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Reply from Haym Soloveitchik to the JQR Interview with Robert Brody

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Reply from Haym Soloveitchik to the JQR Interview with Robert Brody Reply from Haym Soloveitchik to the JQR Interview with Robert Brody Reply from Haym Soloveitchik to the JQR Interview with Robert Brody By Haym Soloveitchik Editor’s Note: As a recap of a recent exchange between two scholars on a nuanced debate within medieval Jewish history (see the first footnote), we present this final note by Professor Haym Soloveitchik. Part One Dr. Robert Brody advances no new arguments against my thesis in his recent interview at the blog of the Jewish Quarterly Review (https://katz.sas.upenn.edu/blog/jewish-quarterly-review/jqr-c ontributor-conversation-robert-brody-origins-talmud-study). I have addressed all his points in my original essay and my reply in the Jewish Quarterly Review and online on my personal website.[1] The reader can judge for himself or herself whether my arguments are persuasive. Basically, the issue between us boils down to two points. Brody does not believe in historical implication. Two facts, to him, imply nothing. If so, all the scholar can ever have is a large pile of inert facts. For example, he denies the notion that Sura and Pumpeditha would never have surrendered their monopoly on the “Vox Talmudica,” for that “would have been institutional suicide.”[2] If that’s the case, all we can know of the past is what is explicitly stated in the sources of the past. Brody equally does not believe in probabilities (not even cumulative probabilities [3]). In the absence of probability (or improbability), all theories are equal. If one can believe that scores of scribes both educated and ignorant, with good or bad memories can inscribe a text of a million and a half words without any change in that text’s meaning,[4] then one can believe almost anything. If so, no inference is better than another. The result is that it isn’t worth pondering the implications of the data of the past; one should concentrate on simply knowing them. This is my last reply to Dr. Brody’s critiques. I believe the exchange has reached the point of diminishing returns. Part Two Dr. Brody has just published in the Bar-Ilan Internet Journal a critique of my remarks of Rashi’s emendations (haggahot) on the Talmud, online here (https://jewish-faculty.biu.ac.il/files/jewish-faculty/shared/ JSIJ16/brody.pdf). As this point is irrelevant to my argument, I forgo answering it now. Allow me to explain. The crucial point in my argument is that there existed ongoing contact between Bavel and the Rhineland in the ninth and tenth centuries. This would have enabled the leadershe- ( {h.}ashuvim) of the Rhineland to make inquiries of the state of talmud torah in Bavel, the economic situation of the yeshivot and the level of scholarship in the various institutions in Bavel. Conversely, it would have enabled the men of the Third Yeshivah to make inquiries of the nature of the Jewish settlement in the Rhineland, the seriousness of any offer and the financial abilities of the Rhineland leaders to support such a migration and the enterprise upon which it would embark. This ongoing contact would also have enabled manuscripts from Bavel to reach Ashkenaz in those centuries. Such a continuance of contact is proven by the trade and communication routes of the time. With goods brought regularly from the Near and Far East came manuscripts of sifrei kodesh. Jews in the Rhineland would pay handsomely for manuscripts, just as the Christian prelates and monasteries paid for reliquia. There is no reason not to conclude that manuscripts of the widest variety were available the Rhineland the great emporium of Western Europe in the closing centuries of the first millennium. Whether or not Rashi took a copy of some of these manuscripts back to Troyes is irrelevant to my contention. I introduced this issue simply because Noam’s article treated both the diffusion of such manuscripts in Early Ashkenaz and the nature of Rashi’shaggahot on the tractate of Sukkah. I believe Noam to be correct about Sukkah, but this is simply frosting on my cake. Rashi’s haggahot are at least a century after the migration of the Third Yeshivah, and their nature is of no matter to my argument. I have long pondered the nature of these emendations well before the idea of any Third Yeshivah occurred to me, and should I come to some conclusion, I will include it in the fourth volume of my collected essays. As of now, I have spent enough time replying to Dr. Brody and must return to my own research. Footnotes: [1] Haym Soloveitchik, Collected Essays, vol. 2 (Oxford: Littman Library, 2014), 150-201; Haym Soloveitchik, “On the Third Yeshivah of Bavel: A Response