The Meaning and Importance of Women’s Lamdanut (Analytical Talmudic Learning), and of Lamdanut in General (Column 58)
With God’s help
The previous column dealt with a general characterization of Talmudic and halakhic lamdanut. I am hurrying to get the present column published before Purim, in which I will address questions that arose in the discussions surrounding my article in Makor Rishon’s Shabbat supplement, which served as the background to the previous two columns.
At the end of the previous column I gave a number of references to places where these claims and questions were raised. Some were raised here on the site around the previous column and the one before it; some appeared in the responses that appeared in last week’s Shabbat issue; and some in the talkbacks to the two articles on the Makor Rishon website. There were also responses by email and in other media, for example here and here, and there was also a joint interview with me on Galei Yisrael together with Rabbanit Oshra Koren, who also raised several claims. But before I continue, I will add a few clarifications, whose need became clear from the responses to what I wrote in the previous column.
What is lamdanut? A few clarifications
First, I must emphasize that I did not mean specifically the yeshiva-Lithuanian kind of lamdanut (see my footnote there about Rabbi Ovadia Yosef). A lamdan, in my eyes, is a person who does not err and confuse similar things, and does not fall into the mistakes that ensnare a layman—that is, someone who knows the halakhic discourse and its nuances, and is at home “inside” it. It goes without saying that Maharsham, Rabbi Akiva Eger, Hatam Sofer, Mishneh LaMelekh, and all the great later authorities were consummate lamdanim (and do not need my certification for that), even if they did not engage in Brisker analysis.
Moreover, I also do not distinguish between a lamdan and a halakhic decisor. On the contrary: I have already written several times that the accepted distinction in yeshivot between lamdanut and practical ruling is a scandal and a grave mistake. It implies that the lamdan may say whatever comes into his head and pile mountain upon mountain upon some worthless missing serif of a yod, so long as his structure is elegant and consistent, without the control of common sense. By the same token, it implies that the decisor is not required to understand the Talmudic passage in depth on the analytic plane, and may rule from precedents mechanically, like a sorcerer (to use Maharal’s term, Netiv HaTorah, chapter 15). This is absurd, and I do not understand how it became so deeply embedded in the yeshiva study hall.
In my reply to Y. in the talkbacks to the previous column, I noted that I should have distinguished between two kinds of lamdanut: 1. the ability to use analytic lamdanic tools; 2. the ability to apply them with common sense and to distinguish between the essential and the secondary. Lamdanut in sense 1 alone is mere dialectical cleverness. Greatness in Torah is lamdanut in sense 2, but lamdanut in sense 1 is still a condition for it.
I will now turn to the claims that were raised in response to what I wrote.
The claims I will not address
In my article I argued that the women who are studying have not reached a strong lamdanic level, and that the best among them (literally only a handful) have reached the level of a good avrekh. I will not enter here into the reasons, since I already discussed them in the original article. For some reason, many respondents ignored that and argued against me that this is only the beginning of the process, and that there are many barriers and delays facing women who want to advance in study. All this I know very well, and I explicitly wrote so in my article. Therefore I will not go into it again here. My words were not an accusation against the women, for whose efforts and the difficulties they face I have great admiration.
Other claims that were raised concerned the value of Torah study of every kind, and not specifically the kind I am discussing here—lamdanut. Above I clarified that I was not speaking about one specific school of lamdanut, but about a broader phenomenon.
Beyond that, in what I wrote I am only describing an existing state of affairs. One should not infer from this that women’s Torah study has no value, or that non-lamdanic study in general has no value. I did not say that, and I do not think so. There is great value in every kind of Torah study, certainly when it is undertaken with deep devotion. I am only stating a fact: that female lamdanut, as of now, is still in its infancy (below I will explain why this matters).
The claims I will address
It seems to me that, overall, three main claims were raised against me—two normative and the third factual:
- Many argued against me that lamdanut is not essential and not important at all. Some went so far as to argue that even for a Rosh Yeshiva it is not a relevant criterion. Lamdanut, they told me, is only one form of study among several possible ones; moreover, it is masculine in essence (since historically this mode of study certainly developed in a male environment). Women have other forms of study, no less good, which will contribute an additional storey to the still-incomplete Talmudic-lamdanic edifice.
- Many raised the claim that even if a Rosh Yeshiva must be a lamdan, a community rabbi need not be. Many added that it is far more important that he possess social and human sensitivity, know how to give sermons, advise members of the community, and lead them through their hardships. Those are the needs of the typical community today.
- Finally, a factual claim was raised: I wrote that there are a few women who have reached the lamdanic level of a good avrekh (= a reasonable level of lamdanut). People argued against me that this is insulting and that I do not know the reality. There are women of very high lamdanic level, though only a few of them (because we are at the beginning of the process). The more zealous respondents even mentioned several names by way of example—most of whom, whether by chance or not, I in fact know and appreciate very much. Most of them also added the fact (well known and regrettable, and mentioned in my original article as well) that the male rabbis, too, are not always lamdanic exemplars.
I will now try to examine these claims one by one.
- Is lamdanut the only form of study?
I dealt with this question in the previous column. First I must reiterate and clarify what I argued there. When I speak about lamdanut, I mean lamdanut in its broad sense, not specifically that of the Brisk school and what branched off from it.[1] In that sense, lamdanut is the significant study of Talmudic and halakhic materials. This lamdanut is a paradigm in the same sense as a scientific paradigm, but not in Thomas Kuhn’s interpretation. That is, we are not speaking about one specific method of study chosen because of sociological and other considerations—a kind of convention that does not express any essence of the learning itself. Lamdanut is the study that includes deep understanding and sensitivity to the nuances of the materials under discussion.
As I wrote in the previous column, when we speak of lamdanut in this broad sense, this is nothing other than study grounded in a fundamental understanding of the halakhic and Talmudic sphere and discourse, rather than one specific method or another. When someone is a lamdan in this sense, that means he is a person who stands “inside” and not “outside.” Of course, within that framework there can be different and varied forms of study, and yet there remains a distinction between one who is a lamdan and one who is not. A person can be well acquainted with Talmudic and halakhic sources, and the language may not be foreign to him, and still it is evident that he stands “outside” (to varying degrees). He does not command the lamdanic toolbox and the basic halakhic distinctions, and because of this, when he reads a Talmudic text or a passage from the medieval or later authorities, he may arrive at errors and misunderstandings. In such a case, this is not merely a different form of analysis; it is an error.
I should note that I myself sometimes study in forms other than the accepted yeshiva mode. Some would say that these cannot be counted as lamdanut, even in its broad sense. I disagree with that, but from my experience I agree that additional and new forms of study ought to be created on top of the existing ones, not in their place. Study by someone who is not thoroughly at home in the existing lamdanut, in all its varieties, appears foreign and strange and does not join the halakhic tradition. It also generally suffers from errors and misunderstandings. Even Talmudic scholarship, when done by someone who is not at home in yeshiva-style lamdanut, seems to me less good and less true to the subject. Detachment from what takes place within the discipline can of course provide added value, as in every field, and yet the lack casts a heavy shadow over the final product. It is much more useful to know the existing tradition very well and from within, and only afterwards to try to detach from it and observe it “from outside” as well.
