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. His was a peripatetic life. The first period of his life was spent in the south of France. Later he gravitated to Barcelona, where his married son David resided. At approximately age thirty-five he travelled to Egypt for several months,[15] hoping to acquire there the intellectual legacy of Maimonides from the Master’s fourth and fifth generation descendants but was sorely disappointed in this respect. He even entertained the thought of traveling to Fez, Morocco in search of wisdom,[16] but that particular journey never materialized.

Ibn Kaspi’s reputation is that of an ultra-rationalist. His naturalistic explanations of events in the Bible far exceed even those of Maimonides; for that reason his opinions were marginalized. Though there is an abundance of manuscripts, it was only in the nineteenth century that Ibn Kaspi’s works were published from manuscript. (A few still remain in manuscript.) To this day, his interpretations have yet to “mainstream.”

My juxtaposing the Maimonidean enthusiast Joseph ibn Kaspi to the anonymous author of the kabbalistic works known as Ra‘ya Mehemna and Tikkunei Zohar may strike the reader of this essai as bizarre. Besides their contemporaneity, what basis is there for this juxtaposition?

Geographically, there are certainly grounds for relating the two authors to one another. Though separated by the Pyrenees, there was much traffic, intellectual and otherwise between Provence and Northern Spain. Some of the greatest families of Provencal scholars originated in Spain: the Kimhis, Joseph and his son David, who excelled as grammarians and Bible exegetes; and the Tibbonides, Judah and his son Samuel, who were the premier translators of classic philosophic works from Judeo- Arabic to Hebrew. And the traffic was two-way. Prominent Provencal families wended their way to Sefarad. The halakhist Rabbi Zerahyah Halevi (“Ba‘al ha-Ma’or”), a native of Gerona, established his career in Narbonne, only to return to Gerona at the end of his days. (His great-grandson was the Talmudist Rabbi Aharon Halevi of Barcelona.)[17] Ibn Kaspi is an example of a Provencal scholar who relocated to Catalonia: Barcelona, and eventually, the Balearic isle of Majorca. Thus, there could easily have been a sharing of ideas between southern France and northern Spain.[18]

In terms of mindset, the border between rationalist philosophy and kabbalah was especially porous at this time. Whoever authored Ra‘ya Mehemna and Tikkunei Zohar, carried with him much Maimonidean baggage. Linguistically, it is apparent to any student of the Ra‘ya Mehemna and Tikkunim that they are rife with the philosophic jargon made popular by the Tibbonides’ translations from Judeo-Arabic.[19] And let us not forget that the very backbone ofRa‘ya Mehemna is an enumeration of the commandments à la Maimonides’Sefer ha- Mitsvot. (Rabbi Reuven Margaliyot isolated these commandments and presented them in orderly fashion in the introduction to his edition of the Zohar.)

*

When we put it all together it makes perfect sense. As shocking as some of its bold statements may be, the literary oeuvre of Ra‘ya Mehemna and Tikkunei Zohar cannot be construed as issuing from the mind of an antinomian. An antinomian would not go to the bother of constructing a Book of Commandments after a fashion. Rather, I maintain that the downgrading of the study of Talmud in general, and Mishnah in particular, should be attributed to a radical adoption of Maimonides’ curriculum of studies, whereby his halakhic magnum opus Mishneh Torah has superseded the study of Mishnah and Gemara.

In this respect, Maimonides’ devotees in Provence and Spain ventured beyond the Master himself. Maimonides penned a convincing letter to Rabbi Pinhas, the Dayyan (Justice) of Alexandria,[20] that regardless of what he wrote in the introduction to Mishneh Torah, the traditional study of the Talmudic tractates (albeit as summarized in Alfasi’s Halakhot) continues unabated in his beit midrash.[21] The curriculum that Maimonides once proposed remained an abstraction. It seems that Egyptian Jewry was not overly receptive to this innovation. Only well over a century later, did this great intellectual experiment of Maimonides,Mishneh Torah, a “hivemind of halakhah,”[22] designed to replace the “dialectics of Abayye and Rava,” find foot soldiers in the likes of Ibn Kaspi and the anonymous author of Ra‘ya Mehemna and Tikkunei Zohar. They launched their campaign from the soil of Provence and Spain.

Our thesis does not ride on the reputation of Joseph ibn Kaspi. Ibn Kaspi’s statement is perhaps the most outspoken and provocative call for adoption of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah as a way of bypassing Talmudic studies, yet there are other testimonies (from the least expected quarter) that the exclusive study of Mishneh Torah was starting to gain traction in medieval Spain.

The great halakhist Rabbi Asher ben Yehiel (Rosh) emigrated from Germany to Spain at the turn of the fourteenth century and eventually emerged as the Rabbi of Toledo, Castile, where he left his stamp on the shape of CastilianHalakhah .[23] Evidently, Rabbi Asher had cause to fulminate against authorities who decided questions of practical Halakhah based solely on the rulings of Mishneh Torah without recourse to Talmud.

Rabbi Asher writes:

I heard from a great man in Barcelona who was eminently familiar with three orders [of the Talmud, i.e. Mo‘ed, Nashim and Nezikin]. He said: “I am amazed at people who have not studied Gemara and adjudicate based on their reading in the books of Maimonides, of blessed memory, believing that they understand them. I know myself, when it comes to the three orders that I studied, I am able to understand when I read Maimonides’ books. However, his books that are based on Kodashim and Zera‘im—I do not understand at all. And I know that it is that way for them regarding all his books![24]

*

Rabbi Yahya Kafah (1850-1931) was not wide of the mark when he asserted that those statements in Zoharic literature that undercut the Talmud (comprised of Mishnah and Gemara) were designed to enhance the prestige of the Kabbalah. (By the same token, one may safely say that Ibn Kaspi’s desire to streamline the study ofHalakhah , stemmed from his valorization of Philosophy.)

Logically, our next question should be: What was Maimonides’ own stake in proposing that his compendium Mishneh Torah take the place of protracted Talmudic studies? Maimonides provides a simple answer to this question in his introduction to Mishneh Torah:

At this time, severe vicissitudes prevail, and all feel the pressure of hard times. The wisdom of our wise men has disappeared; the understanding of our prudent men is hidden. Hence, the commentaries of the Geonim and their compilations of laws and responses, which they took care to make clear, have in our times become hard to understand so that only a few individuals properly comprehend them. Needless to add that such is the case in regard to the Talmud itself—the Babylonian as well as the Palestinian—the Sifra, the Sifre and the Tosefta, all of which works require a broad mind, a wise soul and lengthy time, and then one can know from them the correct practice as to what is forbidden or permitted, and the other rules of the Torah.

On these grounds, I, Moses the son of Rabbi Maimon the Sefardi, bestirred myself…[25]

While perhaps not the ideal curriculum, the exigencies of the time demanded the production of a bold new work on the order of Mishneh Torah that would preserve the practice of Halakhah for the masses ill-equipped to make their way through the labyrinthine discussions of the Talmud or even the decisions of the Gaonica (originally intended to clarify the canons of Jewish Law).

But was there perhaps another purpose of Mishneh Torah that Maimonides kept to himself and was not willing to divulge in writing? In Hilkhot Talmud Torah (Laws of the Study of Torah), Maimonides would proceed to sketch the traditional trivium of Mikra (Bible), Mishnah and Talmud, [26]such that Pardes (the esoteric teachings of Judaism) comes under the rubric of “Talmud”[27]; and that furthermore, the mature scholar who has covered the requisite literature and is thus no longer bound by the daily trivium, “will devote all his days exclusively to Talmud, according to the breadth of his mind and the composure of his intellect.”[28] Was the condensing of Talmud into Mishneh Torah Maimonides’ master plan to free time for the study of Pardes or esoterica? Should that prove true, then Ibn Kaspi’s interest,[29] and mutatis mutandis that of the Tikkunei Zohar and Ra‘ya Mehemna, was not so very different from that of HaRav HaMoreh.[30]

[1] This fact was recognized two and a half centuries ago by the discerning eye of Rabbi Jacob Emden. See Emden’s Mitpahat Sefarim, Altona 1768, Part 1, chap. 3 (6b); chaps. 6-7 (16b-17b); Lvov 1870, pp. 12, 37-39.

Whereas Zohar itself has come to be associated with the name of Rabbi Moses de Leon, no single name surfaces in regard to Tikkunei Zohar and Ra‘ya Mehemna (though there are some who would attribute the latter to a yet unidentified disciple of De Leon).

It should be mentioned in passing that even in regard to the authorship of the Zohar there has been a sea change in scholarly thinking. Unlike Scholem, who was convinced that the single author of the Zohar was Rabbi Moses de Leon, current thinking (spearheaded by Yehuda Liebes) rejects this notion of single authorship and assumes the Zohar to be a collaborative or composite work on the part of a mystic fraternity or haburah.

[2] See Zohar I, 27b. This is actually a segment of Tikkunei Zohar that the Italian printers in 1558 mistakenly embedded in Zohar. See Editor Daniel Matt’s note to the Pritzker edition of the Zohar, vol. 1 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2004), p. 170, note 499. See also the Introduction to Tikkunei Zohar (Vilna, 1867), 15b and gloss of the Vilna Gaon, s.v. shalta shifhah.

And see the Tikkunim appended to Tikkunei Zohar (Margaliyot ed.), tikkun 9 (147a).

By the same token, there are passages where the Mishnah is related to Metatron, the “‘eved” (male servant). See e.g. Ra‘ya Mehemna in Zohar III, 29b; and The Hebrew Writings of the Author of Tiqqunei Zohar and Ra‘aya Mehemna (Hebrew), ed. Efraim Gottlieb (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2003), p. 1, line 3.

Moshe Idel has demonstrated that this motif whereby the Mishnah is juxtaposed to Metatron is to be found in the obscure work of Rabbi Abraham Esquira,Yesod ‘Olam (Ms. Moscow, Günzburg 607, 80a-b). See Idel’s introduction to The Hebrew Writings of the Author of Tiqqunei Zohar and Ra‘aya Mehemna, pp. 23-24, 27-28. Inter alia, Esquira’s text makes mention of “six hundred orders ofMishnah.” This is a reference to b. Hagigah 14a. See Rashi there s.v. shesh me’ot sidrei Mishnah. Thus, p. 23, n. 76 of Idel’s introduction is in need of correction. By the same token, Esquira’s “seven hundred orders of confusion” (“shesh me’ot sidrei bilbulim”) is a parody of the “seven hundred orders of Mishnah” in b. Hagigah 14a. See Idel, ibid. p. 28, n. 105.

Concerning the juxtaposition of the six-lettered Metatron, the servant, to the six days of the work week, see the Vilna Gaon’s gloss to Tikkunei Zohar (Vilna, 1867), tikkun 18 (33b), s.v. be-gin de-Metatron. There is precedent in a Teshuvat ha- Ge’onim (Gaonic responsum) for restricting the activity of the angelic realm to the six days of the week and reserving the seventh Sabbath day for Israel’s sphere of influence. See Tosafot, Sanhedrin 37b, s.v. mi-kenaf ha-’arets zemirot shama‘nu; and Rabbi Reuven Margaliyot, Margaliyot ha-Yam ad locum, and idem, Nitsutsei Zohar to Ra‘ya Mehemna in Zohar III, 93a, note 2.

Later, in sixteenth-century Safed, Rabbi Isaac Luria advised reserving the Sabbath day for the exclusive study of Kabbalah (“as was the custom of the early ones”), while relegating the study of Halakhah to the six work days. This is hinted to in the two verses “Hishtahavu la-Hashem be-hadrat kodesh” (whose initials form the word “Kabbalah”) and “Hari‘u la-Hashem kol ha-’arets (initials “Halakhah”). See Rabbi Hayyim Vital, Peri ‘Ets Hayyim (Dubrovna, 1804), Sha‘ar ha-Shabbat , chap. 21 (103c); Rabbi Jacob Zemah, Nagid u-Metsaveh (Lublin, 1881), 25b. And see Peri ‘Ets Hayyim, Sha‘ar Hanhagat ha-Limmud, s.v. kavvanat keri’at ha-Mishnah (85a): “Know that the Mishnah is Metatron in Yetsirah…”

In the Ra‘ya Mehemna in Zohar III, 279b, the Mishnah is referred to as the “shifhah…the female of the ‘eved, na‘ar (“lad”). “Na‘ar” or “lad” is yet another epithet for Metatron; see b. Yevamot 16b (based on Psalms 37:25) and Tosafot ad loc. s.v. pasuk zeh sar ha-‘olam amaro. Just as Metatron is referred to as “‘eved,” “for his name is like that of his Master” (b. Sanhedrin 38b). Both Metatron and Shadai have the numerical value of 318. (In Ra‘ya Mehemna in Zohar III, 82b it is spelled out that “Metatron is a good servant, a faithful servant to his Master.”)

In Ra‘ya Mehemna, in Zohar III, 276a, three of the most difficult tractates of the Mishnah are singled out for derision, ‘Eruvin, Niddah and Yevamot, as they are assigned the acronym ‘Ani (poor man). The Vilna Gaon points out that the derogation of the rabbis, students of the Mishnah, is not absolute, but only relative to the“ba‘alei kabbalah” (“masters of the Kabbalah”). See Yahel ’Or, ed. Naftali Hertz Halevi (Vilna, 1882), Tetse, 276a, s.v. ve-i teima.

Earlier in that passage (Zohar 275b) we have the underhanded compliment, “Hakham Mufle Ve-Rav Rabbanan” (“Outstanding Sage and Rabbi of Rabbis”), whose initials spell the word “hamor” (jackass). (This cynical remark found its way into the modern mystery novel by Richard Zimler, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon [Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1998], p. 44.)

One who found absolutely outrageous the labeling of the Mishnah as a “shifhah” was the Chief Rabbi of Sana‘a, Yemen, Rabbi Yahya ben Shelomo (Sliman) Kafah (1850-1931). See his ‘Amal u-Re‘ut Ru’ah va-Haramot u-Teshuvatam (Tel-Aviv, 1914; limited facsimile edition Jerusalem 1976), p. 12. Available at hebrewbooks.org.

‘Amal u-Re‘ut Ru’ah va-Haramot u-Teshuvatam is Rabbi Kafah’s rejoinder to the bans placed upon him by the various batei din (courts) of Jerusalem—Ashkenazic, Hasidic and Sefardic. It struck Rabbi Kafah as highly ironic that he, a staunch defender of Talmudic Judaism, was placed under the ban, while the Zohar, with its numerous derisions of Talmud and its students, was upheld and, what is more, sanctified. Ibid. p. 14.

The constraints of space do not allow us to explore the controversy regarding the Zohar that erupted in Yemen in the early part of the twentieth century between Rabbi Kafah and his disciples, the self-styled Darda‘im, on the one hand, and their opponents, to whom they referred as ‘Ikeshim. (The first label is based on the Midrashic pun on Darda‘ [1Kings 5:11] as Dor De‘ah, “a generation of knowledge”; the second comes from Deuteronomy 32:5, “dor ‘ikesh u-petaltol,” “a perverse and twisted generation.”) At the instigation of his critics, Rabbi Kafah was jailed on more than one occasion by the Muslim authorities. (Rabbi Kafah alludes to this in‘Amal u-Re‘ut Ru’ah va-Haramot u-Teshuvatam, p. 14.)

The man who acted as a peacemaker between the warring factions was none other than Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook. While upholding Rabbi Kafah’s status as an unusual Torah scholar, Rabbi Kook conveyed to him that he had erred in taking literally passages that were intended to be understood metaphorically. See Igrot ha-Rayah, vol. 2, ed. RZYH Kook (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook 1961), no. 626 (pp. 247-248); Haskamot ha-Rayah, ed. Y.M. Yismah and B.Z Kahana (Jerusalem, 1988), no. 41 (pp. 46-47); Ma’amrei ha-Rayah, vol. 2, ed. Elisha Aviner (Langenauer) (Jerusalem, 1984), pp. 518-521. An incomplete variant of the letter inHaskamot ha-Rayah was published by Rabbi Moshe Zuriel, Otserot ha-Rayah, vol. 1 (Rishon LeZion, 2002), no. 76 (p. 447). See further Rabbi Zevi Yehudah Hakohen Kook, Li-Sheloshah be-Ellul I (Jerusalem, 1938; photo offset Jerusalem, 1978), par. 107 (p. 46).

For Rav Kook’s involvement with the Yemenite community and facilitating their ‘aliyah at the beginning of the twentieth century, see ibid. par. 42 (p. 21); and recently Ben Zion Rosenfeld, “Yahaso shel ha-Rayah Kook le-Hakhmei ha-Mizrah bi- Tekufat Yaffo 5664-5674 (1904-1914)” [“HaRav Avraham Isaac HaCohen Kook and his Attitude Regarding the Sephardi Sages During His Stay in Jaffa 5664–567 4(1904–1914)”],Libi ba- Mizrah (My Heart Is in the East) 1 (2019), pp. 287-290.

