Is belief in the Torah's divinity irrational?

By Rabbi Professor Sam Lebens

“Do you really believe in all of that Judaism stuff? But you’re so clever!” I’m never quite sure if this is a compliment or an insult. But it’s a question I’ve been asked. To save me from the accusation of lying to others, people must think that I’m engaged in some sort of compartmentalization.

The religious scientist, when in the laboratory, puts nothing down to super-natural causes. Every phenomenon requires a natural explanation. And yet, the same religious scientist, when outside of the laboratory is willing to believe in miracles. Once again, the only explanation is that the religious intellectual must have erected an internal iron curtain between their religious persona, which they occupy in the synagogue and at home, and their worldly persona, which they occupy the rest of the time.

Professor Solomon Schimmel writes (https://www.thetorah.com/.../my-personal-struggle-with...):

For years, I have been studying Orthodox Judaism and exploring the question of how it is that modern, highly educated people can make unreasonable faith claims. Specifically, how is it that Modern Orthodox Jews, in the face of overwhelming evidence and logical arguments, believe that God revealed the entirety of the Pentateuch, word for word, to Moses at Sinai and/or in the wilderness?

Let’s examine his example: belief that God revealed the entirety of the Pentateuch to Moses. James Kugel, a leading contemporary Biblical scholar, claims that his discipline stands upon a number of assumptions; assumptions which are owed to Spinoza. According to these assumptions:

1. Scripture is to be understood on its own terms, rather than through the interpretative lenses of any particular church or religious tradition.

2. We have to make efforts to understand the language of the Bible and its own world of ideas, without imposing later conceptions upon it.

3. Consequently, we should assume that scripture means just what scripture says, even when its plain meaning contradicts contemporary values, mores, and conceptions, unless internal textual considerations force upon us a figurative interpretation.

4. To understand the meaning of scripture, we first of all have to investigate how the books were put together. We have to construct biographies for the authors, based upon knowledge of their writings and their historical context, and understand their words in light of these biographies.

5. In considering the words of the prophets, one must recognize that they frequently contradict one another. Hermeneutics of reconciliation are to be eschewed in favor of recognizing the multiple conflicting voices beneath the surface

But Orthodox Judaism rejects many of these assumptions. We think that the Torah is properly interpreted by the Rabbinic tradition; that God speaks to us through these texts; that God may have meant to communicate things to this generation through the same words that communicated other things to earlier generations; and that the words of the prophets are all true. It follows that their words must admit of a reconciliatory reading.

As Kugel sees it, what separates Orthodox interpretations of the Bible and contemporary academic scholarship is just:

the set of unwritten instructions that guide them in reading the biblical text. Accept the one’s, and the other’s interpretations appear irrelevant at best, at worst a willful and foolish hiding from the obvious. It is thanks to this crucial difference in assumptions that these two groups can read exactly the same words and perceive two quite different messages.

Perhaps an analogy will be helpful.

Meticulous scholarship has led some theorists to suggest that ‘William Shakespeare’ was merely a pseudonym for Sir Henry Neville. Detailed study of Neville’s biography renders his life a compelling fit for having authored the works attributed to Shakespeare. Neville’s handwritten notes, found in the books of his extensive library match exactly what we’d expect to be find in the books of a playwright conducting research so as to write Shakespeare’s plays. Notwithstanding this evidence, and this meticulous scholarship, the vast majority of Shakespeare scholars remain resolutely unconvinced.

A key proponent of the Neville theory, John Casson, told the Guardian newspaper: “There are no letters from William of Stratford. His parents were illiterate, his daughters were illiterate: how do you become the greatest writer ever when your family are illiterate?”

Can you hear the prejudice in those words? The son of illiterate parents simply couldn’t have authored such majestic work. Accordingly, noted Shakespeare expert, Brian Vickers put the theory down to:

snobbery, and ignorance… They are unaware that the Elizabethan grammar school was an intense crash course in reading and writing Latin verse, prose, and plays – the bigger schools often acted plays by Terence in the original … Above all, he had a great imagination, and didn’t need to have been to Venice to write The Merchant of Venice, or Othello. What’s most dispiriting about these anti-Stratfordians is their denial of Shakespeare’s creative imagination.

