. Sinai. This morning, the Daf Yomi group learned a Gemara which reminded me powerfully of you – the Gemara says, “When a pauper brings a simple, inexpensive grain offering to Gd, it is considered before Gd as though he had brought his very soul to Gd,” “כאילו הקריב נפשו לפני.” You were מקריב נפשך לפניו, you actually did bring your soul as a Korban, in that fire. You were the Sneh, the Burning Bush.

But there was another fire on Mt. Sinai, a year after that first one of the Burning Bush – this was the fire that burned when the Jews received the Torah. We are told, “וההר בוער באש עד לב השמים,” “The mountain was aflame, up to the heart of the heavens.” Out of that flame came Torah to the Jewish people – and out of the flames of the Holocaust came two powerful people, two Giborim, ___ and Michael Jakubowics, Mr. and Mrs. Michael Jackson.

“A mensch ist schvacher vun a flieg, en shtarker vun eisen.” “A human being is weaker than a fly and stronger than steel.” You were stronger than steel, Mr. Jackson. What remains is for us to emulate you, and carry your lesson with us.

יהי זכרו ברוך.

Birkat haChamah and Pesach: Antidotes for Hyperworship (Derashah Birkat haChamah 5769)

If you ever need a thought-provoking quote, go for Voltaire; he coined adages like, “Common sense is not so common,” and, “Originality is unrecognized plagiarism.” According to a few websites, Voltaire was also the author of this observation: “Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law. ”


This week, I’ve been mulling a Voltaire quote from a letter of his, in which he argued for the existence of a Creator. Voltaire contended that the universe itself is proof that there was a creator, and then he offered an additional argument, that Gd is necessary in order to ensure a just and fair society. He called Gd “the bridle to the wicked, the hope of the just,” and then he added these well-known words: “If the heavens, stripped of His noble imprint, could ever cease to attest to His being, If Gd did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.”


The Torah accepts Gd’s role as society’s unseen enforcer – note Kohelet’s reminder that there are always superiors watching what you do, and there are superiors watching those superiors as well – but it also goes one step further: Man needs Gd not only in order to protect society, Man needs Gd for the sake of Man, because we, as human beings, feel an inherent need to worship Gd.

Yes, Marx was not entirely wrong! Because we experience a natural need to find justice and plan in the universe, we must argue for the presence of a Judge, a Planner. We naturally embrace the existence of a Creator.

And more than that: The Torah believes that, as Voltaire predicted, where we cannot find a Creator, we do invent one.


The Torah says, אז הוחל לקרוא בשם ה', and Rashi and Rambam and others translate, “At that time people used Gd’s Name for mundane entities, labelling natural entities as gods.” Idolatry was not an attempt to get away from Gd – rather, it was an attempt to find Gd, to connect, through entities we could see and to which we could attribute power.

Witness the חטא העגל, the sin with the Golden Calf. The Jewish nation, camped at Sinai for almost six weeks without religious guidance, does not try to cut and run, does not imagine an existence without a Divine leader; rather, they seek to create a new conduit for reaching their Deity.
Man wants Gd.


At first blush, this concept of Man needing Gd for his own fulfillment sounds like a rabbi’s dream; what could be better than to have a congregation of people who actually want to believe, who actually yearn to be told there is a Gd?

But Judaism recognizes that this desire for Design is not entirely innocent; it may lead, in fact, to hyperworship and associated religious disaster, in two ways:


First, Judaism fears the Enosh phenomenon – that in Man’s search for meaning, we find an incorrect answer. As Enosh’s generation ignored the Unseen Gd in favor of visible, tangible proxies; as Jewish teens have, for decades, backpacked through the Himalayas in search of meaning they did not find in Hebrew school; so any of us might, to use the Torah’s words, gaze up at the heavens, at the sun, the moon, the stars, and decide to bow to their majesty.


Hence the Torah’s repeated admonitions against worshipping the bodies of the heavens.

Hence our insistence, when we pray, that we turn not to the stars and planets but to Gd.

And hence the Torah’s explicit harnessing of those heavenly bodies for its calendar and for its mitzvot, implicitly labelling those bodies as servants of Gd, carrying out Divine bidding.

In eleven days, on Erev Pesach, in a rare ritual, we are going to fulfill this last item, overtly identifying the Sun as a servant of Gd.

As we have discussed in various classes, as well as in the Pesach HaModia, we are on the verge of an event which occurs but once in 28 years in the Jewish calendar, Birkat haChamah, the Blessing of the Sun. Through calculations too complex for a derashah, we anoint this April 8th a day when the Sun returns to its original location from Creation. We step outside, we look at the Sun, and we declare, “Blessed are You, Gd, King of the Universe, who performs the deeds of Creation.” We will do this at 9:30 AM, communally, at the shul; those who cannot attend here can do it at home. It’s a simple blessing, found in your Pesach Hamodia. (For more, click here.)

This unusual Birkat haChamah is part of a more familiar pattern of mitzvot and berachot in which we explicitly declare that the Sun is created by Gd. We witness lightning, we hear thunder, we observe the ocean, we see great mountains, and we recite this same blessing labelling Gd the “performer of the deeds of Creation,” reminding ourselves that despite our longing to find Gd, we must always remember the error of Enosh’s generation, to recall that there is but one Gd.


And then there is a second danger associated with our longing for Gd, and that is the threat of complacency. Once we identify a Creator, a Planner, we risk leaving all action to this Gd as we remain on the sidelines.


Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch recognized a message regarding this risk, in the Torah’s apparent flip-flop regarding a מצבה, a stone monument.

In Bereishit we are told that our ancestor Yaakov, set up a monument of a single stone, to worship Gd. But in Devarim the Torah explicitly prohibits the מצבה, going so far as to say that Gd hates such monuments!

R’ Hirsch explained that a מצבה, made of just one stone, signifies simple admiration for Gd, devoid of any human contribution. Before the Torah was given, Man could, indeed, be a non-player, admiring Gd’s Creation and thereby worshipping Him. But once Gd charged us with fulfilling the mitzvot, we could no longer be non-players; we would be expected to assemble multiple stones and build a מזבח/altar for Gd.