[3] See Rabbi Hayyim Vital, introduction to Sha‘ar ha-Hakdamot (printed as an introduction to the standard editions of ‘Ets Hayyim); Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Iggeret ha-Kodesh (4th section of Tanya), chap. 26 (especially 143a). And see Rabbi Dov Baer Shneuri, Bi’urei ha-Zohar (Brooklyn, NY: Kehot, 2015), Bereshit (to Zohar I, 27b), 5a-8d.

[4] Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews, cited in Gershom G. Scholem, “The Meaning of the Torah in Jewish Mysticism,” in idem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New York: Schocken Books, 1970), p. 70, n. 1.

[5] b. Niddah 61b.

Contra Graetz, Scholem, referring to “the ambiguity of certain statements about the hierarchical order of the Bible, the Mishnah, the Talmud, and the Kabbalah, which are frequent in the Ra‘ya Mehemna and the Tikkunim, and which have baffled not a few readers of these texts,” states categorically: “It would be a mistake to term these passages antinomistic or anti- Talmudic” (op. cit. p. 70). Rather, to describe the peculiar posture of the Ra‘ya Mehemna and the Tikkunim, Scholem coins the term “utopian antinomianism” or “antinomian utopia” (op. cit., pp. 80, 82).

Other secular scholars who objected to Graetz’s judgment concerning the controversial passages in the Zohar (or to be more precise, Tikkunei Zohar) were Bernfeld and Zinberg. See Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, 7, Beilage 12; Shim‘on Bernfeld, Da‘at Elohim, Part 1 (Warsaw, 1897), pp. 396-397, note 1; Israel Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature, vol. 3, transl. Bernard Martin (Cleveland: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1973), pp. 55-56.

[6] Scholem and Idel would date Tikkunei Zohar and Ra‘ya Mehemna as early as the end of the thirteenth century (bringing the work in contact with Rabbi Moses de Leon). See Idel’s introduction to The Hebrew Writings of the Author of Tiqqunei Zohar and Ra‘aya Mehemna, pp. 10, 25-26, 29. Tishby established the years 1312-1313 as the terminus ad quem for the composition of Tikkunei Zohar based on its Messianic expectations for those years. Cited in Idel, ibid. p. 10, n. 7. See also p. 23. Idel, relying on Liebes, would make the terminus ad quem a year earlier, 1311. (Ibid.)

[7] See Zohar I, 27a:

They embittered their lives with hard labor‘avodah ( kashah)—with kushya (difficulty); with mortar (homer)—with kal ve-homer (a fortiori); and with bricks (levenim)—with libun hilkheta (clarification of the law); and with all [manner of] labor in the field—this is Beraita; all their labor—this is Mishnah.

Though mistakenly embedded by the Italian printers back in 1558 in the text of the Zohar, this is actually a segment from the later work Tikkunei Zohar. See above note 2.

This same anachronistic interpretation of the verse in Exodus 1:14 is found (with slight variations) in the Ra‘ya Mehemna, again embedded in Zohar III, 153a, 229b (though in this case explicitly identified as Ra‘ya Mehemna). See also Tikkunei Zohar, tikkun 21 (Margaliyot ed. 44a); the additional Tikkunim appended to Tikkunei Zohar, tikkun 9 (147a); and the Tikkunim appended to Zohar Hadash (Margaliyot ed.), 97d (where the end of the verse is interpreted, “be-pharekh—da pirkha”), 98b, 99b.

And see now, The Hebrew Writings of the Author of Tiqqunei Zohar and Ra‘aya Mehemna (Hebrew), ed. Efraim Gottlieb and Moshe Idel (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2003), pp. 39-40.

This degradation of Talmudic hermeneutic was duly noted by Rabbi Kafah (see above note 2). Kafah believed that the not so hidden agenda of the anonymous writer was to promote the study of Kabbalah at the expense of the study of Talmud. See ‘Amal u-Re‘ut Ru’ah va-Haramot u-Teshuvatam, p. 12: “The entire purpose of the author of the Zohar is to cause the Mishnah and the Talmud to be forgotten from Israel, to stop up the mouth of the well of living waters from which flow the ways of the Oral Law, and have them occupy themselves with his new Torah.”

[8] The primary meaning of the Hebrew word shitah is a line; hence, a line of thought. For its derivative usage in medieval rabbinical literature, see Mordechai Breuer, ’Ohalei Torah (Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 2004), pp. 109, 510; Ya‘akov Spiegel, ‘Ammudim be-Toledot ha-Sefer ha-‘Ivri, vol. 2 (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan, 2005), p. 442; and lately, Hayyim Eliezer Ashkenazi, “Heker ve-‘Iyun be-Sifrei Rishonim (4),” Yeshurun, vol. 40 (Nisan 5779), p. 930, n. 7.

In the London Beth Din Ms. 40 (designated in the microfilm collection of the National Library of Israel, F4708), f.30, this word reads “mishnayot,” rather than shitot, but the reading is unlikely, to say the least. Cf. below n. 11.

[9] Maimonides, MT, Hil. Sukkah 4:1.

[10] The three opinions are found in b. Sukkah 2a. [11] In the London Beth Din ms. for “shitot” there occurs the grotesquerie “shtuyot” (foolishness).

[12] The London Beth Din ms. has the superior reading “eino reshut o makom patur.”

[13] Joseph ben Abba Mari ibn Kaspi, Sefer ha-Mussar/Yoreh De‘ah, chap. 15.

Ibn Kaspi’s Sefer ha-Mussar was published in a couple of collections: Eliezer Ashkenazi of Tunis’Ta‘am Zekenim (Frankfurt am Main, 1854); and Isaac Last’s ‘Asarah Klei Kesef (Pressburg, 1903). Our particular chapter (15) appeared earlier in the introduction to Ibn Kaspi’s ‘Ammudei Kesef u- Maskiyot Kesef, ed. Salomo Werbluner (Frankfurt am Main, 1848), p. xv. In Ta‘am Zekenim our quote appears on 53a; in ‘Asarah Klei Kesef on p. 70.

Sefer ha-Mussar was written for Ibn Kaspi’s twelve year old son Shelomo residing in Tarascon (Provence). According to the colophon, it was completed in 1332 in Valencia (Catalonia).

[14] Moshe Kahan is of the opinion that Joseph himself was born in Arles, and that it was his ancestors who hailed from Argentière (hence the Hebrew surname Kaspi). See M. Kahan, “Joseph ibn Kaspi—From Arles to Majorca,” Iberia Judaica VIII (2016), pp. 181-192.

[15] Kahan dates the journey between the years 1313-1315, and writes that Ibn Kaspi stayed in Egypt for about five months. Op. cit. p. 182.

In Mishneh Kesef I, ed. Isaac Last (Pressburg, 1905; photo offset Jerusalem, 1970), chap. 14 (pp. 18-19), Ibn Kaspi writes that about two years ago, at approximately age thirty- five, he went down to Egypt. The colophon of the book (p. 168) is datelined Arles, 1317, which would mean that the Egyptian expedition took place about the year 1315. In Sefer ha-Mussar, which according to the colophon was completed in Valencia in 1332, we receive a slightly different picture. In the introduction, Ibn Kaspi writes that twenty years previous he wandered to Egypt; the total trip, from beginning to end, lasted five months. If we take him at his word, the trip to Egypt was in 1312. What is clear is that the actual sojourn in Egypt was less than five months.

[16] Introduction to Sefer ha-Mussar. In chap. 15, Ibn Kaspi spells out his fascination with Fez: “The Jews find repulsive and abandon today the Guide…the Christians respect and exalt it, and have translated it [to Latin]. All the more so the Ishmaelites; in Fez [italics mine—BN] and other lands, they established study-houses to learn the Guide from the mouth of Jewish scribes.”

[17] See Israel Ta-Shma, Rabbi Zerahyah Halevi (Ba‘al ha- Ma’or) u-B’nei Hugo (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1992), pp. 2, 16; Hayyim Eliezer Ashkenazi, “Heker ve-‘Iyun be-Sifrei Rishonim (4),” p. 933, n. 17.

[18] Though scholars assume a Castilian—rather than a Catalonian—provenance for Tikkunei Zohar and Ra‘ya Mehemna, I do not see that as a major obstacle. Surely, the main flow of traffic was between Provence in the south of France and Catalonia in the north of Spain, but for Jews, Sefarad was an overarching unity, no matter the local potentates into which it was fragmented. Thus, in 1305, the Rabbi of Barcelona, Catalonia, Rabbi Solomon ben Abraham ibn Adret (Rashba) was able to place a newly arrived German émigré, Rabbi Asher ben Yehiel (Rosh) in the rabbinate of Toledo, Castile. (See Avraham Hayyim Freimann, Ha-Rosh ve-Tse’etsa’av, trans. Menahem Eldar [Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1986], pp. 28-29.)

Sometimes, within a single family one finds both strands of Kabbalah, Castilian and Catalonian. Isaac ibn Sahula, native of Guadalajara, Castile, author of the bestiaryMeshal ha- Kadmoni (1281), as well as a kabbalistic commentary to Song of Songs, was a disciple of Rabbi Moses of Burgos, as well as an assumed associate of Rabbi Moses de Leon. (The first reference to the Midrash ha-Ne‘elam, an early stratum of the Zoharic literature, is found in Ibn Sahula’s Meshal ha-Kadmoni.) His brother, Meir ibn Sahula, on the other hand, prided himself on his Catalonian and Provencal pedigree, being a disciple of “Rabbi Joshua ibn Shu‘aib and of Rabbi Solomon ben Abraham ibn Adret (Rashba), who received from Nahmanides, who in turn received from Rabbi Isaac the Blind, son of Rabad of Posquières, who in turn received from Elijah the Prophet.” So writes Meir ibn Sahula at the conclusion to his commentary on the Bahir, “’Or ha-Ganuz.”

(Yehuda Liebes speculated that the especially acerb remarks that precede this peroration are directed against recent developments in Castilian Kabbalah, namely the Zohar. See Y. Liebes, Studies in the Zohar [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993], pp. 168-169, n. 50. However, in all fairness, the description of those “who expound books and books of the nations, and transcribe therein their gods, and call them ‘Secrets of the Torah’ [Sitrei Torah],” sounds more like an attack on Maimonides and his followers who construe Aristotelian philosophy as Sitrei Torah, than an assault upon the Zohar. At the end of his lengthy footnote, Liebes conceded this distinct possibility.)

Thus, the division of Spanish Kabbalah into discrete units of Castilian versus Catalonian traditions need not prejudice us against the possibility of penetrations and influences that defy this dyadic model. One needs to complexify the general picture of Spanish Kabbalah in order to appreciate the multiplicity of forces at work. Binaries are helpful as historic guidelines but they can never do justice to the complexity of lived reality.

[19] Tishby collected some of these Tibbonide neologisms, starting with “nefesh ha-sikhlit” or “intellectual soul” (Ra‘ya Mehemna in Zohar III, 29b). See Isaiah Tishby, Mishnat ha-Zohar, vol. 1, 2nd printing with corrections (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1949), pp. 77-78.

One can well appreciate how the Chief Rabbi of Sana‘a, Yemen, Yahya ben Shelomo Kafah, a most outspoken opponent of the Zohar, typified its author as “the philosopher, author of the Zohar” (“ha-philosoph mehabber ha-Zohar”). See his ‘Amal u- Re‘ut Ru’ah va-Haramot u-Teshuvatam, pp. 12-16.

Besides the obvious use of Maimonidean terminology, there is the subtle copying of categories. An example would be the way in which the author of Tikkunei Zohar patterned his “hamesh minim” (“five species” or “five sects”) of the‘Erev Rav (Mixed Multitude) after Maimonides’ “hamishah minim” (“five sectarians”). The passage from Tikkunei Zohar was incorporated by the printers in Zohar I, 25a. (The note in Derekh Emet alerts the reader that the material correlates toTikkunei Zohar, tikkun 50. In the new Pritzker edition of the Zohar, the passage from Tikkunei Zohar has been removed.) Maimonides’ “hamishah minim” are found in MT, Hil. Teshuvah 3:7. This is just a random sample of the pervasive influence of Maimonides on the author of Tikkunei Zohar and Ra‘ya Mehemna.

Cf. the direct quote from Maimonides, Hil. Teshuvah 3:6 in Isaac ibn Sahula’s Meshal ha-Kadmoni (Venice, 1546), Sha‘ar ha-Rishon (10a), s.v. va-yo’el ha-tsevi le-va’er. And see now Sarah Offenberg, “On Heresy and Polemics in Two Proverbs in Meshal Haqadmoni” (Hebrew), Jewish Thought 1 (2019), pp. 64-65. Recently, Hartley Lachter has attempted to demonstrate that the general tenor of Meshal ha-Kadmoni is esoteric; see H. Lachter, “Spreading Secrets: Kabbalah and Esotericism in Isaac ibn Sahula’s Meshal ha-Kadmoni,” Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 100, No. 1 (Winter 2010), pp. 111-138.

[20] It should be noted, for whatever it is worth, that Pinhas ben Meshullam was a Provencal rabbi who took up the post of Dayyan of Alexandria, Egypt. It would be pure conjecture on my part to posit that his critique of Maimonides reflected the way in which Mishneh Torah had been received in Provence. It is equally possible that Pinhas’ critique was not based on actual observation of the Provencal reception ofMishneh Torah.

[21] See Igrot ha-Rambam, ed. Yitzhak Shilat, vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 438-439; quoted in Bezalel Naor, The Limit of Intellectual Freedom: The Letters of Rav Kook (Spring Valley, NY: Orot, 2011), pp. 297-298.

[22] The term “hivemind” referred originally to the coordinated behavior of a colony of insects (bees or ants) which to an outside observer, appears the workings of a single mind. In the age of the Internet, it refers to the collectivity of the users who function as a single mind in expressing their thoughts and opinions. This is, in effect, what Maimonides created in Mishneh Torah. As he stated it so eloquently in the introduction to that work:

I…intently studied all these works, with the view of putting together the results obtained from them in regard to what is forbidden or permitted, clean or unclean, and the other rules of the Torah—all in plain language and terse style, so that thus the entire Oral Law might become systematically known to all, without citing difficulties and solutions or differences of view, one person saying so, and another something else [italics mine—BN]—but consisting of statements, clear and convincing, and in accordance with the conclusions drawn from all these compilations and commentaries that have appeared from the time of Rabbenu ha-Kadosh [i.e. Rabbi Judah the Prince] to the present, so that all the rules shall be accessible to young and old, whether these appertain to the (Pentateuchal) precepts or to the institutions established by the sages and prophets, so that no other work should be needed for ascertaining any of the laws of Israel, but that this work might serve as a compendium of the entire Oral Law… (Moses Hyamson translation with correction)

[23] See A.H. Freimann, Ha-Rosh ve-Tse’etsa’av, chap. 4 (pp. 32-41).

[24] She’elot u-Teshuvot ha-Rosh 31:9; quoted in Bezalel Naor, The Limit of Intellectual Freedom, pp. 300-301.

[25] Translation of Moses Hyamson with slight alterations.

[26] b. Kiddushin 30a. See Tosafot there s.v. lo tserikha le- yomei.

[27] MT, Hil. Talmud Torah 1:11.

[28] Ibid. 1:12.

[29] In Sefer ha-Mussar, chap. 10, Ibn Kaspi lays out a study plan for his twelve year old son, Shelomo. He advises Shelomo to spend the next two years studying Bible and Talmud. From fourteen to sixteen, he should turn his attention to ethics: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Avot with the commentary and introduction of Maimonides, Hilkhot De‘ot of Sefer ha-Madda‘, as well as Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Starting at age sixteen, for the next two years, he should tackle the Halakhic codes of Alfasi, Rabbi Moses of Coucy [i.e.Sefer Mitsvot Gadol or SeMaG] and Maimonides, and pursue the study of logic. At age eighteen, he would be well advised to study natural science for two years. Finally, at age twenty, Shelomo should commence studying Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Maimonides’ Guide. (He is also advised to take a wife at that time.)

[30] See Maimonides’ famous parable of the King’s palace in Guide of the Perplexed III, 51. Don’t Oppress the Ger

Don’t Oppress the Ger

Ben Zion Katz

The Torah in Motion blog by Rabbi Jay Kelman[1] discusses the daily daf as well as the parashah of the week. When reviewing Baba Metzia 59, Rabbi Kelman mentioned that the Talmud stated that there were 36 or 46 places where the Torah commands not to oppress the stranger/convert[2] (ger), but that he was not aware of any list of the verses in question. This paper is an attempt to generate such a list.

