“My Children Have Defeated Me! My Children Have Defeated Me!”: Halakhah and Aggadah in Conservative/Masorti Decision-Making by Laura Ellen Pisoni Department of Religious Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Marc Brettler, Supervisor ___________________________ Laura Lieber ___________________________ Joseph Winters Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Graduate Program in Religion in the Graduate School of Duke University 2017 i v ABSTRACT “My Children Have Defeated Me! My Children Have Defeated Me!”: Halakhah and Aggadah in Conservative/Masorti Decision-Making by Laura Ellen Pisoni Department of Religious Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Marc Brettler, Supervisor ___________________________ Laura Lieber ___________________________ Joseph Winters An abstract of a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Graduate Program in Religion in the Graduate School of Duke University 2017 Copyright by Laura Ellen Pisoni 2017 Abstract Despite the vast research on Jewish law (halakhah), fairly little has been done to analyze the contemporary responsa literature, particularly in the United States and particularly within the Conservative Jewish movement. These responsa can be defined in two ways: by their methodology and by their outcome. In this paper, I begin by reviewing the origins and development of the halakhah and the power of rabbis within this halakhic system. I then describe the Conservative movement and particularly its halakhic outlook—that is, how the Conservative movement has defined its own relationship to Jewish law and how Conservative responsa utilize that body of law. Finally, by examining contemporary Conservative responsa, I introduce a novel approach to analyzing contemporary halakhah. This approach separates methodology, categorizing it as “systematic” or “aggadic,” from halakhic outcomes, which I categorize as “traditional” or “progressive” depending on the extent to which they advocate halakhic change. I conclude that nearly all responsa use a blend of systematic and aggadic methodologies and that the methodology deployed has little to no bearing on the progressiveness of the halakhic outcome. iv Dedication As always, for my wife. v Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ............................................................................................................................. vii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. viii 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 2. The Halakhah: Its Origins and Development ....................................................................... 3 3. Conservative Judaism and Conservative Legal Decision-Making .................................. 56 4. Halakhic Methodology and Halakhic Outcomes Distinguished ..................................... 83 4. Conclusions ............................................................................................................................ 125 References .................................................................................................................................. 131 vi List of Figures Figure 1. Halakhic Methodology versus Result...................................................................... 89 Figure 2. Halakhic Methodology versus Result, Theoretically Acceptable Outcomes ..... 90 Figure 3. Halakhic Methodology versus Result, Imagined as Quadrants .......................... 95 vii Acknowledgements With special thanks to the Duke University Center for Jewish Studies and its generous grant, which greatly facilitated my research. viii 1. Introduction Surely, this [law] which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?” No, the thing is very close to you . (Deuteronomy 30:11-14)1 If Jewish law is not in heaven, then where is it? Fifteen hundred years ago, it was in the study-halls and classrooms of great Jewish Sages who tried to answer the most complicated questions of their day. A thousand years ago, it was in massive codes penned by giants in the study of Jewish law, who struggled to make Jewish law accessible in a vastly different world. And today, it is in the offices of rabbis and the meeting-rooms of committees who work to offer practical solutions to thoroughly modern questions. In the first chapter of this paper, I will consider the nature of Jewish law and offer a brief history of its development and the power of decision-makers within it. In the second, I will attempt to place within this history the modern Conservative movement by describing the particular way Conservative legal decisions are made. And in the third chapter, I will question traditional understandings of Jewish legal 1 Throughout, unless otherwise specified, translations of the Torah come from Tanakh: The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985). 1 methodology by trying to disentangle Jewish legal methodology used by Conservative decision-makers from the decisions they reach. 2 2. The Halakhah: Its Origins and Development This entire Jewish legal system is called halakhah. Ephraim Urbach writes that “[n]othing has made its influence more profoundly felt on the course of the history of the Jewish people, shaping its way of life and giving it form and substance, than the Halakhah.”1 For him, the halakhah, “reflects the life and character of the people” who follow it. Profoundly, then, Urbach believes that, in many ways, the Jewish people are defined by their law, that the Jewish people and the halakhah are almost synonymous. The problem is that it is very difficult to define exactly what halakhah is. The word does not appear in the Torah and is not used in sources predating the Mishnah, which was codified around the year 200 CE. The Hebrew root of the word means “to go” or “to walk,” and the word “halakhah” may have derived from an Akkadian word for divine revelation.2 Halakhah is, then, an evocative term. It could mean the path that one walks; the way that one conducts oneself along the way through life; or the rules of behavior revealed by the Divine. I may move, but the law stays constant, a sure path to follow, as appropriate in 2017 as it was in 600 CE. But the word “halakhah”—like the halakhah itself, as we shall see—is multi- voiced. Perhaps halakhah means that the law itself is going, that the law itself should move and change. Like a river with its source in the words of those ancient Sages, 1 Efraim Urbach, The Halakhah: Its Sources and Development (Tel Aviv: Modan, 1986), 1. 2 I. Tzvi Abusch, “Alaktu and Halakhah: Oracular Decision, Divine Revelation,” Harvard Theological Review 80, no. 1 (January 1987): 38. 3 maybe the halakhah meanders, meeting new challenges and diverting this way or that. Urbach writes that the word “halakhah” denotes the way in which a person observes the commandments of the Torah and therefore walks in its path. “Walking is parallel to observing,” he writes. “Just as one walks along known roads but the act of walking also lays new paths, so too, although one observes the commandments in established ways, the act of observance itself creates new forms.”3 Should halakhah be an unchanging rule in an ever-changing world or a flexible standard that takes the modern world as it is? Can it be both at the same time? Even the word itself seems unsure of how the system is supposed to work. Judaism’s sacred text is also the early written expression of the halakhah. The Five Books of Moses—also called the Pentateuch and, in Hebrew, the Torah—form the first section of the Hebrew Bible, which also includes the books of the Prophets, Nevi’im, and the collection of Writings, K’tuvim. Together, the three sections are often referred to by their acronym, Tanakh. This Torah, this written expression of both the story and law of the Jewish people, probably took its final form before the turn of the millennium and perhaps as early as the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BCE.4 3 Urbach, The Halakhah, 2. 4 Ronald Eisenberg, The JPS Guide to Jewish Traditions (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2004), 488. 4 There is a second Torah. The first Torah—the one found in the Hebrew Bible—is called the written Torah, and the second is called torah she-be-al-peh, the oral Torah. The oral Torah includes all non-biblical Jewish law, including legislation and laws derived through rabbinic interpretive processes. While the oral Torah was originally unwritten, it has been committed to writing since around 200 CE; thus, the name “oral” Torah is something of an archaism referring to a belief that God gave two Torahs to Moses on Mount Sinai, one in writing and one only orally.5 While the written Torah went through a process of canonization that