As R’ Hirsch wrote, “Merely worshipping Gd in His Greatness and Allmight is not only a form of homage which is not pleasing to Gd, but, as our text expresses it, henceforth Gd “hates” any worship of His Greatness and Allmight which does not seek to express the moral submission of the whole of the human being to His Law, His Torah.” We are expected to be people of action.

Therefore, Gd commands that we learn Torah, that we keep kosher, that we give tzedakah, that we fill our lives with a form of worship which is far from silent, but which is active and demanding at every moment of our day.


Pesach is a perfect opportunity for this action; rather than commemorate the Divine miracles of the past with simple praise, we commit ourselves to the Torah and its mitzvot with the destruction of chametz and the consumption of matzah, educating our children and inviting in guests and reciting kiddush and making berachot – הלא זה יום טוב אבחרהו, this is the celebration which Gd desires, a celebration which commits us to Torah and forces us up from our recliners – or, in the case of the Seder, forces us into our recliners – as active participants.


The act of Birkat haChamah, of blessing the sun, can be a powerful moment. One of my few vivid childhood memories is of standing on the boardwalk in Long Beach, Long Island, the entire Hebrew Academy of Long Beach assembled, listening to our outstanding principal, Rabbi Friedman שליט"א, explain the mitzvah we were doing. I was in the second grade, and did not understand much – but I knew this was a special moment. Gd-willing, it will be equally special for our own children, and for us, this time around, and it will impress upon us once again the reminder that the sun is but a servant of Gd.

It is good that we long for Gd – but let us use Birkat haChamah to reinforce our awareness that the universe’s marvels are only servants to the Creator. And then, let us use the Pesach Seder that night to reinforce our awareness that praising Gd’s wonders is insufficient – we must also commit to action.

Or to borrow a line from the UJC/Federation’s new campaign ad: This Pesach, and every Pesach, symbolism is not enough. We must also act.

-
Notes:

1. Yes, Marx still makes me uncomfortable.

2. Voltaire is credited for that mother-in-law line here. Others credit Hubert Humphrey.

3. Voltaire's line about inventing Gd comes from a letter to the author of The Three Impostorsl it is found in French and English here.

4. Kohelet's line is 5:7; the Enosh reference is Bereishit 4:26. See also Rambam's Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Avodah Zarah 1:1.

5. As an example of the way we specify that we are not worshipping sun, moon and stars, the prayer from the end of the Simchat beit haShoevah, in the Mishnah found on Succah 51b.

6. Hirsch's explanation of matzeivah is found in his commentary to Devarim 16:22; I used the Grunfeld translation.

Aspiring to defy Gd

What Soren Kierkegaard did for Avraham’s faith in Fear and Trembling, someone with an equally eloquent pen ought to do for Moshe’s defiance.

Kierkegaard wrote, with moving, powerful, dramatic beauty, of Avraham’s Akeidah, his decision to follow Gd and bring his son Yitzchak as a korban. He decried those who would infantilize Avraham’s obedience to Gd, who would view it with “the child’s pious simplicity.” He demonstrated, vividly, that this Akeidah was not an act of simple faith, but, rather, a soul-wrenching, terrifying, faithful devotion to a shockingly cruel Divine demand.

Someone ought to do the same for Moshe Rabbeinu’s multiple defiances of Gd, celestial acts which are yet fodder for so many aggravatingly simplistic divrei torah.

Like every 7th of Adar, as I observe Moshe Rabbeinu’s yahrtzeit this year I am awed by a new aspect of that human being whose life, whose power, overwhelms anything I can fathom. This year, it’s his defiance.

Moshe defies Gd multiple times, in multiple scenarios, including:
Gd orders Moshe to return to Egypt and save the Jews; Moshe declines.
Gd instructs Moshe to give the Jews the Torah on the 6th of Sivan; per the gemara, Moshe alters the date to the 7th of Sivan.
Gd declares His desire to destroy the idolatrous, rebellious nation; Moshe denies Gd the opportunity.
Gd informs Moshe that he will die; Moshe instructs Gd in choosing a new leader.
Gd instructs Moshe to remain in the desert; Moshe rails against his fate, before finding acceptance.
And yet, through it all, Gd describes Moshe as בכל ביתי נאמן הוא, the most loyal member of the Divine house. ככל אשר צוה ה' את משה, Following every word Gd instructed Moshe, so Moshe spoke and so Moshe did.

The more I contemplate it, the less I comprehend it.

Or to borrow from Kierkegaard regarding the Akeidah, “The older he became the more often his thoughts turned to that tale, his enthusiasm became stronger and stronger, and yet less and less could he understand it.”

Tanach is filled with people who refuse Divine instructions. Pharaoh. Bilam. And, on the good side, Yonah.

What marks Moshe’s refusal as unique – although Yonah’s has elements of this same character – is that his is not denial, it is defiance.

Pharaoh says, “Who is Gd, that I should listen?” Bilaam says, “Gd will have to follow my will.”

Moshe, on the other hand, accepts the reality of Gd fully, accepts the Torah of Gd fully, accepts the service of Gd fully. Moshe believes in Gd, he does not deny Gd’s existence or authority.

It seems to me that Moshe’s awareness of Gd is what fuels his defiance. He is Gd’s child. His refusal is born out of love for Gd, in the way that adult children often absorb and practice their parents’ values, and yet – in fulfilling their understanding of those same values – defy their parents’ instructions.

And so Avraham is labelled by Gd, אברהם אוהבי, “Avraham who loved Me,” but Moshe is labelled בן ביתי, a member of My household, the one whom I loved.

I never cease to be enthralled by Moshe. He is so far beyond anything I could ever become, and yet his story speaks volumes to me as a person, as a rabbi, as a Jew. His is iconic leadership and iconic abandonment, iconic selflessness and iconic self-awareness, iconic devotion and iconic defiance, iconic failure and iconic success.

יהי זכרו ברוך.

Backyard Poultry

[This week's Haveil Havalim - quite a well-organized edition - is here!]

For those who are looking for more substantive material, please skip to some of my other posts. This one is decidedly of the tabloid variety.

A wonderful relative of mine, who is no doubt concerned that -
(a) We lack for reading material in the Torczyner שירותים, or
(b) Due to the economic crisis and the Agriprocessors scandal we will soon need to raise and schecht our own meat
has blessed our family with a gift subscription to Backyard Poultry.