We will begin with the Talmudic discussion itself, which is not completely straight forward. The gemara (Bab Metzia 59b) begins (my translation): “Our rabbis taught: One who oppresses a stranger/convert verbally (from the rootaleph-nun-heh ) violates three negative commandments, and one who oppresses a stranger/convert financially (from the rootlamed-chet- tzadi)[3] violates two negative commandments.”

One would expect the Talmud now to bring three prooftexts for the former and two for the latter statement. Instead, the Talmud brings three prooftexts for each, the third in each case not even using the word ger!

The three prooftexts for the first statement are Exod. 22:20, Lev. 19:33 and Lev. 25:17. All three verses use the root aleph-nun-heh, but only the first two use the word ger; the third verse uses the word amito, which could be translated as his fellow citizen. The Talmud excuses the latter anomaly by claiming that certainly a ger is a fellow citizen!

The three prooftexts for the second statement are (again) Exod 22:20 (this verse uses the verb lamed-chet-tzadi as well as the root aleph-nun-heh, so it can be used as proof for both statements), Exod. 23:9 (which uses the root lamed-chet-tzadi) and Exod. 22:24 which again is missing the word ger (and also does not use the root lamed-chet-tzadi) – the verse simply states You shall not be a usurer to him, the Talmud again stating that the ger is included in the generic “him”. The Talmud then concludes that with either type of oppression (financial or verbal) one is actually violating three negative commandments.

The Talmud then continues: “We learned in a baraita: Rabbi Eliezer the Great stated: Why did the Torah warn us 36 times, and some say 46 times, about the ger?” Before analyzing the verses referred to by Rabbi Eliezer the Great, we will conclude the Talmud’s discussion of the ger. The Talmud answers Rabbi Eliezer’s question by saying “because their inclination is bad.”[4] The most charitable way to explain this seemingly harsh response is that the convert has more temptations to sin because he or she wasn’t brought up with Torah values and/or has no religious family for support, so it is easier for them to backslide; consequently we must be especially careful in our dealings with them. The Talmud then asks one final, obvious question: Why are we reminded not to verbally or financially oppress the convert because we were strangers in the land of Egypt? Why is our being strangers in the land of Egypt thousands of years ago a reason for not oppressing a convert today? The answer is taken from a baraita of Rabbi Nathan, which explains that one should not gloat about a past defect in yourself that is (still) present in another. Presumably Rabbi Nathan felt that converts may feel like strangers even after their conversion. The Talmud then concludes this discussion with a reminder not to offend anyone even inadvertently.[5]

Now we will analyze the purported 36 or 46 verses to which Rabbi Eliezer the Great (Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus – a second generation tanna[6]) referred. The word ger appears in the Torah 68 times in 61 verses according to the Evan Shoshan concordance.[7] Six verses can be eliminated from consideration because they are either referring to Israelites, they are in a narrative and not a legal context or there is simply no oppression of any kind mentioned or implied in the verse. For example, when Abraham is attempting to purchase a burial plot for his recently departed wife Sarah from the people of Chet he says to them “I am a stranger and a sojourner with you” (Gen. 23:4). A second verse using the word ger unrelated to Rabbi Eliezaer’s statement is when God says to Abraham that his children will be strangers in a land not theirs (Gen. 15:13)[8]. Moses says twice he is a stranger in a strange land (Exod. 2:22 and 18:3). God warns us of strangers rising up against us if we disobey the Torah (Deut. 28:43). Finally we are told not to sell property forever because all land belongs to God and we are merely strangers and sojourners before Him (Lev. 25:23).

Of the remaining verses, 9 specifically state to be good to the stranger/convert because we were strangers in the land of Egypt.[9] These 9 verses (or sets of verses) are the three to which the Talmud already called our attention (Exod. 22:20, Lev. 19:33-34 [these two adjacent verses make a single point, so they will be counted as a single instance] and Exod. 23:9), as well as Deut. 5:13-15 (the Sabbath commandment in the second set of the Ten Commandments,[10] which commands that even the stranger/convert needs to rest on the Sabbath because we [lit. you] were slaves in Egypt), Deut. 10:18-19 (commands to love the stranger because we [lit. you] were strangers in Egypt), Deut. 16:11-12 (the stranger should rejoice on Shavuot because we [lit. you] were strangers in Egypt),[11] Deut. 23:8 (don’t hate the Egyptians because you were once strangers in his land) Deut. 24:17-18 (don’t pervert judgment against the stranger because we [lit. you] were strangers in Egypt), and immediately following, Deut. 24:19-22 (crops that should be left for the stranger [and others] because we [lit. you] were strangers in Egypt. (These last 3 verses list three types of crops to be left for the stranger, but give a single reason at the end, so are counted as a single reference.) The next set of 6 verses or sets of verses parallel the ones just brought, but omit the reason (because we [lit. you] were strangers/slaves in Egypt) presumably because the rationale was already stated in the parallel verse. For example, in the first set of the Ten Commandments (Exod. 20:10) the stranger/convert is also commanded to rest, but a different reason is given (because God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day, although as Ibn Ezra points out [long commentary on Exod. 20:1] that is not a specific reason why the stranger/convert should rest; only the reason given in Deut. explains that part of the command.) Another verse also commands to allow the stranger/convert to rest on the Sabbath (Exod. 23:12). Lev. 19:10 mirrors Deut. 24:21, but again sans raison. Lev. 23:22 parallels Deut. 24:19-21 in idea, but without the reason or the linguistic parallels of the previous example. Two verses/sets of verses parallel Deut. 16:11-12 re the stranger being joyous on holidays: Deut. (16:13-14) command the stranger to be happy on Succot and Deut. 26:11 reiterates the command for the stranger to be joyous on Shavuot; in both of these cases, however, the reason (because we [lit. you] were strangers in Egypt) is lacking. This brings the total number of verses or sets of verses warning not to oppress the stranger to 15.

Six more verses remind us to be good to the ger in different situations, or warn us not to oppress the ger, without the reason being given anywhere: Lev. 25:35 (do not lend money with interest even to a ger), Lev. 25:47 (redeem the property of a ger as you would a kinsman), Deut. 14:29 (regarding a tithe that includes distribution of benefits to theger ), Deut. 24:14 (you may not withhold anyone’s wages, including those of the ger), Deut. 26:12-13 (the declaration given when the tithe from Deut. 14:29 is brought to Jerusalem), and Deut. 27:19 (a curse for someone who subverts the rights of the ger). This brings the verse count to 21.

The next set of 23 verses/sets of verses state that the ger should be treated the same as an Israelite and has similar obligations and punishments. Exod. 12:19 forbids the ger from consuming leaven on Passover (Hag HaMatzot). Exod. 12:48-49 commands that a circumcised ger can share in the paschal offering and then states more generally that one set of laws (torah achat) should apply to the circumcised ger and us (lit. you). Num. 9:14 in the discussion of the second Passover, parallels both the specific command regarding the stranger celebrating the pesach offering and equality before the law (chukah achat), although the requirement for circumcision is lacking, likely because it is understood. Lev. 16:29 includes the ger in the Yom Kippur commemoration. Lev. 17:8 equates the obligations of two kinds of sacrifices (theolah and zevach) for the ger and Israelite, while verse 17:9 commands the ger too upon the proper, applicable sacrificial procedure. Verses 17:10-12 enjoin the ger as well as the Israelite from consuming blood. Verse 17:13 instruct the ger and Israelite how to hunt. Verses 17:14-16 again forbid the consumption of animal blood but add prohibitions for both Israelite and ger about how the meat must be consumed and what to do if the meat is not consumed properly.[12] Lev. 22:18 equates the ger and Israelite regarding freewill offerings. Num. 15:14-16 in general equates the sacrificial laws for Israelites and gerim. Lev. 20:2 forbids a certain kind of idolatry (Molech worship) equally for gerim and Israelites. Lev. 18:26 and 24:22 again make general statements about equality under the law for gerim. Lev. 24:16 enjoins both ger and Israelite from blasphemy. Num. 19:10 and 35:15 equate Israelite and ger regarding the exculpatory ceremony of the red heifer (for an unsolved murder) and cities of refuge (for one who commits accidental homicide). Num. 15:26 includes the ger in the communal sin offering ritual, while Num. 15:27-29 includes the ger in the individual sin offering ritual. Num. 15:30-31 includes the ger in the punishment (karet) meted out for the willful violation of commandments. Deut. 1:16 commands that judges treatgerim as they would their (Israelite) brethren. Deut. 29:19 includesgerim in the second covenant between God and the Israelites at the end of the forty years of desert wandering, while Deut. 31:12 includes gerim in the obligation to hear the public recitation of the Torah every seven years on Sucot (Hakhel).

This brings the total verse/set of verses count to 44. Presumably, there were some Rabbis who were “lumpers” and may have included some of the duplicate verses above as single instances when interpreting the list of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, making the list total 36, while others were “splitters” and divided some of the verses above considered a set, making the total 46. In any event, I submit that the list of verses generated above is likely similar to the one compiled by Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus.

[1] TIM.org

[2] While ger (plural gerim) is usually translated as stranger or foreigner, in Rabbinic parlance it often means a convert. I will use the term ger or translate as either stranger or stranger/convert unless it becomes obvious from the context (see below) that the Talmud is referring to a convert. See also below, footnote 12.

[3] Probably because both roots are found in the same verse (Exod. 22:20 – see below) the Rabbis assumed they referred to different types of oppression. These two definitions are already found in the Tannaitic literature (Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, ed. JZ Lauterbach, vol. 3, Jewish Publication Society, 1935, 1961, p. 137).

[4] Here it is obvious the Talmud is referring to a convert.

[5] The expression used in the Talmud is not to mention to someone to “hang something up” if someone in that person’s family had been hung.

[6] M Margolioth. Encyclopedia of Talmudic and Geonic Literature. Joshua Chachik. Tel Aviv. 1970. vol. 1. Pp. 92-101 (Hebrew).

[7] Avraham Even Shoshan. A New Concordance of the Bible. Kiryat Sefer, Jerusalem. 1990, 1997. Pp 242-3.

[8] While clearly this verse provides the moral basis for not oppressing the ger, since it is referring to descendants of Abraham, it cannot be part of a list warning not to oppress the “other”.

[9] Based on the Talmudic discussion, it is surprising there aren’t more verses such as these in the Torah.

[10] Ten Statements is probably a better translation for the way the expression is used in the Torah (e.g., Deut. 4:13).

[11] Perhaps because the pilgrimage festivals all are tied in to leaving Egypt, strangers also need to rejoice on those festivals, for we too were also once strangers (although it is odd that this injunction is not found in relation to Passover, only for Shavuot and Succot – see below).

[12] Deut. 14:21 is not included in this list, because this verse allows a ger to eat certain types of prohibited meat, unlike Lev. 17:15, presumably because the two verses are dealing with different types of gerim.

On the Times Commonly Presented for Birkat HaL’vana, Part 3

On the Times Commonly Presented for Birkat HaL’vana, Part 3

By Avi Grossman

Some time ago, my first article appeared on the Seforim Blog (link). It felt good to join the club.

In the comments section, readers took much more issue with the opinion of Rabbi Bar Hayim that I mentioned at the outset than they did with any of the arguments I myself was advancing, and it it even got a little personal, but along the way, I was able to refine some points I had always wanted to make, and I discovered some potential answers to other lingering questions.

The Talmud relates (Sanhedrin 42a):

“R. Aha b. Hanina also said in the name of R. Assi in Rabbi Yohanan’s name: Whoever pronounces the blessing over the new moon (hahodesh) in its due time (bizmano) welcomes, as it were, the presence of the Shechinah: for one passage states, “This month will be your first month,” while elsewhere it is said, “This is my God, and I will glorify Him.””

Rabbi Bar Hayim had argued that “in its due time” was a reference to Rosh Hodesh. I called this an elegant proof, and others challenged the assertion of elegance, saying it was no proof at all. I countered that if one were to look elsewhere in the Talmud, specifically in the second chapter of Rosh Hashana and Maimonides’s laws of Sanctifying the New Moon, the expression the “new moon in its due time” always meant the night when the court was expecting witnesses to spot the new moon, i.e. the first night of the month. For some inexplicable reason, this was still not accepted, with the other side arguing that somehow, this passage in Sanhedrin was referring to something else, possibly theallowed, as opposed to prescribed, time for reciting the blessing,[1] which was the first half of the month. I showed that that was untenable based on the language, and also redundant, because if it were not the first half of the month, the blessing could not be recited at all, and therefore Rabbi Yohanan should just have said “he who recites the blessing on the moon.”

I also pointed out that Rabbi Yohanan’s proofs from the verses are also unequivocal. What is the connection between the verses he cites? Both have the word zeh, “this,” denoting that in the former verse, the one used as the source for all of our sages’ teachings concerning finding and sanctifying the new moon, God, so to speak, pointed out the appearance of the new moon to Moses and Aaron, while in the latter verse the people perceived God so clearly, it was as if they were pointing at Him. It is clear that Rabbi Yohanan can only be referring to spotting the new moon, and nothing else.

Some then pointed out that the offending word, bizmano, was not in some manuscripts of the Talmud, making any proof based thereon moot, but once again, the opposite would be true: If Rabbi Yohanan was specifically referring to the blessing on the hodesh, then it by force must be the first night of the month because thereafter the moon is not referred to as hodesh, “NEW moon,” but rather as just yareiah or l’vana!

Parenthetically, this, and the follow-up comments to my second post, made me realize that when trying to analyze the Talmud and codes, it is important to practice a form of talmudic constitutional-originalism, in this case approaching the source texts with an intention to understand them as their writers meant them. In this case, I was advocating for an originalist approach to understanding what bizmano meant, and really, one should try to compare the sources with contemporaneous sources in order to be sure what the terms mean. My disputants were certainly not taking an originalist approach, and you can read their various arguments.[2]

However, and this is something that carries a significance I have only begun to realize, although intellectual honesty requires of us to be originalists when dealing with those facets of the Oral Law that have been committed to writing, when the sages themselves looked to the scriptures, they practiced originalism when trying to give over the p’shat, the plain meaning, but they also practiced a form of “living-and- breathing constitutionalism” (or whatever is the opposite of talmudic originalism) when they derived teachings using the methods of exposition, or as we would say in Yeshivish, “when they made drashos based on the middos shehatorah nidreshses bahem.” The sages engaged in active reinterpretation of verses, and in a functioning Sanhedrin, such new teachings were halachically binding for all of Israel. If you think about it, the Written Torah with its critical oral counterpart was meant to be interpreted as a living and breathing document, and this harks back to a point I made a few years ago.

I then pointed out something which has even more halachic consequences. The aforementioned passage from Sanhedrin continues:

“In the school of Rabbi Ishmael it was taught: Had Israel earned no other privilege than to greet the presence of their Heavenly Father once a month, it would be sufficient. Abaye said: Therefore, we must recite it standing.”

That is, according to this exact reading of the Talmud, one only succeeds in greeting the Divine Presence if he recites birkat hal’vana the night of Rosh Hodesh, and therefore one needs to stand for the blessing only if he recites the blessing the night of Rosh Hodesh! If you take another look at Maimonides’s formulation, you can see that is implied, because he first mentions the issue of standing, citing our version of the Talmud, and then mentions that after the fact, one can still recite the blessing after Rosh Hodesh.

Most importantly, the points I was making, namely that Rabbi Yohanan in Sanhedrin is discussingbirkat hal’vana specifically on Rosh Hodesh, and that the implication is that one should stand for reciting the blessing only on Rosh Hodesh, can be found by reading Rabbeinu Manoah’s commentary on Maimonides, and that he goes even farther. Many of the blog’s commentators were arguing that what I was writing was entirely my own, but they should have looked at the sources!

