With the Passing of Prof. David Halivni Weiss, z”l (Column 485)
This morning (Wednesday) we received the news of the passing of Prof. David Halivni Weiss, one of the most renowned and prominent Talmud scholars of recent generations. Although I did not engage with his thought, and in general I do not engage in academic Talmud research (nor do I hold that field in particularly high esteem), I thought it appropriate to devote a few words to him.
Halivni was born in Carpathian Russia in 1927, studied with his grandfather in Sighet Marmaresh, and was ordained as a rabbi at the age of fifteen. During the Holocaust he was sent to Auschwitz and Mauthausen, and because of a kapo named Weiss he decided after the war to change his name to Halivni. In 1947 he immigrated to the United States, where he studied at Yeshiva Chaim Berlin (under R. Yitzchak Hutner), earned his B.A. and M.A. in philosophy at Brooklyn College and New York University, and completed a doctorate in Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York (the Conservative JTS). He was a student-colleague of R. Shaul Lieberman at JTS, and in time succeeded him as head of the seminary and the Conservative beit midrash. In parallel he taught Talmud at various academic institutions in the U.S. and in Israel (Bar-Ilan University and the Hebrew University). In 1983 he resigned from the leadership of the Conservative movement due to a dispute over the ordination of women, and even founded a small movement of his own that failed to take off. He led a congregation in Manhattan, where he also conducted debates over various halakhic innovations (he attempted to circumscribe the calling of women to the Torah). In 2004 he immigrated to Israel; in 2008 he received the Israel Prize for Talmud studies; and, as noted, he passed away here in Israel this morning.
He memorialized his life story, chiefly the period of the Holocaust, in a captivating short book titled A Leaf Not Blown Away. I read it long ago and no longer recall the details, but in my view it is highly recommended. In his book Shvirat HaLuchot (“The Breaking of the Tablets”) he lays out his theological doctrine regarding the Holocaust. There he argues that it is historically unprecedented (that is, its difference from other events is not merely quantitative), that it lacks plausible historical explanations, and he rejects the possibility of viewing it as divine punishment.
His nine principal scholarly volumes are titled Mekorot u-Mesorot (“Sources and Traditions,” on various tractates and orders of the Talmud), and there is an additional book devoted to a general introduction to his method. As far as I know, he is regarded as the one who revived the distinction between Amoraim and Stammaim, and his claim is that the anonymous stratum (stam) of the Babylonian Talmud was written by Stammaim who lived centuries after the Amoraim (in the sixth to eighth centuries, roughly two hundred years after the last Amoraim), and that they were the ones who edited the Talmud (contrary to the dictum in the Talmud itself that “Ravina and Rav Ashi are the end of instruction,” which had commonly been understood to mean that they edited the Talmud. Halivni offers a different interpretation of that dictum).
A Note on His Conservative Stances
As mentioned, in 1983 he decided to resign from the seminary and from the Conservative movement due to a dispute over the ordination of women. I never understood this step, since ordaining women as rabbis is a very moderate move and is not difficult to ground halakhically. Within the Conservative movement there were far more serious problems in its relationship to halakhah, and withdrawing over such a minor disagreement always struck me as puzzling. Perhaps he understood that it was not his place and used that straw to climb down from the tree. I do not know.
I saw on Wikipedia that moderate Orthodox organizations like “The Edah” refused to adopt him and his fellow seceders because they had not voiced opposition to Sabbath driving and had annulled parts of the laws of family status; and precisely on a marginal issue like women’s rabbinic ordination they mounted the barricades. Indeed, it is not clear.
By my impression, there was in him a certain halakhic-traditional rigidity (perhaps a Hungarian legacy from his education in Sighet. A Jew can leave Sighet, but Sighet does not leave the Jew), but it rested more on sociological considerations than on substantive ones. The ordination of women, as noted, is an easy issue on the principled plane. Today there are already Orthodox communities that do this, and in my eyes it is quite trivial. Halivni was well aware of this, but thought the hour had not yet been prepared. That is, the impediment was sociological rather than substantive. In that sense he was very traditional.
One must understand that we are speaking of a person who was thoroughly aware of the theological and meta-halakhic underpinnings of the Jewish and halakhic outlook. He was one of the developers of Conservative conceptions; that is, he was not “traditional” in the conventional sense. He had a detailed and explicit theory of halakhah; this is not a person occupied solely with tradition in its sociological sense. And yet, it seems that sociological considerations outweighed substantive ones for him.
Therefore I must clarify that when I say he was very traditional and very conservative, I mean this pejoratively. This is conservatism in its negative sense, namely the rejection of positions or arguments on extraneous grounds (just because “this is not the way things are done”), even though on the substantive and pertinent level they are indeed correct and proper. I have explained more than once that lack of pertinence is, to my mind, the essence of the defect I see in conservatism (as in novelty-mongering as well).
A Personal Encounter
I had the occasion to meet Halivni personally around 1990 (I do not remember exactly). He was then living in the U.S., and would occasionally visit Israel as a well-known academic. I was then working on my Ph.D. in physics at Bar-Ilan University (in the afternoons; in the mornings I studied in yeshiva in Bnei Brak). One fine day I received a call from him asking if I would meet him for lunch at Bar-Ilan. I asked what this was about, and he said he was preparing his volume of Mekorot u-Mesorot on tractate Bava Kamma (published in 1993), and in the course of his study of the “dayo” sugya (Bava Kamma 25) he had read an article of mine and wished to discuss it. It was one of the first articles I wrote (I believe it was the second), and it dealt with the logic of the kal va-ḥomer rule (it was a preliminary analysis; since then the matter has developed much further). Of course I regarded this as an honor and agreed.