The same is true of other forms of study that arise outside the academy: one can easily sense the absence of the foundational level, where that absence exists. The force and significance of these additions and changes increase dramatically when they come on top of the existing level. Let me tell an anecdote from my own experience. When I taught at the hesder yeshiva in Yeruham, a student from Hebron Yeshiva (in Jerusalem) came to me and asked whether there was any point in leaving Hebron and coming to Yeruham to study there. Would he acquire anything new that could help him advance? I told him that I thought the answer was yes, but that I recommended doing so only after a few more years in Hebron. There he would acquire the accepted yeshiva way and become well seasoned in it, and after that the special accents he would hear in Yeruham (mainly from the Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Blumentzweig) would help him much more. There is something in the Haredi-Lithuanian yeshiva world that gives far better basic tools than any other yeshiva. It is something in the air and in the tradition that is transmitted not only through books but orally. As a rule, the lamdanut of a graduate of a Haredi yeshiva cannot be compared with that of a graduate of a hesder yeshiva. And this is not a question of the number of years, but of the atmosphere, the culture, and above all the all-encompassing character of the world one inhabits there. In Lithuanian yeshivot, conceptual moves are in the air, and study is one’s entire world. You hear things quoted in the name of this or that Rosh Yeshiva, or from one of the later authorities whose teachings reached the yeshivot as part of the Oral Torah through his students. That atmosphere creates a lamdanic power that people do not manage to reach in non-Haredi yeshivot. This does not mean that I have no criticism of the style of study in the Lithuanian yeshivot and of its quality. Sometimes you will find there type-1 lamdanut detached from type 2 (see the definitions above). But the basic foundation is given there in its most solid form. One cannot compare the graduate formed there with the products of non-Haredi yeshivot (including advanced yeshivot).
The best graduates of the Zionist yeshivot have advantages in openness, originality, opening additional avenues, and perhaps also in common sense. But all of these receive their significance only if the learner is well equipped with the first level—namely, with classical basic lamdanut (lamdanut in sense 1). The same is true regarding women: there is value in different forms of study that may emerge there, but they will receive significance and validity only if they appear on top of the first level of classical lamdanut.
Against this background it may be easier to understand my claim that among women who study Torah, it is hard to find high-level lamdanut. I wrote that the best among them have reached the level of a good avrekh, and It is no small matter. (this is no small matter). And yet it is important to understand and internalize that this is the situation, and not to live in denial and suppression. Even if they possess common sense and understanding of the material, they lack type-1 lamdanut—that is, the analytic tools and insights developed in the lamdanic tradition. Therefore, on the lamdanic axis (of type 1), which begins with the Haredi-Lithuanian yeshivot and then descends through the Zionist yeshivot, women currently occupy a lower rung.
I do not know whether there is such a thing as study with a feminine character, but it is only reasonable that a population that did not participate in the game has the potential to renew additional forms of study and additional perspectives. But, as I said, that potential has significance only if it comes on top of what already exists and on top of type-1 lamdanut, not in place of them.
- Must a community rabbi—man or woman—be a lamdan?
The claim regarding a community rabbi sounds very logical. Most members of our communities are not outstanding Torah scholars, and their needs have more to do with human problems, listening, and psychological wisdom than with lamdanut. Even their Torah needs are related more to clarifying Jewish law in simple questions (when and by whom Kaddish is said in the synagogue, or when one goes to the cemetery at the end of the year of mourning) than to lamdanut.
On the other hand, precisely today it is very common for a community to include people with fairly high Torah levels. Many of them studied in yeshivot, and therefore the classes the rabbi gives in his community cannot be classes of a low lamdanic level. That will affect his standing in their eyes, and rightly so. It is not desirable for there to be lamdanim in the community who are greater than the rabbi (unless we are truly dealing with rare exceptions, in which case it is also not a problem). With all due respect to ethical talks and lectures for the festivals, the rabbi’s standing depends on the significant Torah level that he projects. Beyond that, he is also supposed to raise the community to higher Torah levels, and not suffice with responding to needs—that is, community services and moral talks or homiletic discourses, as is customary in our districts.
Beyond that, even answers to questions of Jewish law must be given from a lamdanic perspective. There are simple questions that can be answered by consulting concise handbooks, but the analysis of complex situations requires lamdanic skill. True, it is common for people and communities to turn to other rabbis in order to receive answers (I myself have received quite a few questions from communities that already have a rabbi), but this is certainly not the desired state of affairs. It is a result of the situation I described, in which non-lamdanic rabbis are appointed, and therefore the trust they receive from their communities is limited.
As I mentioned in my article, humane and communal service can be provided to a community by a psychologist, or even by a priest. They will do that no less well than any rabbi. The rabbi’s role cannot be exhausted by providing such services, and even when he does provide them, this ought to be nourished by his Torah world. A rabbi is first and foremost a Torah scholar in the classical Torah sense, and everything else comes on top of that. Therefore he must be a Torah personality, while alongside that there should of course also be sensitivity, human wisdom, and understanding of the human soul. The claim that was repeated again and again in response to what I wrote—as if one comes at the expense of the other—is tendentious and distorted. Both are required, and lamdanut is more required than humanity and social sensitivity. For those services he can make use of professionals, or of people who have better abilities than his own. That is not the essence of a community rabbi. The claim that social skills are needed does not render lamdanut unnecessary. After the rabbi is a projecting Torah personality, people will trust him and come to consult him on other matters as well. But first he must be a rabbi, and only afterward a communal therapist. The rabbi’s standing is nourished by the honor of Torah, not by the professional authority of a therapist, and the members of his community ought to respect him because of his Torah.
Finally, in my article in the essay collection HaRav, I argued that in the past communities did not maintain rabbis merely as service providers. They regarded it as an honor to support a Torah scholar who was several sizes greater than they were, in order to advance him and not only in order to receive services from him. In our time the conception of the rabbi as a provider of services to the community has taken over, and of course there is substance to that. But that is not the whole picture. We have lost the dimension of the community as one that provides a service to the rabbi. I explained there that without some community supporting him, it is very difficult for a person to grow in Torah over the years. This is yet another reason why it is worthwhile for the community rabbi to be a lamdan. Supporting such a person is important also in the sense of the chain of transmission of the Torah to future generations. I elaborated further in that article.
To conclude this point, I will simply repeat what I already wrote in the article. The problem exists among male rabbis too, but the solution is not to demand therapeutic skills instead of Torah lamdanut; rather, it is to raise the general bar and appoint those who meet it and are worthy of the role, regardless of gender. Affirmative action and politically correct discourse usually only do harm. When I wrote that nowadays one sometimes demands of a rabbi the ability to locate sources and quote from the Responsa Project, I meant men and women alike, and not—as I was accused—as a description of how I assess women. I definitely think there are women who are beyond that level, but I argued that lowering the bar in order to promote equality does not really advance equality; it simply leads to the appointment of male and female rabbis with inferior qualifications.
The significance of all this
Before I move on to discuss the third question, I should summarize and discuss the significance of all this for our issue. If lamdanut is indeed the key to Torah stature and to rabbinic and Torah positions, then it is clear that the level of female lamdanut is a necessary condition for women’s advancement in the Torah world. As long as a female lamdanic stratum of significant level has not yet emerged, we are stuck. Even if someone does not accept my claims about the importance and centrality of lamdanut as such, he will still have to admit that this is how things are perceived in the Torah world and among those who set the standards there. They assess a learner according to the measure of his lamdanut, and certainly not according to his human sensitivity or social skills. Therefore, at least de facto (and in my opinion rightly so), recognition of women’s Torah study at a high level depends on the female lamdanut that will develop.
A person’s lamdanut can be heard in lectures or in articles. Usually this happens in writing, because a person can put into writing more than he can say orally, and do so with greater length and detail. Beyond that, the audience listening to him is not always suitable for a lamdanic lecture, whereas a written article reaches, in the better form, a lamdanic readership that can appreciate it and critique it. Therefore, when I claimed that women do not write lamdanic articles, I did not mean to make some point about writing as such. Writing is not a value in itself, and of course not a necessary requirement. True, writing helps shape lamdanic ability, but from my point of view writing is mainly an indication of the lamdanic level itself. The absence of female lamdanic writing means the absence of female lamdanut.
A note on essentialism
Against this background, one can hear essentialist statements claiming that women are not suited to learning Torah and Jewish law in depth, and are not built for halakhic and Talmudic lamdanut. In my article I mentioned these claims and added that as long as women have not discharged the burden of proof and shown that they are capable of this, those claims cast a shadow over the entire revolution in women’s learning. Women will not receive the proper attitude and appreciation as long as we do not see female lamdanut at the very highest level. I already mentioned that there are various objective reasons for this situation (we are at the beginning of the road, there are barriers and delays, and so on), and yet as a matter of fact the burden of proof has not yet been discharged.