The Hebrew version of the Schottenstein edition mentions that the classic commentators do not explain why the word bizmano is there, and that the expression has a seeming redundancy that of course one has to recite the blessing when it is the blessing’s time, but they do not try to find out what the term means elsewhere, and they mention that an alternative manuscript does not have that word, but they fail to make anything of it. Dealing with Rabbeinu Yona on B’rachot, there were always some lingering difficulties I had with his essay, as I wrote here:

Rabbeinu Yona’s comments at the end of the fourth chapter of B’rachoth describe three ways to understand what Massecheth Sof’rim meant by not reciting the blessing “ad shetithbasseim…” Rabbeinu Yona offers his own understanding, and this is the basis for all later misunderstandings: tithbasseim refers to the light of the moon being significantly “sweet,” a state that it only achieves “two to (or ‘or’) three days” into the new lunar cycle. Why the vague language? Because no two months are the same. By the time the moon becomes visible for the first time, it could be that the molad itself was anywhere from twelve hours to 48 hours to even more or even less before that, and each month has its own set of astronomical conditions that affect this. See this chart. Notice that no two months share a percent illumination, or location in the sky, and each has its own level of difficulty being spotted. When two days are shown consecutively, it is because the first day’s conditions were not sufficient for most to have actually enjoyed or even seen the light of the moon. The possibilities are endless, and there is no objective rule for determining how much time the moon takes each month to get to the stage Rabbeinu Yona describes, and that is why he used the vague terminology “two to three days.” (As pointed out on the last page of the linked file, Maimonides did feel that there was a mathematical formula for determining minimal visibility.) More importantly, the “two to three days” statement is just an example of how long it takes, but the underlying rule is when the light becomes “sweet…” In languages like 13th- century Rabbinic Hebrew and Modern Hebrew and English, “two to three days” or “two or three days” allow for all of those possibilities. The halacha also allows for that… it seems that in every subsequent work you can find (with the the very important and critical exception of the Beth Yosef), the opinion of Rabbeinu Yona’s mentor is referred to as “Rabbeinu Yona’s opinion,” even though he offered one that actually differed from that of his mentor, and it is inaccurately reported as waiting for three days after the molad, taking out the the critical “two or/to.” Even later, it is further transformed into waiting until after three days have passed, i.e., at least 72 hours. This evolution is clear from reading the sources as they appear in the halachic record in chronological order. This is unfortunate and also illogical, because we saw above that the whole idea of “two to three days” is only offered as a way to describe how long it may take the light of the moon to become “sweet.” It could actually vary, because the sweetness is the point. Rabbeinu Yona did not mean “three days, in every single situation, no matter what,” and even if he had said that the underlying rule is to wait three days from the beginning of the cycle, why did they add that “at least” modifier? The readers of the Seforim Blog rightfully asked: how could it be that Rabbeinu Yona did not read what was obvious to others, that the starting point for the recitation of the blessing was Rosh Hodesh? Perhaps it was not obvious!? To this I offered that perhaps he had incomplete access to the sources. After all, he himself admits that he was unfamiliar with our text of Massechet Soferim, which explicitly mentions birkat hal’vana on Saturday night. It is not such a stretch to say that his text of Sanhedrin was deficient, or that he did not have the complete version of TY B’rachot.

They also failed to notice that Rabbeinu Yona’s explicit hava amina, assumption, was that birkat hal’vana should be recited on Rosh Hodesh, but Massechet Soferim could be used to derive when the blessing should first be recited because his text of Sanhedrin apparently could not. That is, just like he did not recognize our text of Soferim, he apparently did not have our text of Sanhedrin.

In their commentaries to Maimonides’s ruling thatbirkat hal’vana should be recited on Rosh Hodesh, two other 13th century sages, Rabbeinu Manoah and the Hagahot Maimoniyot, aka Rabbi Meir Hakohen, a student of the Maharam of Rothenburg, are explicit that the Talmudic sources indicate what Maimonides says, and they go further. Rabbeinu Manoah explains why the decisors did not take Massechet Soferim into halachic account on this issue:

“Because it does not make sense for one to delay performing a commandment that he has an opportunity to perform. Who knows how the world runs and what may occur, and there is much that can come upon someone that can prevent him from eventually performing [the commandment]. Therefore, any one who fears God should bless [the moon] right when he sees it in its renewal, and not wait for Saturday night.”

Note that Rabbeinu Manoah also refers to the recitation of the blessing as “a commandment.”

The Hagahot Maimoniyot also described how the Maharam dealt with the apparent contradiction posed by following Massechet Soferim:

“And thus my master, Rabbeinu, may he live long, practices: when he takes the initiative to recite the blessing during the week so that he not miss the time for reciting the blessing – which is until the sixteenth of the month – he wears his fine suit.”

That is, the Maharam realized, as I wrote earlier, that our received text of Massechet Soferim describes how to recite the blessing, and not when. Thus, he satisfied the opinion of Massechet Soferim not by reciting the blessing on Saturday night, but by reciting it some other time while dressed nicely.

I also wondered why Rabbeinu Yona postulated that the blessing on seeing the new moon involved deriving pleasure (or benefit, depending on how you translate the word hana’a) from the light of the moon. Since when did that have to do with the other birkot har’iyah, the blessings recited upon seeing certain phenomena? Is one required to somehow benefit from seeing the sun, or the sea, or lightning in order to recite the relevant blessings? Now, the blessing on the blossoming of the fruit trees makes mention of how people receive pleasure from seeing them, but then why can’t that be the case with the moon, that one enjoys seeing it, but does not have to have enough light to have some utility.

I believe the answer is that Rabbeinu Yona took his cue from a similar blessing that is also connected to Saturday night, the only one that the sages said demands that one derive some sort of pleasure/benefit from that which he sees: the blessing on the fire, in the eighth chapter of the Brachot. Most importantly, I also found an amazing explanation as to why Rabbeinu Yona’s interpretation of Massechet Soferim became the basis for a halachic practice and opinion that persisted in Northeast Europe, even though it was rejected by scholars who lived in more temperate lands.

Check out a link to this site, which has some pretty good diagrams indicating where and when the new moon was or will be visible. I have been looking at the site regularly for some years, but this afternoon I found something very interesting. During the summer of 1990, there were months in which the moon was positioned very far to the south of the sky. On August 21, 1990, which was Rosh Hodesh, 30 Av 5750, the new moon was visible in most of Africa and South America as the night began, but in Israel and Europe and most of North America, the moon was not visible until late the following afternoon (Fig. 1).

(Fig. 1)

Almost a month later, on September 19, 1990, Erev Rosh Hashana, the new moon was visible in the South Pacific (Fig. 2) and the next day, September 20, 1990, Rosh Hashana 5751, it was visible across Australia, Africa, and South America (Fig. 3), but once again, those In Israel, Europe, and most of North America did not see it until September 21 (Fig. 4), and this is remarkable because Australia is well to Israel’s east, and it seems reasonable that if the Australians could see the new moon, then the Israelis should have had an even easier time spotting it, being that for them the moon is almost half a day older, and therefore larger.

(Fig. 2)

(Fig. 3) (Fig. 4)

On December 5, 2002, 30 Kislev 5763, the new moon was at least visible in Israel, but once again, it was not visible in Northeast Europe, in places where the Ashkenazic aharonim had lived (Fig. 5). The true molad, the lunar conjunction, had been the previous day, December 4, at 9:34 am Jerusalem time while the average molad was at 9:06 pm and 13 parts, although as can be seen from here, it is actually not easy to translate the average molad times to our current UTC system. See more below about that.) The following February, the moon was much harder to see in classical Lita than it was in the Mediterranean basin (Fig. 6).

(Fig. 5) (Fig. 6)

I found all of these examples by a very superficial perusal of their archives, and it turns out there are dozens of examples that can be easily found in the last 30 years. A general rule can be derived: the farther a place is from the equator, the harder it will be there to spot the new moon compared to places of similar longitude but closer to the equator. For those in the Northern Hemisphere, there are many months when the added difficulty is quite significant.

Looking back, I could have extrapolated this from other information I already had, including the fact that the Israeli New Moon Society always publicizes that it is easier to spot the new moon from the Negev simply because it is in the south of the country.

All of this helps explain why we find that various forms of the practice of delaying birkat hal’vana for a day or two after what would appear to be the ideal time according to the classical opinions in the Talmudim is mostly a later Ashkenazic phenomenon, and one that Litvishe Rabbis, like Rabbi Tukachinsky, brought to Israel, whereas the generally Sephardic streams advocated for birkat hal’vana on Rosh Hodesh, or a week later, as per the kabbalistic practice. The fact that in Northeast Europe, the moon was often not visible until a day or two later than when it became visible in the more temperate regions seems to be a good explanation for this feature of the literature. Often, the Jews in Northeast Europe really had to wait for the moon to become barely visible even after the molad calculations indicated it was already well- visible in the places where the sages of the Talmud and the Rishonim used to live. I am grateful to have found this very real justification for a practice that at first seemed to go against the plain meaning of the Talmud.

Ultimately, I should have known that Maimonides was aware of all this, and took this into account. Chapters 11-17 of Kiddush Hahodesh are dedicated to explaining how to find the new moon in the sky, and that is the ultimate reason for knowing when the molad is of each individual month, and not so that one can add 72 or 168 hours to it in order to know when to recite the blessing, while the the eighteenth and last chapter discusses the practical case of the moon not being spotted for a number of months due to extenuating circumstances such as weather, and in our days, pollution. Towards the end of that chapter, he mentions that the more one stands to the east, the less likely he is to spot the new moon, while the farther to the west, the more likely, and then concludes with:

“All the above statements apply to the countries west and east [of Israel ] at the same latitude, i.e., they are between 30 and 35 degrees north [of the equator]. If they are located farther to the northerly, or less to the norther, different principles apply, for they are not parallel to Eretz Yisrael.”

There is no reason, therefore, to consider that places in northern Europe should be able to spot the new moon according to the molad in Israel, and as we have seen, they often have to wait significantly longer to see the moon.

… Getting back to the issue of calculations and Professor Bromberg’s thesis, I recently saw that this year, the Ittim L’vina calendar has a new appendix explaining how there is a major disagreement regarding how to present the classic, average molad times in our modern terms. Considering that there are 1080 parts per hour instead of 3600 seconds, it should be easy to translate any molad time to any time on our clocks, but the problem is that no one knows, for example, if the tradition says that the molad for a given month is exactly at 15 hours of the day (9am), when that is according to the UTC time (adjusted for the Jerusalem time zone)! As Maimonides writes, the clock we use to determine the average moladot is, unlock the ritual clock used everyday, a constant, 24-hour clock, that assumes the day starts at hour 0, always 24 objective hours after the start of the previous day (like the secular system defines the start of the day as exactly 24 hours after the start of the previous) and therefore, during the summer, the “molad day” starts hours before the sundown, while during the winter, the “molad day” starts sometime well after the sundown that started that halachic, calendar day. The Ittim L’vina calendar brings four attempts to figure out how to determine when the average molad for any given month actually happens, and as Prof. Bromberg has shown, the truth is that no one knows. This can not be over-emphasized. When the calendar writers say, therefore, that on a given Saturday night, laymen should refrain from reciting birkat hal’vana at 7pm, as they depart the synagogue, because the average molad was say, at 8pm three or seven days earlier, and therefore they still have another hour before “the first opportunity” (sic) to recite the blessing, it is disingenuous, because they do not really know when the average molad was! It must be stated that, when Maimonides described the times of the average moladot, the only practical application was not birkat hal’vana, because up until the 13th century, no one even imagined that the time for birkat hal’vana should depend on the molad, but rather calculating the day of the week on which to establish the first day of Tishrei, which did not necessitate knowing when exactly the molad occurred according to which ever time piece they may have used. For example, if the calculation showed that on Monday the average molad was shortly before the end of the 18th hour (noon), making Monday fit for Rosh Hashana, it only meant that in the theoretical, 24-hour clock that started with the first molad, the molad of Tishrei was before the end of the 18th hour, but no one could know if that translated to before halachic noon on that particular Monday. And no one cared, either.

This revelation thus renders most of the foregoing discussions on the matter practically moot, and gives another very good reason why, if one were wondering when to recite the blessing on seeing the new moon, he should just follow the basic understanding of the talmudim and rishonim: when he sees the new moon, he should recite the blessing.

I would like to thank Rabbi David Avihail, Rosh Yeshivat Ramot, for his constant encouragement and support in producing these articles.

[1] For more on this critical distinction between the prescribed time and the allowed time, see, for example, Maimonides’s descriptions of the times for the daily prayers in his Laws of Prayer, 3:1-7.

[2] My blog, avrahambenyehuda.wordpress.com, has many more articles about understanding the original biblical and talmudic terms in context. Towards Decoding Ha-Yeriah Ha-Gedolah (The Great Parchment), A Cryptic 14th Century Italian Kabbalistic Text

Towards Decoding Ha-Yeriah Ha-Gedolah (The Great Parchment), A Cryptic 14th Century Italian Kabbalistic Text

By Ezra Brand

Ezra Brand is an independent researcher based in NYC. He has an MA from Revel Graduate School at Yeshiva University in Medieval Jewish History. His main research focus is currently 13th and 14th century sefirotic Kabbalah, and he is interested in using digital and computational tools in historical research. His previous contributions to the Seforim Blog can be found here, and a selection of his academic research can be found here. He can be reached at ezrabrand-at-gmail.com; any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.[1]

Sefirotic Kabbalah has its origins in thirteenth century Provence and Spain. It reached its apotheosis in the Zohar, which began to appear in Castile in the late thirteenth century. Kabbalistic literature started appearing in Italy soon after. Moshe Idel, in his masterly survey of kabbalah in medieval Italy, shows how “Rome was a place where Catalan Jewish culture, philosophical and kabbalistic, were already well established in the 1280s.”[2] And further: “Thus, in one decade, approximately 1280-1290, the Jewish culture in Rome was enriched by the arrival of a variety of Jewish esoteric material: theosophical and ecstatic Kabbalah, as well as Ashkenazi esoteric material.”[3] Idel raises the possibility that “a massive importation of kabbalistic literature took place in Italy at the very end of the thirteenth century.”[4] Idel make programmatic statement that “a pluralistic vision of the history of Kabbalah, which entails deemphasizing the centrality of Spain in the history of Kabbalah, will help to distinguish more precisely the specific contributions of Kabbalah in Italy.”[5]

Ha-Yeriah Ha-Gedolah (from here on: YG) is a fascinating, enigmatic work, which provides a window into this first flourishing of Italian Kabbalah. According to Giulio Busi, the academic scholar who first published YG from manuscript in 2004, “Ha-Yeri‘ah ha-Gedolah was probably written at the beginning of the 14th century by an author whose name remains unknown to us. Most likely, he was an Italian kabbalist, since all the preserved manuscripts have been copied by scribes working on the Italian peninsula.”[6]

The first modern academic scholar to mention YG was Gershom Scholem in his 1937 list of commentaries on the Ten Sefirot. Scholem also mentioned the line-by-line commentary onYG written by the fourteenth-century Italian kabbalist Reuven Tzarfati.[7] Scholem’s student Efraim Gottlieb, in a pioneering study on Tzarfati, discusses YG briefly.[8]

In 2004, Giulio Busi, with Simonetta M. Bondoni and Saverio Campanini, published YG for the first time, based on the extant manuscripts.[9] It comes out to 71 pages, with at most around 13 lines on a page.[10] Busi gives an introduction summarizing previous research and presenting his own research on this work, and an overview of the extant manuscripts of YG and Tzarfati’s commentary. (Busi’s introduction is available online.) Like the thirteenth-century Zoharic literature[11] and related kabbalistic works, YG interprets biblical stories and topics in terms of the interplay between the sefirot. Busi describes it as a “forgotten masterpiece of kabbalistic literature,[12] and as “one of the most obscure texts of the whole kabbalah”.[13]

Even after its appearance in print, YG does not appear to have evinced very much interest, either among academic scholars or among enthusiasts of Kabbalistic literature. I am not aware of any further scholarship on this work. In a previous paper of mine, I gave an overview of some aspects of YG. Here, I’d like to revisit this enigmatic work, provide some suggestions for a way forward in decoding it, and hopefully spur further interest and research.[14]

YG is set up as work made up of sixteen “Sections” (sippurim).[15] Busi describes YG as “a booklet of a few extremely dense and symbolic pages.”[16] He further writes: “There is no doubt, however, that the Great Parchment is one of the most obscure texts of the whole kabbalah.”[17] Busi in his introduction gives an overview of each story based on Tzarfati’s commentary, prefacing: “Obviously, there is no guarantee that Sarfatti’s exegesis always reflects the thought of the unknown author of the work. Nevertheless, the detailed analysis of this early commentator represents the only starting point we possess with which to explore this still unknown chapter of late medieval kabbalah.”

I would claim that Busi overstates the obscurity of this work. I would like to point out a few aspects of YG that would aid in making progress in decoding this fascinating work.

Indexing Sefirotic Correspondences

Busi writes: “Apparently rebelling against the laws of meaning, [YG] is striking for its capacity to evoke waves of esoteric implications without ever mentioning directly the kabbalistic secrets.”[18] And further: “The key is offered by a scheme of correspondences that the author never enunciates openly but the reader must be aware of”.[19]

Again, I believe that this is somewhat overstated. Admittedly, the overarching narrative of the sections is often unclear. The work is dense with biblical and Talmudic quotations and allusions, and written in a kind of associative, stream-of- consciousness style, making the overall narrative difficult to untangle. There are often what appear to be throwaway lines that don’t seem to be relevant in context. As I mention below, it may be that the author was simply writing with stream-of- consciousness, and never intended every line to have a deeper meaning. In any case, YG is by no means the only esoteric work to have been composed in a purposefully enigmatic style.