When I arrived at the lunch it turned out he was there with faculty from the Department of History or of Jewish History (I no longer recall) who were hosting him. The two of us sparred, heatedly, over the details of the sugya before their astonished eyes. I remember that Halivni was so immersed in the matter that he did not even notice that we had an audience, and that these were in fact his hosts, with whom he ought to have been speaking if only out of courtesy. I saw in him then a genuine love of Torah. I no longer remember the details we discussed (they are surely recorded in his book on that sugya), but in the discussion it became clear to me that he perceived a problem in that sugya and argued that it could only be solved on the research level (by stratifying the sugya and separating its different components). When he read my article he saw that I was proposing a solution to the same problem that bothered him, without resorting to academic methods (a logical analysis). As a person of intellectual integrity, he felt obliged to examine whether there was indeed a solution to the problem; if so, he would have to forgo his academic solution—and thus we came to our discussion.
As noted, I do not recall the details, but to the best of my understanding my proposal did solve the problem that troubled him. He was not persuaded in the end, and concluded the discussion by saying that a research-critical solution was required. I always thought that this was mere stubbornness, because it is hard for a person to give up his own innovative theses—especially those at the core of his doctrine (the distinctions between strata in the sugya—Stammaim and Amoraim). But it may be that I was the one biased and unwilling to yield for the very same reason. Here I want to record matters to his credit. Beyond the love of Torah that I saw in him, it is worth noting that, although perhaps in the bottom line it was hard for him to concede (or perhaps not), he nevertheless felt obliged to invite an unknown young man who had written a non-academic article on the sugya, in order to clarify the matter and honestly examine whether there was indeed a difficulty and whether his solution was necessary. As stated, one can debate the conclusion (perhaps I will try to reread his book to recall and think anew), but such a step was very impressive in my eyes. I saw in him very impressive expressions of love of Torah, intellectual honesty, and humility. The fact is that all of this has remained with me to this day (in contrast to the difficulty in the sugya, which has remained with me less).
I will now bring another anecdotal facet that touches indirectly on Halivni and reminds me very much of the story I reported above.
A Literary Look at Talmudic Research
In the book by Rabbi Prof. Shlomo Zalman Havlin, Masoret Ha-Torah She-Be‘al Peh, Appendix 2 to Chapter 8 (p. 304), there is an analysis of an episode from Chaim Potok’s The Promise (see his brief article in Daat, here in Appendix 2). This book is a sequel to his The Chosen (or Ha-Dagul in the older Hebrew translation I read in my youth), whose two protagonists are two young men from different backgrounds: Danny Saunders, the son of a rabbi in a very conservative and closed Hasidic community who ultimately becomes a psychiatrist; and his friend Reuven Malter, the son of a well-known Talmud scholar (with a Conservative orientation), who is accepted to a conservative yeshiva and attempts to receive rabbinic ordination from it. One of the climaxes of the book (in Chapter 15) is Reuven Malter’s oral rabbinic ordination exam before a panel of three examiners from the yeshiva’s faculty. I bring here the entire passage (translated from English by Havlin; the speaker is the examinee, Reuven Malter):
| …There were no preliminaries. Rabbi Gershenson smiled into his beard and in a gentle voice asked a question regarding a matter of law in Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De‘ah—a sixteenth-century compendium of Jewish law—which I was required to master, together with knowledge of Tractate Chullin and another tractate of my choice, and with the major commentaries on that material. I was required to know it all by heart. No other knowledge was demanded.
I answered Rabbi Gershenson’s question slowly and quietly. It was a simple question, and I answered it simply as required. He asked another question from Yoreh De‘ah, and I replied as before. He nodded and smiled, adding a more complex question from the same book. In my answer I set out the differing views of the authors and commentators and concluded with the halakhic ruling. Thus it continued for about forty minutes: the dean seated in his chair with his fingers tucked into his vest, Rabbi Gershenson asking questions in Yoreh De‘ah, and Rabbi Kalman silent, pensive, and looking gloomy… smoking heavily. Three quarters of an hour later and I was still answering questions in Yoreh De‘ah… Shortly thereafter Rabbi Gershenson finished his portion and fell silent, apparently satisfied with my knowledge of Yoreh De‘ah. After a brief pause Rabbi Kalman began his questions. He asked me to explain a passage in Tractate Chullin. I recognized the passage immediately. It was the one I had been asked to read in class a few months earlier—a difficult passage with problematic words which I had been required to review again and again. I quoted the passage, explained it, and cited several of the commentators on it and expounded them. He returned and asked me to explicate the words themselves, and he had difficulty understanding how the meaning and explanation I proposed applied to those words. I told him that this was how the Rishonim explained it, and he responded irritably, “I know the Rishonim—but are you satisfied with the fit between the meaning and the words?” I answered that I was… Again silence. Rabbi Kalman quoted a passage from one of the Rishonim I had cited earlier, a passage that contained a reference to another tractate, where there is also a word similar to the one under discussion here, and he asked me to explain the passage in the other tractate. It was a tractate I had not selected and that had not been set for the exam. Rabbi Gershenson prepared to respond, and so did the dean, but I had already begun my answer. I was happy for the opportunity to discuss that passage, which I knew well by heart… Many Orthodox Jewish scholars believe that the printed text of the Babylonian