Of course, in any case one cannot accept an essentialist claim as a sweeping statement. At most, this would be a statistical claim—namely, that women generally tend to be of this sort. No one argues that every woman, by her very essence, cannot be a lamdan. That is a rather ridiculous speculation and certainly one without any basis. In any event, for the time being it is difficult to refute the statistical claim (although I am not inclined to think it is correct, or at least that the current situation is unchangeable), as long as the burden of proof has not been discharged—and that is what I wrote.
In any event, it is important to note that this is a meaningless statement, because even if it were true, that would not imply that women are forbidden to study; and certainly it would not mean that a woman who has studied and reached a good level is not entitled to the appropriate regard, including appointment to a rabbinic role. So what is the point of engaging in essentialism? I am writing these lines in this subsection only because of the feelings of offense (unjustified feelings) that were aroused in some of the women who responded to what I wrote.
- The actual state of affairs
The third claim concerns, ostensibly, facts—or at least the assessment of facts. The question is whether the assertion that there are almost no women of real lamdanut is in fact correct. As stated, people argued against me that I do not know the reality. I was told that there are quite a few women of lamdanut whom I have not heard of and whose writings I have not read. Many complained that I am ignoring reality and speaking without examining the matter in sufficient depth.
I readily admit that I did not examine the matter systematically. Moreover, it is entirely possible that there are wonderful hidden women scholars whose names I have never heard. But as someone who is active in the field of women’s learning and acquainted with a considerable number of the leading women learners, I wrote these things on the basis of a clear impression I have. In order to persuade you that this is a grounded claim, I will offer a few indications that this is indeed the case.
First indication: the absence of lamdanic articles
First, let me ask here what I asked many of the respondents: could they kindly send me a high-level lamdanic article written by a woman? So far I have not received even one. I know of a few isolated examples, and none of them rises to a truly high level (beyond that of a good avrekh). To this day I have not seen a woman who has offered an original solution to a difficult passage in Maimonides or to a sharp contradiction between Talmudic passages (I assume there have been a few such cases, but the fact that I have not seen them, and that some of my best friends have not seen them either, also says something). It is not pleasant for me to say this about women whom I know and value greatly, but I see it as a duty, because denial is part of the problem and prevents its solution.
It is true that when there are no platforms publishing lamdanic articles by women (see my discussion of this in my article in Makor Rishon), it is hard to expect such articles to exist. People generally do not write lamdanic articles only for the drawer (though I do not know why not, and in what way this differs from poetry). But here I must raise another point. About two years ago, after I was exposed to this bleak state of affairs, we founded at the Bar-Ilan Midrasha a journal for women’s writing in Talmudic analysis, called Derisha, precisely in order to fill this gap and provide a platform for women who write. The editorial board offers help, advice, and guidance to writers who seek it, in order to advance female lamdanut and bring it to expression. We sent out requests in various places asking women to submit suitable articles. I assume you would have expected, as I did, that all the women scholars of the world who cannot find a platform to publish their lamdanic creations (which are presumably being written for the drawer) would seize this opportunity as though they had found a great treasure. I thought the editorial board would be flooded with submissions, after all this is almost the only platform that enables women to publish learned Torah material, and even assists them in doing so. But lo and behold: the editorial board is searching everywhere for writers, and not really finding them. There is simply no one expressing a desire to send material for publication. So I ask myself: where are all those hidden women scholars of whom the respondents to what I wrote keep speaking?
Some argued that women, by their nature, do not write, are shy, and so on. In academic fields I do not find that convincing. Those very same women write and publish articles and books on academic platforms. It is only in the lamdanic sphere that there is a striking and obvious absence. In my experience, if someone has something to say, he does not keep it bottled up. At the very least I would expect that some of the women would not keep it to themselves and would want to publish. Therefore I find it hard to accept the claim that this is merely shyness.
There were women who told me that they had never heard of this journal and that no call for materials had reached them. So here it is: I have already written this in Makor Rishon, and I am repeating it here, and I have also said it to everyone with whom I have spoken. I would be very, very glad if, following what I have written, additional submissions were to reach the editorial board of Derisha. I am not writing this merely as a challenge intended to prove my claim (that there is no female lamdanut), but truly in order to advance the matter. As noted, without lamdanut and lamdanic writing it will be very difficult to break the glass ceiling that hangs over women’s learning. By contrast, when there is female lamdanic writing at a high level, many of the opponents will find it hard to ignore women and their learning or to disparage them.
Second indication: denial
To view the matter from another angle, I will relate how all this began. I mentioned in my article in Makor Rishon that I wrote an article together with a female student of mine in the beit midrash for female doctoral students at Bar-Ilan. I looked for a place to publish it, and among others I sent it to Asif (see my article and column 56 on this), and as stated it was rejected. Suddenly I understood the depth of the problem. There is no Torah journal (known to me) that is willing to accept a lamdanic article by a woman. I thought to myself that this creates a very great difficulty and constitutes a serious barrier to women’s advancement in lamdanut. As stated, lamdanut is the foundation for women’s advancement in the Torah world.
Following this, I wrote by email to a number of leaders of women’s learning, heads of midrashot and senior women teachers, and asked whether this state of affairs was familiar to them. I repeated my claim that this barrier has serious significance for women’s learning and for the advancement of the process, and I proposed establishing a platform for women’s lamdanic writing so that there would be a horizon of advancement for women in Torah study.
To my astonishment, the spirit that prevailed in that email group was one of despair and defeatism. Some of them told me that there was nothing to work for, and that there is almost no woman who both wants and is able to write a lamdanic article. At that time I was only at the beginning of my involvement in the field of women’s learning and did not know the situation, and of course I was hearing the voices of those very same women speaking publicly about the wonders of the women’s Torah revolution. No wonder I was stunned and deeply disappointed. There is a double discourse here: inside, a spirit of despair is blowing; outside, a spirit of sweeping enthusiasm.
I obviously do not mean to accuse anyone of lying. That is not the point, and in any case this is not a lie. I bring this here for two reasons. First, as an additional indication that this really is the state of women’s learning. Those women certainly know the situation well—certainly better than I do—and they too support my claim. So it is not only I, who supposedly do not know the hidden women scholars, who am saying things to their detriment without justification; rather, the same is true of those who know them very well and may even belong among them. Second, I wanted to point to a kind of denial. If even someone who assesses the situation as I do does not allow herself to say so out loud, then we are dealing with denial of the problem, and that delays its solution.
As stated, after some time the journal Derisha was founded, and it became clear to me that they knew the situation better than I did, and that this is apparently indeed the actual state of affairs (which of course did not prevent the protests that came after what I wrote). Still, my problem is with the denial. Bringing things out into the open will not weaken resolve; but even if it did, it would still be a condition for progress. As Justice Brandeis said, sunlight is the best disinfectant. The other side of the coin is that denial is, of course, what makes the disease chronic. That is why I wrote these things in Makor Rishon in rather sharp language, which caused some of my acquaintances—my senior partners in this process, as well as my students—to become angry and offended. I do not see where this offense comes from, if I am merely describing the factual state of affairs as it actually is. This was my way of aiming my arrows at the denial and stirring the public to act in the right direction. The situation I described is the actual situation. As for style, some argued that I used language that was too sharp, and if so I regret that and apologize for it. But I very much doubt that without that, my words would have produced the resonance that might perhaps contribute to changing the situation. Therefore I repeat them here, and even spell them out in greater detail.
One more note on the responses to what I wrote
Some of the men and women who responded agreed with me on the factual plane (though some of them complained about the wording, and others did not). Many others denied it emphatically, both in writing and orally. As stated, they repeated that there is a substantial number of women of high lamdanic level, certainly above the level of a good avrekh. As I have explained, to the best of my knowledge there are no such women, and even female lamdanut at the level of a good avrekh—and again, this is a level of lamdanut that should not be belittled—is quite rare. So how is it that people, men and women alike, deny this reality? Am I not seeing what they see? What exactly is being missed here?