For those rare souls to whom Backyard Poultry is not as well-known as, say, Women and Golf or Ireland’s Own, the magazine’s masthead explains that it is “Dedicated to more and better small-flock poultry.”

I am an outdoorsy sort; I like to garden, and I would love to have pets that would earn their keep. So I eagerly awaited our first issue – which came yesterday, on Shabbos.

Right after Shabbos ended I sat down to peruse this unanticipated gift, and could not help being taken aback immiedately by the cover story, a feature on Naked Neck Chickens. I thought to myself, “Poultry prurience? He’s sending me photos of chickens in the, um, raw?” (In truth, the pictures were very tastefully done, I must say.)

I must admit that at this point I was sympathetic to the idea of trashing BP in favor of more substantive reading, but I pressed on. Being a member of a tribe with its own share of idiosyncrasies, I knew I should not judge “Backyard Poultry” by its cover.

So I flipped through the pages, passing ads for egg incubators and Hatching Made Easy and articles on Mites in Winter Poultry Houses and Silver-grey Dorkings, thinking this might actually be educational for me, and might even give me new insights into the sugyos (talmudic discussions) related to Bava Basra discussions of שובכות and Chullin discussions of טריפות - Torah uMadda at its best! -until I found this text in a green box on page 23:

We would like to hear from anyone who can identify (1) situations in which chickens or other poultry have communicated or attempted to communicate with humans and (2) situations indicating that chickens or other poultry think or plan into the future.

If you have experiences in either of these situations, please share them with us. Provide as much detail as possible, as well as an e-mail or phone number so we can inquire further in the most efficient manner possible. Photos or other illustrations are also welcome. Your photos will be scanned and returned.

Send your experiences to: byp@tds.net, please say “Fowl Comunication” in the subject line, or by standard mail to BYP Fowl Language, 145 Industrial Dr., Medford, WI 54451.

We hope to be able to share future articles on these experiences.

At this point I realized I must put down Backyard Poultry and get back to work. I thank my generous relative for broadening my horizons – and given that the magazine is in its fourth year, there must be a market for horizons this broad - but I was never really one for the chicks, anyway.

Besides, there’s a gemara shiur I need to prepare – and we already finished Maseches Beitzah last month.

An Approach to the Challenge of "My Jesus Year"

The New Birth Megachurch in Lithonia, Georgia. The Christian Book Association’s annual conference. Ultimate Christian Wrestling. A Christian rock concert.

A young man named Benyamin Cohen - my wife’s classmate growing up, actually - realized in his early 20’s that he wasn’t finding meaning in Judaism, and that many of his Bible Belt Christian neighbors seemed a lot more passionate about their religion. So he visited those venues I just mentioned, and others, on a tour of Christian life, to see what it was that so inspired them. He recorded his experiences in a book, My Jesus Year.

Cohen’s search for religious passion reflects a problem I think many of us face. Based on my own experience and my conversations with Jews here and elsewhere, I know that Benyamin Cohen is not the exception; he is the rule. Many, if not most, are frustrated; Judaism, and particularly prayer, doesn’t “do anything” for them.


There are two main types of prayer, and I believe prayer doesn’t move us because we are dissatisfied with the first type, and unable to achieve the second.


The first type of prayer, which is found early on in the Torah, is Needy Prayer, the request of a supplicant seeking assistance.
• Kayin does it, pleading with Gd after he is punished.
• Avraham uses prayer to beseech Gd for aid, seeking forgiveness for Sdom, and an heir for his legacy.
• Yitzchak and Rivkah are childless, and daven for help.
• Yaakov is afraid of his enemies, of Esav and Lavan and then Esav again, and he davens for protection.
• And we read in this morning’s parshah that the Jews in Mitzrayim, suffering in slavery, cry out to HaShem for relief from their pain.


This type of prayer makes a lot of sense; I need something, Gd can provide it, so let me ask. I don’t even need to believe anything in order to do it; what do I have to lose by trying?

But if this is the defining display of our connection to Gd, if my every prayer is a request for something or even a Thank You for something, then this prayer, and the relationship it represents, are fundamentally doomed.

A connection based solely on petitionary prayer cheapens our role as human beings, as speaking spirits, as the singular nexus of the sacred and the mundane. Truly: Would we sink so low as to exclusively dedicate our audiences with the Creator to a shopping list?

Indeed, when the Talmudic sage Rava witnessed another sage praying for an extended period of time, he mocked him, saying, “He is abandoning the eternal life [of Torah study] in order to pursue temporary life!”

More than that:
• Prayer which focusses on filling our needs is bound to be uninspiring for us. Who finds fulfillment in filling out a grant application, a scholarship form? Further, who won’t wonder, “Doesn’t Gd already know what I need? Why must I jump through these hoops?”
• And what happens at times when we don’t feel a need, or we don’t feel a need that we think Gd will fill? Then, without a purpose, why pray?
• And, of course, we notice those prayers which do not come back with a “Yes” stamp, and we wonder, “Is there a Gd listening to my prayers at all?”

And so this supplicatory prayer, though accompanied by snappy tunes, or recited slower or faster, with new phrases or old, with or without improved translations and commentary, ultimately loses any personal connection and becomes a rote artifact of obligation, neither spiritual nor satisfying.


Which brings us to the second model of prayer: Relationship Prayer.

This second type of prayer is found more rarely in the early going in the Torah, but it is present.
In the Torah’s most obvious example: When Avraham was convalescing from his bris milah, HaShem appeared to him. “וירא אליו ה', HaShem appeared to Avraham.” Why? For what purpose? What message did Gd convey to Avraham?

The Torah doesn’t say; instead, the Torah moves on to a visit by three messengers, and then the destruction of Sdom. But what happened during HaShem’s visit to Avraham?

The answer is… Nothing. Avraham’s association with the Divine is not restricted to a petitioner’s plea or even to the communication of prophecy; Avraham can also simply BE with Gd, can sit at the entrance of his tent and contemplate the Gd who created Avraham and Sarah and all around them.

This is prayer as relationship - and, as Avraham’s descendants evolve, it becomes their ideal form of prayer.


Certainly, it takes a while. In upcoming parshiyyos we will see the Jews, led by Moshe, call out to Gd in need - at the Sea, and when they need water and food. Moshe himself will pray to Gd multiple times for the very survival of the Jewish people, and he will seek forgiveness for their sins.

