Limmud Conference 2015

Barry Kleinberg

Jewish censorship of Jewish texts

- 1 - “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who will watch the watchers?” Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

"The hardest thing about being a communist was trying to predict the past"

Milovan Djilas

"There is no Orthodox history

Jacob Katz

- 2 - Marc Shapiro

born 1966) holds the Harry and Jeanette ,מלך שפירא :Marc B. Shapiro (Hebrew Weinberg Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Scranton and is the author of various books and articles on Jewish history, philosophy, and theology.

Marc Shapiro received his BA at Brandeis University and his PhD at Harvard University, where he was the last PhD student of the late Prof. Isadore Twersky. He received rabbinical ordination from Ephraim Greenblatt.

Between the World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, 1884-1966 (London, 1999)

The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides' Thirteen Principles Reappraised (Oxford, 2004)

Saul Lieberman and the Orthodox (Scranton, 2006)

Studies in Maimonides and His Interpreters (Scranton, 2008)

Ed. Kitvei Ha-Gaon Rabbi Yechiel , 2 vols (Scranton, 1999, 2004)

Changing the Immutable: How Rewrites Its History (Oxford, 2015)

Seforim blog (http://seforim.blogspot.co.uk/)

- 3 - Censorship - A definition and some quotations

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other infor- mation which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authori- ties or other groups or institutions.

“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” Golda Meir, My Life

“Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.” Philip Pullman

Jewish self-censorship

Talmudic saying (numerous places)

Babylonian Beitza 28a

הלכה ואין מורין כן This is the law but we do not teach it

- 4 - Babylonian Talmud Hulin 15a

כי מורי להו רב לתלמידיה מורי להו כר' מאיר וכי דריש בפירקא דריש כרבי יהודה משום עמי הארץ

One law for students (Talmidei chachamim?) and one law for the ignorant

Proverbs 25:2

'The Glory of God to conceal a thing'

Why censor? (many models?)

* We are not ready for it or able to handle it!

* The author would not want us to see it - literacy for the masses

* The author did not mean it

* There is no way that the author could have said that! - Rabbah!

* Forgeries!!

- 5 - The Torah Commentary of R. Yehuda Hehasid (c. 1150-1217)

This 12th Century pietist asserted that several verses in the Torah are post- Mosaic.

Genesis 36:31-9 which contains a list of the kings of Edom 'before they reigned any king over the children of Israel' - added by the Men of the Great Assembly

Numbers 21:17 - 'Then sang Israel this song'. He claims that the 'song' referred to is the 'Great Hallel' (Psalm 136). It was only in a later generation that King David removed it from the Pentateuch, together with all the other anonymous Psalms written by Moses, and placed them in the book of Psalms.

Y. Lange edited a 1975 publication of R. Yehuda Hehasid's commentary. In his introduction he states that he never had any thought of censoring the text, even though the passages could create confusion for some. He wrote this precisely because he knew that there were those who did indeed want him to delete sec- tions of the commentary.

R. Moses Feinstein: Igerot Moshe, vol. vi, 'Yoreh de'ah' 3. nos 114-5

Declared that the book contained heresy and could not have been authored by R. Yehuda HeHasid. It was therefore forbidden to publish the work.

Lange (under extreme pressure) published a second edition with the passages deleted.

- 6 - An example of censorship from outside the Orthodox world! Changing the Immutable p80

In the Conservative prayer book Siddur Sim Shalom, we find the following translation for the blessing of the Amidah that ends mehayeh hametim ('Resurrector of the dead'): Prasied are You, Lord, Master of Life and Death.' The Conservative Rabbinical Assembly's earlier Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book has 'Who callest the dead to life everlasting'. Conservative Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser (1907-84), in his translation of the prayer book, rendered the passage as 'Who callest the departed to life eternal'.

All of these translations make very nice blessings. The only problem is they are not what the blessing in the Amidah is speaking about, and the translators knew this. Yet in order to present congregants with a text that would not violate their theological outlook, an outlook that rejects resurrection, the correct translation was altered, so that God is now 'Master of Life and Death', etc., instead of God the 'Resurrector of the dead'. Similarly in the prayer for the State of Israel there is a line that reads reshit tsemihat ge'ulatenu, which means 'the first flowering of our redemption'. Uncomfortable with describing any messianic significance to the State of Israel, Siddur Sim Shalom 'translates' this line as 'its promise of redemption'.

