Us and Us

Please see my essay, "Us and Us," in the Jewish Link.

Exploring the Meaning of Naanuim

Please see my essay in the Jewish Link.

Ideas in Collision

Please see my essay "Ideas in Collision."

Tzuras Ha-Daf

My son, a recent Bar Mitzvah, is a subscriber to the new Koren Talmud, which features Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s translation and commentary in English.  The new "Steinsaltz" may find adherents among Talmud students at all levels, but it should be especially well received by those interested in the peshat, or basic comprehension, of the Talmud page.  Often dismissed as “making a laining,” acquiring peshat is an undervalued goal of Talmud study and Talmud education.   

Facilitating readability with punctuation, vocalization, and an expansive translation, the Koren edition -- like its Hebrew predecessor -- also provides context to a sugya with topical discussions (“Notes”), halakhic summaries (“Halakha”), biography (“Personalities”), etymology (“Language”), and other realia (“Background”) in the margins of the daf.  These are the same features Steinsaltz fans have enjoyed for decades, and we can celebrate the fact that this high-quality product is now accessible to those without training in Modern Hebrew (a growing number of us, sadly, even in the Modern Orthodox community).

The translation-commentary and the supporting material are not the only innovations of the Koren.  At least as significant -- in Koren’s view, at least -- are the updated “Vilna Shas” pages at the back (or front) of each volume.  In his introductory remarks, publisher Matthew Miller proudly extols "the classic tzurat hadaf (pagination) of Vilna, used by scholars since the 1800s."  Indeed, he places tzurat hadaf at the top of the list of the new edition's notable features.  

Although it has many merits, the Vilna section of the Koren does not compare favorably with the original Hebrew-only Steinsaltz.   

The return to the Vilna format (a trend that began some years ago with a tzurat ha-daf edition of the Hebrew Steinsaltz) is significant because it is a regression, reversing the groundbreaking approach of the original edition.  When it first appeared, an outstanding feature of the Steinsaltz -- second only to the Modern Hebrew translation -- was the new layout, a fundamental and deliberate departure from the standard Vilna pagination. Aside from vocalization and punctuation, Rabbi Steinsaltz introduced a new system of paragraphs to break up the text into logical sections. And, he split each amud of the Vilna page into a two-page spread.  For many Talmud students, the modern look-and-feel of that edition was, and remains, its most appealing feature. To its detractors as well as its advocates, the first Steinsaltz did away with tzuras ha-daf in its current literal sense.

On the pages of the Koren, something is gained, but something is also lost.  The original Steinsaltz has a tangible airiness -- there is ample spacing between lines of mostly equal width -- allowing the reader to more easily follow and grasp the sometimes knotty text.  The aesthetic clarity of the layout minimizes intimidation and eases the way to comprehension.  In contrast, the punctuated Vilna pages of the Koren feel busy and crowded (true to their tzuras ha-daf ideal, the Koren editors painstakingly mirrored the layout of the late nineteenth-century Romm family Talmud down to the width of each line).  Side by side with the Koren, the Vilna-Romm edition is actually neater and more welcoming, despite its lack of nikud. 

An idealization of the Vilna layout also appears to underlie a baffling practice in contemporary early Talmud education.  Neither the original Steinsaltz nor, for that matter, any modern, punctuated edition has been widely adopted in elementary and high school yeshivot.  Some educators apparently assign more value to tzuras ha-daf than to textual clarity; I have heard others argue that a Spartan diet of Talmud without “dots” will serve our children well as they advance in Torah study.  But when young students are introduced to Chumash, do we insist that they read from the layout found in the Sefer Torah, where tzurat ha-daf actually has some halakhic significance?  Do we worry that our children will become textually impaired by relying on nikud and separations between verses? Sixth and seventh-graders especially, but advanced students as well, waste time, energy, and precious educational resources parsing a text that is difficult to understand even after it can be read.  We enable greater -- not less -- textual mastery, and detract nothing from genuine tradition, by advancing the aesthetics and clarity of the Talmud page.    

But it is still comforting, I suppose, that this revised Steinsaltz might now be acceptable to a certain segment of the community that could not stomach the original.

There is a certain irony to the term tzuras ha-daf.  Ancient and medieval philosophers distinguished between chomer (matter) and tzurah (form).  Plato, most famously, spoke of a world of ideal forms, representing perfect reality.  Shadows of those forms, he said, exist in our world only in their inferior, material manifestations. I think we can all agree that the layout of the Vilna Shas is far from a Platonic form. Rather than tzuras ha-daf, chomer ha-daf more accurately conveys an obsession with layout.  In its truest sense, tzurat ha-daf is the text and its meaning, rather than its appearance.  

