Limmud Conference 2015 Barry Kleinberg Jewish Censorship Of
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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 Rabbi Ephraim Greenblatt. Between the Yeshiva 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 Yaakov Weinberg, 2 vols (Scranton, 1999, 2004) Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism 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 Talmud 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! - Midrash 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 halakha 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 Gemara 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.