Talmud is the perfect and complete embodiment of the Oral Torah tradition, and that its words are identical in time, source, and sanctity to the teachings that emerged from the interpretation of the Torah itself. This is a position my father and I could not accept. There are many textual errors in the Talmud—too many emendations and word substitutions of the text, even against the Talmud’s own statements—for us to believe the text was so “frozen.” We see the Talmud as containing almost millennia of ideas and traditions that were in force; we see the Talmudic text as flowing, living, like a body of running water with streams flowing into and out of it. The mishnah passage to which Rabbi Kalman directed me clearly attested to such a flow. We came to the pièce de résistance, the crushing and astonishing example that Malter planned to use to stun his conservative rabbinic opponents and prove to them the correctness of philological critical research. And so the description on p. 345 (the translation here is mine, a free rendering; I did not check the Hebrew edition of this book): We moved from sugya to sugya in Tractate Sanhedrin until we found ourselves at the mishnah that lists eighteen differences between capital cases and monetary cases. I recited the mishnah by heart, and instead of continuing with the ensuing Talmudic discussion I skipped a few pages to the place where one of the Amoraim wonders about the mishnah’s count, saying that he sees in that mishnah only nine differences. The Gemara resolves the difficulty, but that explanation did not satisfy me. — “The other Amora did not have the same version of the mishnah as the first,” I said, and I waited in silence. The dean’s face turned from pink to a deep red. Rabbi Kalman’s face went pale above the whiteness of his collar, while Rabbi Gershenson narrowed his gaze at me. — “Where is that other mishnah found?” he asked gently. “It is not in the version of the Babylonian Talmud, nor in that of the Jerusalem Talmud.” — “No.” — “Where is it?” — “In a manuscript!” — “In a manuscript?” cried Rabbi Gershenson. — “Have you seen this manuscript?” asked Rabbi Kalman, raising his voice. — “This manuscript appears in the Naples edition of the Mishnah,” I said. — “The Naples edition of the Mishnah,” repeated Rabbi Kalman, looking at me. His entire Torah world met a dangerous challenge. The whole framework of the mental gymnastics by which he had been setting this sugya in place went up in smoke in the face of a textual variant found in a Mishnah edition from the fifteenth century. — “Where did you see this edition of the Mishnah?” the dean suddenly asked, slightly raising his voice. — “In the Seminary’s Frankel Library,” I said. His lips parted; a soft sigh issued from between them. He leaned back and said nothing, but the redness in his face deepened and grew. — Rabbi Gershenson asked, “You discovered this manuscript on your own, Reuven?” — “Yes.” — “You studied the sugya, and it occurred to you to resolve the difficulty by assuming there was a variant mishnah, and you went and found it?” — “Yes!” He shook his head gravely; the smile vanished from his face. He does not fear an emendation based on evidence from outside the sugya, so long as the proof is found and supported somewhere in the Talmud. But to adopt a correction based entirely on a source outside the Talmud—that is dangerous. Such a method endangers the authority of the Talmud, the sources upon which one can base Talmudic jurisprudence. His head moved back and forth. Rabbi Kalman sat rigidly in his chair, his eyes clouded. He looked like someone who did not know how to respond. |
In that scene they ask him about a difficulty in a certain sugya, and he proposes a research-critical solution that, of course, is unacceptable to them. This is, of course, part of the same tension between old and new embodied in the two friends, except that here it appears in the context of methods of study (the academic versus the traditional), with Malter and his father as researchers facing rabbis who employ traditional methods of study and analysis.
R. Z. Havlin analyzes this episode and makes use of his comprehensive and profound encyclopedic knowledge to try to identify which sugya is involved, who the examiners were, and on whom the story’s protagonists are modeled.[1] I have on a few occasions spoken and corresponded with R. Z. Havlin (who would occasionally appear on this site), among other things about this matter. I do not recall whether we wrote or spoke about the analysis of this episode, but he told me—and also sent me written material—that sheds some light.
Potok himself thanks Halivni for consultation on matters of Talmudic research, and from there it is not far-fetched to assume that the scholar Malter, Reuven’s father, is modeled on Halivni’s image. Havlin writes in his article cited above:
In this book, there is an attempt—perhaps a first—to raise for detailed discussion, with accompanying examples, the contrast between these two methods of study, with the aim, of course, of demonstrating the superiority of the scientific method in studying the Talmud.
But he adds:
Alas, the examples brought there, proceeding by way of the simple to the complex, contain clear hints that enable precise identification—and it turns out that none of them holds water, neither from a lamdanic nor from a scientific perspective.
He identifies the yeshiva called in the story “Hirsch Seminary and College” as Yeshiva University in New York, and even identifies the three examiners: Rabbi Gershenson is Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik, Rabbi Kalman is Rabbi Yerucham Gorelick, and the dean is Rabbi Belkin, the university’s president.
And he writes:
The exam becomes a struggle between Rabbi Kalman and the student Malter. First, Malter interprets a sugya and emends it with the aid of parallels in other tractates; afterwards he interprets a sugya by means of a parallel in the Jerusalem Talmud—and specifically in its first printed edition—which is like an external source, though still a Talmud; and finally he decides the discussion by bringing an interpretation of the sugya based on a correction from a manuscript, which is the use of an external source to interpret the Gemara—something intolerable in the eyes of the yeshiva’s heads.
The description of this episode is sufficiently detailed to try to identify which sugya is at issue—and here we return to Halivni.