The Kitzur Shulkan Arukh

In terms of practical halakhah, after the Shulkhan arukh, the most popular text in Jewish history is R. Solomon Ganzfried's (1804-66) Kitsur shulhan arukh. It has been printed so many times that it is hard to imagine that anyone would at- tempt to censor something in it, yet this indeed happened.

- 7 - 201:4

All those who deviate from the community by casting off the yoke of precepts, severing their bonds with the people of Israel as regards the observance of the Divine Commands, and are in a class by themselves; also apostates, informers, and heretics - for all these the rules of onen and of mourners should not be ob- served. Their brothers and other next of kin should dress in white, eat, drink, and rejoice that the enemies of the Almighty have perished. Concerning such people, the Scripture states (Psalms 139:21) 'Do not hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee?'. Also, (Proverbs 11:10): 'And when the wicked perish, there is joy.'

The Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh was a book for the masses. In fact, with the expan- sion of Torah education for girls, they too were taught from this text. In the Mosad Harav Kook replaced the original with a new entirely (this has been corrected in subsequent editions).

SRH - Collected Writings, vol. VII, p. 26 (see Natan Slifkin article) http://www.rationalistjudaism.com/2010/10/wisdom-of-rav-hirsch.html

"Even if this notion were ever to gain complete acceptance by the scientific world, Jewish thought, unlike the reasoning of the high priest of that nation (probably a reference to Thomas Huxley, who advocated Darwinism with mis- sionary fervor—N.S.), would nonetheless never summon us to revere a still ex- tant representative of this primal form (an ape—N.S.) as the supposed ancestor of us all. Rather, Judaism in that case would call upon its adherents to give even greater reverence than ever before to the one, sole God Who, in His boundless

- 8 - creative wisdom and eternal omnipotence, needed to bring into existence no more than one single, amorphous nucleus, and one single law of “adaptation and heredity” in order to bring forth, from what seemed chaos but was in fact a very definite order, the infinite variety of species we know today, each with its unique characteristics that sets it apart from all other creatures."

Rabbi Shimon Schwab "Yes, you are correct. The editor [Rabbi Klugman] consulted with me and I advised him not to publish them [two letters including the above text]. I told him that the letters are controversial and likely to be mis- understood, and that publishing them would just bring him unnecessary grief [tzoros]. (Quoted in Changing the Immutable p130)

Rabbi Joseph Elias fundamentally distorted Rav Hirsch's views and claimed that Rav Hirsch never really intended them seriously.

Rav Moshe Shapiro holds that such an approach to Chazal is a fundamental perversion of the and blatantly heretical; after being disproven in his claim that Rav Hirsch's writings were forgeries, Rav Shapiro stated that "Rav Hirsch is not from our Beis HaMidrash."

Rav Aharon Feldman maintains that Rav Elyashiv " paskened" Rav Hirsch's approach to be heresy for all Klal Yisrael; when I asked him how he could do such a thing, Rav Feldman told … (Rabbi Natan Slifkin) that "Rav Elyashiv is bigger than Rav Hirsch" (which did not seem to answer the question). (NB Yeridat HaDorot vs on the shoulders of giants)

Rabbi Moshe Meiselman (Torah, Chazal and Science) likewise maintains that the approach of Rav Hirsch (in all three areas mentioned above) is heresy, and therefore entirely omits Rav Hirsch's views on these topics from his 800 page

- 9 - book on Torah, Chazal and Science.

Changing the Immutable pp120-1

In thinking about haredi attitudes towards Hirsch, the first thing to observe is that he has entered the pantheon of gedolim in the haredi world. The strongest proof of this is that Hirsch is the subject of a biography published in the Artscroll series of 'significant Torah personalities', which in America is the ulti- mate stamp of haredi approval. (see http://artscroll.com/categories/bia.html - "Over 100 classic and contemporary biographies of significant Torah personali- ties. These great books make it possible to "walk with the sages of the ages through the pages!")

Not everyone needs to learn Torah all day!