It seems to me that behind this lies the difficulty I discussed in the previous column. An outsider does not know how to assess lamdanut and lamdanim. The respondents to what I wrote, who speak about high levels of lamdanut among women, thereby testify about themselves that they simply stand “outside.” With all due respect, and despite how uncomfortable it is for me to say this, this claim is simply factually false. They may know the women in question, but they do not really understand what lamdanut is, and therefore they cannot evaluate and determine whether there are such women and how many. Incidentally, one could put this to an empirical test. In principle, one could ask men in the advanced years of a yeshiva program and leading women in the lamdanic field to write anonymous lamdanic articles, and then have a committee evaluate them and determine their relative lamdanic level.
[1] See in the talkbacks following the previous column the discussion regarding my comment about Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
Discussion
More power to him (though I do not know the books).
So in your view lomdus really is something very broad.
If so, I can give an example of a lack of lomdus that I encountered (I’ve encountered many, but this was an especially traumatic event), and specifically on the part of a man. Maybe this can also clarify for others what is meant.
By way of introduction—the man in question was a doctoral student who wrote about environmental quality in halakhah (I don’t know exactly what, but in that area). He was writing at a Canadian university that had a general humanities faculty (not a Talmud department or Jewish studies department), and from what I checked, his supervisors were more experts in Jewish biblical interpretation. This introduction explains how he probably did not meet anyone who understood anything in Gemara before he met me.
And now for his astonishing claim—he discussed the prohibition against wastefulness and said that the Gemara calls this bal tashchit. According to him, the usual understanding is that the Gemara means the verse “you shall not destroy its trees,” but this understanding is problematic, because the verse says “lo tashchit” and not “bal tashchit.” He suggested that the prohibition is learned from “but for your own lifeblood I will require an accounting,” from which the Gemara in Bava Kamma learns, according to him, that a person may not injure himself, and the prohibition of wastefulness is similar to that. Proof of this comes from the Mishnah in Bava Kamma 90, which equates the two. Maimonides was the one who linked “bal tashchit” with “you shall not destroy its trees,” and from there the mistake rolled onward.
So in his remarks there are logical problems too, but also an analysis of the Gemara without any familiarity with how Gemara works—a problem I have also seen among women Torah students (though I have not seen anything this catastrophic at this level).
By the way, sometimes freedom from the basic assumptions about “how the Gemara works” reveals new and astonishing things, but one has to check that those basic assumptions really have no basis—and in order to check that, of course, one must know them…
P.S. Sad—when I pointed this out to him orally, he said “thank you.” That one can still understand, because what I was basically saying (though very politely) was that he had no idea what he was talking about. But when I sent him a written elaboration, he did not reply at all.
“To this day I have not seen a woman who proposed an original solution to a difficult Rambam or to a hard contradiction between sugyot.”
I haven’t checked in a systematic and comprehensive way, but in most of the other articles too there are no significant breakthroughs. They are mainly either summaries or analogical applications from one thing to another to contemporary issues (autonomous vehicles on Shabbat, prisoner exchanges with Hamas, and so on
…)
You also described the Haredi yeshiva world as more successful (at least in type “1” lomdus), and that doesn’t fit with the picture of the world that I saw in Bnei Brak. Every time I came to some study hall and picked up that study hall’s collected volume—I came away unimpressed
Since yesterday (11 Adar) was the yahrzeit of our mighty genius Rabbi Chida of blessed memory, I am honored to refer you to the entry “Rabbanit” in Shem HaGedolim, where Rabbi Chida notes several Torah novelties by women. And Maimonides already wrote at the end of chapter 4 of Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah that “the discussions of Abaye and Rava” are explanations of the commandments, which in his view can be known by man and woman, adult and child, broad-minded and limited-minded alike. In Responsa Chaim Shnayim, siman 17, a halakhic correspondence is brought between Mrs. Marcada Arukh and the rabbi of Alexandria, Rabbi Avraham Israel; see Dr. Y. Levin’s article, “Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim’s Responsum Regarding Women and Torah Study,” Akdamot 13 (available online).
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
Regarding your point that the learning of someone who is not familiar with the existing lomdus appears foreign and strange, and regarding the fact that it suffers from errors and misunderstandings: a good case supporting your point is Prof. David Henshke. If we take, for example, his book Ma Nishtanah, one can see there an example of good scholarship which often proves (mainly in the footnotes) that researchers who were not truly at home in the sources arrived at mistaken understandings, especially when they drew analogies from the ways of the nations—for example, his note on comparing the symposium to the yeshivah on the Seder night, and also his notes on the studies of his colleague Aharon Shemesh regarding Passover.
But Henshke also shows the opposite: the burden of lomdanut that does not see basic changes between different sources and within its own toolbox does not do a good job of cracking the structure of the Seder night. On a personal level, the order Henshke creates allows one to distinguish between the essential and the secondary, and enables me to build a proper Seder night, less cluttered with conjectures flying through the air that, to my regret, do not convince me or speak to me (and it seems to me not always merely because I am an ignoramus who is sometimes caught in mistakes), and above all they exhaust me.
And if we return to Prof. David Henshke and compare his articles from the beginning of his written scholarly career to his path today, we discover the gap between a person who imposes on his many readers and heaps up learned details that are unnecessary for the matter he is dealing with (once he published an article in Tarbiz showing how a claim of one of the Acharonim is already found in the writings of the Qumran sect), and at times (as in his early controversies with Prof. Shlomo Naeh [Em LaMasoret; The Short Prayer of One Walking on the Road]) one can see the polemical agenda in the articles more than the persuasive content. But as time passed one can see the balance between his phenomenal mastery of the expanses of Torah and the ability to stop and look at basic sources in high resolution and reach sound conclusions. Therefore, in my humble opinion, he chose the scholar of Midrashei Halakhah, Prof. Menahem Kahana, as a reader of his book before publication (Kahana opposes the yeshiva world, as may be seen in his article on the difference between the world of academia and the world of the yeshivot, published in the book BeChevlei Masoret VeTemurah).
“My strength is exhausted like a woman’s”—it seems that sometimes דווקא the lack of a yeshiva background allows for a fresh and sharp reading of sources (contrary to your statement, “even Talmudic scholarship, when done by a person not steeped in yeshiva lomdus, seems to me less good and less true”). And here the place of the woman returns (Kahana also noted this in the above article regarding the difference between the different worlds of learning—yeshiva and academic). And there are some good examples of this in academia (Liora Elias, of blessed memory, for example; Vered Noam, may she live and be well), and of course also men (Kahana, the later Henshke, Naeh). On the other hand, lomdim who came into academia sometimes created a mixing of fields and did not lay aside the conjectures of the yeshiva world even when they came to the field of philology.
Indeed, Rav is great in biblical Hebrew, and many are great in the language of the Sages, and your words are apt that the conception has almost entirely been lost in Religious Zionism that the community serves the rabbi and sees him as its great man, its hero. (And here is something fresh in the opening of Maharat Persico: https://7minim.wordpress.com/2017/03/09/tau/)
Regarding your internal conclusion that lomdus is required more than humanity and sociality: sensitivity does not belong only to the field of social sciences, which is secondary in your eyes (also) in this context of what is proper for a community rabbi. Sensitivity (= attention to details) belongs to the ability to distinguish between sources (part of your definition of a lomdan), to connect the studied text to the people hearing its lesson. In many cases (it seems to me mainly in more closed and less urban communities), the rabbi is the address for matters involving “human service.” In many cases, feeding decisions in such cases from the rabbi’s Torah world can damage and interfere with common sense in reaching correct decisions (and in my opinion, many shocking cases prove this). People’s tendency not to go to service providers (therapists, etc.) but specifically to the rabbi takes us back to the old world in which, on the one hand, the rabbi was the greatest of the group, and on the other hand he dealt with various matters for which he had no suitable training. And perhaps this is one of the reasons that the age of rabbis in communities is coming to an end, and not only because of diminished lomdani stature. But still, what remains—in my humble opinion—in many communities is the need to combine lomdus with sensitivity and sociality, and that is what distinguishes a community rabbi: that he is communal. The division you made between lomdus and humanity/sociality (which I join to the textual sensitivity presented above and call all of them “sensitivity”) seems crude to me, especially in the way you presented it in this post.