Havlin’s Critique of Halivni and Identifying the Sugya
As noted, Halivni is the father of the method that distinguishes between Amoraim and Stammaim who edited the Talmud, and he even claims a gap of centuries between them.[2] Havlin emphatically disputes Halivni’s thesis and has written about this in the book cited and in various articles. He argues that the evidentiary basis for this thesis is very weak. As an indication, he writes that in the introduction to Mekorot u-Mesorot on Seder Nashim, Halivni found it necessary to bring a sugya that would demonstrate and prove clearly his view regarding the Stammaim. Well, it is not the sugya I discussed with him in Bava Kamma, but rather the Bavli in Sanhedrin 36b: “R. Abbahu said: There are ten differences between monetary cases and capital cases….” Note that this sugya does not belong to Seder Nashim, the subject of the volume. From this Havlin infers that in all of Seder Nashim Halivni did not find a single clear example for his method, and in fact it seems that in the entire Talmud there is only that example from Sanhedrin.
You will not be surprised to hear that that Sanhedrin sugya is precisely the one on which Reuven Malter is examined (remember, Halivni was the Talmudic consultant for the book). The whole course described above—parallels from other tractates, a parallel from the Jerusalem Talmud in its first printing specifically, and a decision by means of a manuscript correction—indeed appears in Halivni’s argument from that Sanhedrin sugya. Thereafter Havlin himself delves into the matter and demonstrates through various research arguments why that entire move in the Sanhedrin sugya is incorrect (as Talmud scholars Albeck and Epstein also wrote regarding that sugya), meaning that even this sole example of Halivni’s method does not hold water.
So much for the anecdote. May these words be for the elevation of the soul of Prof. Halivni, z”l.
[1] I believe that R. Z. Havlin has a hobby of identifying literary figures. I recall, for example, a similar claim of his regarding Chaim Grade’s novels Tsemakh Atlas and Milhemet Ha-Yetzer (both with an obvious autobiographical basis; therefore there is certainly justification to try to identify the figures who appear in them). He attempts to identify who Tsemakh Atlas is, one of the heroes of those books. There are several proposals in the literature for his identity, and Havlin offers an identification of his own.
[2] See throughout his books and introductions, as well as his article “Studies in the Formation of the Babylonian Talmud,” Sidra 20 (5766).
Discussion
Although Halivni’s method of absolutely separating the anonymous editors from the Amoraim has met with serious objections from Talmud scholars, it would be an exaggeration to cast doubt on Talmud research as a whole. The field has produced enough proven fruits.
With God’s help, 1 Tammuz 5782
If Rabbis Gershenzon and Kalman are pseudonyms, then a Talmud scholar named Zvi Malter, who specialized in renewed interpretation of the Talmud on the basis of variants found in ancient manuscripts, really did exist.
He was the librarian of the Jewish Scientific Library in Berlin and a student of משה שטיינשניידר. In 1900 he moved to the U.S. and was a professor at Hebrew Union College and later at Dropsie College, where he taught rabbinic literature. Among other things, he published a critical edition of tractate Ta’anit of the Babylonian Talmud, in which variant readings from ancient manuscripts were noted, and on their basis new explanations of the sugyot were also proposed. Whether he had a son named Reuven, I do not know. In Wikipedia’s entry on him there is no information about his family…
As for the identifications (proposed by Prof. Havlin) of the opponents of interpretation based on manuscript readings with R. Joseph Dov Soloveitchik and Rabbi Belkin, I am somewhat inclined to doubt it. At Yeshiva University under their leadership there were also professors who engaged in Talmud research. They probably did not see textual analysis of variants as a central interpretive tool, but it is hard to assume that they rejected it altogether.
Best regards, Gamliel Gavriel Gringras-Girondi
Havlin mentions him as the inspiration for the name of the elder Malter.
The fact that there were Talmud scholars at Yeshiva University does not mean they had a place in the beit midrash. Without checking, I assume they did not.
Halivni has the same letters as Havlin. A wonder indeed.
In Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein’s article, “The Brisker Method of Conceptualization — The Method and Its Future,” Netu’im 18, pp. 30–32, Rabbi Lichtenstein addresses Talmud research. He sees great importance in clarifying the precise text through reliance on manuscripts and in knowing the historical background and the realia, but he opposes the approach that sees these clarifications as the be-all and end-all, a “magic solution” that renders superfluous all the analyses of the Rishonim and Acharonim. So that kind of extreme rejection of reliance on manuscripts is not found there. If anything, one might have associated “Rabbi Gershenzon and Rabbi Kalman” with the circle of the Hazon Ish…
Best regards, Gamliel Gavriel Gringras-Girondi
And even the Hazon Ish did not reject reliance on manuscripts altogether. When Rabbi Avraham Reisner published his edition of Sha’ar HaMayim by the Rashba (which had been discovered in manuscripts by the scholars Prof. Lewinger and Prof. Marx and identified by them on the basis of quotations in the Beit Yosef), the Hazon Ish endorsed the identification.
Incidentally, at Yeshiva University there was a Talmud scholar named Prof. Avraham Weiss, who preceded Prof. David Weiss-Halivni in identifying layers in Talmudic sugyot, and maintained that the editing of the Talmud was an ongoing process that began in the Amoraic period and continued through the Savoraic and Geonic periods. But Halivni and his student Prof. Shamma Friedman, may he live and be well, went much further and attributed all the anonymous material to the post-Talmudic period.
Another graduate of Yeshiva University, Prof. Yerahmiel (Robert) Brody, in the substantial introduction to his critical commentary on tractate Ketubot in the Babylonian Talmud, which is due to appear soon, God willing, from Yad HaRav Nissim — also dissociates himself from the tendency to date all the anonymous material to the Savoraic period, and supports his view with evidence. Brody began his academic career as a mathematician who discovered “Brody’s theorem,” but made a professional shift to become a scholar of Talmud and Geonic literature.