There are other examples that can be brought to illustrate the difficult relation- ship between the haredi world and Hirsch. For instance, Hirsch advocated the creation of a religious laity, and he insisted that not everyone needed to devote his life to Torah study or become a rabbi. Yet the notion that one could, as a first choice, serve God by having a profession, rather than exclusively through Torah study, is not something that fits in with the haredi Weltanschauung of recent decades. The following note appears in the Netzah edition of Hirsch's writings:

"There words of Rabbi need to be understood against the background of his era. They were stated in order to save the youth who had separated, or whose parents had separated them, from the study of Torah, and who were almost in the arms of the Haskalah and assimilation. This is not the case today when we have been worthy of a new generation of youth whose soul

- 10 - longs for Torah precisely in a yeshiva setting. There are many parents whose ideal is to see their sons advancing in the study of Torah and intensively pursu- ing this. There are also numerous young women of valor who place upon them- selves the burden of earning a livelihood, precisely in order that even after mar- riage their husbands will not be disturbed from their studies."

Hirsch's advice to all of us:

Our task in life has no greater enemy, and there is no greater cancer on our present state, than ignorance. Study Torah thoroughly-Torah, the Prophets, Kethuvim (Hagiographia), Talmud and decisors. And do not study out of a de- sire to be a rabbi. Study Torah as a businessman, a tradesman, an artist, a doctor, or a scientist.

Censorship of Rav Kook

http://www.atid.org/resources/art

/ravkook.asp

(Jewish Chronicle of London,

Sept. 13, 1935, p. 21)

- 11 - Attitudes to the Halutsim and physical exercise

http://lookstein.org/lookjed/read.php?1,16837,16845,quote=1

...see Betzalel Naor's translation of Orot published by Aaronson in the Introduction pages 35-44 where the famous and controversial contents of Chapter 34 in Orot HaTechiyah are discussed. Chapter XXXIV on page 189 states:

Chapter 34: Orot

"The exercise that Jewish youths in the land of Israel engage in to strengthen their bodies in order to be powerful sons to the nation, enhances the spiritual prowess of the exalted righteous.... However, if youths sport to strengthen their physical ability and spirits for the sake of the nation's strength at large, this holy work raises up the Shechinah just as it rises through songs and praises uttered by David, king of Israel in the book of psalms....through actions of the body of individuals for the sake of the community, outer spirituality ascends.

On page 38 Rav Naor quotes an oral exchange between Rav Kook and the Gerrer Rebbe. Rav Kook showed the Gerrer Rebbe a precedent for what he had written concerning physical exercise in Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed section 3:25. Maimonides writes: "There are many things that are necessary or very useful to some people, whereas according to others they are not at all needed; as is the case with regard to the different kinds of bodily exercise, which are necessary for the preservation of health according to the prescriptions of those who know the art of medicine... Thus those who accomplish acts exercising their body in the wish to be healthy, engaging in ball games, wrestling, boxing...are in the opinion of the ignorant, engaged in frivolous

- 12 - actions, whereas they are not frivolous according to the learned" To this the Rebbe responded: "The 'Guide' too, we do not study".

Prudish censorship

Changing the Immutable p184

Throughout history, one of the prime considerations leading to censorship has been the issue of sex, namely, what is and what is not allowed to be shown and said. Since Judaism has a very conservative sexual ethic, Jewish history has also seen its share of censorship in the sexual realm. While it is probably true that the impact of Christian society has had some influence on the development of puritanical attitudes, this is hardly the entire story. Furthermore, the haredi world has developed in such a way that its standards of modesty are far removed from anything that is found even in the most conservative Christian circles.

For example, Israel haredim have a difficult time in bringing awareness of breat cancer to their communities, because the word 'breast' will never appear in their publications. This is the sort of extreme fastidiousness when it comes to lan- guage that, as far as I know, has no parallels outside this community. Similarly, in all the controversies over gay pride parades that have taken place in Israel, the words 'gay' and 'homosexual' have never appeared in the Israeli haredi press. (The America haredi press has different standards in this regard.) The Israeli haredi media uses euphemisms to name the events, but never actually tell the readers who organizes these parades. Rape and other sexual crimes are also not mentioned. In fact, someone whose only source of news was the Israeli haredi papers would never have learnt exactly what precipitated Bill Clinton's im-

- 13 - peachment or the resignation and prison sentence of Israel's president Moshe Katzav.