If you resolutely assume from the outset that x is false, then you’re almost bound to find ‘compelling evidence’ that x is false. Likewise: if you assume that God wasn’t the principle author of the Pentateuch, then certain textual anomalies are bound to take on a different light than they would if you assumed that God was the author. But the anomalies in question really don’t serve as compelling evidence that God was not the author, unless you’re already assuming that God was not the author (just as the evidence for Neville only becomes salient on the assumption that it couldn’t have been Shakespeare who wrote those plays).

Spinoza’s assumptions are attractive to Biblical Scholars. They want their discipline to approximate the standards of a natural science. Even the most religious of scientists tend to adopt a stance that is sometimes called methodological naturalism. According to this stance, it is always inappropriate to appeal to the acts of God in coming to a scientific theory. Even if God exists, we should keep him out of the laboratory.

Methodological naturalism is not compartmentalization. God created a world that abides by natural laws. Science progresses as we try to discover what those laws and regularities are without any appeal to super-natural processes beyond the empirical data. But why come to this chaotic world with the assumption that its many varied phenomena should yield to one set of laws? Why think that the basic principles that govern the development of a fetus should govern also the birth of distance galaxies? Science operates in the hope that unifying laws will be found. But that faith is blind, unless you believe that the universe itself, with all of its varied phenomena, is the creation of a law loving God. In this way, theism can serve as excellent scaffolding for making sense of the sciences. But, scaffolding holds a building up from the outside. God is not welcome in the laboratory itself.

That’s well and good for the sciences. But if the question is whether or not God was involved in writing the Torah, then using a discipline that adopts a methodological naturalism is to beg the question. Methodological naturalism rules out any theories that use God to explain phenomena. So you can guarantee, before you start your investigation into who wrote the Bible, that methodological naturalism won’t discover a Divine author. But its failure to find a Divine author is not evidence that God wasn’t involved. It’s not a finding. It’s not a conclusion. It’s just an assumption. You don’t need to be a fundamentalist, or manifest a pathological compartmentalization, or show disrespect to the academy, to recognize the logical fallacy of petitio principia (i.e., of begging the question). If anything, it is the scholars who raise these accusations who show a basic disregard for the philosophy of science.

Samuel Lebens is associate Professor in the philosophy department at the University of Haifa, he is also an Orthodox Rabbi and Jewish educator. He is the author of The Principles of Judaism (Oxford University Press), and has a forthcoming book, The Guide to the Jewish Undecided, which is set to be published by Maggid in 2022.

First posted to Facebook 19 December 2021, here.

The Mishkan: a mishmash of misguided theories

By Daniel Abraham and Shmuli Phillips

As with other areas of academic interest in the Torah, the Mishkan (Tabernacle) has provided fertile ground over the years for those who seek to dispute traditional belief in biblical accounts of the Exodus and the Jews' subsequent journey through the Wilderness. While traditionalists are often portrayed as primitive and closed-minded for remaining loyal to their received texts, it is eye-opening to see the progression that these academic accounts have gone through over the years.

In the early days of source criticism, Julius Wellhausen confronted believers with a theory that the Tabernacle had never existed. The academic world of that era embraced the notion that the entire account was simply a retrojection of worship in the temple used to explain how the Israelites offered sacrifices in the desert. Wellhausen’s position is still upheld by some today, as Benjamin Sommer summarises: “many modern scholars contend that the priestly tabernacle is a fiction invented by priests in the exilic era to represent Solomon’s temple”.

Nevertheless, this theory has been increasingly challenged in recent decades, as scholars have started to identify specific parallels between the Mishkan and older shrines from the Ancient Near East. Sommer cites sources to show that several details of the Tabernacle’s structure and operation recall large tent sanctuaries used by Northwest Semites in the Late Bronze Age.