But we will also witness the emergence of this new paradigm, at Divine decree. Gd will declare, “ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם, Make a sanctuary for Me, and I will dwell among them,” and with this He will revive that Divine visit to Avraham, and a type of prayer that is not Supplication, but Relationship.

The korbanot, the offerings the Jews would bring to Gd in that sanctuary, were not associated with requests and needs; there were no personal offerings in that Mishkan. Rather, the Jews brought the קרבן תמיד, a twice-daily offering which marked a national, on-going relationship with Gd.

This relationship, centered on a building known after all as the אוהל מועד, the Tent of Meeting, is described liturgically as “שמה שכינה שכינה לך, There the Shechinah, HaShem’s presence, resides, waiting for you.” Not waiting for you to come ask for things, but waiting for you to visit, to say Hello, to renew that conversation which began when HaShem visited Avraham after his bris milah so many years ago.


In truth, Relationship Prayer is as difficult as needy Petitionary Prayer, but for a different reason. Petitionary prayer may be difficult because it is inherently uninspiring, but Relationship prayer is challenging because it demands something of us, a currency we concede most stingily: It demands Trust.
• The Avraham who can commune with Gd after his circumcision is the one who trusted Gd and followed Him from Mesopotamia to Elonei Mamrei.
• The Jew who can communicate with Gd at the Mishkan is the one who trusted Gd and followed Him out of Egypt, into the desert.
• And the Jew who will find Gd today is the one who trusts Gd, who permits himself to believe.

Trust is the reason we can have this relationship, the ingredient that allows our prayer to evolve.


The Christians I have met in Cohen’s chapters - the wrestlers, the musicians, the baseball players, the megachurches - share this common thread: Trust. The people Cohen describes, the people who are invested, the people who attend and sing and cheer and fund these Bible Belt institutions, are people who trust this deity of theirs. Before they love, they believe, and everything follows from there.

A Jew who spends a great deal of time second-guessing himself, who finds relativism in every sphere of life, is going to have a hard time suspending his questions and doubts long enough to believe. Even as he bows in Shmoneh Esreih, this Jew observes himself from the outside and asks, “To whom am I bowing?” Even as he begins a meal by washing his hands, he wonders, “What if there is no Creator, and all of this is just an obsessive charade?”

All of our relationships, including religious relationships, are founded on trust - and so the Jew who wishes to experience passion in prayer, who wishes to experience some religious epiphany in shul, must look past the question of tunes and translations and ask himself the first, most basic question: Do I trust? Do I allow myself to trust?


Every time Israel becomes involved in a war, certain stock photographs of soldiers circulate by email. There’s the picture of young men trudging in a line to the front. There’s the picture of children heading into bomb shelters. And there’s the picture of a soldier perched on a tank, praying as the sun rises. Or a unit gathered to hear krias hatorah. Or a rabbi helping a solder put on tefillin.

To be sure, some soldiers turn to Gd at that point as supplicants, because there are no atheists in a foxhole; for them, perhaps, prayer is a hopeful means of asking Gd, who may or may not exist, for help. But for the rest, prayer is a function of their basic, lifelong trust in Gd and the Torah, a trust that gives them a relationship that remains with them even in the toughest times.

This relationship is what Benyamin Cohen was seeking in My Jesus Year, and this is what Avraham Avinu had - and, if we can permit ourselves to trust, then it is a relationship we will enjoy as well.

-
Notes:

1. I can't recommend the book My Jesus Year itself, because I am very uncomfortable with the author's derogatory description of his father throughout the book. It is lashon hara and character assassination.
The book is also written in Bloggish rather than formal English, complete with misplaced apostrophes and unique grammar. That's the author's choice, of course, but it rubs me wrong in a book produced with a major publisher.

2. There is a third, hybrid type of prayer, but I felt it was more a classroom topic than a derashah topic: Rav Chaim of Volozhin, the main student of the Vilna Gaon, in his Nefesh haChaim that even when we pray for our needs, we don’t pray because we want something for ourselves; rather, we turn to a Gd who cares about us, with Whom we have a relationship, and we say, “If You care about me, then my suffering must also cause You pain - and I wish for You to fill my needs so that Your pain will end.”
What a remarkable prayer - Gd, give me what I want so that You will be happy! This prayer bespeaks so much more than a petitioner before a king; it is the conversation of two lifelong friends, whose shared heart wishes only the best for each of them.

3. Rava's sarcasm is on Shabbat 10a.

Alphabets, Politics, Dating, and Jewish Pedagogy: When the Medium is also a Message

[This week's Haveil Havalim is out here! And a very good edition it is.]

Lois McMaster Bujold, in her Miles Vorkosigan books, tells a story of rebels attempting to smuggle support to their mountain resistance. Their oppressors check every horse entering the mountains, but find neither weapons nor supplies. Only in the end, when the resistance is successful, do they realize that the horses were not carrying weapons - the horses were the weapons.

That story came to mind as I prepared for a class I gave this past Shabbos, on the evolution of the Hebrew alphabet - because, as I saw in my research, sometimes the Medium is also the Message.

A bit of background: Every November we cover a monthlong theme through classes, events and displays in shul. We started this practice several years ago with “17th century Jewry” in honor of the 350th anniversary of Jewish life in North America, and then we followed up with Sephardic Jewry, Chassidus and Israel at 60. This year we are looking at The Jewish Book, so my classes this month focus on different aspects of Jewish printing. Our centerpiece scholar-in-residence will be Professor David Stern of University of Pennsylvania, and he’ll talk about the printed machzor, chumash and gemara. But back to our topic:

This Shabbos, I taught a class on "Who Invented Rashi Script?" The answer, it seems clear to me, is that Rashi never used Rashi Script. Rashi may well have used one of the semi-cursive hands which were popular in his day, but Rashi Script does not turn up until the 13th century. Also, I am convinced by Herbert C. Zafren's contention ("Early Yiddish Typography," in Jewish Book Annual, Vol. 44, 1986-1987/5747) that Rashi script most closely mirrors a Sephardic semi-cursive which was current in the Middle Ages - but which Rashi, as a German-trained French scholar, would not have seen.