Both you and I would be happy if our community rabbi decided that this year we study sugyot on family matters from tractate Ketubot and other sources in depth, out of a desire to discuss burning issues in the lives of the community members from within the sources. Both of us would want the conjectures flying in the air to settle on people’s hearts. Like you, I too would be happy with more lomdani articles published by women, and that there would be women community rabbis. Your community rabbi, when he would give a class in honor of Purim, would discuss citations from the Acharonim about wearing shaatnez on Purim and continue from there to the place of Purim in our world according to Pachad Yitzhak and others. My community rabbi would read passages from the beginning of tractate Megillah and discuss the status of the holiday, wondering together with the public about the fact that this is a unique holiday in being on two different dates, or alternatively would read the Book of Esther with interpretations like those of Rabbi Binyamin Lau, Michael Eisenberg, and others.
Needless to say, linguistically the Gemara uses “bal” not as a quotation from the Torah but as a description of the prohibition that appears in the Torah. Like: “bal tosif,” “bal tigra,” “bal yachel,” “bal yera’eh u-bal yimatzei,” “bal talin,” and “bal teshaktzu.”
I really do agree that sometimes freeing oneself from conventions (even if based on unfamiliarity) gives interesting angles, as can happen with the standpoint of laymen in any field.
First, I’m not talking about breakthroughs but about a lomdani move. How many academic articles are groundbreaking? Second, I didn’t expect this from all women, but among men there certainly are such articles as well (in my opinion, in Haredi journals most articles are of that kind. An article contains a novel lomdani move, even if not a breakthrough).
S.Z.L., what our rabbis call “Torah novelties” is usually a novel ruling, not a lomdani move (like resolving a difficult Rambam). But of course there can also be lomdani Torah novelties by women.
Shlomi, it seems to me that I agree with everything you wrote. Is there any point on which you disagree with what I wrote? I did not notice one.
Regarding your internal conclusion that lomdus is required more than humanity and sociality: sensitivity does not belong only to the field of social sciences, which is secondary in your eyes (also) in this context of what is proper for a community rabbi. Sensitivity (= attention to details) belongs to the ability to distinguish between sources (part of your definition of a lomdan), to connect the studied text to the people hearing its lesson. In many cases (it seems to me mainly in more closed and less urban communities), the rabbi is the address for matters involving “human service.” In many cases, “feeding” decisions in such cases from the rabbi’s Torah world can damage and interfere with common sense in reaching correct decisions (and in my opinion, many shocking cases prove this).
The division you made between lomdus and humanity/sociality (which I join to the textual sensitivity presented above and call all of them “sensitivity”) seems crude to me, especially in the way you presented it in this post.
1. Sensitivity belongs to no science, neither social nor natural nor lomdus. I am speaking about human sensitivity, and this is present or absent among scientists or rabbis just as among human beings of all types. What does this have to do with the sciences?
2. The use of “sensitivity” in relation to sources and texts is metaphorical in this context, and there is no necessary connection between it and human sensitivity. This wordplay is a crude conflation of two completely different concepts (which apparently stems from a lack of sensitivity to using the same term in two contexts 🙂 ).
3. The distinction I made between lomdus and human sensitivity is sharp and self-evident, and I do not see anything crude in it. What connection is there at all between the two? The connection you made between two completely different and independent senses of sensitivity is, in my view, especially crude, and because of it you see my self-evident claim as especially crude. By the way, I do not mean to play with words here, but exactly what I wrote.
4. Your remarks seem doubly strange to me in light of what you yourself write—that lomdus is no guarantee of sensitivity. You yourself bring shocking cases of a rabbi who gave insensitive advice. So what does that mean? That there is a clear distinction between lomdus and sensitivity, no? And those are precisely my words (= a particularly crude distinction, according to you).
5. Of course a rabbi needs human sensitivity, and of course lomdus does not replace that requirement. I wrote that too. What I claimed is that the rabbi’s primary role is not the social-human one, since that can also be done by another person. Of course, assuming that people come to him with problems and it is his role to provide an answer, then it is important that he also have sensitivity and that lomdus alone not suffice. As stated, I wrote this.
Regarding סעיף 3, the connection between the different senses of sensitivity is attentiveness to the words that emerge from a text or from human mouths.
That connection seems to me similar to the connection between those two and working in printing. A printer also deals with words and has to distinguish between them (not to print them one on top of another). Attention to a person’s words has almost nothing to do with the words, but rather with body language and context, and therefore textual (lomdani) sensitivity is entirely marginal in this context. Do you think that analyzing a poem and analyzing a halakhic or legal sugya are the same ability? Forgive me, but this is really just a vort (in the pejorative sense of the word). To use fashionable terminology, you are basically identifying emotional intelligence with intellectual-interpretive intelligence.
With God’s help, 12 Adar 5777
To the RMDA – greetings,
I do not see the value of the student of Torah in the quantity of “novelties” he produces. The purpose of study is to understand the words of Torah in their depth, to know clearly the source and rationale for every halakhah and every position, their limits and definitions, and the practical implications that emerge from them.
“Novelties” are in the category of a found object. Sometimes one discovers a new line of reasoning or an interpretive move that no one thought of, and then it is all well and good to publicize the discovery; not infrequently it will turn out that there are cracks and strained points in it, and not infrequently it will turn out that we merited to coincide with the words of earlier authorities who had already noted the same novelty, and sometimes it also happens that we merit a genuine novelty.
But in my humble opinion that is not the goal for which we study. We study in order to clarify the truth, whether it is new or whether it is in the category of “old wine.”
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
Hello to you, S. Z. Levinger (are you a Levite?)
Your words are intellectually correct and show a healthy mind, and you really seem like “aged old wine” (an outstanding student). I “follow” your words quietly and always enjoy them; this is my opportunity to tell you so openly.
You have now opened a door to innovate on your words. “Peering through the lattice”—I came up with this (a little novelty): every Torah scholar who meditates on Torah has sparks upon sparks of holiness opened to him, and the Torah is compared to fire and to the light that comes from fire, and so it truly “peers” and is revealed through the cracks and becomes manifest. “Behold, this (the interpretive novelty) stands behind our wall… peering through the lattice…” And is that all?! No! Because one can innovate more: “My beloved answered and said to me”—behold, my beloved, whom we all know who he is: go and produce a novelty!! You too, “go, get thee gone,” and the understanding one will understand.
Once I heard or read that the sages always leave us “room” in their novelties… to open a new novelty within them, and only thanks to you did I understand why they said that. In my opinion, every novelty creates angels, as is known (I mean novelty and study), and angels symbolize mission and creation, because mal’akh comes from the word melakhah, and this hints at action. Every novelty puts in us a desire to seek how to be exact in the commandments and not perform them by habit, but to renew the commandments like a bride entering your home—enjoy every word of Torah and seek what can be done after the study. Any novelty that has no connection to beautifying one’s intention in the commandments or that does not broaden the heart—I do not think it “speaks to me.”
A wonderful and strengthening article by Rabbi Zalman Melamed (a double entendre) (from Parashat Bechukotai—bechukotai = from the language of engraving and renewal):
http://www.yeshiva.org.il/midrash/1484
A little taste:
Engrave the Torah into the natural soul, and through this engraving the natural soul will connect with the inner soul of the Torah; this engraving will penetrate to the inner spiritual spring and then the soul will be revealed, and the soul and the life-force will unite together with the Torah, and this is “If you walk in My statutes.” Then, when the Torah is engraved within the person and the person is united with the Torah, he becomes one who “walks”: “If you walk in My statutes.” He becomes like an ever-strengthening spring, like a river that does not cease. His spiritual movement already bursts forth from within him; he no longer needs to overcome, to defeat forces, to suppress forces that hinder him from doing the will of the Master of the Universe, because his will becomes like the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. “Make His will your will.” “If you walk in My statutes”—if you reach the inner soul in which the Torah is engraved, then you will “walk”; it will already be a movement. One does not stand still and keep and guard the Torah, but rather progresses constantly. And one goes and ascends—and this is Israel’s matter—to go onward and upward…….