He adds “in some respects the tabernacle’s plan is closer to that of a genuine ancient Semitic tent shrine than to Solomon’s temple”. Sommer notes that just like the Tabernacle, these ancient Semitic shrines held “the presence of the god…traveled through the desert, and were made of red leather (as opposed to the usual black tent of Semitic nomads).” Furthermore “the use of acacia wood rather than olive or oak for building the ark and various elements of the tabernacle calls a desert setting to mind, because it comes from a tree common in the deserts south and southwest of Canaan”. This evidence led other scholars such as Richard Elliot Friedman to concede that “the Tabernacle probably was housed in the Shiloh structure. And then it was housed in the first Temple”.

Famed archaeologist, Kenneth Kitchen, shows that the Torah’s detailed account of the Tabernacle’s structure exhibits a number of parallels between the Tabernacle and other movable shrines that predate 1200 BCE. He writes of “large tents over wooden frames set in socketed bases were used for both ritual and royal purposes at Mari, still half a millennium before any Moses.” He also describes how divine houses in Ugarit myths from this time period draw not only upon similar themes, but even their terms to describe building materials are identical to those of the Torah (qerashim, ohel, mishkan).

Kitchen offers further detailed evidence supporting the antiquity of the Tabernacle, showing parallels of gods dwelling in Tabernacles, two levels of ritual priests similar to the Cohanim and Levites, consecration rituals for both high priests and sanctuaries lasting for days, wagons to transport these structures, the shape and style of the ark itself, and silver trumpets to assemble people and signal a march to war.

He then concludes: “Thus the old nineteenth-century dogmas must be abandoned in the face of those facts. There is no reason whatsoever to deny that the tabernacle and temple building accounts run true to form, and would normally be considered as records of actual work done. Thus, for the Sinai tabernacle, in retrospect, we possess a considerable—and growing—amount of valuable comparative data (much of it very old, and much, contemporary; far less, of later date) that favor the hypothesis that a small but well-decorated dismountable tent shrine (based on usages of its time) accompanied the Hebrew from Sinai to Canaan, its rituals being of appropriate modesty in extent and format.”

While the building materials of the Mishkan can therefore be seen to reflect those of an era which significantly pre-dates scholarly theories and estimates, the particular structure and layout of the Mishkan may contain an even more specific and significant theme.

One of the most significant recent developments in the traditional response to biblical criticism has been the work of Rabbi Dr Joshua Berman, who emphasizes the need to evaluate the Torah in the context of parallel literature from the Ancient Near East. In Ani Ma’amin, Berman shows how various key biblical features appear to have been deliberately formulated in a way that mirrors and, in crucial ways, departs from the religious, military and cultural writings of ancient Egypt.

Dr. Joshua Berman goes into great detail explaining how Ramesses II’s military camp at Kadesh “constitutes the closest parallel to the Tabernacle—including the Temple of Solomon—known to date”. As can be seen from the attached diagram, the layout and proportions of the Mishkan are identical to the military camp of Rameses II – believed by many to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus. In a recent post we showed how the Song of Sea could be seen as a deliberate appropriation of Rameses’ victory celebration over the Hittites – ironically replacing Rameses with the God of the Bible. Here too we can see the Torah’s subtle symbolism working to glorify God in place of the deified Egyptian monarch.

Berman adds that just like the four camps of Israelites in the desert: “Egypt’s four army divisions at Kadesh would have camped on the four sides of Ramesses’s tent compound”. In Richard Elliot Friedman’s words “its size, shape, proportions, surrounding courtyard, golden winged accoutrements, Eastern orientation, and arrangement of outer and inner rooms are a match”.

Berman concludes that the Egyptian parallel is far more convincing than previous scholarly attempts to view the Tabernacle in the context of Canaanite or Assyrian shrines: “Neo-Assyrian camps are routinely depicted as oval in shape, and feature no throne tent of any kind”. Had the Torah been written during the Neo-Assyrian or Babylonian exiles, which at one point represented the academic consensus, we would have expected any Israelite writer to have been influenced by the designs of these cultures’ temples rather than express intimate knowledge of Egyptian and Ugaritic religious and military structures from centuries earlier.