Rather, Rashi script was used by printers when they first produced chumashim with Rashi's commentary. They used this font, I believe, for two reasons: First, they wanted to distinguish between the text and the commentary, for religious reasons. Second, once they were choosing an alternative font they chose this Sephardic-based font because it's smaller than block print, allowing them to fit in more text in a smaller space (see Meir Benayahu's הסכמה ורשות בדפוס ויניציאה pg. 258).

The idea of distinguishing between text and commentary is particularly important, and is the way in which the medium is the message. The Rambam wrote (teshuvah 268) that one may not use Ktav Ashurit, the Assyrian alphabet which we consider traditional Hebrew script, for normal correspondence and mundane matters. Granted that Tashbetz (teshuvah 1:5) disagreed, many halachic authorities followed the view of the Rambam; it's even cited in the Rama (Yoreh Deah 284:2). Therefore, we can tell, by looking at which script is used, just how sacred the content is. (And so there is a very interesting halachic discussion on whether one should, or should not, use Ktav Ashurit for a Get.)

There is much more to say on this, but it was a 45-minute class and this is a blog post. So to return to the main idea, that the medium is, sometimes, also the message:

We see this in politics. When a politician has a Facebook page, the news is not what's on the page; the news is that he has one at all. Or when a politician sends a surrogate to speak before an audience, he tries to use a surrogate with whom the audience can identify, based on religion or skin color or career or geography. It doesn't matter what the surrogate says, since it'll only be a re-hash of material available elsewhere, but the message is that people like You (the audience) support this candidate.

We see it in dating, too: The way you dress, the car you drive, even the stationery on which you send a note (for those who still use pen and paper), these are the medium, but they are also the message. My Rebbetzin baked me chocolate chip cookies for our first date, because I had mentioned it was my birthday. The cookies were great, but the fact that she took the time to do it was the real message.

And, of course, since I am a rabbi and a Jewish father: In Jewish pedagogy, the medium is very often the message. The way we dress for shul (and when we show up!), the way we stand or sit while davening, it's all medium, but it's all message.

I can see it in the way my children daven with me; they are very attuned to these signals of medium. If they see me looking out of the siddur as I say the words, they don't take that tefilah seriously. If they hear me use a serious tone or cadence when saying another part of davening, they take it more seriously.

The kids actually pick up more cues about what I'm doing than I do, and all without consciously trying to do so. Maybe it's because they have heard the message so often that it's no longer compelling for them - but the medium may offer something new or varied each time.

Odds and Ends: Shavuos Reading

Shavuos is a tough holiday for being both rabbi and father. I had our older two kids sleep in my office Shavuos night so that they could daven with me at the 5 AM minyan, but after returning home and having a quick family seudah I was then off-limits to the world for a several hours, while the great rebbetzin managed the family. Then I was so thrown off of the old circadian rhythms that the rest of Yom Tov was a blur of naps and shiurim and speeches and davening, and I have to admit that I emerged feeling more than a little guilty about being unable to truly help. I think if I were not the rabbi, I probably wouldn’t stay up all night unless my children were old enough to join me.

During Yom Tov I did catch up on some books that had been waiting for me, though, and found some interesting things:

I finally got around to starting Gilead, and I liked it enough that I hope to finish it. The pace is slow and folksy (think Steinbecky, a Grapes of Wrath turtle crossing the road), not my favorite tempo, but I like the peek inside an old preacher’s mind. It rings true, so far; I could see myself sounding like that someday.

Thumbed through R’ Yitzchak Etshalom’s Between the Lines of the Bible. (I wonder if he realizes how many books on Amazon share this title?) This book surprised me, but not in a good way; I began it expecting to like it, and I just didn’t. His approach to modern commentary, as expressed in his early discussions of “Entering the Characters’ World,” just didn’t work for me. The lessons derived, such as regarding the sale of Yosef, seemed, by turns, either derivative or contrived.

Also looked over Naomi Graetz’s Silence is Deadly, and found that a more rewarding, if frightening, read. I’ll readily acknowledge that I was not aware of a few of the sources she brought to show that wife-beating was, at times, sanctioned by certain rabbinic leaders. Overall, she made a convincing case for the need for stronger rabbinic action to oppose this bestial phenomenon.
Lest this appear an across-the-board endorsement, I don’t agree with some of her premises. For example: At the start of the book Dr. Graetz attempts to read sanction for wife-beating into biblical texts, arguing that these texts influenced social acceptance of domestic violence, but (1) her reading runs counter to the texts themselves, and (2) because her readings are new, they can’t have been an historical influence.
I also don’t agree with her contention that rabbinic sanction could have framed society’s overall view of wife-beating. Given the book-acknowledged fact that the majority weight of the rabbinate came down harshly against this horrific violence, I don’t see how the minority view could be considered the source of this evil. I stick to my view that this violence is more a product of human malfunction than social approval/allowance.

And the new HaMaor came (and with a daring, hot-pink cover!). Although this Torah journal isn’t of my political bent, I find interesting ideas in some of their divrei torah, and I enjoy reading it.

At the end of this issue I found a remarkable letter on the current Conversion Controversy.
The letter itself is forgettable, making foolish, hearsay-based claims about conversion-over-the-telephone, but the opening paragraph, apparently tying together the Conversion Controversy and Global Warming, is what makes it interesting. It reads (rough translation):

The entire world trembles, we hear the greatest and most frightening earthquakes, stormy winds blow and overturn great cities, thousands and myriads are cast from their homes and the place of their dwellings and are killed and die from illness and hunger and thirst, and in general the weather patterns are changing and the places that had been coldest are warming and the ice and snow are melting, there is a great upheaval in the world, in all of its corners, and no one pays attention that new, never-before-seen things are happening. But all of this does not approach the spiritual and physical upheaval that is happening in the Holy Land, when there are those in Israel who accept converts…

I can’t quite put my finger on why I find this entertaining rather than sad. There must be something wrong with me.

Rashi's Daughters: Joheved - Myths and Facts, Part II

Part I is here - please read it first.

Here is a non-comprehensive list of errors I found in Rashi's Daughters, Book I: Joheved. It is not comprehensive because there were many items I felt were probably incorrect, but I lacked the time or resources to fact-check. I have only included those items I was able to verify as errors. The parentheses include the page number in Rashi’s Daughters Book I: Joheved. The brackets include notes as well as the sources showing the errors.

Frankly, the specific items listed here don't bother me much; I am including them only because I did the research and want something to show for several hours of work. The more troubling items are the ones I included in Part I.