“I considered my ways and turned my feet to Your testimonies.” David said: Master of the Universe, every day I would plan and say, “I am going to such-and-such a place and such-and-such a dwelling,” but my feet would bring me to synagogues and study halls, as it says, “and I turned my feet to Your testimonies”… David would plan to go to one place and would find himself in the study hall. There are children whom one sends to the store and later one looks for them, and in the end they are found on the playing field. So too, by contrast, David intended to go to his personal needs, perhaps public needs, and found himself in the study hall. “If you walk in My statutes”—this happens when the Torah becomes engraved within a person. The study hall becomes his inner nature.
The Sefat Emet adds an explanation here: “I considered my ways and turned my feet to Your testimonies”—I thought about all kinds of things and always connected them to Your testimonies, in the category of “In all your ways know Him.” Every place David went became his study hall. Everywhere David went, he went with the atmosphere of the study hall. End quote from the link.
King David would arrive automatically where? At the study hall. Why? In order to innovate! From here learn that the whole purpose of novelties is to open a doorway for the soul to shine and sparkle, in order to illuminate the way—which way should a person choose? The way of Torah and good deeds.
May it be His will that “If you walk in My statutes” be fulfilled in you in its full sense; then automatically the Torah will be engraved within a person, as is known that 40 days before a person emerges into the world he is taught the entire Torah. I suggest looking at the above link; it is very relevant!
Now regarding your question practically: do we study to seek the truth? I don’t know what truth you are speaking about, because if you say such a thing, it seems to me that for some reason there are commandments about which you are doubtful? Then cast your sparks… upon us…. And perhaps it will open an interesting and i n f l a m m a b l e conversation! Make sure there is a water belt in the area, so that if your words are like fire (and not like a spark), we can extinguish or weaken the fire, because we are “small,” and we must beware of the sparks issuing outward from you!
“He has told you, O man, what is g o o d, and what the Lord requires of you: only to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly (seek out His ways) with your God.” This is the good that the Lord has “told” us (hard as sinews). A strong utterance.
You remind me of the wise man’s words: “Besides Kohelet being wise, he also taught the people knowledge, and he weighed, searched out, and set in order many proverbs. Kohelet sought to find words of delight, and what was written uprightly, words of truth. The words of the wise are like goads, and like well-planted nails are the masters of collections; they were given by one shepherd. And furthermore, my son, beware: of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the flesh.”
He prefers that the Oral Torah remain oral, but hinted that the things would be written down—yet he impressed upon us that we should always leave gleanings for others, so that we not grow weary harvesting all the fruits for ourselves and become tired. Each one should gather an omer per head! “The one who gathered much and the one who gathered little gathered exactly an omer, each according to what he could eat”—each person should innovate a little. And as you said, S.Z. Levinger, may his Rock and Redeemer preserve him, “to find words of delight”—seek to fulfill what you learn; that is the secret! “What does the Lord require of you”—do not read mah [what] but me’ah [a hundred]! Do many commandments and bless over them, not only in the Eighteen Benedictions… Intend that all your deeds be for the sake of the God of heaven! Then we will merit a complete redemption speedily in our days! Be strong and courageous!
Happy Purim to all
The matter of “bal” is not the only mistake in his remarks, but for the other mistakes one has to look at the sugyot (or remember them)
Regarding the distinction in the yeshiva world between learning and halakhic ruling: there really are people for whom this distinction leads to the learner being able to say whatever comes into his head without control—but it seems to me that they are the minority. My impression is that usually this separation stems from different levels of required stringency in the evidence, and not from the absence of any such requirement from the learner. The learner is expected to say things that are reasonable and plausible, but for the sake of an actual ruling something more than that is needed, and it is not enough that the ideas fit together nicely.
The analogy that comes to my mind is medical research, where a researcher can conduct a successful series of experiments on a substance and discover that it has a desired effect. He will publish his articles in prestigious journals, but it would not occur to anyone to turn this into a medicine—first of all it has to undergo a long and exhausting approval process by the FDA.
The researcher did not stop in the middle—so far as he is concerned, he finished the work, and he moves on to another project. He will lecture about the previous project at every conference he attends. But it is clear to everyone that his experiments, however successful and statistically significant, are not enough to create a medicine.
To Rabbi Michi,
A comment on essentialism and values
The rabbi wrote above that claims of an essentialist kind regarding women’s suitability for Torah study are meaningless in and of themselves. Personally, I am not among the essentialists, but it seems to me that there is indeed an implication here—namely, the creation of a social value norm. The rabbi mentioned this point in several comments on the subject under discussion—how much social encouragement there is for female lomdus. If indeed women are essentially unsuited to it, then there is no point in encouraging the majority of women in that direction. True, one should not prevent those who are suited, and should even encourage them; but in terms of the prevailing norm in places of study/education, there is no point in encouraging women toward study at a lomdani level.
Whether essentialist claims are true or not—I think the value/normative issue on this subject is critical, and not only because of the objective barrier it may pose for women, but because it touches on the very heart of the issue of men’s and women’s obligation in Torah study and in teaching it to others.
An anecdote, for example—in the synagogue where I most recently prayed, the rabbi announced a class for men, and in his announcement declared that although the women of the synagogue have several days of study each week, the men also need to have [study]… after all, they are obligated in Torah study.
Without expressing a personal opinion (though I have one) regarding the obligation of Torah study for men and women, etc., there is here a most fundamental issue that needs discussion, clarification, and examination—what is the value norm that our Jewish society wishes to promote? Equality in Torah study between men and women, or is there precedence for men or for women in Torah study (just as there are laws of precedence in Torah study between a father and his son)? And of course, why—and on the basis of which sources?
In the end, most of the potential years of Torah study are during the years of marriage and life within the family unit. Therefore, the real value weight of this issue lies precisely in those years and not in the years of yeshiva/ulpana/academy study.
I believe that the whole discussion around various barriers, objective and subjective, to women’s Torah study will not be sufficiently effective without discussing this issue.
And one final remark regarding the state of women’s Torah study today—I think that the small-great upheaval that occurred happened to a considerable extent thanks to the rush of yeshiva students after various rabbinical ordination programs. That is, Torah study underwent a significant decline among yeshiva students. In my opinion (and perhaps contrary to the rabbi’s view on this matter), what leads to mediocrity in women’s Torah study is not their exclusion, but rather the fact that the “good” level of study today among many Torah students is simply passing rabbanut exams. Therefore, the best among them will be at that level. In my opinion, this is the root of the OU’s alarm, and that of other rabbis, at the phenomenon of maharat-ordained women—because it reflects back to them the real standard level of study among many Torah students.
With God’s help, on the eve of “A time for every community” 5777
Greatness in Torah requires gray, routine work for years upon years: another page and another sugya, another Tosafot and another Rambam. “A little at a time one increases much.”
By contrast, when study is driven by an aspiration for achievement, prominence, and leadership, the path to the summit is rushed, and since there is little room at the top, the bitterness and frustration of those who did not reach the summit grows.
Therefore, in my humble opinion, it is worthwhile to leave the constant tension of comparison with “the neighbor’s grass.” Let each man and woman study what suits him or her and builds him or her. There are masters of Talmud and masters of halakhah; there are masters of Bible and masters of aggadah. Let each man and woman develop the side in which he or she excels, and receive from others what they excel in. And
each person will be a teacher in his field and a student in the other fields, and we will be in the category of “they receive judgment one from another.”
Regards, S.Z. Levinger.
As I wrote, I am not dealing with the commandment of Torah study and what is required there. I am dealing with the practical and principled importance of lomdus. Whoever wants not to be a lomdan, good for him; he will presumably receive reward for Torah study, but recognition of Torah greatness he probably will not have. In the case of women, that is what we are dealing with.