History and Heritage

Rabbi Shimon Schwab: Selected writings 234

What ethical purpose is served by preserving a realistic historic picture? Noth- ing but the satisfaction of curiosity....Rather than write the history of our fore- bears, every generation has to put a veil over the human failings of its elders and glorify all the rest which is great and beautiful. That means we have to do with- out a real history book. We can do without. We do not realism, we need inspira- tion from our forefathers in order to pass it on to posterity.

Interview with Nosson Scherman: General Editor Artscroll June 2007

Question; How do you respond to critics who accuse ArtScroll biographies of whitewashing history by characterizing great as saints without faults?

NS; Our goal is to increase Torah learning and yiras shamayim. If somebody can be inspired by a gadol b’yisrael, then let him be inspired. Is it necessary to say that he had shortcomings? Does that help you become a better person? What about lashon hara? You know in today’s world, lashon hara is a mitzvah. Character assassination sells papers. That’s not what Klal Yisrael is all about.

R. Eliyahu Dessler (1892-1953) said that truth should not be understood as identical with certain facts. Rather, 'truth is that which advances the good and brings people to do God's will.'

- 14 - Anonymous author of Rav Eliyashiv's recent biography the author acknowledges that some of the stories he repeats may not be true, but adds that 'they don't tell stories about me and you'.

For him, this is reason enough to include the stories, as their purpose is to in- spire the reader so that one day 'it will be possible to tell such stories about us'.

Marc Shapiro: Changing the immutable p10

...on the Dei'ah veDibur website, which carries articles from the Haredi newspa- per Yated ne'eman and advocates the Lithuanian yeshiva worldview, the follow- ing appears: 'A related complaint that is sometimes made is that we leave out in- formation. This is true, but the reason is that in our Torah-based scales of values, the harm of embarrassment that can be caused to someone - perhaps a family member or bystander - rates much higher than the needs of historical record or journalistic objectivity.'

Conclusion....some hope?

As we have seen throughout this chapter, there are those who censor halakhic positions they find objectionable. While they sometimes do this by actually deleting material from books, the most common way is simply not to mention these opinions in halakhic discussions. However R. Shlomo Zalman Auerbach felt that this too was unacceptable, and he stated that articles on halakhic topics should not omit lenient opinions. Similarly, R. Hayim Kanievsky instructed the publisher of a new volume of writings by R. Yehiel Mikhel Epstein (1829-1908)

- 15 - to include everything, including his permission to turn on electric lights on festivals.

BUT....

http://www.haaretz.com/1.665838 (review of Changing the Immutable)

Covering up some minor deviation from theological dogma may not be of inter- est to more than a few academics, but the wholesale rewriting of history is a ba- sic social concern. And as Shapiro writes in his introduction, “The acts of cen- sorship… and telling a story which one knows to be false are simply different stops along the same continuum….” Here we have not just isolated examples of textual tampering or censorship, but also an entire ideology built on historical misrepresentations and half-truths. The consequences are already devastating.

Truth is important!

Exodus 23:7

;Keep thee far from a false matter 7 ז מִדְּבַר-שֶׁקֶר, תִּרְ חָק; וְנָקִי וְצַדִּיק אַל-תַּהֲרֹג, כִּי and the innocent and righteous slay לא-אַצְדִּיק רָ שָׁע. thou not; for I will not justify the wicked.

- 16 - Mishnah Avot 1:1

The world stands on three things: on justice, on truth, and on piece

Babylonian Talmud Tractate Shabbat 55a

The seal of the Holy One, blessed be He, is Truth

Babylonian Talmud Tractate Sanhedrin 92a

Whoever dissembles in his speech is as though he had engaged in idolatry

Babylonian Talmud Tractate Sanhedrin 92a

Four classes will not appear before the presence of the Shekhinah...The class of liars, as it is written, "He that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight" [Psalm 101:7]

Hastings Rashdall: Theory of Good and Evil

Sometimes truth must give way to Truth.

- 17 -