Unfounded practices
• Emphasis on demonology doesn’t fit the fact that Rashi doesn’t discuss it much in Responsa or in Vitry

• Use of translations during Torah reading (pg. 11, 79) [Tosafot Megilah 23b says they didn’t use translators]

• Reciting Shehechiyanu at the birth of a child (pg. 17, 347)

• Reading Sefer Chashmonaim [Book of Maccabees] in shul on Shabbat Chanukah (pg. 95)

• Tzidduk haDin every day of Shivah (pg. 167)

• No meat/wine during Shivah (pg. 168)

• No Shivah for a death which occurs during Yom Tov (pg. 178) [shivah simply begins after Yom Tov is over]

• Not visiting the same grave twice in one day (pg. 185)

• Gambling, cardplaying (pg. 190) [doesn’t show up in Jewish European life until the 15th century]

• Making noise for Haman in the Megilah (pg 190) [first found in 14th century sources]


Explanations of Jewish practices which don’t match Rashi’s own explanations
• Refraining from work while the menorah is lit (pg. 94) is not because of women’s role in the miracle, but rather to highlight that one may not use the candles to illuminate work

• Using nice shrouds (pg. 166, 295) is not out of concern for embarrassment in the next world; Berachot 18a only says that the soul there cannot leave the grave because the body was buried in a reed mat.

• Sniffing earth, tearing grass at a funeral (pg. 167) is not to permit the soul to leave, but to echo verses about a person being as grass and dust, per Rashi in Vitry 279-280

• The idea that Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden because of Adam’s ingratitude for Eve (pg 321) doesn’t match Bereishit, or Rashi there


Practices which are contradicted by clear sources
• Not starting new ventures on certain days of the week (pg. 27, 39) [Rashi Vayyikra 19:26]

• Rashi wears tefillin his right hand, but also lifts his right hand to hit, indicating he is a righty (pg. 41)

• Wearing a red ribbon to deflect the evil eye (pg. 70 and later) [Tosefta Shabbat 7:11]

• Eating squash/beet/leek on Rosh haShanah (pg. 71) [Machzor Vitry 323 specifies other foods: red apples, white grapes, white figs and lamb heads]

• Trying to find a hive and get honey on Shabbat (pg. 121) [Shabbat 95a]

• Collecting Ketubah before yibbum (pg. 127) [Yevamot 87b]

• Eved Ivri in Rashi’s day (pg. 130) [Erchin 29a]

• Holding a Purim celebration in a house of mourning (pg. 186)

• Holding a feast on Purim night before Megilah reading (pg. 189) [Tosefta Shabbat 1:7]

• Reading the Ketubah aloud during a wedding (pg 221) [Vitry 476]

• Leaving the Chuppah for Sheva Berachot (pg 221) [Vitry 476]

• Gathering shards from the broken glass after a Chuppah (pg 221) [Vitry 476]

• Permitting a couple to each other after their initial marital act (pg 229-230) [Vitry 466]

• Abortion for non-Jews (pg 314) [Sanhedrin 91]

• Laxity in men-women interactions (such as pg. 210) [Shabbat 64b, Vitry 528]

• Cheating taxes [Bava Kama 113a]

• Teaching Torah to the Abbot [Sanhedrin 59a]

• Students go to prostitutes [Likkutei haPardes meiRashi 3b]

• Raunchy singing and general loose speech re: sexuality (pg. 195, 224) [Ketuvot 8b]

• “Euphemisms for sexual acts are for children” (pg. 214) [Yevamot 103a]

• Publicly identifying who is using the mikvah on a particular night (pg. 215) [Eruvin 55b]

• Daylight cohabitation (pg. 288) [Shabbat 86a]

• Watching animals mate (pg. 290) [Avodah Zarah 20b]


Non-Rashi sources are put into Rashi’s mouth
• The institution of having families give the money from Kapparot to families, instead of the birds, as well as the complaint against having the needy people receive birds “filled with sins” (pg. 72) - Actually from Maharil Erev Yom Tov #2

• Women’s exemption from time-bound mitzvot are “because their time belongs to their husbands” (pg. 136) - That’s R’ Yaakov Anatoli in his Melamed haTalmidim

• Rashi is listed as cutting his nails in a particular order (pg. 179) which actually appears first in Avudraham

• Rashi says he can’t study Kabbalah until he is 40 years old (pg. 260) but that doesn't show up until the Shach to Yoreh Deah 246:6 - some 500 years later

• Rashi is quoted as saying that the prohibition against teaching one’s daughter applies uniquely to secrets of Torah (pg. 340) This is a direct quote from Sefer Chasidim 313, which wasn’t written until 100 years after Rashi’s time, in Germany

• Rashi is quoted as adding that if women’s hearts draw them to learn, they should be taught (pg 341), in a direct quote from the 16th century Maayan Ganim of R’ Shemuel Arkevolty


Misunderstandings
• Labelling “Original Sin” part of the mystical tradition of “Maaseh Bereishit” (pg 183) [Chagigah 11-13]

• “Rabbis in Tractate Megillah complain about licentiousness at Purim time” (pg. 199) [not found in Tractate Megillah]

• Confuses "Erusin" with betrothal (pg. 199); "Erusin" happens with the presentation of a ring at the wedding (pg. 221)

• Identifying “Honor your parents” as the fourth commandment (pg 208)

• Saying that Arayot may not be studied with less than 2 students (pg 213) [Chagigah 11b]

• Considering Arayot to be about “How-To” (pg. 213) [Chagigah 11b]

• Advanced students haven’t heard of Masechet Kallah (pg. 215, 257) [Shabbat 114a]

• Fourteen days of niddah after miscarriage of a baby girl (pg. 253)

• Rashi refuses to learn Kabbalah (pg. 259-260) [Vitry 291]

• Considering rice to be new to the area then (pg 300) [Responsa 110, all over Talmud]

• The berachah on Shabbat candles is considered new and controversial (pg. 308) [Responsum of Rav Natronai Gaon]

• Infants under 30 days have no soul yet (pg. 325) [Sanhedrin 91]

• It is claimed that Rashi complained about his wife throwing keys at him when she was a Niddah. (pg. 353) The only similar account is simply a record, in Machzor Vitry 499 and Tosafot Ketuvot 61a, that Rashi was careful not to pass keys hand-to-hand when his wife was a niddah.