• Kenneth Kitchen, “On the Reliability of the Old Testament (2006)
• Richard Elliot Friedman, “Who Wrote the Bible” (1987)
• Richard Elliot Friedman, “The Exodus” (2017)
• Joshua Berman, “Inconsistency in the Torah” (2017); Ani Ma'amin (2020)
• Benjamin Sommer “The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel” (2011)
• James Kugel “How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now (2007)

First posted on Facebook 3 March 2022, here.

Scholarly speculations and the making of Amalek

By Nissim Bellahsen and Shmuli Phillips

Initially I thought we’d missed the boat for an Amalek post, it being several days since Parashat Zachor was read. But upon further reflection on the quality of scholarship behind the latest offering from thetorah. com, it seemed more fitting to run with it for a Purim post instead.

A story is told of the Dubner Maggid – a rabbi famed for his ability to find a mashal for any given lesson or occasion. The Maggid was once questioned how he managed to be so prolific with his parables. The wise sage explained (with a mashal of course): A man walking in the forest sees a boy not far from a tree with a number of arrows right in middle of the bull's eye. He asks the boy who shot those arrows? "I did" replied the boy. "And how did a boy your age manage to hit the center every time?" "Simple", said the boy, "first I shot the arrows then I painted the target".

An amusing anecdote? Perhaps. But like all good fables, it has a serious message too. In this instance it provides a biting critique of the methodology which appears to have been adopted by many in the field of academic biblical studies, through which they build up entire theories and stories based on the flimsiest of indications in the text.

The scholarly article in question, which seeks to uncover the origin of Amalek’s special biblical status, sees Dr Gili Kugler – a senior lecturer in Bible Studies in the University of Haifa – take this methodology to an extreme. The pre-drawn target for Kugler’s analysis of Amalek can be found at the end of the article: A highly speculative supposition that, since narratives describing military victories of both Saul and David over Amalek are found within twelve chapters of each other, this can only mean that rival groups of scribes must have mischievously manipulated the text. The article can be viewed here: https://www.thetorah.com/article/amalek-a-pawn-in-the-rivalry-between-saul-and-davids-legacy.

THE GRAND THEORY

The two sets of scribal antagonists firmly in place, Kugler now lets her imagination run free. Rather than basing her theory on the text of the two passages in question, she instead superimposes her own theory that the Saul narrative initially praised him for a resounding rout of Amalek. Unfortunately for Saul and his scribes, however, the Davidic scribes had the last laugh, editing the biblical account of his victory so that it shouldn’t upstage David’s later triumph over the same enemy:

“The fact that both David and Saul have a story about how they defeated the Amalekites is no coincidence. Saul and David represent two different dynasties, whose founding figures competed—whether in reality, or in the minds of their later adherents, or both—for the identification and legacy as the founder of the monarchy in Israel.”

“It is probable that YHWH had no role in the older version of Saul’s war against Amalek, before it was reworked by the redactor of 1Samuel 15. I suggest (all or part of) verses 4–9 are the core of the older story, which told how Saul fought against Amalek on his own initiative

But the account of Saul’s defeat of Amalek was then revised to include an introduction, with YHWH specifically telling Saul to proscribe (cherem) all the animals. This made Saul’s not doing so—which would not have been an issue in the core story—a direct violation of YHWH’s command, and allowed for Samuel’s dramatic confrontation of Saul, ending with Saul’s painful humiliation.

MANIPULATING THE EVIDENCE TO MATCH THE THEORY

No evidence of any sort is offered for this rereading of Saul’s battle with Amalek. Two somewhat similar episodes of victory over Amalek within a twelve-chapter distance, coupled with an imagined scribal rivalry, appear to be regarded as a sufficient foundation for her proposed violence to the text. Unfortunately the article continues to deteriorate yet further from this low point.

Kugler recognises that her grand theory faces a challenge. Given the prominent prior appearances of Amalek in the Torah along with the clear command that they be wiped out, she asks, why would the claimed “original version” of the Saul battle not have required him to eradicate the Amalekites? Why would this context need to be subsequently supplemented by Davidic scribes?