At any rate, I found that in Alon there is a Jew named “Reuven Malter” who works in marketing advanced protection and security systems. I wonder whether he is related to Prof. Zvi Malter or to Potok’s “Reuven Malter” 🙂
The rabbi should write “Rabbi David Halivni,” even though he was Conservative [which in itself should not bother the rabbi], because today I met a friend from Rabbi Shagar’s Siach Yitzhak Yeshiva, and he told me that he knows a brilliant student from Har Etzion Yeshiva who studied with Rabbi Halivni
and said of him that he was a tremendous Torah scholar, stringent in light matters as in grave ones; and yet my friend may complain to me that when R. Chaim Kanievsky passed away the whole world was in an uproar, while for such a great man—nothing.
According to Prof. Havlin’s assumption that The Chosen is a roman à clef whose characters represent real figures under changed names, one could suggest that Reuven Malter’s friend, the rebbe’s son who became a psychologist, represents the well-known psychiatrist Prof. Avraham Twerski, whose father was a rebbe. But here we run into the problem of Prof. Twerski’s rebbe father, who was not at all a zealot or separatist, but rather open to modernity, engaged in outreach, and encouraged his sons to study at universities.
And it seems to me that it is preferable to say: no conclusion can be drawn from this. It is more likely that the author constructed characters that are not identical with any concrete individuals, and had no problem taking one character trait from one person and combining it with another trait from someone else; there is no biographical portrait here under another name. The characters represent archetypes of ways of coping with a historical dilemma, and nothing more…
Best regards, Gamliel Gavriel Gringras-Girondi
Paragraph 1, line 2
… one could have suggested …
This deficiency was corrected on this very site, when RMDA, who refused to address the passing of R. Chaim Kanievsky, wrote an entire column about Prof. Halivni 🙂
Best regards, G.G. G.G.
Two comments. 1. The “Layers” method developed at Bar-Ilan by Rabbi Dr. Pinchas Hayman develops Prof. Halivni’s brilliant distinction regarding the layer of the anonymous stratum of the Gemara. In general, from the day this distinction came into the world, I do not know how one can learn without it. B. A literary note: The Chosen (HaNivchar, the chosen/selected one) juxtaposes two kinds of fatherhood. The father who teaches Talmud is a warm and attentive father, modern, available. Opposed to him stands the rebbe, Danny’s father, who raises him in silence (cruel, but with tremendous power) for the role of the next rebbe, his successor, in order to teach him to feel the pain of the world. Precisely the modern father turned his son into a rabbi, and the Hasidic father, with all his powerful intensity, turned his son into a psychologist, a student of the human soul. The book (Potok) respects both fathers. There is no good and evil here.
Rabbi Lichtenstein is evidence to the contrary. He acted exactly as I described regarding Yeshiva University in relation to his son Rabbi Meir, who tried to go the academic route at the yeshiva in Har Etzion.
An interesting point. I’m not sure, because “rabbi” is not a title for a God-fearing person but for someone who gives halakhic rulings to the public and teaches Talmud and halakha (not Talmudic archaeology but Talmud). He had something of the second, but regarding the first I have very great doubts.
And as for Shatzal’s characteristic demagoguery (even if charming), I did not refuse to write about R. Chaim Kanievsky. I wrote that I had nothing to write about him. I don’t think much of recycled eulogies saying he was a great man, diligent, possessed of wonderful traits, etc. (I noted this at the end of my conversation with the computer science lecturer from Karnei Shomron, the owner of the interview blog — for some reason I forgot his name.) If I don’t have something interesting to write, I don’t write. What I did find interesting about him was mainly negative, and that had already been written about in the past. That has no place after his passing.
1. To the best of my knowledge, the Layers method is not a Talmudic or scholarly method but a pedagogical technique (to color each layer in the sugya a different color, or something like that). He applies academic research to teaching Talmud in high school. I certainly do know how one can study Talmud without it. I do so every day (regardless of whether it is correct or not).
2. Life is complicated. As for good and evil, I too got the impression that Havlin exaggerated Potok’s tendentiousness, but it is true that one can discern his leaning toward Malter’s side.
I do not cast doubt on Talmudic research as a whole, certainly not because of the criticism of Halivni (whose details I myself do not know). In my view, the field contains quite a bit of work that is of no importance at all, and even the significant things (the few there are) usually do not speak to me personally. In my opinion one can manage perfectly well without them (the misses will not be great, even if you are not versed in academic research). There are exceptions, such as Henshke, but that is mainly because of the combination he makes with classical lomdus, which is very rare.
“From the day this distinction came into the world, I do not know how one can learn without it”…?
And how does one learn, according to this “distinction,” “Let the words of Torah be burned rather than be handed over to women”?
On what basis does the rabbi doubt his fear of Heaven?
With God’s help, 1 Tammuz 5782
And perhaps the inspiration for the character of “Rabbi Gershenzon” (= son of Gershon) came from the figure of Rabbi Yehuda Gershuni, a disciple of Rabbi Baruch Ber and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who headed “Yeshivat Eretz Yisrael” in New York. Beyond Lithuanian analytical depth (as he received from R. Baruch Ber), Rabbi Gershuni was known for a special fondness for a Torah capable of bringing practical implementation of halakha into a renewed reality, and he himself saw this trend as the “Torah of the Land of Israel.” Several of his books are devoted to halakhic clarification on current issues raised by the political rebirth of the Jewish people. It suits him very well to take pleasure in his student’s mastery of Yoreh De‘ah more than in finding obscure variants in old printings.