With all this in mind, the fact is that throughout the work, YG explicitly mentions sefirotic correspondences. Unlike the Zoharic literature, YG is replete with explicit usage of the standard terms for the ten sefirot. The Temple is a clear theme throughout (see below), and YG explicitly indexes the one-to-one correspondences between ten items in the Temple and the ten sefirot, using the sefirot’s standard names.[20] Another explication of symbols can be found inYG ’s discussion of Ezekiel’s Vision of the Chariot, where the correspondence of the Four Faces with specific angels, cardinal directions, and sefirot are given, again using the sefirot’s standard names.[21]

Certain terms are used consistently for Evil (or closeness to Evil) throughout, such as Sha’atnez, Woman, Snake, Calf, Donkey, Limping Thigh, Mixture.[22] Specific terms recur with presumably consistent sefirotic equivalences, such as Ruth and Upper Pool.[23] Even if YG never explicitly defines the meaning of a symbol, comparison with other thirteenth- and fourteenth-century works should allow for fairly certain elucidation.[24]

Close Commentary of Biblical Texts or Specific Topics

In many sections, YG very closely hews to biblical texts, quoting the biblical words and performing an extremely close interpretation, sometimes phrase-by-phrase, or even word-by- word. Busi’s edition does a tremendous service by italicizing the biblical quotes, but many quotes fall through the cracks and are not italicized. YG is often written in a way that only a single word is added to biblical text, or a biblical word is paraphrased, the order of words is switched, words are skipped words, or a pastiche between two biblical verses is made. These techniques presumably impart meaning. Closely separating the biblical quotes from YG’s additions or paraphrase helps clarify what exactly YG is attempting to convey.

Even when YG is not closely interpreting a biblical text line- by-line, the topic is often still clearly defined.

By comparing how other thirteenth- and fourteenth-century kabbalistic works interpret these biblical stories and topics, it is likely that much light would be shed on the discourses of YG.

Please see the appendix of this article for a chart comparing YG’s Sections with corresponding biblical stories or topics.

Word Associations

A striking aspect of YG is the continuous flow of writing, using word associations and wordplay. This is true both in terms of how it interprets biblical verses, as well as how it segues into new topics seemingly based on linguistic similarities alone. This interest in wordplay likely ties in to the ideas of “Linguistic Kabbalah,” which were influenced by Abraham Abulafia.[25] As mentioned earlier, YG was most likely written by an Italian kabbalist at the beginning of the fourteenth century, a time when Abulafia’s influence was strongly felt.

Some particularly notable examples of this can be found in Section 7, which is devoted to Jacob/Tiferet. I’ll adduce one example from there, a riff on the word “Tiferet” (my underlines, italics of biblical verses and biblical citations in Busi’s original, with small changes in punctuation where it seems appropriate):[26]

ועל כן לא יאכלו בני ישראל את גיד הנשה [בראשית לב לג]. לא יכרתו החוט הבא עליהם בשפע אמיתי, הנשה שלא ישכחו התורה, הה״ד ישראל לא תנשני [ישעיה מד כא]. והחוט הוא הוא״ו הנאצלת על תפארת הה״ד <ישראל> אשר בך אתפאר [ישעיה מט ג] ולקדוש ישראל כי פארך [ישעיה ס ט] זה ואלהי יעקב.[27] אפריון עשה לו המלך שלמה מעצי הלבנון [שיר השירים ג ט]. ובית תפארתי אפאר [ישעיה ס ז]. ועם כל זה לא תפאר אחריך [דברים כד כ] בעשרה היניקות היונקות ונאצלות מן הקו האמצעי קדוש ונורא [תהלים קיא ט]. כי תחלת העשרה הוא השם הגדול א׳[28]. על כן <לא> תסיר האצילות מהם. אם הם שפלים (אם) בעיניך, פאר הראש הם .וגדולים, כי בן בג בג עומד על גבה

The overall message of this passage is fairly clear: First, the author closely interprets the verse in Genesis as saying that Jews should not block the flow (YG interprets “gid” to mean “chut”), and should not forget the Torah (interpreting the next word “hanashe” to mean “forgetting”, using the verse in Isaiah to show that “hanashe” can mean forgetting[29]).

The passage then clearly begins to riff on the root “Pe’er,” which is the root of the word Tiferet, the sefirah under discussion in this Section. YG brings quotes which use “Pe’er” The .(התפאר, פאר, אפריון, תפארת, פיאר) in five different ways passage is saying not to “remove” the ten sefirot which emanate from Tiferet,[30] since the beginning of the ten sefirot are Keter. It may very well be that the individual verses do not add an additional mystical meaning, and the author is simply reveling in adducing additional verses with the same root.

Post-Biblical Sources

As mentioned, YG is dense not just with biblical quotes and allusions, but also with quotes of and allusions to Talmud, Midrash, and other medieval sources.[31]

YG mentions the messianic figures of Menachem ben Amiel and Nehemiah ben Hushiel,[32] who appear in early medieval works, such as the apocalyptic Sefer Zerubavel and Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer.

YG supports an idea with a quote that seems to be an adage that was popular among medieval Jewish authors:[33]

״הה״ד אשרי המדבר באוזן שומעת״

The first source that I could find for this adage is Ramban in his early work Milhamot Hashem, at the end of a long piece, where he lyrically writes that a certain opinion is correct:[34]

״והדברים מודיעים שכולם נכוחים למבין וישרים למוצאי דעת ואשרי המדבר לאוזן השומעת״ should correctly be ״באוזן״ It therefore seems clear that YG’s ,as the Munich manuscript has it.[35] Soon after Ramban ״לאוזן״ this saying is used by Meiri and Sefer HaHinuch in a similar way: As an exhortation at the end of passage, and certainly not as a quote.[36]

Some Greek philosophical concepts are mentioned in YG, such as the Five Senses and the tripartite soul.[37]

A sampling of interesting scientific statements made by YG: “Water is good at all times and for all living creatures, which is not the case for other liquids”. [38] “The dove has no gallbladder.”[39]

While discussing YG’s sources and quotations, I can’t help but discuss a fascinating passage found in the discussion on the Sotah:[40]

״מה שאמרו ז״ל סוטה לא הייתה ולא נבראת, ר״ל במעשה מפורסם, ואם תאמר המעשה שמביאין שאשה אחת שתתה מי סוטה בחילוף אחותה ולא הזיקו לה ואחרי כן <באה> אצל אחותה ונקשה ומן הריח מיד <וצבתה> בטנה ונפלה ירכה [במדבר ה כז] כי היא הייתה טמאה, זה סיוע לדברינו, ורצו באומרם [זה המעשה][41] כי כל הדיעות[42] חוצבו ממקום אחד ואדם אחד ישיג השגת <העדן ואדם אחד ישיג השגת> גיהנם.״

YG starts off with a(n allegedly) rabbinic quote which makes the shocking statement that the Sotah ritual never actually happened. The quote is cryptically explained by YG to mean presumably meaning that in fact the Sotah ,”במעשה המפורסם“ ritual occurred, but that there was never a “famous” (or “publicly-known” or “well-known”) case.[43] YG then continues that if you may question this explanation on the basis of “a The story .(״ואם תאמר המעשה שמביאין״) ”story which is brought appears as described in more than one Midrashic source.[44] For convenience, I’ll quote the Midrash Tanhuma’s rendition with the online Sefaria translation:

“[There is] a story about two sisters who resembled each other. Now one was married in one city and the other was married in another city. The husband of one of them wanted to accuse her of infidelity and have her drink the bitter water in Jerusalem. She went to that city where her married sister was. Her sister said to her, “What was your reason for coming here?” She said to her, “My husband wants to have me drink [the bitter water].” Her sister said to her, “I will go in your place and drink it.” She said to her, “Go.” She put on her sister’s clothes, went in her place, drank the bitter water, and was found clean. When she returned to her sister’s house, she joyfully went out to meet her, then embraced and kissed her on the mouth. As soon as the one kissed the other, she smelled the bitter water and immediately died, in order to fulfill what is stated (in Eccl. 8:8), “No human has control over the wind to contain the wind, nor is there control on the day of death […].”

YG goes on to say that on the contrary, this story actually It is likely .(״זה סיוע לדברינו״) supports his explanation that what YG means is that since in the story of the two sisters the actual death of the sister occurred in private, it was not a publicly-known case.[45]

YG next says the story of the two sisters can be understood allegorically to mean that all “knowledge” (or “evil”) comes from one place. In other words, the story of the Sotah water being passed from the innocent sister to the guilty sister should be understood allegorically. The Sotah water has inherent power, but the power that it has really depends on the person imbibing it. The innocent sister was unharmed by the Sotah water, but when it reached her unfaithful sister, it had an effect. In the same way, all knowledge starts off the same, but whether this knowledge is reified as good or evil depends on the person comprehending the knowledge.

סוטה לא הייתה“ I could not find any source for YG’s quote that which ,״ומה שאמרו ז״ל״ YG prefaces the quote with .”ולא נבראת generally means that it’s a quote from the Talmud or Midrash. לא היה“ The Talmud Bavli in Sanhedrin 71a uses the formulation regarding the Wayward Son and City of Idol ”ולא נברא .but not about Sotah ,(בן סורר ומורה ועיר הנידחת) Worshippers

Ishay Rosen-Zvi made this very same claim from a critical historical perspective in his 2008 book (based on his doctoral dissertation), that the Sotah ritual never actually happened and was essentially a purely theoretical law.[46] Meir Bar-Ilan harshly criticized Rozen-Zvi’s thesis, in a review article called “Between False Reality and Fictional History”, available on his homepage here.[47] Bar-Ilan admits that there are instances where even the Talmudic rabbis said that a biblical story or a biblical ritual never actually occurred, but he believes that Sotah is not one of these cases. It would be interesting to discover additional traditional sources that state that the Sotah ritual (or “Sotah ordeal”, as Bar-Ilan believes is the more accurate appellation) never actually took place.

Let me point to another case of YG claiming that a story recounted in an authoritative text was not an actual historical event. This time, shockingly, it is regarding the Sacrifice of Isaac, where YG claims that this was a dream:[48]

שעשה חסד לעקוד את יצחק בנו להיות זריז על מצות המלך שעקדת יצחק“ .”חלום היה ולא דבר אחר

Marc Shapiro in his book Changing the Immutable cites other medieval sources (including possibly Maimonides) which also say that the Sacrifice of Isaac never happened, and shows how this idea was considered so problematic by a later printer of Moreh Nevuchim that it was censored out of theEphodi commentary.[49]

In any case, the two parts of the statement would seem to contradict each other : If YG assumes that the Akedah was only to offer (״חסד״) ”a dream, then what was the great “kindness up Isaac? It is very likely that this line in YG needs to be read sefirotically: Isaac is a common reference to Gevurah while Abraham is a reference to Hesed. The Akeda is being read as an amelioration of Gevurah by Hesed. If this is true, the meaning of this line in YG is as follows: Since the Akedah was a dream, and not a historical event, we cannot explain the story in a straightforward way, for example as illustrating Abraham’s submission to God’s will. Rather, it must be understood sefirotically, as illustrating the interplay of Gevuah and Hesed.[50]

Temple Vessels and Rituals

Many of the of biblical sections interpreted by YG, as well as topics discussed, relate to the Temple. As I mentioned earlier, YG clearly indexes the correspondences between items in the Temple and the sefirot.[51] A majority of the Sections begin with an item from the Temple. The Scapegoat, sent into the desert by the High Priest on Yom Kippur as part of the Yom Kippur Temple service, is a recurring symbol of evil in YG.[52] Most of Section 11 is an extended discussion of the Candelabrum, in turn interpreting the verses relating to the Candelabrum in Zachariah, Ezekiel, and the Pentateuch. The entireties of Sections 14 and 15 are devoted to verse-by-verse interpretations of the Bible verses on the Sotah and the Red Heifer, respectively. Both of these rituals were performed at, or at least near, the Temple.

Conclusion

YG is an early, fascinating, and cryptic work. I have attempted in this article to give an overview of some themes of the work, as well as some fascinating statements that I could not find elsewhere. I am hoping that someone will take upon themselves to publish Reuven Tzarfati’s commentary in some form, which should greatly further progress in understanding YG.[53]

Appendix

Breakdown by Section of Interpretation of Biblical Texts or Topics biblical Story # topic page(s) verses layout of Eden; creation of Adam and Eve; eating from Tree of 1 119-121 Knowledge; curse on the Snake (Genesis 2: 9-14, 25; 3: 6) Golden Calf 121-122 (Exodus 32:1) Staff of Moses 122 Bala’am 122 Phineas / 123-124 Eliyahu Snake 124 2 Flood 125-128 Moses in Egypt 128-129 Flood 129-130 (continued) Sacrifice of 130-131 Isaac 3 Yom Kippur 131 service Circumcision / Orla (Foreskin 132-135 and Tree) Hagar and 4 135-138 Ishmael 5 6 Foreplate 140 Phylacteries 140-141 Dove 141 Foreplate 141 (continuation) 7 Death of Jacob 142 World-to-Come 142-143 Jacob’s fight 144 with angel Tiferet 144-145 Even Shetiyya 145-146 Korah 146 Moses hitting 146-148 the rock Abraham and 8 Covenant of 148-151 the Pieces Ruth; Keter; 151-152 Messiah Abraham and Covenant of 153-154 the Pieces (continuation) 9 Netzach Gilgul and 10 Levirate 158-160 marriage Levirate marriage 158-159 (Deuteronomy 25: 6-10) Song of Songs 158-161 4:3,8,11,15 Ruth lies with Boaz (Ruth 160-163 3:8-14) Zachariah lights menorah 11 (Zachariah 164-165 3:4-5; 4:2-3, 14) Ezekiel and menorah 166-167 (Ezekiel 40:5, 6, 9; 41:2) Menorah in tabernacle 167-168 (Exodus 25:31-32) Ezekiel’s chariot 168-169 (Ezekiel 1:10) Scapegoat 169-170 12 Manna 170-173 13 Prayer 173-174 Sha’atnez 174-177 prohibition Sotah (Numbers 14 177-181 5) Red Heifer 15 182-188 (Numbers 19)

[1] I would like to thank Binyamin Goldstein and my father for looking over a draft of this article and making very helpful comments and corrections.

[2] Moshe Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, 1280-1510: A Survey, pg. 99.

[3] Idel, pg. 102.

[4] Idel, pg. 111.

[5] Pg. 113.

[6] Pg. 23.

[7] For more on Tzarfati, see Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, pp. 148-150, and index.

[8] In Efraim Gottlieb, Studies in the Kabbala Literature (Hebrew), ed. J. Hacker (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1976).

[9] Busi’s book includes Flavius Mithridates’s Latin translation of YG, which Mithridates had prepared for the well-known fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance nobleman and philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Busi also includes an English translation of the Latin.

[10] The actual text of YG is pp. 119-191.

[11] I use “Zoharic literature” to mean “The Zohar”, as is now common in academic scholarship.

[12] The Great Parchment. Flavius Mithridates’ Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English Version, Edited by Giulio Busi with Simonetta M. Bondoni and Saverio Campanini, Turin, Nino Aragno Editore, 2004, pp. 21, 28.

[13] Pg. 29.

[14] I still have not had a chance to study Tzarfati’s full commentary to YG. Busi says he has a transcription of it (pg. 29, footnote 19). Unfortunately I could not get access to this transcription. A few manuscripts of Tzarfati’s commentary are available through National Library of Israel’s Ketiv website. I read through a few pages of the commentary in Moscow RSL 134, which had the advantage of being available for download (the manuscript pages on Ketiv’s online reader load very slowly, and often buffer endlessly and don’t load at all).

I was excited to discover a new automated tool being developed for transcribing Hebrew manuscripts, which launched a few months ago, called Tikkoun Sofrim: https://tikkoun-sofrim.firebaseapp.com/en. I read their documentation and contributed a few lines to each of the two manuscripts they have up, and I was quite impressed. I look forward to being able to use the tool to assist in transcribing additional manuscripts.

[15] Although YG is called in some manuscripts “Iggeret Sippurim”, “sippurim” in this context likely means “sections”, as pointed out by Gottlieb. This is because there are no “stories” per se being told. For this reason I use the term “Sections” for YG’s “sippurim”, contra Busi who uses the term “Tales” to describe the Sections. That YG doesn’t contain any literal tales is in contrast to the Zoharic literature, where kabbalistic and midrashic interpretations are generally framed within tales of R’ Shimon bar Yochai and his circle. For a recent comprehensive study of this important aspect of the Zohar, see Eitan Fishbane’s, The Art of Mystical Narrative: A Poetics of the Zohar, Oxford University Press, 2018.