Rashi's Daughters: Joheved - Myths and Facts, Part I

[Note: Haveil Havalim is out here!]

Prologue: A great Rashi joke I found here:
Rashi and his wife were getting ready to go out.
Rashi's wife comes into the room, and Rashi sees her and says, "I think you might want to try the blue dress -- it might look a bit nicer."
His wife answers, "Do you have to comment on everything!?"
(Did you know there were Rashi jokes? I know two of them now!)

And now to business:
I first learned of Ms. Maggie Anton in 2006, when a congregant showed me an article she had written, labelling the practice of lighting Shabbat candles/lamps a non-mitzvah until the time of Rashi’s grandchildren. She wrote that there had been great controversy until then. She even declared that it was only during those last generations that a blessing on Shabbat lights was instituted, copying the Talmudic blessing of the Chanukah lights.

I was surprised to hear this, knowing the serious view of the sages on the priority of candle lighting over the centuries. I did some research and found Gaonic responsa from centuries before Rashi (Rav Natronai Gaon), simply declaring that of course one should recite the blessing on Shabbat candles. There was discussion about the practice as חובה or מצוה, obligation vs commandment, but it was clear that this was important, and that it warranted a berachah. Further, Machzor Vitry, the premier record of Rashi’s practices and policies, quotes that responsum of Rav Natronai Gaon verbatim.

Rav Natronai Gaon’s responsum is #66, and it reads:
One who lights the lamp of Shabbat must recite a blessing. Why? For it is obligatory, as we say (Shabbat 25b), “Lighting lamps for Shabbat is obligatory, for Rav Yehudah said citing Shemuel, Lighting lamps etc.” And we have seen that where it is not possible, other mitzvot are overridden before it, as Rabbah said (Shabbat 23b), “It is obvious that in balancing the lamp of the home and the Chanukah lamp, the lamp of the home is greater.” One must bless, “To kindle the lamp of Shabbat.”
And if you will ask, “Where did He instruct us,” it is from Rav Avya and Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak (Shabbat 23a).

I exchanged some emails with Ms. Anton, and came away from the exchange respecting the seriousness of her efforts, even if I felt she had erred.

Fast-forward two years, and I was asked to teach a class about Ms. Anton’s Rashi’s Daughters series. I agreed to critique Book I: Joheved, and set about reading the book.


First, I found some good work here.
The historical notes about the brief positive era for French Jewry are both accurate and interesting; the French interlude in the Italy-Germany-France heyday of pre-Crusades Jewry certainly was fruitful.

Ms. Anton also brought up some interesting notes inter alia, such as about Rashi’s view of Song of Songs as a consolation for future exiled Jewry, and the lack of the 5-day, pre-7 day Niddah period in Rashi’s day. (The first appearance I have found of that 5-day period is the Or Zarua, who lived a century after Rashi. Vitry 499 discusses niddah practices and does not mention it.)

I enjoyed her Talmudic cites. Granted that the study sessions she portrayed were simplistic, I couldn’t really expect more in a work of fiction.


But I also ran into trouble with this book; I really found myself taking offense at the way Rashi and his family were treated. It seems to me that their lives were stretched this way and that in order to form a compelling story or promote a specific idea regarding women's lives.

Part of this is probably the fact that after studying Rashi's works at various levels for 30 years, I feel some connection. And part of it is probably a result of my own status as a public figure in my community; I would not want someone to do to me what appears to have been done to Rashi here.

And then there was another problem, maybe my biggest problem: Ms. Anton's presentation of Judaism's greatest teacher as a not-so-closeted liberal felt to me like a challenge: You think you know what Judaism is about? Nah; you're basing your Judaism on a misunderstanding, some ahistorical, overly pious idea of what Judaism is supposed to be. Here's the real thing; I read 250 books, and this is what happened in Rashi's day. Rashi wasn't as hung up on religion as you guys are.

This implicit charge is inherently offensive, moreso when it turns out to be based on errors and fiction, and so I took to the task of finding the book's errors and fiction.

I found four basic types of inaccuracies: Errors, Perception, Fictionalization and Misrepresentation. The last was the worst in terms of my own feeling, but here is the collection:


1. Straightforward Errors
There were many simple errors - in moving earlier practices into Rashi’s day, or moving latter-day practices back into Rashi’s day, or borrowing French cultural practices and putting them into Rashi’s family, or just inventing Jewish practices altogether. The list is very, very long, and I will reserve it for a second post, linked at the end of this piece.


2. A matter of perception
I have problems with the way Ms. Anton plays Rashi. Rashi is portrayed as an intellectual, a professor who could just as easily be obsessed with algebra as with Talmud, and with little religious depth or moral authority. He rarely, if ever, seems to reflect on Gd, other than regarding personal suffering or celebration.

In particular, Rashi is depicted as violating his own religious precepts on sexuality, grabbing hold of a woman’s arm, allowing his students to visit brothels, winking at his daughter’s trysts with her betrothed, violating many Talmudic passages (Ketuvot 8b, to start) as well as Rashi’s own lessons recorded in Vitry 528 and Likkutei haPardes meiRashi 3b.

To me, this is the equivalent of a National Enquirer writer penning a piece about some celebrity doing drugs, when in truth the celebrity is on an anti-drug crusade. Why do it? Where is the justification in doing this to a human being, dead 900 years or not?


3. Liberties of Fictionalization
And I had a third problem: The question of what, exactly, counts as legitimate Historical Fiction. I am confused by Maggie Anton’s own words from Rashi’s Daughters Book I: Joheved -

Rashi’s Daughters Book I: Joheved, Preface
At the beginning of most novels, you come across a statement that says smething like, “All characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. In Rashi’s Daughters, however, most of the characters are actual persons, and I’ve made every effort to ensure that their fictional lives resemble reality as accurately as possible.

vs.

Rashi’s Daughters Book I: Joheved, Afterword
In any case, because I am writing fiction, I can draw whatever conclusion I like.

Which is it?

Certainly, many historians believe Rashi ran a vineyard - but after that the story is on ice thinner than a sheet of Catherina’s parchment. Rashi is portrayed as having a bad temper, as being unable to satisfy his wife, as teaching the Abbot of Montier-la-Celle, all of which has no basis in any historical source. (Yes, there is such an abbey near Troyes. But what of it? See Sanhedrin 59a on the prohibition against teaching him - and see Rashi’s own comments there!)