By contrast, with “Rabbi Kalman” there is a tendency toward critical analysis of the approaches of the Rishonim, out of a sense that the interpretations of the Rishonim do not always sit comfortably with the language of the Talmud, and that one should seek the Rishon’s approach that best accords with the plain sense of the sugya. It seems to me that his character fits Rabbi Prof. Shmuel Kalman Mirsky, a scholar of Geonic literature and editor of a critical edition of the She’iltot, whose aspiration for interpretation close to the plain meaning of the Talmudic sugyot was filled by the teachings of the Geonim.
Best regards, Gamliel Gavriel Gringras-Girondi
One learns with the intense experience of “Is not My word like fire?”
It is worth noting that in the end, despite “Reuven ben David Malter’s” fondness for renewed interpretation based on manuscript versions, “at the end of the day” he becomes a congregational rabbi whose bold scholarly innovations do not occupy a central place in his halakhic guidance of the community.
The inner process undergone by the son of “David Malter” also occurs with “David Halivni,” who, as a halakhic teacher for a community, tends toward conservatism, shrinking from bold innovations. This “archetype” — a bold scholar and a conservative decisor — also includes Rabbi Prof. Binyamin Ze’ev Benedict, teacher of Rabbi Eliyahu Zini and Prof. David Henshke, who on the one hand supported the approach of late anonymous strata, and on the other hand in the realm of halakhic ruling stood firmly rooted in the Hungarian-Yekkish tradition.
Best regards, G.G. Gregm"l
Likewise, the son of Prof. David Halivni, of blessed memory, Rabbi Dr. Ephraim Bezalel Halivni, may he live and be well — although he is very accomplished in the field of Geniza versions of the Talmud, with which he works in the Historical Dictionary of the Hebrew Language — nevertheless, his Talmudic research focuses more on halakhic topics with implications for practical ruling, such as “The Rules of Halakhic Decision-Making in the Talmud” and “Distinctions between Man and Woman,” and less on the layered development of the sugyot.
To I"A — greetings,
The “first” matter in which RMDA casts doubt regarding Prof. Halivni is how far he excelled as “a person who gives rulings to the public and teaches Talmud and halakha,” which is what the title “rabbi” is measured by. The “second” is “Talmudic archaeology,” that is, the separation of layers in the sugya, in which Prof. Halivni excelled but refrained from applying it to halakhic ruling.
RMDA did not cast doubt on Halivni’s “fear of Heaven.” On the contrary, he extolled the love of Torah, intellectual honesty, and humility of a renowned scholar who turns to a young and unknown Torah scholar in order to reexamine his interpretive approach. Is there a clearer sign than that of fear of Heaven?
Best regards, Gamliel Gavriel Gringras-Girondi
That is an anonymous addition not found in the Naples print.
I"A,
Read my words again. I did not write that I have doubts about his fear of Heaven.
As someone who grew up (partly) in Rabbi Benedict’s community, of blessed memory, I doubt this description — both as to his boldness as a scholar and as to his conservatism as a decisor.
With God’s help, 1 Tammuz 5782
To Avraham Chaim and Chayota — greetings,
Precisely the distinction between the layers in the Talmud helps one “manage” with Rabbi Eliezer’s harsh statement against “handing over words of Torah to women.”
It turns out that the “anonymous voice of the Gemara” (in Sotah 21) sees the view of Ben Azzai, who disagrees with Rabbi Eliezer and obligates a father to teach Torah to his daughter, as the view of “the Rabbis,” and from this anonymous layer it follows that they held that most tannaim viewed women as obligated in Torah study.
One female Talmud scholar (whose name has momentarily slipped my mind) wanted to see in Rabbi Yehoshua’s statement, “A woman prefers one kav and sexual intimacy to nine kav and abstinence,” which is brought immediately after Rabbi Eliezer’s statement “Whoever teaches his daughter Torah teaches her frivolity” — an expression of a positive attitude toward women’s Torah study, since the source of Rabbi Yehoshua’s statement is in the halakha that a woman may prevent her husband from “professional advancement” if that move would damage the marital bond. According to that halakha, tiflut (= strengthening the marital bond) is a positive value.
If Rabbi Eliezer requires that the father refrain from teaching his daughter Torah out of concern that this will lead to forbidden relationships with men, then Rabbi Yehoshua proposes that a husband share his Torah study with his wife, which would strengthen the marriage (“tiflut” in the sense of “connection”).
Best regards, Gamliel Gavriel Gringras-Girondi
Rabbi Eliezer is consistent with his view that even a woman who has male and female slaves must occupy herself with spinning wool, because “idleness leads to licentiousness,” and the Gemara explains that even an intellectual activity such as chess (nardashir), which prevents “boredom,” is not suitable for women according to Rabbi Eliezer, because it may lead to forbidden relations with men.
In the Layers method, “an anonymous addition” is not a term of disparagement or of diminished importance or value. This division is a working tool, like glasses that sharpen vision or provide a three-dimensional view. I assume it does not help the philosophical analysis of the sugya but rather the historical perspective on it, though sometimes that perspective is useful for understanding. (I’ll stop, because the flames are already crawling over here.)