[16] Pg. 21.

[17] Pg. 29.

[18] Pg. 28 [19] Pg. 29.

[20] Pg. 163, beginning of Section 11.

[21] Pg. 169. The correspondences there are not completely clear to me, as mixed in with the standard names for sefirot are other superlatives, and it’s not completely clear to me how to punctuate the text. The sefirot seem to be grouped there into four parts as follows: 1) Keter; 2) Tiferet, Chochma, Bina; 3) Shechina (=Malchut); Gedulah (=Chessed), Gevurah; Netzach; 4) Hod, Yesod.

As an aside, I want to point out another confusing detail in this passage :

״וצורת אדם גבריאל ד׳ אלפין מרוח ימה.״ in this context actually means רוח ימה It would appear that East, and not West as it typically does. This is for two reasons: First of all, on pg. 183 YG states explicitly that corresponds with East. In addition, it is clear that צורת אדם that corresponds to West, as it says צורת שור it is actually in the continuation of pg. 169, as well as on pg. 183.

.שעטנז, אשה (חוה), נחש, עגל (הזהב), חמור, ירך צולע, ערב [22]

.רות, בריכה עליונה [23]

[24] Eliyahu Peretz’s index of sefirot of selected thirteenth- and fourteenth-century kabbalistic works is especially useful in this respect: E. Peretz, Ma’alot ha-Zohar, Jerusalem 1987. I would like to thank Dr. Daniel Matt for bringing this work to my attention.

[25] For more on this, see my previous article on YG, as well as my article “Joseph Gikatilla’s “Hasagot on the Moreh”: A Linguistic Kabbalist Reads Moreh Nevuchim”, which can be found here.

[26] Pg. 144. Another very interesting illustrative example can be found earlier in that page, where one of the words in the association is not explicit:

״ואשרי המחכה ויגיע [דניאל יב יב] לקץ הימין, בזמן שהם עושים רצון השלשלת העליונה, ולא לקץ השמאל, הצולעה שנשמט מירך יעקב, ולא מישראל כי שרה עם אלהים, שאמר <גרש> האמה <הזאת> ואת בנה .[בראשית כא י]״

It seems clear that the connection being made is due to the in the two verses, which ,שרה wordplay of the homonyms spelled is explicitly quoted in the first verse (where it means “struggled”), and implicit in the second verse (where “Sarah” is the speaker). Incidentally, this is an example of the word “Limping” being used a symbol for Evil, “Limping” being a common symbol in YG for Evil.

[27] “Velohei Yaakov” seems to be a reference to a biblical phrase, which appears three times in the Bible. See Mithradates’ translation (pg. 216). It is unclear to me if Mithradates’ interpretation is correct.

[28] This letter most likely is a shortening of “Akatriel,” which is used throughout the work to mean Keter.

[29] This may also be a play on “Yisrael” used in the verse in Isaiah, which can also mean Jacob.

[30] The idea of each sefirah having its own secondary emanation of ten sefirot emanating from it, is a theme of YG, as Busi mentions in his introduction.

[31] Busi’s edition does give those sources a handful of times, but mostly does not, even when a source is explicitly being quoted. [32] Pg. 165.

[33] Pg. 133.

[34] Milhamot Hashem on Rif Shabbat 12a, last line.

[35] Apparatus fn. 184.

”לעולם“ .Meiri in his commentary to Bavli Berahot 3b s.v [36] (last line); Sefer HaHinuch, Parshat Va’ethanan, Mitzvah 419, In subsequent generations, the adage is .”ומה שאמרו“ .s.v almost exclusively formulated in a more biblical style, as .on the pattern of Proverbs 25:12 ,״אשרי המדבר על אוזן שומעת״ It is formulated this way already by Meiri in his Magen Avot, .(last line) ״ואף בשאלתות״ .Topic 1, s.v

[37] Pg. 187. The manuscript on which the text is based only has two parts of the soul, but the apparatus in fn. 1025 says that the JTS manuscript has all three parts written.

״המים טובים בכל זמן ולכל בעלי חיים, מה שאין כן :Pg. 187 [38] .בשאר משקים״

,I also found this .״ועל כן היונה אין לה מרה״ :Pg. 141 [39] using a search, in the Rashba (in his commentary on Bavli Hulin 42a s.v. “kol”) and in other medieval works.

[40] Pg. 180.

[41] This word is added in a MS, according to the apparatus. in place of ”הרעות“ According to the apparatus, one MS has [42] which may be the more correct version, based on the ,”הדיעות“ context.

[43] See my footnote below for a discussion of this explanation and how to parse the whole passage of YG.

[44] This story appears in Midrash Tanhuma parshat Naso (on one of the Sotah verses – Numbers 5:12), §10 in the Buber edition, and §6 in the regular version, and in Bamidbar Rabbah (on that same verse) 9:9. As an aside, the story is also referenced by Rashi in his commentary on Numbers 5:13.

[45] I would like to thank Binyamin Goldstein for clarifying this for me. Admittedly, the flow of the passage is confusing, with first stating the story as a question, and then suddenly saying that it’s in fact support.

[46] Rosen-Zvi, The Rite that Was Not: Temple, Midrash and Gender in Tractate Sotah, Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008 (Hebrew).

[47] Pp. 12-19. (See there pp.19-22 for an interesting discussion about the authenticity of Mishnaic descriptions of the Yom Kippur service in the Temple and the Red Heifer.) Bar- Ilan there in a footnote (fn. 42) points out that another scholar previously posited in her 1984 book that the Sotah ritual never happened and is totally theoretical.

I’d like to point out what appears to be a clear error made by Rozen-Zvi, not pointed out by Bar-Ilan (even though Bar-Ilan, pg. 13, quotes this passage in Rozen-Zvi verbatim). Rozen-Tzvi remarks, pg. 156, in reference to a story about a Sotah in the Mishnah in Eduyot 5:6 (parentheses and exclamation mark in the original):

״זוהי העדות היחידה (בכלל, לא רק בספרות חז״ל!) שנותרה על מאורע מסוים של השקיית סוטה בתקופת הבית.״

The Midrashic story quoted by YG is at least one instance of exactly such a textual witness. (As to whether the Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah and the Tanhuma are within the bounds of “Hazalic literature” is a separate discussion, but Rozen-Zvi explicitly adds there’s no such witness even outside of Hazalic/Talmudic literature.)

[48] Pg. 138.

[49] Shapiro, Changing the Immutable, pp. 67-73. I’d like to thank Marc Shapiro for telling me about this by email a few years ago, before Changing the Immutable was published.

[50] I would like to thank Marc Shapiro and Jonathan Dauber for their insightful comments on this passage, when I was writing my first paper on this topic.

[51] Pg. 163, beginning of Section # 11.

[52] See especially the lines at the end of Section #11 (pp. 169-170):

״ושעיר המשתלח הפך המנורה. שמים חשך לאור ואור לחשך [ישעיהו ה כ], הה״ד בפיו ובשפתיו כבדוני ולבו רחוק ממני ותהי יראתם אותי מצות אנשים מלומדה [ישעיהו כט יג]. ושעיר המשתלח היה מעור סמאל. והמשלח את השעיר [לעזאזל] יכבס בגדיו [ויקרא טז כו].״ mentioned ,אור is a play on עור סמאל It is possible that being the opposite of עור earlier in the section quoted, as is a common idea in Kabbalah. In general, I would be אור remiss if I didn’t mention the relevant well-known comment of the Ramban in his commentary on the biblical verse of the Scapegoat, where he makes the surprising comment that sending the Scapegoat to the desert is intended as a way to appease the forces of evil.

[53] Reuven Tzarfati is an important Kabbalist in his own right, whose works deserve further study, according to Moshe Idel, one of the pre-eminent scholars of kabbalah. See Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, 1280-1510: A Survey, pp. 148. Rav Aryeh Tzvi Frommer HY”D: סנגורם של ישראל

סנגורם של ישראל :Rav Aryeh Tzvi Frommer HY”D

A Closer Look At One of the Greatest Defenders of the Common Jew in Modern Times[1] Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin, Av Beit Din of Kozoglov, Author of Responsa Eretz Tzvi, Siach Ha-Sadeh, Doreish Tov Le’amo[2]

By Alon Amar ”הכל מלמדין זכות” – משנה סנהדרין ד:א

In the fall of 1933, immediately after the death of Rabbi Meir Shapira zt”l – Rosh Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin, an article appeared in the “Lubliner Tugenblatt” newspaper. The title reads “Who will be the next Rosh Yeshiva?” The article references multiple distinguished candidates for the prestigious appointment, including Rav Menachem Zemba hy”d and Rav Dov Berish Weidenfeld zt”l –The Tchebiner Rav. Interestingly enough, the eventual successor to Rabbi Meir Shapira, was not even mentioned in the article, though his greatness in Torah learning and piety was on par with those aforementioned geonim. Rav Aryeh Tzvi Frommer Hy”d (RATF), also known as The Kozoglover Gaon, was chosen as the next Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin and served at its helm until it’s closure during World War II. His unique legacy expanded beyond the four walls of the yeshiva where he inspired and taught students. Through his responsa he engaged real-life issues creatively defending many customs of questionable halachic standing and created the mishna yomi program allowing all Jews, both scholars and laymen, to complete the entirety of Torah Sheb’al peh. His preoccupation with the spiritual needs of the full spectrum of jewry, and the creativity he employed for this task remain defining hallmarks of his inspiring legacy.

Brief Biography

RATF was born in Czeladź, Poland in the year 1884[3]. His father Hanoch-Hendel made his living as a tailor[4] and RATF’s mother Miriam-Kayla passed away when he was three years old.[5]He was sent to study in heder in the town of Wolbrum, residing by relatives of his mother. Some of his formative years of development in Torah learning occurred after leaving Wolbrum to study in the Yeshiva Ketana of Amstov, Poland[6]. The dean of the yeshiva, Rabbi Efraim Tzvi Einhorn zt”l recognized the unique abilities and challenges of the young orphan and took great care in supporting the young boy’s spiritual & physical development.[7] [8]

Rabbi Efraim Tzvi Einhorn Zt”l – Rosh Yeshiva Amstov, Poland

At the age of thirteen, RATF made his way to the court R’ Avraham Borenstein known as the “Avnei Neizer”[9] in Sochaczew (Sochatchov), Poland. Reb Leib Hirsch as RATF came to be known (Yiddish translation of Aryeh Tzvi), studied assiduously under the Avnei Neizer for five years developing a reputation as notable young Torah scholar in Poland and a close student of the venerable Avnei Neizer.[10] RATF was exposed to the unique combination of halacha, gemara, kabbalah and chassidut interwoven in the thought of the Avnei Neizer. At the time the Avnei Neizer was one of the leading poskim of the generation. RATF subsequently married Esther Shweitzer and spent the next eight years studying in the home of his father-in-law. Despite moving away from his beloved rebbe, RATF maintained close ties with the Avnei Neizer, visiting on holidays as well corresponding on Torah topics.[11]

When the Avnei Neizer passed away in 1910, his son R’ Shmuel Borenstein[12], the “Shem Mi’Shmuel” was crowned the heir to his father’s chassidic court; becoming the second scion of the Sochatchov dynasty. On his father’s first yahrzeit, the Shem Mi’Shmuel established Yeshivat Beit Avraham in his memory. The Shem Mi’Shmuel appreciated the unique talents of RATF, and invited him to be the Rosh Yeshiva of Beit Avraham at the age of 27[13]. It was during this period of learning & teaching that RATF published his first work; Siach Ha’Sadeh. In it, RATF dealt with various talmudic topics with central themes of hilchot berachot & tefillah. The work came with laudatory approbations from leading scholars of the time including: Rav Meir Arik,[14] Rav Yosef Engel[15] and others.[16]RATF remained the Rosh Yeshiva of Beit Avraham, until the city of Sochatchov was destroyed in World War I.

Rabbi Shmuel Borenstein Zt”l – (Shem Mi’Shmuel) The second Sochatchover Rebbe Cover page of Siach Hasadeh; Pietrikov 1912

The Frommer family had grown to a total of six children, relying on RATF as he sought his next job opportunity. His uncle, Rabbi Yitzchak Gottenstein, the rabbi of a small town in Poland, Koziegłowy (Kozoglov), had passed away and the community needed a new Rabbi. The community was small, and the financial opportunity was no greater. However, due to lack of alternatives this would be RATF’s next stop. There, RATF established a small yeshiva and continued his learning and teaching, jump-starting an environment of Torah learning and scholarship in the small town. Although his tenure there did not last particularly long, he would be forever known by the appellation; “The Kozoglover Gaon”.

After leaving Kozoglov[17], RATF headed to Zbeirtza, Poland. The community of Sochatchover chassidim that lived in the city of Zbeirtza, were “laymen” of an extraordinary caliber. Many of them students of the Avnei Neizer, providing context to appreciate the uniqueness and caliber of RATF and his erudition. RATF had developed into a combination of a classical scholar, chassid and tzadik that made him such a sought-after leader. He was knowledgeable in all areas of the revealed Torah as well as kabbalah and chassidut as is evident from his works. Additionally, he would arise at midnight to recite “tikkun chatzot” and study kabbalah late into the night away from the public eye. It was in Zbeirtza that his students began to compile notebooks with the teachings that RATF would share on shabbat & yom tov.[18]

Once again, the time came for RATF to migrate to the nearby town of Sosnovitz[19]continuing to gain admirers and students. It was at this time that Rabbi Meir Shapiro zt”l, founder of Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin and Rav of Lublin, expressed an interest in having RATF join the faculty of the yeshiva[20]. RATF deflected the requests due to his desire to remain close to his existing students and admirers. However, after Rabbi Meir Shapiro’s untimely death in October 1933,Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin was left without a leader. RATF decided to move to Lublin and became the second Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin.

The funeral of Rabbi Meir Shapiro Zt”l at the Yeshiva of Chochmei Lublin

In a fascinating interlude in RATF’s life, he witnessed one of his lifelong dreams materialize; visiting Eretz Yisrael. RATF had a great yearning for the land of Israel.[21]He once remarked to his confidant and host in Tel Aviv, Rabbi Dovid Landa, that “a regular day in Eretz Yisrael contains the same holiness as yom tov sheni shel galuyot in the diaspora”.[22] His trip lasted four months while he visited Jerusalem, Meiron[23], Tel Aviv & Bnei Brak.[24] Afterward, he returned to his new position at the Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin. RATF experienced some of his most productive years of Torah learning & creativity at the helm of the yeshiva. After many years of narrowly avoiding personal financial collapse and constantly being forced to migrate throughout Poland, he had finally arrived at a place where his only concern was Torah.

It was during his tenure as Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin that he published his second work,Responsa Eretz Tzvi,[25]in 1938. Eretz Tzvi, is a work of collected responsa, mostly concentrated on the orach hayim section of the Shulchan Aruch with certain discussions regarding Yoreh Deah and Even He’ezer as well. The volume was first published in Lublin, at a printer only steps away from the Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin.[26] A second printing was done in America in 1963 and a third re- printing by RATF’s nephew, Rabbi Dov Frommer in 1975 in Tel Aviv[27]. It is worth noting that a fourth edition including never before collected writings, as well asSiach Hasadeh, became the “second & third cheilek” of the responsa Eretz Tzvi as separate volumes. The collection includes responsa, letters & glosses on various masechtot, and was printed in 2000 by Rabbi David Abraham Mandelbaum[28] [29]. Throughout Eretz Tzvi, RATF corresponds with many scholars including TheGerrer Rebbe, The Shem Mi’Shmuel of Sochatchov, Rabbi Meir Arik and the Bianer Rebbe on various topics of halacha. It is in this work that his unique approach combining halacha, aggadah and kabbalah is showcased. His creative methodology allowed for uncovering defenses of questionable customs, providing a limud zechut for the masses in many cases. In this way he served as a “Defender of Israel”[30].

Cover page of Responsa Eretz Tzvi; Lublin 1938

In 1938, on the occasion of the second completion of the Daf Yomi cycle, RATF introduced a study program that would complement Daf Yomi: Mishna Yomi[31]. Two mishnayot studied every day; enabling a participant in the Daf Yomi program to finish the entirety of the mishnah, even those tractates which did not include bavli commentary.

The second world war began, and Poland was overrun by the Nazi army. In 1939 RATF together with his family were forced to relocate to the Warsaw Ghetto[32]. It was reported[33] that RATF was leading Torah learning initiatives for the younger students in the ghetto. Additionally, even while in the ghetto he continued to comprise Torah novella as many of his glosses on his own responsa Eretz Tzvi were written during his time in the Warsaw Ghetto.