One hundred years from now, tzuras ha-daf may mean something radically different than it does today.  In our nascent digital age, e-readers of all kinds have made the format of the printed page mostly irrelevant.  I suspect that many Talmud students have already sacrificed tzuras ha-daf for the convenience of studying on their iPads (though, to be fair, a Vilna-based app is available in the ArtScroll Digital Library).

Perhaps, on some level, the Talmud may be regarded as a sacred text, even if that category is normally reserved for Scripture.  But if the text -- the true tzurah of the Talmud page -- is sacred, then pagination is only a sacred cow.

Cursing Copernicus

 . . . the evil Copernicus, may the names of the evil rot! . . .

The sun, the moon, the planets, the stars, and all heavenly objects orbit the earth every twenty-four hours.

It must be publicly stated that books on astronomy are by far the worst of all scientific books, since they are full of heresy, hatred of God (God save us!), hatred of Judaism, hatred of truth, nonsense and madness, such that it is a great mystery how these 'scientists' and their books are so much more foolish and full of venomous blasphemy than all their other scientific writings.

-- R. Yosef Zalman Bloch, Be-Emunah Shelemah (Monsey, 2012), cited by Marc B. Shapiro on Seforim Blog (note 12). My translation.

So this is what we have come to.  Not only the Big Bang, but Copernicus, Galileo, and heliocentrism itself are the enemies of Judaism (and of truth).  Daas Torah rules that the Earth is stationary.  "And yet, it stands!"

We should resist the urge to engage such nonsense on its own terms.  Do we really need to prove, from a "Torah persepctive," that the Earth goes around the Sun?  Must we compile lists of gedolei Yisrael who endorsed Copernicus to counter what are, to be generous, the twisted ravings of a grotesquely misguided piety?  Does the truth require a hekhsher?

In my view, obscurantism of this kind shares nothing with the core principles and values of Judaism.  Instead, R. Bloch's position is more in line with seventeenth-century Roman Catholic objections to Galileo (Galileo's observations proved Copernicus right).  Thus, Robert Cardinal Bellarmine's 1615 letter to Paolo Foscarini, who had dared to say that Galileo's conclusions did not oppose Scripture (the full text is here):

But to want to affirm that the Sun really is fixed in the center of the heavens and only revolves around itself without traveling from East to West, and that the Earth is situated in the third sphere and revolves with great speed around the Sun, is a very dangerous thing, not only by irritating all the philosophers and scholastic theologians, but also by injuring our holy faith and rendering the Holy Scriptures false.

Introduction to the Song of Songs by Amos Hakham (An Excerpt)

Please see my recent post on Seforim Blog, a translation of an excerpt from Amos Hakham's Introduction to the Song of Songs in the Da'at Mikra Bible commentary series (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1973).

https://seforimblog.com/2012/09/introduction-to-song-of-songs-excerp/

Reimagining Issachar

The essay below first appeared on the website of Rabbi Marc D. Angel's Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. This is a slightly revised version. 

Issachar and Zebulun are said to have founded an economic model now popular within a segment of Orthodox Jewish society. As commonly perceived, Issachar “bore the yoke of Torah,” devoting himself exclusively to study, while Zebulun became a successful global merchant. Recognizing the benefits and deficiencies of their single-track careers, they contracted to share the rewards, if not the burdens, of their respective products. Each received goods produced by the labor of the other. Lacking the time, or inclination, for constant study, Zebulun financed his brother’s cerebrally pious lifestyle and, in return, was guaranteed a portion of Issachar’s metaphysical reward. Issachar avoided traditional work but, thanks to Zebulun, he could still put food on the table. 

The paradigm just described turns out to be based on a superficial and incomplete reading of Issachar’s image in the Bible, in the traditional biblical commentaries, and in the literature of the Sages. 

As with many midrashic themes, the Sages derived the concept of an Issachar-Zebulun partnership from cryptic but suggestive biblical language. The relevant biblical passages are below — the first is from Jacob’s poetic prophecies on the tribes; the second, from the blessings of Moses. The final passage is from an account of King David’s coronation in the Book of Chronicles (translations from the New JPS version):

Issachar is a strong-boned ass,

Crouching among the sheepfolds. 