In order to resolve this conundrum, Kugler scales new heights of speculation and misrepresentation of the Torah’s text. The initial version of the Torah, she charges, viewed Amalek as just another one of Israel’s enemies to be defeated alongside the Canaanites. In order to make their claimed corruption of the Saul narrative appear convincing, the Davidic scribes then had to turn their scalpels and quills to the text of the Torah itself, effortlessly inserting two passages which consider Amalek the eternal enemies of God and requiring them to be annihilated!

“Historically speaking, the conflict with Amalek was likely nothing out of the ordinary at first, and this is reflected in how they are remembered in many biblical texts, i.e., just another group whom Israel fought with. The decision of the pro-David scribes to turn Saul’s military victory into a religious defeat changed this picture.”

“This command made its way into Exodus, with the oath that war with Amalek would be fought throughout the ages. Deuteronomy, with the account of Amalek’s cruelty in attacking the weak and defenseless first, is a further elaboration of this perspective”

We must remind ourselves at this stage, that the entirebasis for the grand theory that Dr Kugler has concocted is her identification of two broadly similar narratives at a twelve-chapter distance coupled with the rivalry she has imagined there to be between Saulide and Davidic scribes.

In order to support her claim that the two passages requiring Amalek to be eradicated are later additions, Kugler seeks to show that other “non-Davidic” passages do not depict Amalek in this way as Israel’s special enemies. Her citations of the sparse references to Amalek in the book of Bereishit – centuries before Amalek’s attack on Israel took place – are scarcely relevant. She then notes that Amalek are mentioned alongside other Canaanites (receiving no special treatment) in the episode of the spies. It is not clear, however, that every mention Amalek throughout the Tanach is expected to disclose their status as eternal enemies. Particularly in the context of Israel’s campaign to take possession of the Land, a band of cruel cut throats in the Negev deserts do not deserve greater attention than the armies protecting the powerful walled cities.

Finally there is Bilaam’s treatment of Amalek which, according to Kugler, considers them as “just one of several nations that Balaam predicts Israel will crush in the future” and does not recognise them as Israel’s eternal enemies. Yet this claim relies upon a questionable translation of Bilaam’s utterance “reishit goyim Amalek” as “a leading nation is Amalek”. The translation adopted by Onkelos and the vast majority of traditional commentators, however, is “first of nations is Amalek”. This translation is consistent with how the term “reishit” is used elsewhere in the Torah, and is taken by all the commentaries to refer to Amalek’s special status – earned by being the first nation to attack the Israelites in the desert.

While Kugler claims that: “Israelites have other negative encounters but only Amalek become God’s eternal enemies to be wiped out”, we find that the Midianites are practically wiped out for their attempt to obstruct the Israelite’s progress through the desert.

To summarise, there is little if any supporting evidence in the biblical texts for Kluger’s theory that the special enemy status of Amalek as the result of a later scribal rivalry which caused them to drastically edit existing biblical passages.

SNUBBING A SIMPLER SOLUTION

Before freely wielding the scalpel to carve up the Torah’s text, Dr Kugler might have considered the principle of Occum’s Razor which gives preference to simple theories over their more complex counterparts. She mentions in passing that the verse in Devarim explicitly limits the commandment to destroy Amalek to “when the Lord your God grants you respite from all your enemies who surround”. Very simply, this earlier condition explains why Amalek’s special status is not relevant when the Torah describes the initial military campaign to take possession of the Land of Israel, and is certainly inapplicable to David’s battle with Amalek which occurs while he is in exile – taking refuge with the Philistine king, Achish.

Saul, by contrast, having united the nation under his kingship and defeated other enemies, was perfectly placed to receive the divine word to wipe out Amalek. Did Dr Kugler pause to consider whether this single principle – explicitly contained in the Torah’s text – provides a simpler and considerably more convincing account of the Amalek episodes than her complex tale of unmentioned rival scribes having inflicted unseen violence on various biblical passages?

She might also have found a more satisfying theory for why Amalek alone among Israel’s opponents is deemed the eternal enemy of God. While Amalek’s military prowess deserves no special mention alongside the other Canaanite nations whom Israel would battle for the Land, they certainly stand out in the biblical text for their eagerness to cut down the weak and weary at the start of Israel’s journey through the wilderness.