RATF was forced to take a job making shoes for the German soldiers on the Russian front provided by the “Shultz” company.[34] He worked alongside the third Sochatchover Rebbe – Rabbi Dovid Borenstein and the Piasetzna Rebbe – Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira[35] along with other great rabbis and scholars .[36]

RATF alongside his Rebbe. Rabbi Dovid Borenstein Zt”l – The third Sochatchover Rebbe

After the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in the spring of 1942 the Frommer family was sent to the Majdanek death camp in Lublin, Poland only 123km away from his belovedYeshivat Chochmei Lublin. It is documented that as he entered the gas chambers, the holy Kozoglover Gaon exclaimed “Thank G-d, for I am included in the sanctification of G-d’s great name!”.[37]

A newspaper article describing the experiences of Torah scholars in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Key Themes In The Thought of The Kozoglover Gaon

הכל מלמדין זכות – סנגורם של ישראל .1

The central theme in the halachic thought of RATF, is his focus on defending existing customs which are at odds with normative practice, often utilizing various non-traditional halachic arguments. RATF not only included kabbalistic and chassidic sources in normative talmudic &halachic discussions, but even allowed them to inform practical decisions in the realm of halacha. Eretz Tzvi strives to support rather than tear down shaky customs. RATF notes in his introduction to Eretz Tzvi when discussing his approach:

“That which we observed, that the students of the Baal Shem Tov zt”l abolished the practice of fasting and self- affliction [to atone for sins], and I am not worthy to enter into this discussion. Rather, I base myself on the mishna ”All may argue in favor of acquittal”[38] [From this example, one could suggest that RATF saw himself as a halachic expositor of the way of theBaal Shem Tov, utilizing his halachic knowledge to apply thechassidic outlook of focusing on positive actions, rather than becoming mired in the guilt of sin.] Naturally, the very first responsa in Eretz Tzvi begins with this exact objective, foreshadowing the central theme of his halachic work:

“In defense of the widespread custom of wearing a tallit kattan which is smaller than the halachic size delineated in the Shulchan Aruch[39] which ostensibly precludes any fulfillment of the mitzvah tzitzit as many great scholars have protested about…as well as providing a limud zechut regarding the required length of tzitzit”[40]

One common conflict between chassidim and mitnagdim is their opposing halachic attitudes within the area ofzmanei hatefillah. Perhaps the most well-known example of RATF’s limud zechut is the defense of the custom of some chassidim for beginning shacharit after 4 halachic hours into the day. The problem being the recital of berachot kriat shema, after their preferred time. This poses a potential transgression of beracha levatala[41]. RATF defends this custom with various arguments. In the first part of the responsa in Eretz Tzvi[42], RATF begins by neutralizing the potential issue ofberacha levatalah by positing that the prayer is considered a tefillat nedava, a voluntary prayer similar to the voluntary offering in the beit hamikdash. A voluntary tefilla is not bound by the common restrictions of an obligatory tefilla.

However, RATF is challenged to explain how one could put aside the halachically preferential time for praying and engage in a seemingly lesser level of voluntary prayer chovah[ vs. nedavah]? To answer this secondary question, RATF utilizes the Shulchan Aruch Harav of Rav Shneur Zalman of Liadi – The Ba’al Hatanya.[43] The gemara[44]states that someone who is constantly engrossed in Torah learning Torato( um’nato [Rashbi V’chaveirav]) is not obligated to stop at the proper time and pray shemoneh esreih while engrossed in learning. Additionally, the Ba’al Hatanya adds that praying with the highest level of deveikut (divine cleaving) would take precedence over Torah learning, even for those who are described as torato um’nato.

RATF points out that from the Shulchan Aruch Harav we see that only a prayer with extraordinary intent and focus [A] trumps the Torah learning of someone who’s primary occupation is Torah learning [B] while an ordinary tefillah [C] would not obligated him to interrupt his studies to pray. ([A]>[B]>[C]) Utilizing a similar line of reasoning, we can assume that an individual who delays praying to attain the higher level of prayer will supersede the usual obligation of prayer service at the proper time. ([A]>[C])

Perhaps a more ambitious attempt at justifying the practice of some of the great chassidic masters with respect to zmanei tefillah, is another point in the same responsa. RATF quotes from the Ruzhiner Rebbe[45]who explains that prior to the sin of adam harishon in gan eden, the entire day was equally fit for prayer. However, the post-sin world is not fit for such a structure so the forefathers; Avraham (Shacharit), Yitzchak (Mincha) and Yaakov (Arvit) designated timeframes for each prayer. When the world reaches the ultimate redemption, the framework of zmanei tefillah will revert to their undefined framework similar to pre-sin existence. Utilizing a concept from the Rashba in Masechet Menachot[46] [regarding the halachic status of korban ha’omer], RATF suggests that since prayers of the tzadikim are focused on delivering the ultimate redemption (when the typical time boundaries will cease to exist) these prayers in and of themselves (even in our current pre- redemption era) are not bound by the usual rules and regulations.[47] Additionally, in two separate places RATF defends the practice of regular hassidimc (not only great tzadikim as discussed above) who begin to pray Mincha in the time of bein hashmashot[48]employing the concept of safeik d’rabanan lkula.

Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter zt”l (seated) – The “Imrei Emet” of Ger along with his grandson.. A common correspondent of RATF. (Hakira.org)

In another example of limud zechut RATF defends the custom of delivering mishloach manot late in the day of Purim such that it is already past nightfall. While this practice ostensibly has no grounds in halacha as the halachic day has ended, as RATF himself admits, he still uncovers a halachic reasoning for the custom.[49] RATF quotes an explanation from Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Rabinowitz, the Yid Hakadosh of Pshiske,[50] who defends the practice of beginning to praymincha when the prayer will extend past the proper halachic time of shkiah. Rabbi Rabinowitz justifies it based on the gemara and Tosafot in Berachot[51]regarding the curse of Bilaam towards the Jewish people. It is mentioned in the Gemara that Bilaam knew the precise split-second at which Hashem became angry during the day and could fit in a quick curse at that opportune time. However, Tosafot asks “What curse could you fit in a split- meaning “they (כלם) second?” and answers that the wordkalem should be cursed” could fit the time allotment. Tosafot offers a second explanation: “even if it was a longer curse, if Bilaam would begin his cursing of the Jewish people in the split-second that Hashem’s anger appears each day even if he would continue after that time it would take effect as well.” Therefore, proves the Yid Hakadosh quoted by RATF, we see from here that beginning a prayer or a mitzvah at the right time will allow one to finish after the allotted time.[52] [53]

RATF (Third from left) administering a bechina at Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin

A limud zechut which came in an alternate form is RATF’s insistence on separating the strict halacha from that of middat hassidut or virtuous behaviour. In a correspondence[54] between RATF and the Imrei Emet of Gur (Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter), RATF discusses a specific type oflashon hara treated by the Hafetz Hayim in his work Shemirat Halashon. The Hafetz Hayim discusses the prohibition of speaking negatively about a person “even if he [the speaker] himself saw him [the transgressor] from close proximity doing something that is inappropriate according to the law”. As a source, the Hafetz Hayim cites Rabbeinu Yonah in Shaarei Teshuva[55]:

”…perhaps the transgressor already repented from his evil ways, is distressed in his thoughts, and the heart knows the bitterness of his soul, and it is incorrect to reveal it.”

RATF points out that the exact words of Rabbeinu Yonah namely, “It is incorrect”, smack of middat chassidut and not strict halachic prohibition, and therefore takes issue with the Hafetz Hayim supporting his halachic decision on such grounds. RATF continues and writes “And since many people fail in this, one ought to find them a defense”.

It is interesting to note, that the work of Rabbeinu Yonah being discussed is the Shaarei Teshuva – a work not typically categorized as halachic. RATF did not object to the use of Rabbeinu Yonah’s “Shaarei Teshuva” on the grounds that it is a mussar work as opposed to ahalachic one. One possible explanation is that RATF himself relies on and includes non- halachic sources to inform halachic decisions. RATF employs the full gamut of Torah thought in order to come to the defense of common practices and customs even if they infringe on pietistic sensibilities.[56]

Limud Zechut in Other Writings

As a young Rabbi, RATF published a short letter delineating the basic requirements of hilchot tefillah enabling his fellow Jews to fulfill the obligation of daily prayer. He published this letter anonymously, seemingly to avoid the appearance of haughtiness in a younger scholar lecturing the public. Part of the letter that RATF published anonymously to remind the general public about the basic requirements of Teifillah in hopes of zikui harabim

Lastly, in addition to his published works RATF published a kuntres or small pamphlet called Doresh Tov le’amo[57]. The work remained in manuscript and included a defense of “most Jews” who don’t have the requisite intent during the opening birchat avot of shemoneh esreih. RATF writes that even if a person doesn’t understand the meaning of the words, if they are aware of the fact that they are praying “in front of Hashem” bedieved they fulfill their obligation. [RATF’s position is seemingly in opposition to the well-known position held of Rabbi Chaim Brisker[58]that in the first beracha of shemoneh esreih both the intent of standing in front of Hashem as well as the meaning of the words are necessary even bedieved.]

1. Innovation Through Connecting all Areas of Torah

RATF utilized existing logic and concepts while applying them to previously unexplained passages and problems providing a framework of creativity that remains in line with tradition. We have already seen from the above mentioned responsa that RATF was open to utilizing kabbalistic and chassidic concepts in order to provide a limud zechut. RATF’s works do indeed draw from chassidut, kabbalah as well as gemara and rishonim. RATF describes his philosophy regarding new interpretations in Torah and their purpose: [59]

“As it is explained in the work Maayan Chaim as he discusses at length to provide support to those who produce Torah novella although it is not clear whether they are true & correct which would be a transgression according to the Zohar. In my humble opinion, the Zohar prohibits writing such novella only in a case where the logic being applied is not true, however if the logic and approach is true and found in earlier works, even if it is being applied in a novel way to explain a certain passage, even if the explanation is not correct this is not a transgression. For this is the honor of Torah and to demonstrate that there is nothing that is not hinted to in the Torah and everything can be “clothed” in Torah.” RATF in his later years

A great example of his propensity to cross-pollinate between disciplines is a discourse on Sukkot[60]. Regarding the libations of wine and water that took place on Sukkot he writes:

“One could suggest that the libations of wine and of water represent two separate ideas, oneg & simcha. The water libations represent oneg, as the concept of water is the source of all enjoyment as explained inShaarei Kedusha[61]while wine represents simcha as [the Talmud] says “ein simcha ela b’yayin”. Additionally, we know that oneg & simcha are two separate ideas as explained in theChatam Sofer’s novella (Shabbat 111a)[62] that on Shabbat there is an obligation of oneg while on Yom Tov there is an obligation of simcha…it would seem that the difference between these two emotions is that oneg involves the five senses while simcha involves only the heart/mind [lev]…and from simcha one arrives at dancing as is written in the Sefer Hakuzari, and the Maharal explains that our custom to raise our feet during Kedushah is to show that our soul naturally longs to take flight and similarly dancing which is initiated by simcha…on the other hand oneg is specifically in the engagement of the five senses as it says in Sefer Yetzira[63] which corresponds to oneg…and this is why all year round the only libation is that of wine representing simcha in the heart/mind however specifically on Sukkot after the forgiveness of sins [Yom Kippur] the body [and senses] are purified we are then given the libations of water representing the enjoyment of the senses as now these too can be used in cleaving to Hashem.”

In this passage RATF quotes from Talmud and a classical commentary as well as kabbalistic and chassidic sources interchangeably and unapologetically. The breadth and depth of RATF’s references adds a layer of relevance as he finds common themes in sifrei kabbalah along with classical rishonim and achronim. [64] In another passage, RATF describes his affinity for combining the hidden and revealed disciplines of Torah learning. He states:[65]

“It is my “way”, myself the pauper, to uncover (l’hamtzi) a source in the revealed Torah for the hidden…”

The word he uses is l’hamtzi which has double connotation of uncovering & creation. Through utilizing the spectrum of Torah literature RATF essentially creates new sources previously unrelated to the topic at hand through exposing them to his unique thought process.

See Responsa Eretz Tzvi[66] where he was asked by someone who accidentally turned on a light onshabbat and wanted to understand how much money he should give for atonement (kaparah). At the end of the discussion, [after finding a lenient opinion in estimating the modern equivalent of the monetary sums discussed in the gemara] RATF adds a reminder lest the questioner miss out on the true purpose of giving the symbolic amount to achieve “kaparah”.

“However, the crux (ikar) of teshuva is the remorse and humility and lowliness that a person should be heartbroken that he desecrated the holy Shabbos. Additionally, it would be appropriate to take up oneself to assist the “Chevra Shomrei Shabbos” …for this is considered a tikkun of desecrating Shabbos.”

RATF’s halachic thought utilized a maximalist approach in finding prooftexts and sources. Besides for the revealed and esoteric areas of Torah, we see from this last example that his responsa took the full religious experience into account.

RATF (bottom right corner) at a an unspecified event in Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin. To his right, Rav M, Ziemba

Centrality of Torah for All Jews & Mishna Yomi

In a related theme to limud zechut & providing access to all areas of Torah, it is clear that RATF strived to include the full population of Jewry in his philosophy of learning Torah. It is interesting to note, as Rabbi S.Y. Zevin does in his review of Eretz Tzvi[67], that although RATF was the dean of a yeshiva which was typically focused on the abstraction of talmudic law, Eretz Tzvi is comprised entirely of questions that are practical in nature. He utilized his training in the disciplines of pilpul and sevara as a tool for dealing with everyday people & problems.

An initiative of RATF aiming to elevate the religious experience of common Jewry, was the Mishna Yomi program that he instituted. Upon the second inaugural Siyum Hashas in 1938, RATF created a new study program allowing every Jew to appreciate and complete the entirety of Torah. His initiative was both complementary and supplementary to the Daf Yomi that was already instituted by Rabbi Meir Shapira zt”l. An adherent to the Daf Yomi schedule would complete the entire Talmud Bavli over the course of the seven-year cycle. However, there are many aspects of torah sheb’al peh left untouched due to the significant amount of mishnayot that have no Bavli commentary. RATF suggested that thegeulah (ultimate redemption) is dependent on the Jewish people learning the entirety of the oral Torah. See below for his inspirational words when introducing the program explaining an interpretation provided by the gemara for a cryptic passage in Hoshea.[68]

“Though they hire among the nations, now I will gather them up” (Hoshea 8:10)

“Should they learn it all; then, “now I will gather them up” [the Geulah will come immediately]”(Bava Batra 8a)

One could understand the words of the gemara “It all” in two ways. Either A. All of Bnei Yisrael or B. Each individual should learn all the mishnayot as they encompass all of the oral law. And there is support for this from the Zohar[69] that one of the methods of teshuva is to learn the entirety of Torah …as every part of Torah has a unique ability to offer salvation for a specific area in one’s life, however the ultimate geulah is the entirety of all individual salvations at once and therefore all areas of the Torah must be covered in order to glean all the unique salvations to arrive at the ultimate collective salvation [of the Jewish people]. It ,[if they learn it all] ”אי תנא כולהו“ therefore says utilizing both understandings [A. all of the Jewish people and B. the entirety of the oral Torah] …and this is the purpose of the “Mishna Yomi”, that every Jew young and old, scholar and layman, wealthy & poor can all take part in this great mitzvah.”

RATF felt that the geulah could be hastened through the entirety of the Jewish people learning all the mishnayot which encompasses the oral Torah.[70] It was seen as a great complement to the Daf Yomi, to the extent that there were printings of Talmud with both the Daf Yomi & Mishna Yomi schedule to allow for combined study.[71]

Although RATF conceived the Mishna Yomi prior to WWII, the concept needed a reaffirmation amongst post war Jews. Rabbi Yonah Stenzel, who was a student of RATF in the town of Sosnovitz and eventually emigrated to Tel Aviv and joined its rabbinate, re-instituted the concept of Mishna Yomi & Halacha Yomi in remembrance of those Jews that perished in the holocaust. In a few articles he is credited with creating the Mishna Yomi format, however RATF clearly introduced the concept before the war.