to Robert Brody,” Jewish Quarterly Review 109:2 (Spring 2019): 289-320; Haym Soloveitchik, “Reply to Brody–Part II,” at HaymSoloveitchik.org, available here (https://haymsoloveitchik.org/downloads/Reply%20to%20Brody%20I I.pdf). The only new point that he adds here is the documentation of his statement of the difference between significant and trivial variants. However, I never challenged this principal; I simply argued that there are also other principles in textual criticism, and the mark of a good editor is his or her ability to use the one most appropriate for the case at hand. See “Reply to Brody—Part II,” pp. 39-40. [2] Collected Essays, pp. 171-172; “Reply to Brody–Part II,” pp. 9, 20. [3] “Reply to Brody—Part II,” pp. 38-41. [4] Ibid. pp. 21-22. The Anonymous Author of Tikkunei Zohar and Ra‘ya Mehemna: An Antinomian or a Radical Maimonidean? The Anonymous Author of Tikkunei Zohar and Ra‘ya Mehemna: An Antinomian or a Radical Maimonidean? By Bezalel Naor Today, it is an accepted fact in scholarly circles that Tikkunei Zohar and Ra‘ya Mehemna form a single unit that postdates the main body of Zohar.[1] More than one reader has been scandalized by statements in Tikkunei Zohar and Ra‘ya Mehemna likening the Mishnah to a shifhah or maidservant.[2] Predictably, in response, there grew an apologetic literature that attempts to justify how such shocking statements are compatible with normative Halakhah.[3] One cannot rule out altogether the assertion by various secular historians that these pejorative statements betray an antinomian streak,[4] though to be certain, such statements of Tikkunei Zohar and Ra‘ya Mehemna are not situated in the present but deferred to the future. With this proviso, they are no more “antinomian” than the statement of Rav Yosef in the Talmud: “Mitsvot (commandments) are nullified in the future.”[5] I wish to present a hitherto unexplored possibility. It seems likely that the anonymous author of Tikkunei Zohar and Ra‘ya Mehemna (which surfaced in Spain in the first decades of the fourteenth century)[6] was not so much an antinomian as a radical Maimonidean. It is in this light that we should understand negative statements issuing from the author regarding the study of Mishnah or those comparing the various Talmudic exercises and mental gymnastics to the backbreaking labor to which the Children of Israel were subjected in Egyptian exile.[7] These do not spring from an anti-halakhic mindset but rather from taking at face value Maimonides’ syllabus as laid out in his introduction toMishneh Torah: Hence, I have entitled this work Mishneh Torah (Review of the Law), for the reason that a person, who first reads the Written Law and then this [compilation], will know from it the whole of the Oral Law, without having need to read any other book between them [italics mine—BN]. We should be asking ourselves: Are there any historical grounds to assert that in Spain in the early 1300s there were halakhic Jews who openly—we should add, brazenly—promulgated the Maimonidean curriculum to the exclusion of Talmudic studies and the concomitant exercise ofpilpul ? I offer the words of Joseph Ibn Kaspi: Therefore my rabbis, listen to me and God will listen to you! I see that it is the intention of those among you who engage in Gemara, novellae and opinions (shitot),[8] to know proofs for the practical commandments, for you are not satisfied with the tradition from Mishneh Torah composed by Rabbenu Moshe [i.e. Maimonides], though he said: “And one shall have no need of any other book between them [Italics mine—BN].” Here is an example. Ha-Rav ha-Moreh [i.e. Maimonides] wrote in his laws: “A sukkah that is higher than twenty ammah is invalid.”[9] Yet you despair and are without comfort until you know whether the reason is because “the eye does not rest upon it,” or because “one is not sitting in the shade of the sekhakh (overhead boughs) but of the walls,” or because “the sukkah must be a temporary dwelling,” as written in the Gemara.[10] Even this will not satisfy the very punctilious (mehadrin min ha-mehadrin) until they have added problems and opinions (shitot)[11]: “If you should say,” “one may say,” etc. Truly, I admit that this is good, but why is the knowledge of proofs an obligation in regard to practical commandments, while not [even] an option,[12] but an outright prohibition when it comes to commandments of the heart? What sin has been committed by these four commandments of the heart (that I mentioned) that you do not treat them in the same manner but are satisfied by a weak tradition of few words, wanting comprehension?[13] Who was Joseph Ibn Kaspi? Born either in Arles, Provence or Argentière, Languedoc,[14] around the year 1280, he passed in 1345 on the island of Majorca.
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