The Song of the Sea recounts how “Peoples heard, they trembled; a shudder seized the inhabitants of Philistia. Then the chieftains of Edom were startled; the powerful of Moab were seized with trembling; all the inhabitants of Canaan melted” – a report which is echoed by Rahab at the start of the book of Joshua. Only Amalek refuses to be in awe of the miraculous progress of the Israelites –instead attacking this newly-freed nation which challenges the Ancient Near Eastern order of oppressed serfs and cruel, immoral pagan rites. Amalek – like Haman the Aggagite [Amalekite] in the Purim story – fundamentally opposes the divinely-ordained mission of the Jews to spread their light and thereby refine and assist the rest of the world.

Based on highly speculative theories such as this one, academics and publishers at theTorah.com similarly seek to deprive both the Jewish people and the wider world of the God’s revealed mission for the Jewish people, and the Torah’s core historical messages of ethical monotheism. In its place they prefer to highlight weak parallels and use them as the basis for a conspiracy of scribal rivalry that QANON would be proud of. A Purim Torah – yes. But one with a very serious message.

First posted on Facebook on 16 March 2022, here.

A flawed reconstruction of the Tannaitic study hall

A couple of people sent me this Kotzk-blog article in recent days that summarises a primary theme from Rabbi Binyamin Lau’s The Sages: the apparent friction between creative and conservative elements within the Tannaitic study hall. The blog prides itself on “uncompromising truth and intellectual independence”, a mission statement which I see as an invitation to challenge its uncritical tribute to Rabbi Lau’s account.

Chapter 46 of Judaism Reclaimed, which critiques this section of The Sages, notes that the theory Rabbi Lau (pictured, right) presents is not original research. Rather it closely adheres to a history of the sages compiled centuries ago by the Jewish-German historian Heinrich Graetz. Unfortunately for his readers, not only does Rabbi Lau fail to mention Graetz’s work, but he is also either unaware of or unwilling to engage with a comprehensive and scathing critique of Graetz’s work which takes up over 200 pages of Rabbi S. R. Hirsch’s Collected Writings (Vol. 5).

A significant element of Graetz’s account is his attempt to demonstrate that the hermeneutical creativity of the oral tradition was an innovation on the part of Hillel; an innovation which led to conflict between different groups of sages. Graetz’s suggestion, which runs counter to traditional Judaism’s view that the hermeneutical rules are of Sinaitic origin, is reproduced uncritically by Rabbi Lau who writes in his introduction:

“It was in the beit midrash of Shemaya and Avtalyon that exegesis achieved a new form. There the scholars learned how to expound verses analytically by comparing, juxtaposing, and combining texts…Hillel introduces the practical application of the exegetical principles in the land of Israel…ushers in an exciting period of creativity in developing the Oral Law…”

According to the Graetz-Lau theory, Shammai represented the old and more static traditions while Hillel championed creativity in hermeneutical interpretation and halachic development. Shammai was strict and inflexible while Hillel was lenient and innovative. This apparent tension is then imaginatively threaded through subsequent generations of Tannaitic sages, reaching its peak with the debate between Rabbi Eliezer (“the Shammaite”) and his colleagues concerning the oven of Achnai.

As our chapter shows, Rav Hirsch advances considerable challenges to the Graetz-Lau theory and its depiction of the methodology of interpreting the Torah as being a major battleground between the schools of Hillel and Shammai (and their followers in subsequent generations). Rav Hirsch’s comprehensive research demonstrates, for example, how of 280 recorded disputes between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, 245 of them are entirely unrelated to hermeneutical methodology. Of the remaining 35 disputes, we do not find a single example of Beit Shammai disputing the validity of a hermeneutical principle advanced by Beit Hillel; he typically accepts the validity of the interpretative rule but counters with an argument against its specific application in the scenario under discussion. If anything, the reverse is true: a Baraita in Yevamot (16a) describes how school of Shammai offered 300 dialectic arguments to support their contention over a detail of levirate marriage. These arguments nevertheless failed to dislodge Beit Hillel from their loyalty to an ancient tradition. This is also consistent with the Talmud’s comment a couple of pages earlier that it was the school of Shammai that exhibited keener halachic reasoning.