Gamliel Gavriel etc. — hello. If I weren’t afraid of the auto-da-fé, I would quote from my dissertation, from the dialogue between Rabbi Eliezer and the matron in the Jerusalem Talmud, Sotah (“A woman’s wisdom is only in the distaff”), etc. — the sugya from which the exemplary statement “Let the words of Torah be burned rather than be handed over…” was taken.
Also regarding women reading the Megillah, the anonymous layer presents a position that strongly supports it. The anonymous sugya at the beginning of Arakhin sharpens the novelty of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi’s ruling (Megillah 19) that women are obligated in the reading of the Megillah from the wording of the Mishnah, “All are obligated in the reading of the Megillah,” and the anonymous layer explains: “all” — to include women.
It seems that the tanna in the Tosefta to Megillah did not understand it that way, for he taught: “All are obligated in the reading of the Megillah — priests, Levites, Israelites, converts, freed slaves, and Nethinim…” and women are not mentioned! It seems that in the place and time of the tanna of the Tosefta, the reading of the Megillah was viewed as a positive time-bound commandment from which women were exempt.
Likewise, from the testimony of the Jerusalem Talmud about Rabbi Haggai and Rabbi Mana, who read the Megillah at home for the women of their households, it follows that even in the fifth generation of the Amoraim of the Land of Israel, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi’s view had not become the practice of the general public. Women did not come to hear the Megillah read in the synagogue.
That is to say: the one who established decisively among the people of Israel that women are obligated in the reading of the Megillah was the author of the anonymous stratum in Arakhin!
Best regards, G.G. G.G.
And well known is the position of the author of Halakhot Gedolot, that women are obligated in hearing the Megillah but not in reading it. The Turei Even explained that women’s obligation in Megillah because “they too were part of that miracle” is a rabbinic enactment, by tannaim or amoraim, whereas men’s obligation is from “words of tradition,” from the enactment of Mordechai, Esther, and the Men of the Great Assembly; and one whose obligation is rabbinic cannot discharge one whose obligation is from “words of tradition.”
To Chayota — greetings,
Two reasons are given by the Rishonim for Rabbi Eliezer’s prohibition against teaching Torah to daughters. According to Rashi on Sotah, the concern is forbidden relations between men and women, a concern that unfortunately “has not lost its force” even today (see the Takana forum and the Kan exposé), and certainly existed in the days of the Sages, when there were no books and Torah was learned through discussion in a group in the study hall…
By contrast, according to Rambam, Rabbi Eliezer’s reason is concern over mistaken understanding of Torah, due to a woman’s impatience and preoccupation, and therefore “her mind is not properly directed” during study (as Rambam says in the laws of prayer, that one should not stand to pray unless “his mind is properly directed”).
It may be that Rabbi Eliezer’s two statements reflect these two concerns. In his statement, “A woman’s wisdom is only in the distaff,” Rabbi Eliezer fears that intellectual involvement will cause a woman to stumble into forbidden relations with men, for which reason Rabbi Eliezer also requires even a wealthy woman who could keep herself occupied with “chess” to spin at the distaff, so that she not come to “licentiousness.”
By contrast, in his statement “Let the words of Torah be burned rather than be handed over to women,” Rabbi Eliezer expresses concern over mistaken understanding of Torah, because of the impatience and shortness of spirit of most women when it comes to investing in deep study.
Best regards, Gamliel Gavriel Gringras-Girondi
Incidentally, Rambam solved the concern of mistaken understanding of Torah in his lucid work Mishneh Torah, in which he states (at the end of chapter 4 of Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah) that the explanations of the commandments, to know what is forbidden and permitted, can be known by anyone, “great and small, man and woman, broad-minded and narrow-minded.” Rambam thus explicitly made his work available to women as well.
My mistake?
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… for Rabbi Eliezer’s prohibition against teaching Torah to daughters and women. …
Regarding Potok’s books: it should be added 1) that Potok himself moved from Yeshiva University to the Jewish Theological Seminary and was ordained there as a Conservative rabbi; 2) regarding the identification of Gershonzon with Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, of blessed memory, my late brother-in-law pointed out to me that Gershon is from the house of Levi, but this is not the place to elaborate.
And today the Health and Education Ministries have adopted the view that the economy and the education system should not be shut down.
Best regards, G.G. Gregm"l
Where can one read these things?
I am outside the jurisdiction of the Inquisition.
Lucky you.
At the Bar-Ilan library. At the National Library.
The figure and path of Rabbi Benedict in halakha, communal leadership, and scholarship are described in Prof. David Henshke’s article, “A Dead Man Who Has No Comforters” — On the Figure of My Teacher Rabbi Binyamin Ze’ev Benedict, of blessed memory. His support for the method of late anonymous strata is not mentioned there. I remember this from reading many years ago Rabbi Eliyahu Zini’s introduction to one of his books dealing with the contribution of the Savoraim to the editing of the Talmud, but now I fear my memory has misled me.
Best regards, Gamliel Gavriel Gringras-Girondi
In note 25 he mentions the esteem of the Rishon LeTsion Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim for Rabbi Benedict. In Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Glicksberg’s article, “Rabbinical Seminaries under the Presidency of the Rishonim LeTsion: A Continuity with Almost No Change” (Pe‘amim 135), it is mentioned that Rabbi Nissim wanted to appoint Rabbi Benedict as head of the “Beit Midrash for Rabbis and Dayanim” that he established in Jerusalem in 1957, but it did not come to pass.
In the rabbinical program at JTS, young men and women sit together, without a halakhic dress code or standards of modesty. A woman can sit in such a course even in jeans and a tank top and be ordained as a rabbi.