Of course. In my remarks I only made a general comment about this for the readers’ benefit.
I’m willing to agree to this qualification. But the study still has to be with the aim of issuing rulings, not merely of saying coherent and sophisticated things. If in the end you are not convinced, or are left with some doubt—of course you are not obliged to act that way. But that is not what happens in yeshivot. There the assumption is that the study is not for practice (and not only in the case where the conclusion is unclear to me), and against that I protested in my remarks.
Yitzhak, what you wrote in the last paragraph is interesting, and on second thought I am inclined to agree with it.
But what you wrote at the beginning does not touch on my point. I did not write that women should be encouraged to advance in Torah. What I wrote is that one should allow whoever wants to advance and not block her. That is a completely different statement, and the question of essentialism does not touch it at all. By the way, even in your question—whether to promote women—it seems to me that essentialism is not very important. One can try to promote them within the necessary limits, and not at the expense of the men but parallel to them.
Hello,
A. In your last column and in a dedicated article, you spoke about two types of rabbis: one serves the community and the other is served by the community. See Rabbi Kook’s book Midbar Shur, derashah 36, where he describes the two types and expounds them on the verse “I am a wall, and my breasts like towers,” and even derives a practical implication regarding a deathly ill person—that for the first type one may pray that he die, but not for the second, based on the sugya in Ketubot 104.
B. I have just finished reading the eye-opening article by our Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked, “Paths to Governance” (HaShiloach, edited by Yoav Sorek, issue 1), and I thought of two points in your recent articles:
1. The article deals at the state level with the same issue you described in your articles that include the HeatBall example. Turning “judicial holes” into “spaces of governance” only insofar as the market cannot manage on its own.
2. Concerning the level of female lomdus. Since this is an article by a woman, and since it deals with the fundamental dispute between Aharon Barak and Menahem Elon, I thought that Aharon Barak is an example of a lomdan (as Menahem Elon said of him) who did not remove the beam from between his own eyes; that is, his words are entirely coherent but do not reflect the intent of the legislator or the will of the people as understood by the woman heading the Justice Ministry. Analyticity with mistaken syntheticity. How pathetic is one who proves with lomdus that a Torah prohibition does not exist while the Talmud stands and cries out: “The Torah prohibited a harlot’s payment—even if he had relations with his own mother.” Perhaps female learning (not lomdus!) does not wish to arrive at the path of Aharon Barak, but rather at penetration into the Shammaite logic, the eye of the intellect and the synthetic. I understand that there is in this no criticism whatsoever of what you wrote.
Shabbat shalom
As stated, there can be novelties in lomdus, but it is preferable that they be done on top of the existing tradition and not in place of it. I wrote that the fact that there are type-1 lomdim does not negate the need for lomdus as a condition for type-2 lomdus. But as you wrote, apparently we have no dispute. Happy Purim
I asked the rabbi in the previous article, and indeed that was where it would have been fitting to ask this question. But there, presumably, the comment escaped the rabbi’s notice because of all my comments, which were replies to others, and so it will continue to escape notice if it remains there. I asked the rabbi regarding Rabbi Ovadia and “What is your beloved more than another beloved?” The rabbi answered that R. Chaim and the Griz also would not understand (I understood, and nevertheless I disagree—they would not understand what the scientific revolution is, but regarding what they themselves did, perhaps they did not speak and think philosophically, but they did have self-awareness—if one were to explain to them in simple Yiddish the content of Rav Soloveitchik’s words, they would understand). But I still did not understand whether the rabbi agrees (presumably he understands) with the distinction between marriage and betrothal? (If so, then in his understanding Rabbi Ovadia was still only betrothed and not married, even if we agree that betrothal [the lomdus of pre-Briskers and decisors, if there is any difference between those two] also constitutes lomdus.)
The distinction is not sharp. I think he definitely understood Brisker thought, but certainly he was not rooted in it and did not use it. Call it betrothal or marriage. I too tend more toward Brisker thinking (at least as a basis), but that’s me. It is worth thinking about this in light of the criterion I gave for lomdus: will you find simple errors in his words? I think that with Rabbi Ovadia you will hardly find such things. By the way, if you explain to Rabbi Ovadia in spoken Iraqi the meaning of the scientific revolution, he will understand it no less well than they would. And I would not be surprised if there were no need to explain it to him at all (because he already knows).
I disagree. For those who separate learning from halakhic ruling, the point is not that the conclusions of study are unclear, but that to decide one needs something beyond clarity. That “something beyond” is not precisely defined and certainly not agreed upon—it can be finding hints for the novelty in the great later authorities, not finding anything opposite among them, fitting with the rulings of so-and-so, etc.—but the basic idea is that certainty in one’s reasoning is not enough to issue a halakhic ruling, not that one may invent absurd conjectures. Even if the learner studies with the aim of ruling on halakhah, he is not supposed to rule that way in practice until he finds that additional “beyond.”
If we continue the analogy, clearly the researcher works with the aim of finding a medicine—but he is not the one who can permit himself to start selling it on the basis of his experiments, even if they are highly significant and achieved world fame in the pages of Nature.
With God’s help, Saturday night after Shabbat Zakhor 5777
The difference in biblical Hebrew between ‘al’ and ‘lo’ on the one hand and ‘bal’ on the other is that ‘al’ and ‘lo’ express prohibition, whereas ‘bal’ is the negation of the possibility that the thing will occur, like “You set a boundary they may not pass, that they may not return to cover the earth” (Psalms 104:9).
It seems that the Sages also used the expression ‘bal’ regarding prohibitions because they wanted a person to relate to Torah prohibitions as things that “there is no way” a person could transgress. And indeed the fences of the Sages, which expanded the border of the prohibition beyond what the Torah prohibited, brought about a situation in which the biblical prohibition became something trivial, something it would not even enter one’s mind to transgress.
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
Where do the words erusin and nisuin come from, and what is the linguistic difference between them?
S.Z., I didn’t understand why you wrote the above differences.
My opinion on women studying Torah is that just as they have reward on account of the man’s Torah study, so the time has come for the man to have reward on account of the woman who studies Torah—may there be many such women.
The more the mother is a “bookworm,” the sharper her children will be
With God’s help, Purim of unwalled cities 5777
To Mosheh – greetings,
Yishai (above) brought the words of a “researcher” who “proved” from the phrase bal tashchit that this was a different prohibition from “you shall not destroy its trees,” which is of course sheer ignoramusness; that researcher did not know that it is the way of Hazal to use the word ‘bal’ where the Torah says ‘lo’ or ‘al’. I, as a side note, explained why Hazal in fact used this expression and changed from the Torah’s wording. And I suggested saying that a prohibition stated with ‘bal’ expresses such a strong internalization that “there is no way” a person would come to such a deed.
With Purim blessings, S.Z. Levinger
I now remembered that by means of a similar idea Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Harlap explained the commandment to drink “until one does not know the difference between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordechai.” He asks: what point is there in becoming so confused that we bless Haman instead of Mordechai? And he answers that in our drunkenness we show that our revulsion at Haman and our love for Mordechai are so deeply internalized within us that even in a state of loss of awareness, to the point of drunkenness, when we have already forgotten who Haman and Mordechai are, nevertheless our mouth will automatically continue to say: “Cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordechai.”
I disagree. See Maimonides’ eighth root on negations in the language of “lo.”
And Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner in Pachad Yitzhak explained that the deeper the comparison, the deeper the distinction—something like what we find in the Mishnah Yoma about the two goats, which must be equal in height, weight, and value in order to sharpen the difference between them, that this one is for within and that one is for Azazel. So too Haman and Mordechai need to be equal in our eyes in appearance and in every respect, in order to sharpen the distinction between them—that this one chose evil and that one chose good.
I didn’t understand the word “depth.”
Comparison = similarity
Distinction = difference
Why compare or distinguish between Haman and Mordechai?
Haman was arrogant, and therefore he was humiliated and hanged (and his sons too), and many like him were murdered. “Cursed is Haman” because a curse came upon him. The meaning is Haman and all the Amalekites.