When he saw how good was security,

And how pleasant was the country,

He bent his shoulder to the burden,

And became a toiling serf (Gen. 49:14-15).

And of Zebulun he said:

Rejoice, Zebulun, on your journeys;

And, Issachar, in your tents (Deut. 33:18).

Of the Issacharites, men who knew how to interpret the signs of the times, to determine how Israel should act; their chiefs were two-hundred, and all their kinsmen followed them (1 Chron. 12:33).

To celebrate David’s ascension to the throne, Chronicles reports, nearly all the tribes of Israel sent large delegations of their best soldiers to Hebron. But the Issacharite team was unique; instead of fighters, they sent a small cadre of two-hundred men who were expert in reading the "signs of the times." This expression is ambiguous, and the precise nature of the two-hundred Issacharites is something of a mystery. Jewish translations and commentaries provide multiple explanations, including suggestions that they were astrologers, astronomers, or gifted policy makers with broad expertise on national issues.  The Midrash identified them as legislators who were experts on the Hebrew calendar, specifically, the rules of intercalation (i.e., when and how to add a thirteenth lunar month to the year). Having mastered this highly technical area of the law, the Issacharite council was charged with determining -- for an entire people -- the proper days on which to observe the biblical holidays. This was a daunting responsibility, as national unity depended on a uniform calendar.

The central biblical source-text on Issachar is our passage from Genesis. However, the metaphors in Jacob’s blessing, while detailed and colorful, are hardly transparent. Jacob compares the tribe to a crouching, toiling donkey, who willingly bears some sort of burden as “a toiling serf (mas ‘oved)”; but it is unclear from the text whom Issachar serves and of what his service consists. Rashi, following the Sages, defines Issachar’s burden as Torah study, and adds Zebulun’s supporting role to his portrait. On the surface, Rashi appears to promote the current paradigm, in which Zebulun goes to work and earns a living while Issachar “sits and learns.” Read carefully, however, Rashi’s view is surprisingly nuanced. 

The popular model assumes that by virtue of his single-minded dedication to Torah study, Issachar had a right to Zebulun’s financial support. But Rashi himself underlines Issachar’s responsibilities, rather than his privileges, and is completely silent on Issachar’s right to external subsidies. As a serf who “bent his shoulder to the burden,” Issachar owed specific services, not only to his patron but, in Rashi’s words, to “all of his Israelite kinsmen.” For the privilege (not the right) of Zebulun’s investment, Issachar was obligated, according to Rashi, “to provide [the nation of Israel] with religious instruction and with [decisions on] the intercalation of the calendar.” Rashi’s model essentially depicts Issachar as a utility, providing a real, if intangible, commodity to the nation. Issachar’s scholarship is a means to satisfy the Jewish people’s religious and cultural needs; it is never an end in itself.

In Rashi’s portrayal, as it happens, Issachar also brought a physical commodity to his partnership with Zebulun. On the words “he saw how good was security (va-yar menuha ki tov),” Rashi cites the view of the midrash and Onkelos that Issachar’s land produced superior fruit, allowing the tribe to spend minimal time at work in the orchard. A related midrashic opinion, not cited by Rashi, takes the expression “when he saw . . . how pleasant was the country” at face value; “this refers to his land,” in the words of an alternate view (yesh omrim) in the midrash. But even Rashi’s conception of Issachar includes an element of real labor. Rather than being a completely passive recipient of charitable gifts from Zebulun, Issachar grew his own fruit and, following an efficient distribution model, utilized his merchant brother to bring them to market. For a good part of the year, we would find Rashi’s Issachar in the orchard, rather than the beit midrash.

Other exegetes on the pages of Mikraot Gedolot offer radically alternative views of Issachar that are worth considering in contrast to the current model. Rashbam, following the midrashic thread mentioned, portrays Issachar as a farmer rather than a scholar. Seeing “how pleasant was the country,” Issachar preferred an agrarian lifestyle, became highly successful and wealthy, but was also heavily taxed by the Israelite kings in the form of tithes from his vast produce. Much more harshly, Ibn Ezra suggests the Issacharites “were not courageous” and were thus assessed a draft-dodging fine or, to avoid conquest, paid protection money to the surrounding powers. Ibn Ezra’s portrait of a rather emasculated Issachar appears to be inspired by our passage in Chronicles; if they were able to fight, why would Issachar not send soldiers to King David’s inauguration, like the other tribes? (Interestingly, Onkelos portrays Issachar in the very opposite light. Following another midrash, his translation includes a comment about Issachar achieving extraordinary military success against his enemies, turning them into “toiling serfs.”) For Rashbam and Ibn Ezra, then, Issachar was never dependent on the financial support of any other tribe. In fact, just the opposite; by establishing a mostly self-serving economy, Issachar -- not Zebulun -- was in debt to his brothers. His books were regularly audited and he was forced to give up a percentage of profits to the national treasury.