It is noteworthy that the specific vehicle chosen by RATF for bringing the ultimate redemption was Torah study. The gemara mentions other potential deeds that can bring the ultimate redemption in somewhat simpler ways.[72] The accessibility of Talmud Torah to the masses and the potential for each and every Jew to experience the entirety of Torah was RATF’s preferred initiative for bringing about greater spirituality in the community at large. It was through Torah that RATF saw his contribution in hastening the geulah. Tamud Bavli, Tractate Hagigah and Mo’ed Katan and Mishnayot Shvi’it – special edition for the students of the Daf Yomi and the Mishnah Yomi – Munich 1947

Conclusion

Halachically speaking, any city which is entirely idolatrous is classified in the gemara as an ir hanidachat and condemned to destruction. However, the gemara[73]mentions that if one of the houses within the city maintains a mezuzah on its doorpost the city should not be destroyed. An apocryphal story describes a city facing imminent destruction due to its idolatrous practices that had permeated every household. On the eve of the final verdict there was a Jew who arrived from another city and ran from door to door affixing mezuzot to all bare doorposts. I believe that on a symbolic level, one of the rabbis affixing figurative mezuzot to various embedded customs requiring limud zechut in the last century was the Kozoglover Gaon, Rabbi Aryeh Tzvi Frommer Hy”d. The concept of limud zechut, that was RATF’s raison d’etre, allowed for needed leniency within the structure and framework of Orthodox Torah observance. At times, we need a limud zechut on our own individual behavior as well as for our various practices and customs as a community. Perhaps, even if the halachic conclusions of RATF aren’t the accepted practice, his willingness to defend questionable practices with the breadth of his learning utilizing both the revealed and esoteric sections of the Torah remind us the importance of limud zechut and our responsibility to engage others and ourselves through it’s lens.

**I would like to dedicate this article in memory of my grandparents:

Norman Sebrow Jo Amar

יוסף בן מזל ז”ל נחמן דוד בן צבי אייזק ז”ל

Jeanette Sebrow Raymonde Amar

רוחמה בת אסתר ז”ל יוכבד בת אשר זעליג ז”ל who ,שליט”א I am grateful to Rabbi Hershel Schachter [1] introduced me to the Torah of the Kozoglover Gaon amongst a variety of unique thinkers as a student in his shiur. Additionally, I would like to thank the following people for their insight and help in bringing this project from idea to reality: Rabbis Dovid Bashevkin, Yaacov Sasson, Danny Turkel as well as Moshe Rechthand. Lastly, R’ Eliezer Brodt for his insight and breadth of knowledge that he offered to help complete this project. [2] RATF’s collected writings and teachings can also be found in Eretz Tzvi (Moadim & Al Ha’Torah) compiled by Erlich, Yehuda; Tel Aviv, 1984. Additionally, his students in Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin compiled a collection of insights called Mekabtz’el.

[3] Frommer, Aryeh Tzvi. Eretz Tzvi, Bnei Brak, 1976, pp. 5–6.

[4] Soreski, Aharon. Geonei Polin Ha’achronim, Bnei Brak, 1982, pp. 182 According to other opinions his father was a coal salesman.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid. pp. 184 RATF’s personality is described as being or a bit of שובב exceptionally bright while at the same time a a “troublemaker”. It was in the yeshiva in Amstov that Rabbi Efraim Einhorn, paid special attention to the young orphan and provided him with the fundamentals for development in learning. It was this special attention that RATF attempted to repay when Rabbi Einhorn’s grandson, Rabbi Moshe Krohn came to study with RATF in Zbeirtza. RATF took extra care to attend to all of Rabbi Moshe Krohn’s physical and spiritual needs.

[7] Regarding the level of studies at the Amstov yeshiva – see Ibid. pp. 185-186 The day began with a shiur from 5AM until 10AM when the yeshiva would pray shacharit.

[8] Some of the other well-known students of the yeshiva; Rabbi Shlomo Stenzel and the Rebbe of Radomsk: Rabbi Shlomo Henich Hacohen Rabinovitz.

[9]1838 -1910. A chassid and son-in-law of the Kotzker Rebbe, after the Rebbe passed away he became a Gerrer chassid. In 1883 he moved to Sochatchov where he founded his own branch of chassidut named after the city, and which gave him the title of “the Sochatchover Rebbe.” His responsa were collected posthumously and published as the Responsa – Avnei Nezer hence his title. He published the sefer Eglei Tal as well, which covers the 39 melachot of Shabbat.

[10] Geonei Polin Ha’achronim, pp.182

[11] Ibid. – As a testament to the esteem regarded by the Avnei Neizer for his student, see Responsa Avnei Neizer, Orach Chaim, 109 where his teacher writes the following. “Greetings to my beloved student, the Harif and Baki our teacher, Rabbi Leib Hirsch. From your letter I see that you have been meditating on my work…You said well and spoke truth. Wishing you great strength and courage in Torah and G-d willing, may you develop into a vehicle for chassidut and fear of Heaven…Abraham”

[12] 1855-1926. Published the work “Shem Mi’shmuel”. The only son of the Avnei Neizer, was both a son and close student of his father and maintained an extremely close relationship with his father until his death. After his father’s death, he was accepted as the next Socatchover Rebbe. He published his father’s works and led Socotchov Chassidut. He died at the age of 70. He was brought to burial in the same ohel (covered grave) as his father, the Avnei Nezer, in Sochaczew. His son, Dovid, succeeded him as third Sochatchover Rebbe.

[13] Bergman, Ben-Tzion. Michoel B’Achat, pp.44 – RATF was not the only one asked to lead the yeshiva. Rav Michoel Forschlager another prized student of the Avnei Neizer was sought along with RATF to lead the yeshiva. It was RATF who served as the dean of the yeshiva while Rav Forschlager was more directly involved with directing the studies of the young students. Among Rav Forschlager’s students were Rabbi Avraham Aaron Price, Rabbi Mordechai Gifter, Rabbi Yitzchak Hoberman and Rabbi Pinchas Hirschprung. Additionally, see the newly reprinted Toras Michael (Machon Avnei Choshen, 2016) a collection of Rav Forschlager’s torah novella.

[14] 1855-1926 – One of the great galician Torah scholars with works such as Imrei Yosher, Tal Torah. His students include the prolific Rav Reuven Margolies and founder of Daf Yomi and Chochmei Lublin Yeshiva – Rabbi Meir Shapiro.

[15] 1858-1920 – Rabbi and Av Beis Din in Krakow, Poland. Author of Gilyonei Ha’Shas, Beit Ha’Otzar. Himself a fascinating Torah scholar who utilized abstract thinking in his conceptual approach to Talmudic study. At thebris of RATF’s first born son, Rabbi Yosef Engel served as the sandak, while RATF himself was the mohel.

[16] Including Rabbi Moshe Nachum Yerushalimsk, 1855-1916. Another of the great Torah luminaries in Poland at the time.

[17] See “Rabbi Aryeh Tzvi Frumer From Kozhiglov: Head of the Rabbinical Court and Rosh Yeshiva: Center for Holocaust Studies” – the reason for his departure from the city as being due to a disgruntled wealthy man that RATF slighted by deciding against him in a din Torah. For another version of the story involving his neighbor being a priest see the introduction to the third printing of Reponsa Eretz Tzvi.

[18] Specifically, Rabbi Yitzchak Yaakov Erlich whose son R’ Yehuda ended up publishing the works of RATF Rav in Israel many years later.

[19] It is in Sosnovitz where Rabbi Yonah Stenzel (1904-1969) became a devoted student of RATF. Rabbi Stenzel, who also studied in Chochmei Lublin, eventually migrated to Tel Aviv where he re-stablished the study of Halacha and Mishna Yomit in memory of all those who perished in the Holocaust.

[20] It is important to emphasize the honor and prestige that even joining the student body of the yeshiva brought along with it. It was said that each student needed to know 200 folio of Talmud by heart to gain admission.

[21] See Responsa Eretz Tzvi I:25 in his letter to the Gerrer Rebbe “Who will give me wings of a dove, I will fly and settle (in the land of Israel), kiss its earth, embrace its stones may it be hastily in our days”

[22] See Geoneil Polin Ha’achronim pp.250

[23] See Eretz Tzvi I:27 where he mentions that a certain hiddush occurred to him in Meiron on Lag Ba’omer

[24] Geoneil Polin Ha’achronim pp.252: It is said that he after meeting with the Chazon Ish zt’l in Bnei Brak, the Chazon Ish praised his brilliant Torah mind saying that he had not met such a brilliant mind in many years.

[25] The name is used as a description of the land of Israel, in the book of Daniel for example (Chapter 11), from which he had recently returned. Additionally, Tzvi for his middle name.

[26] Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin was located at Lubitrovska 57, initially a vacant lot which Rabbi Meir Shapira secured from a wealthy donor. Eretz Tzvi’s first printing was at a press located footsteps away at Lubitrovska 62 as seen on the cover page.

[27] Geonei Polin Ha’achronim, pp 271. Reportedly, the copy used for the third printing was amongst many works that survived the destruction of the holocaust and arrived as part of a larger delivery to the misrad hadatot of Israel. It was this specific copy that had the glosses of the author in the margins. Among other works saved is RATF’s personal copy of Responsa Imrei Yosher with RATF’s glosses.

[28]Rabbi Mandelbaum is a notable scholar of all topics related to Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin and many of the great minds of Polish origin. Rabbi Mandelbaum added a new dimension to the Torah of RATF and many other geonim by collecting their dispersed writings and organizing them while also providing noteworthy glosses and footnotes in various reprintings. Rabbi Mandelbaum’s father was a student of RATF in Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin. Additionally, Rabbi Mandelbaum thanks Rav Shmuel Halevi Vozner Zt”l and other for sharing many of the items found in this second volume as he was in possession of various manuscripts and writings of RATF.

Bnei Brak, 2000 ,שו”ת ארץ צבי, חלק ב ה ‘ [29]

This term is also used in reference to – סניגורם של ישראל [30] the great Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev (1740-1809) who repeatedly strove to portray both Jews and Jewish issues in a positive light. For more on this topic see; Luckens, ‘Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev’, Ph.D. thesis (Temple University, 1974) pp. 38 citing M. Wilensky, I, 122-131.

[31] His words were recorded and can be found in Eretz Tzvi Moadim pp. 276 pp. 14 ארץ צבי עה”ת [32]

[33] Hidden in Thunder: Perspectives on Faith, Halachah and Leadership …, Volume 1, Esther Farbstein, pp. 14 ארץ צבי עה”ת [34]

[35] See http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/shoah/biton37.pdf based on the daily journals of Hillel Zeidman

[36] [The Last Path for Torah Leaders in the Warsaw Ghetto]. Bais Yaakov (in Hebrew) (47): 7 – Testimony of Avraham Hendel. An additional story is told about Rabbi Aryeh Tzvi that he was desperately searching for someone to help him conduct a chemical experiment with the margarine that was given out at meals in the shoe factory – to test for any treif fat that could have been mixed in and thus prohibited to eat.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Reponsa Eretz Tzvi, Introduction

[39] Siman 17

[40] Eretz Tzvi, [41] See Shulchan Aruch 58:6

[42] Responsa Eretz Tzvi I:36

[43] Talmud Torah 4:5

[44] Shabbat 10a

[45] Israel Friedman of Ruzhyn (1796 –1850), also called Israel Ruzhin, was a Hasidic rebbe in 19th-century Ukraine and Austria. Friedman was the first and only Ruzhiner Rebbe. However, his sons and grandsons founded their own dynasties, collectively known as the “House of Ruzhin”. These dynasties, which follow many of the traditions of the Ruzhiner Rebbe, are Bohush, Boyan, Chortkov, Husiatyn, Sadigura, and Shtefanesht. The founders of the Vizhnitz, Skver, and Vasloi Hasidic dynasties were related to the Ruzhiner Rebbe through his daughters.

[46] Menachot 4a

[47] It should be noted however, that RATF concedes that this line of reasoning would specifically apply to the great tzadikim whose prayers can be assumed bring the ultimate redemption closer vs. those of the typical petitioner.

[48] See Eretz Tzvi 1:1, 1:60

[49] 1:121

[50] Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Rabinowitz (1766–1813). A student of the Chozeh of Lublin (Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz) with whom he eventually parted ways. See Buber, Martin: Gog und Magog (1949; first published in English translation as For the Sake of Heaven, 1945). The Yid Hakadosh would become the teacher of Rabbi Simcha Bunem of Pshiskhe. See Rosen, Michael: The Quest for Authenticity.

[51] 7a s.a [52] See Piskei Teshuvot, Purim, Siman 695:5 Note 24. Where this responsa of RATF is brought as an example of an opinion that defends the practice of starting the Purim feast close to the end of the day where most of it will take place after Purim although it was begun before the end of the day.

[53] Additionally, regarding the proof from Tosafot in Berachot referencing Bilaam. See Nefesh Harav (pp.114) that when Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik heard this proof he laughed explains that it was evident that he שליט”א and Rabbi Shachter was not comfortable with this type of proof.

[54] See “From Principles to Rules and from Musar to Halakhah: The Hafetz Hayim’s Rulings on Libel and Gossip”, for Rabbi Dr. Brown’s discussion the works of the Hafetz Hayim at length and who discusses RATF’s discussion as well.

[55] Shaarei Teshuva, Sha’ar 3

[56] See below for further examples (non-exhaustive list) of limud zechut:

1.See Eretz Tzvi 34 – in defense of the custom for women of the time that didn’t daven everyday, when seemingly this is against the clear gemara (Berachot 20b) & Shulchan Aruch (O”C – 106:2) that women are obligated in tefillah. Rabbi Aryeh Tzvi provides additional support via comparison of tefillah to korbanot thus re-affirming the position of magen Avraham (ibid.) that suggests that the women will at some point request something from G-d and therefore fulfill their Torah obligation according to the Rambam.

2. See Eretz Tzvi 53 54 – in defense of the common custom to make a borei pri hagefen on wine that includes significant amounts of water which are 6x the wine although this is seemingly at odds with the normative halacha as both the Shulchan Aruch YOD (siman 134) & Rama (YOD 204:5) conclude that one should not make a borei pri hagefen on such a wine. 3. Eretz Tzvi 75 – in defense of the common custom in an area without an eiruv on Shabbat to use a minor to perform hotzaah. 4. See Eretz Tzvi 94-95 with respect to finding support for those kohanim who fly on an airplane which might fly directly over graves of Jews thus exposing them to tumas kohanim 5. Eretz TZvi 96 – in defense of the common custom to make seltzer on Shabbos – 6. Eretz Tzvi 97 – in defense of the custom of certain chassidim to sit in the sukkah and make a bracha on shmini atzeret – though ostensibly at odds with the gemara. 7. Eretz Tzvi 125 – finding support for creating a mikvah using snow in a place that no other type of mikvah would be possible. 8. Eretz Tzvi 30 – in defense of the custom of the Ashkenazim in the diaspora who refrain from reciting the daily birchat kohanim 9. Eretz Tzvi 35 – in defense of the custom for those washing netilat yadaim and the water does not cover most of their hand

[57] See Geonei Polin Ha’achronim, pp. 262

[58] See Chiddushei Rabbeinu Chaim Halevi al Harambam, Hilchot Tefillah as well as the he’arot of the Chazon Ish

[59] Eretz Tzvi (Torah commentary) Introduction

תרפ”ה Eretz Tzvi, Moadim, pp. 110, Sukkot [60]

[61] Kabbalistic work of the Ari’zal

ד”ה ודע [62]

[63] Chapter 2:7

[64] Another notable exchange is one that appears in the second volume of Eretz Tzvi where RATF engages in correspondence with none other than the Ishbitzer Rebbe, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner zt”l. It was in 1934 that the Ishbitzer Rebbe sent a question that was bothering him regarding a specific comment of Maimonides related to Hilchot Shevuot. RATF goes on to cite various chassidic and Kabbalistic sources and their bearing on the halachic issues. Thank you to Rabbi Josh Rosenfeld for pointing out this source, in his Sunday Responsa Series.

[65] Responsa Eretz Tzvi, I:12

[66] Siman 62

[67] Sofrim U’Sfarim, Tel Aviv, 1959, pp.189. [Thank you to Rabbi Eliezer Brodt who brought this source to my attention]

[68] The discourse can be found in it’s entirety in Eretz Tzvi Moadim pp. 276.

[69] Zohar Chadash, Rut

[70] See also Eretz Tzvi, II: 72, 73

[71] This unique edition was printed in the framework of daily Daf Yomi and daily Mishnah. A combined calendar of Daf Yomi and the daily Mishnah is printed at the beginning of the book for the years to come: 5767-1912. The tablet is spread over four columns. Beneath the calendar of Daf Yomi, a special prayer was printed “after the end of a chapter from a daily mishnah.” This prayer was composed by Rabbi Yonah Stenzel zt “l, in memory of the Holocaust victims” who were killed for the sanctification of God … by the German oppressors. [Seen at Tzolman’s auctions (Bidspirit.org)]

[72] See Shabbat 118a – “If only [Bnei] Yisrael would keep two consecutive Shabbatot they would be immediately redeemed”

[73] Sanhedrin, 71a