4. Misrepresentations
Of course, none of the above is criminal. People make mistakes, and if they are looser than I would prefer in labelling it “historical,” c’est la vie. But now I come to something that really troubles me, especially coming from a writer I respect: Misrepresentations of historical accounts, apparently to further an agenda.

I can only conclude that either I am entirely missing certain sources, or Ms. Anton was misled by her mentors.

Example 1: The candle-lighting controversy
Ms. Anton writes in her Afterword:
At this time there was a great controversy over whether a woman should say a blessing over the Sabbath lights, which was settled only after Rashi’s death when one of his granddaughters wrote responsa explaining how the ritual was performed in her mother’s home.

The Responsum in question was written by Rabbeinu Tam, Rashi’s grandson (Sefer haYashar Teshuvah 45), and it simply says to recite the blessing:
I have also heard that they have uprooted the blessing on the Shabbat lamp and desecrated the sacred and the love of the mitzvah. Many obligations require blessings. This is not like mayim acharonim…

There is no mention of any controversy, or even debate.

Example 2: Rashi and his wife
In her afterword Ms. Anton writes of Rashi:
He refers to his wife only twice, once in his kuntres, complaining how she threw the keys at him when she was niddah, and the other time in a responsum, when she interrupted him at afternoon services because a non-Jew was bringing them a gift of bread and cake before the end of Passover.

This is a big deal, to me. Rashi's wife throwing keys at him, Rashi whining about it in his commentary?

Turns out, the latter account is imprecise, but largely correct - see Rashi Responsum 114 for the whole story. But the former account is simply untrue. The “story of the keys” is actually one line in Tosafot, citing from Machzor Vitry 499:
In Machzor Vitry, Rav Shemaya explained that Rashi was careful not even to pass a key from his hand to hers.

That’s it. No complaint. No airborne keys. Only a sick feeling at seeing Rashi described this way.

Example 3: Rashi’s daughter writing a responsum on how candle-lighting was done in her home
The responsum is noted above in Example 1. It was written by Rabbeinu Tam rather than a granddaughter, and it included no reminiscences about how lighting was done at home.

Example 4: Rashi’s daughter writing a responsum for him
Ms. Anton writes in her Afterword:
Besides the Shabbat lights responsa, there is another one, written late in Rashi’s life, that begins by stating that the reader will not recognize his handwriting because, due to his incapacity, it is being written by his daughter. Thus at least one daughter was learned enough to compose legal responsa in erudite Hebrew, and probably the others were too.

Aside from the fact that taking dictation is not composing responsa, and that “probably the others were too” is less than scientific, let’s look at the text itself:

Ms. Anton is referring to Responsum 73 - but there is no daughter involved. Herewith the text:
My strength is weak and my mouth is mute, to tell the troubles which are passing over me, wave after wave. Therefore my hand is weak from being able to write a response to my relative R’ Azriel and to my beloved and my friend R’ Yosef for his words, in my own handwriting. I am dictating from my mouth to one of my brothers, and he is writing.

Example 5: Rabbeinu Tam saying that women wore tefillin and recited a berachah on them
Here are Ms. Anton’s words, from her Afterword:
In the Tosefot to Tractate Rosh haShanah 33a. Rabbeinu Tam mentions that Michal, King Saul’s daughter, wore tefillin. He then states that in his time, women not only performed these time-bound mitzvot, but when they did so, they said the blessing. But tefillin were not worn outside the home, so Jacob could know only that women said the blessing over them from watching his mother, Joheved, or perhaps his older sisters. In any case, because I am writing fiction, I can draw whatever conclusion I like.

Let us first note that in Rashi’s day tefillin generally were worn all day. Even 350 years later, in the days of the Shulchan Aruch, they were largely worn all day, although some people had already stopped doing so by then.

But aside from that, let’s read the actual words of Tosafot:
The law follows Rabbi Yosi, for his reason is with him, and the practical deed is also great [as testimony], for in Eruvin 96a we learn that Michal, daughter of Shaul, would put on tefillin, and Yonah’s wife went to the Beit haMikdash for the regel, and Chagigah 16b mentions a case in which they brought a korban to the women’s area and the women leaned on it, in order to satisfy them. And they may recite berachot on time-bound active mitzvot, even though they are exempt from the mitzvah itself and are simply engaging in it, like Michal daughter of the Cushite, who also recited blessings.

No mention of any women in his day wearing tefillin.

Example 6: Rashi’s daughter, Leah
Ms. Anton writes in her Afterword, regarding the third daughter, Leah, presented in the book:
Rashi’s students wrote of their surprise when he ignored tradition and mourned for a little girl during a festival, causing some historians to speculate that she was his daughter.

The problem is that this account is in writing in both Vitry 275-276 and Responsa of Rashi 189, and the text is clear that Rashi was not related to the girl:
And at the time of the burial some there protested that we should not recite Tzidduk haDin because of the festival, and not Kaddish, for Kaddish is only recited because of the passages of Tzidduk haDin. And our master rose and recited Tzidduk haDin and then kaddish, saying this is not eulogy and a desecration of the festival, but rather acknowledgement and acceptance of Divine judgment. And when he returned from there, he entered the house of the mourner to comfort him and to speak to his heart… (continues to describe what he said to the mourner)

If Rashi was the mourner, how did he go to comfort the mourner?

Example 7: Rashi's views on women's Torah education
At the end of this book Rashi is quoted as presenting a very liberal view on women's Torah education. I might read these passages and think Rashi was a forerunner of the Bais Yaakov movement.

The problem is that the words put in Rashi's mouth are direct quotes from later writers - one from Sefer Chasidim 313 (a century later, in Germany), and the other from Maayan Ganim (16th century Italy).


These last 7 cases are the ones that trouble me most, because there really is no way to get from the evidence to the conclusions drawn in Rashi’s Daughters. It just seems like Rashi and his family are being used to make a point.

Please note: I am emailing this post to Ms. Anton for her reply; I will print any and all explanations/rebuttals she wishes to send me.


In my next post, Gd-willing, I will provide a non-comprehensive list of errors in the book.