Moses’ two-word blessing to Issachar is even more mysterious than Jacob’s. How should we interpret “rejoicing in tents”? The peshat (literal) approach, taken by several traditional commentaries, is straightforward and parallel to the previously cited explanations of Jacob’s blessing. Represented by tents, the Issacharites were shepherds and farmers, in contrast to the merchant-marine Zebulunites. Again, midrashic exegesis takes a different approach -- the Sages read “tents” as a symbol of Torah study; recall that Jacob is also called a “dweller in tents” (Gen. 25:27). Like Jacob’s, Issachar’s “tents” were taken to mean “tents of Torah study,” i.e. batei midrash, maintained by Zebulun’s profits. One may be tempted to argue that the midrashic approach supersedes the literal one, and that the popular Issachar-Zebulun model is in perfect agreement with the midrash. But peshat and derash are both legitimate and religiously significant layers of biblical interpretation. The Sages never precluded Issachar's agricultural vocation; rather, they added the scholarship theme to the more obvious peshat interpretation. When we imagine Issachar, we may — perhaps should — picture both.

One additional biblical reference to Issachar must be included in this discussion. From Deborah’s Song in the book of Judges, we get a view of Issachar’s character during a period of national crisis:

And Issachar’s chiefs were with Deborah;

As Barak, so was Issachar --

Rushing after him into the valley.

Among the clans of Reuben

Were great decisions of heart.

Why did you stay among the sheepfolds

And listen as they pipe for the flocks?

Among the clans of Reuben

Were great searchings of heart! (Judges 5:15-16)

Perhaps Ibn Ezra was correct — the Issacharites were poor soldiers. Still, when Barak and Deborah led Naphtali and Zebulun in battle against Sisera, Issachar enlisted voluntarily and served courageously. The neighboring tribe of Reuben, in contrast, sat out the war. The Reubenites themselves, of course, believed that their lofty contributions were necessary and sufficient to serve the nation: “Among the clans of Reuben were great decisions of heart,” Deborah sang with bitterness and sarcasm. After all, the Reubenites were the (self-appointed) thought leaders of Israel, who could count on thousands of their flock to attend spirited rallies at a moment’s notice. At their conferences and rallies they had “great searchings of heart,” analyzing the issues of the day from all possible sides. But their high-minded pronouncements were hollow, and glaringly irrelevant to the wider public. Reuben's policy platform produced no meaningful action and, being so obviously detached from reality, only highlighted the tribe's isolation; in the end, Reuben “stayed among the sheepfolds” (or sheep-pens -- bein ha-mishpetayim -- ironically, the very same expression Jacob used with respect to Issachar), remaining both geographically and existentially on the nation’s periphery. In an earlier era, Reuben fought at the front lines with Joshua to fulfill a debt for the patrimony Moses granted him east of the Jordan. But now, in the age of the Judges, the Reubenites were secure in remote villages far from the Canaanite front, and they could expect no gain from Barak’s war. Issachar, in stark contrast, remained empathetic to his brothers, and fought alongside them when needed.  

Orthodox Judaism promotes neither a single religious archetype, nor an ideal “Torah personality,” nor a monolithic concept of a labor economy. Over the centuries, our religion has accommodated multiple paradigms in all aspects of life and there are many great and varied figures in our history and literature from whom to draw inspiration. The Issachar familiar to most of us -- the full-time scholar -- was never held up by the Torah or by our Sages as the one and only model of authentic Jewish living. His image has taken on other, no less ideal, forms in biblical and rabbinic tradition, including that of a man who finds joy and meaning working the soil under his feet and who returns home every evening soaked in the sweat of physical labor. That Issachar is no less a ben Torah than the one who never leaves the beit midrash. With a sense of responsibility stretching beyond its own borders, this reimagined Issachar is the type of leader the Jewish people can look to for support and for guidance, on and off the battlefield.  

It is time to rethink our fixation on the two-dimensional Issachar, to the exclusion of all others. On closer examination, the others are even more inspiring.