Therefore it is possible that his sociological considerations were not entirely devoid of substance. He lived among his people.
On the contrary, for studying the “anonymous strata” there is nothing more fitting than “anonymous” dress 🙂
Best regards, Just an anonymous questioner
*** deleted ***
I have no idea how the women dress there, nor how the men dress, but I very much doubt that you are right. But even if it is true, he should have acted to institute a dress code and not to eliminate the possibility of women serving as rabbis. And in the end, in my view, Conservative male and female rabbis have defects far more serious than their dress code.
I know. Even if there is some dress code somewhere, it is not actually enforced in the classrooms.
The heads of the institution, too, can dress one way or another.
And in prayer as well — a woman dressed immodestly can also open the ark, carry a Torah scroll, etc.
(Incidentally, this is somewhat reminiscent of the situation in some of the mixed preparatory programs in Israel today, where young men and women study Gemara together, side by side, even in shorts.)
With God’s help, eve of the holy Sabbath, “This is the statute of the Torah,” 5782
Torah study, whether for women or for men, has an aspect of “purifying the impure and defiling the pure.” On the one hand, “the light within it” acts on the learner in a direction that draws toward elevation in Torah observance as well, and in that sense Torah is an “elixir of life.” On the other hand, study may lead the learner to pride and arrogance. When one sees that he or she too can offer arguments with a certain logic to them, one may come to think that he or she too can be a bar plugta, an interlocutor on equal terms, with the tannaim, amoraim, and sages of the generations.
Therefore the decision will always be full of hesitation. On the one hand, precisely students who come in “jeans and a tank top” and are not aware of the honor and sanctity of the Torah have a good chance that study will draw them near and awaken in them the desire to observe more and more. A kollel student who teaches Judaism to secular university students told me that Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv instructed them not to comment at all on the immodest clothing of female students, so as not to distance them from Torah study.
Similarly, R. Meir Dorfman, one of the founders of “HaMakom” in Tel Aviv, related that the gaon R. Shlomo Fischer warned him not to say a word about the clothing of participants in the classes — not to demand a kippah from the boys and not to demand non-revealing clothing from the girls; let them come and learn “as they are,” and with God’s help there will be some who draw closer.
Of course, when one comes to discuss ordination for Torah leadership, the problem is much more serious. In the dilemmas surrounding the ordination of women in the Conservative movement — fortunately for me, no one there is asking my opinion 🙂 — but the problematic aspect exists also among Orthodox women who study Torah. As RMDA wrote in other discussions, their level of learning is not high, and generally they are not even capable of understanding that the road is still long before they can be considered halakhic decisors, and therefore they are deeply hurt by being “excluded” from spiritual leadership.
At any rate, Prof. Halivni did not reject women’s ordination as rabbis altogether, but held that it should come through a prolonged process that would bring habituation and maturation. But the leaders of the seminary held in this matter like their Chabad neighbors, who maintain that one should leap over obstacles from the outset 🙂
Best regards, Yekutiel Schneor Zahavi
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… teaches Judaism to university students …
A question — apparently I did not understand something.
A great Torah scholar, but he did not see a problem with traveling by car on Shabbat?
If driven by a non-Jew?
If driven by a Jew?
Did he see a problem and just prefer not to protest? (As in much of Orthodoxy, where the reality on the ground is that this is the public: do what you can and not what you can’t?)
In general, is there any halakhic opening to discuss the issue? (Even if Rabbi M.A. does not agree, still perhaps there is something to discuss — for example, permissions for a divorcée to marry a kohen; even if they are probably wrong, still there is something to hear.)
Or did I not understand something in the post?
I didn’t say that he saw no problem. They accused him of that. I don’t know and have no information. But what does that have to do with his being a Torah scholar? He can know a great deal of Torah and still see no problem with driving. Either because in his opinion there is no prohibition, or because in his view under those circumstances it is better to remain silent, or because he is simply wicked.
If that is the argument, it proves nothing; love of truth is not identical with fear of Heaven.
Thanks! What is the title called?
Somewhere among hills and valleys there is a site called Wikipedia:
“Chayota Deutsch, The Many-Faced Matron: Fixed and Changing Patterns of Encounters between Sages and Foreign Women in the Midrashim and the Talmuds, dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 2011, under the supervision of Prof. Hananel Mack”
The wording of Rav Sherira Gaon (and so too it is brought in the Itur and in Otzar HaGeonim): “And they and the sages after them also established several discussions in the Gemara, such as Rav Eina and Rav Simona; and we have a tradition from the earlier ones that the Gemara from the beginning of ‘Ha-Ishah Nikneit’ up to ‘From where are these words derived? — by money,’ the later Savoraic rabbis arranged and established, and other passages as well.”
So we have here that already the Geonim established that there are different strata in the Gemara from different periods — “they and the sages after them established [them] in the Gemara.”
But look — the Midrash tells us almost in passing that even in the Prophets there are layers:
“Rabbi Simon said: Beeri, the father of Hosea son of Beeri, prophesied these two verses, but they were not enough for a separate book, so they were attached to Isaiah.”
As for Rabbi Professor Halivni’s position on appointing female rabbis, he explains his stance well in the booklet
A Leaf Not Blown Away. As I understand it, this stemmed not from love of conservatism but from hatred of innovation — a trait that our Rabbi Michael Abraham
also shares. See there.
Rav Sherira Gaon speaks of “several discussions” and points to specific sugyot established by the Savoraim, not to all the anonymous material in the Talmud!
Best regards, Just an anonymous questioner
Both stories are very beautiful. Thank you!