Rather than debating the legitimacy of halachic innovation versus tradition – a theory made possible only by the selective presentation of Tannaic sources – the proliferation of disputes between these two great academies was attributed by a Tosefta to students not having properly absorbed the ideas set forth by their founding sages.

Rabbi Eliezer, presented by Graetz and Rabbi Lau as a rigid Shammaite traditionalist who vigorously rejected the interpretative methodologies (or “inane deliberations”) of his colleagues, is shown to have availed himself of interpretative or logical methods of extracting halachah on no fewer than 63 separate instances. Some of the most complex hermeneutical methods are even said by the Talmud to have been championed by him.

In the infamous Akhnai debate, a dispute over whether a certain type of oven can contract ritual defilement, grows in intensity. Rabbi Eliezer repeatedly succeeds in summoning supernatural affirmations of the correctness of his position. Rabbi Yehoshua dismisses these proofs and famously declares that “it [the Torah’s interpretation] is not in Heaven.” Rabbi Eliezer’s persistent refusal to concede the argument in favour of the majority view leads to his excommunication.

Rabbi Lau’s account views this event as part of an ongoing ideological rift between the schools of Shammai -- which rigidly clings to received tradition -- and Hillel, thought to be more creative and flexible in its hermeneutical interpretations of the Torah. He labels the strong stand taken by Rabbi Eliezer (the “Shammaite’’) in the Achnai episode a “classic example” of rigid adherence to tradition. In doing so, he fails to recognize that the debate is entirely irrelevant to the question of tradition versus creativity; Rabbi Eliezer does not ground his case in received tradition, nor does Rabbi Yehoshua respond with interpretative innovation based on hermeneutical rules. Rather, all parties to the dispute agree on the basic halachic principles governing the ritual impurity of vessels and are involved in a relatively minor disagreement as to how the halachah can be most logically applied to a specific circumstance. Importantly, the Gemara describes how “Rabbi Eliezer advanced all the arguments in the world”—hardly the behaviour of someone clinging doggedly to transmitted dogma.

The special significance of the Achnai case really lies in Rabbi Eliezer’s rejection of majority rule as the proper basis on which to resolve halachic disputes. The powerful implications of this rejection lead Ramban to comment that, had the Sanhedrin been fully functioning at this juncture, Rabbi Eliezer would have been tried as a Zaken Mamre (Rebellious Elder).

Readers with an interest in the history of the Tannaitic study hall are strongly recommended to include the writings of Rav Hirsch – a scholar who truly straddled the worlds of Talmudic and academic Judaism – in their attempts to reconstruct this fascinating period of Jewish history.

First posted to Facebook 16 December 2021, here.

Never Again or Nothing New Under the Sun? Humanity's humbling reality

"Who would have thought that this kind of thing could happen in the twenty-first century?"

“How can there be a brutal military invasion targeting civilians in 2022?”

My social media over the past month has been regularly punctuated by expressions of disbelief over the horrific events in Ukraine. The sort of events that many wanted to believe belonged to a bygone era. A less civilised past.

Students of history will be aware, however, that we are far from the first generation to imagine that we had put devastating wars behind us. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia which was considered to have paved the way to universal peace; the 1814 Congress of Vienna which many hoped could create a new post-Napoleonic order which would end war in Europe. The League of Nations, set up in the aftermath of the “war to end all wars”, succeeded only in causing complacency and opposition to re-arming in the face of the subsequent Nazi threat. “Never Again” was adopted as a slogan following WWII and the Holocaust, while the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was acclaimed as “the end of history”.

Sadly, a recurring pattern throughout human history is shock and horror at the depths of cruelty and depravity to which fellow human beings can once again sink. Disbelief that people and societies, who were imagined to be civil and sophisticated, could still perpetrate and support acts of depraved brutality. How then are we to relate to the sudden reappearance of such evil which has invaded the comfort zone of our “post-war” Western world?