Mordechai was modest, zealous, and Jewish in every sense of the word; he knew and understood that everything is under providence from Him, blessed be He. “Blessed is Mordechai” means the Jews are blessed, because Mordechai already passed away (how can one say “blessed is Mordechai” if he passed away? Rather the meaning is “blessed are the Jews”).
Both the sacrifice for Azazel and the one “inside” effected atonement. Why did you give “honor” to Haman by comparing him to “Azazel”?
Where do the words erusin and nisuin come from, and what is the linguistic difference between them?
Happy Purim
Where does the word bal come from?
With God’s help, the day of Moses our teacher’s covenant, 14 Adar, the year 5000 + 777
To Mosheh – greetings,
The difference between Haman and Mordechai is enormous. But everything could have been otherwise. Every person has the possibility of choice. He can reach heights of righteousness like Mordechai, and God forbid he can fall into the abyss of wickedness like Haman.
Besides the potential, which belongs to every person, what the great righteous and, by contrast, the great wicked have in common is a force of strong will that brings persistence in the goal despite all difficulties.
See what persistence Haman has: one man does not kneel and bow to him—and he cannot rest or be still. He takes 10,000 talents of silver out of his pocket to persuade the king; see what alacrity: he toils all night to prepare a gallows for Mordechai and runs early in the morning to the king to ask him to hang Mordechai.
“From my enemies You make me wiser through Your commandments”: when we see the fervor, persistence, and alacrity that our enemies invest in doing evil, we understand how much fervor, persistence of purpose, devotion, and alacrity we must invest in doing the good and the upright according to the will of our Creator!
Therefore in this year 5777, we will fill our throats with 777 brandy in order to awaken to the “five thousand”—with the same fervor that “the enemy said: I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil”—we will pursue commandments and good deeds, in order to attain knowledge and fear of God and to distribute spoil of faith and trust.
Great is drinking, which draws Israel close to one another and to their Father in Heaven. We shall drink flaming beer and be inflamed with love for the Master of the capital, who will perform miracles for us as in Shushan the capital and build for us the chosen House; may He seal the mouth of accuser and creditor, and send us a redeemer and one who draws us out, and then we shall sing an unforgettable song as in the days of Miriam, Aaron, and Moses!
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
Regarding betrothal and marriage: betrothal is kiddushin, by which the woman is designated for her husband and forbidden to the whole world like something consecrated. Marriage is the huppah, by which the woman enters her husband’s home and they begin a shared life together.
Today, in order to prevent mishaps, the kiddushin-betrothal is done close to the huppah, but in the time of Hazal they would wait 12 months between them, in order to prepare mentally for the new reality, so as to arrive at life together מתוך a strong desire, great aspirations, and tremendous longing.
And so too in Torah study: there is the “betrothal,” the desire to cleave to the Torah and know it, and the “marriage,” in which one arrives at comprehensive knowledge and clear understanding.
More power to you
With God’s help, Purim of unwalled cities 5777
To the RMDA – abundant peace until the moon is no more,
It is true that ‘lo’ serves both for command and for negation (as emerges from Maimonides’ words in the eighth root of Sefer HaMitzvot), but ‘bal’ in Scripture serves distinctly as negation, and therefore I suggested that Hazal used, regarding Torah prohibitions, the language of negation, like “an inviolable statute.”
May it be His will that there be fulfilled in us and all Israel: “And I will pour out for you blessing until there is more than enough.” Next time in rebuilt Jerusalem!
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
Hello Rabbi,
You note that there is a problem in the area of female lomdus, but as you noted in one of your past posts (which dealt with the insufficient training of ramim and the fact that they do not provide an adequate response to people’s questions in the philosophical/faith sphere).
Ordinarily women do not approach you with questions, and in that area there are fewer restrictions on them. So it could be that this
simply speaks less to most of them. For example, I have gotten to know brilliant women in the natural sciences, but not infrequently when discussions of a philosophical nature take place, it seems that it simply does not interest most of them.
Quite possible. I think I even wrote that here in the past.
Dear Ma'oz, women are interested in every topic—believe me—but (and this is emphasized) one has to know how to convey it in the “form” they like, and in the appropriate way—to elaborate where necessary and shorten where necessary.
Levinger:
“the enemy said: I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil”—we will pursue commandments and good deeds, in order to attain knowledge and fear of God, and to distribute spoil of faith and trust.
—->But that speaks about the enemy.
Hello to you, one must note that style and form do not change the content. I can tell you that for a period I listened to women’s classes out of curiosity; most of them speak in a very sentimental way. I also listened to Sivan Rahav-Meir, who is undoubtedly a brilliant woman, and she too speaks in that style. One must take into account that even for men who study en masse in yeshivot and in engineering faculties, it is hard to deal with abstract subjects, all the more so for women, to whom these fields are sometimes less accessible.
In your article you claimed that you tried to solve the problem of lomdus by making room for the publication of lomdani articles by women.
I understood that there was an expectation that many women would send articles, and you were disappointed.
But I do not think that this indicates the quality of women’s learning.
A much simpler and more logical answer is that women simply do not think of writing articles because they were not educated for that.
The field is in its infancy, and women are still trying to clarify what it means to study the Talmud.
From your perspective, the absence of articles indicates the absence of lomdus. It could be that it simply indicates a lack of understanding of what lomdus is in the eyes of the “male” Jewish world.
In addition, I would be glad to hear what you think about being directed toward lomdus from a young age—
My brother, in sixth grade, has been learning Gemara already since second grade, and now he has the ability to open a Gemara and understand what it is talking about (perhaps not to produce novelties, but at least to understand the meaning of the words).
By contrast, I am in eleventh grade and have never opened a Gemara במסגרת the school system.
Surely my brother has a better starting point for the world of lomdus, and if you try to compare our level of knowledge you will conclude that he is more of a lomdan.
Not because I am a woman and these are the traits of my soul.
Not because I am incapable.
You too said that you do not think so, and yet you placed the burden of proving the ability on the women.
All in all, that is logical, but I think it is proper that at least I be given an equal starting point.
The lack of understanding of what lomdus is also stems precisely from this point.
What do you think?
I did not understand the claim. I agree with every word. My claim is that in practice there are no lomdani women, and I further claimed that they conceal this (most of them are not at all aware of it). There certainly are reasons, and the differences in education are the main ones among them, and I believe and hope that it is indeed within their reach (for some of them certainly; not all men are suited for this either). Let them prove it. So far they are not doing so. Denial does not help, and it is a pity that people adopt it.
With God’s help, 11 Adar 5777
To the RMDA – greetings,
The problem of cultivating lomdus exists in hesder yeshivot as well. We are not in the situation of the Lithuanian Torah world, which educates its young people to sit and toil for many years in theoretical and abstract study. In our world there is heavy pressure to go out into practical life—army, academic education, and work. Even during the few years that can be devoted to study, the student must devote significant time to study that directly prepares him to cope with life’s challenges—developing a religious worldview and learning practical halakhah. Naturally, abstract Talmudic analysis gets pushed aside.
Moreover, in all other fields the student is accustomed to structured and guided study, which introduces him in a short time to the principles of the discipline. By contrast, a student entering the give-and-take of Amoraim, Rishonim, and Acharonim is like a student walking into a symposium where Nobel Prize winners are arguing: one brings evidence from some study, another refutes it from some article, and the poor student loses his hands and feet.
Male and female students need a framework of guided study of central sugyot that will give them concise knowledge of the modes of Talmudic thinking. An important step in this direction was taken by Rabbi Eyal Reznikovitz of the hesder yeshivah in Yeruham, in his series of books Kuntresei Limud, which guide students in the methods of analysis. So far two books have appeared. One on “Doubt, Clarification, and Decision,” and another on “The Rules of the Commandments,” and both effectively introduce students to the reasoning used by profound lomdim,
A review of the books appears in Rabbi Dan Navon’s article, “The Nehama Leibowitz of the Gemara,” on the Shabbat Supplement – Makor Rishon website
Regards, S.Z. Levinger