One very powerful message I took from Out Of The Depths, the memoirs of former Chief Rabbi of Israel and Holocaust survivor, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, is his sharp criticism of those who sought to portray Hitler and other Nazis as having been somehow crazy or inhuman. As if the Second World War came from some other planet – committed by aliens. He wrote that unless we internalise the fact that human nature can lead people down the route of evil, we will not recognise the warning signs and fail to stop it from happening again. Responding to one of the witnesses from the Eichmann trial, Rabbi Lau wrote:

“If Auschwitz were indeed another planet, it would be easier to accept the Holocaust. But in truth, the disaster of Auschwitz is that it happened on the very same planet where we had lived before, where we live now, and where we will continue to live. Those who carried out the cruel murders of the innocent were ordinary people, who returned home from their murderous acts to water the flowers in their manicured gardens. They tended the flowers lovingly and carefully so they would blossom, just after they had torn infants to pieces and shattered the skulls of men and women. Just after shoving thousands of people into the gas chambers to their deaths, they came home to play with dolls together with their little girls, and listen to classical music, eyes closed, engrossed in the uplifting spirituality of Bach and Beethoven…Those were people just like you and me, and that’s the whole problem. When you transfer all those horrors to another planet, you minimise the issue. You are saying that something like the Holocaust can never happen to us again. In my humble opinion, you are wrong…”

It is a natural human reaction to be so horrified by cruel atrocities that we want to entirely disassociate from those who carry them out. By considering such people to be completely different we no longer feel threatened by our potential to become like them. They are not viewed as the “regular people” that we perceive ourselves and our societies to be. Rabbi Lau – supported by the terrible lessons of history – teaches us that this is naive and can be highly dangerous.

Rabbi Lau’s warning parallels a criticism made by Rabbi S. R. Hirsch of the tendency in many quarters to depict leading religious figures as ever-righteous superhumans who are never subject to temptation – and certainly always distant from sin. As I discuss in Judaism Reclaimed, this approach leads to a disconnect. By implying that great people were naturally pre-ordained for greatness their followers are deprived of potentially potent role models who can inspire others to battle and overcome challenges.

Instead, as Rambam teaches in Hilchot Teshuvah (5:2), “each person bears the potential to be righteous like Moses our teacher or wicked like Jeroboam”. Rather than disassociate ourselves from powerful role models for the good or imagine that perpetrators of evil belong to a class of other-worldly demons, we must be aware of our innate ability – the very thing that makes us human – to follow either of these paths.

Ultimately it will not be well-meaning peace accords or institutions such as the Treaty of Westphalia, Congress of Vienna, League of Nations or United Nations which will alter the course of humanity. In Moreh Nevuchim (3:11), Rambam maintains that only way to truly change human society is to cure the underlying ills which drive people and nations into war:

For through awareness of the truth, enmity and hatred are removed and the inflicting of harm by people on one another is abolished. It [Tanach] holds out this promise, saying “And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb…”. Then it gives the reason for this, saying that the cause of the abolition of these enmities, these discords and these tyrannies, will be humanity’s knowledge of God…

The primary and perhaps exclusive causes of warfare and misery are obsession with and competition over material possessions, power and pride. Only once humanity is taught or becomes aware of this folly and reaches for a higher, more refined goal, its energies and capabilities will be channelled towards achieving universal happiness, and people will “beat their swords into ploughshares…”.

First posted on 20 March 2022, here.

Why does the Torah prohibit superstition?

The analysis of Judaism Reclaimed which relates to the parashah of Achrei-Mot focuses in part on its prohibition against “walking in the statutes” of the surrounding pagan nations. This commandment is understood by the sages to refer to “Darkei Emori” – superstitious practices of the Emorites which were commonly believed to influence natural phenomena and protect people from worldly dangers.

In the understanding of Rambam, all such superstitious practices are categorised alongside various forms of magic and necromancy as empty and foolish actions. He takes a strong stand against those who conclude, from a simple reading of the Torah that any of these darker arts as efficacious:

"Anyone who believes ... that these things are true ... but that the Torah has prohibited them is one of the fools and those lacking knowledge ... But those who possess wisdom ... know ... that all of these things that the Torah prohibits ... are emptiness and vanity that fools stray after, and all of the paths of truth have been corrupted because of them. Because of this the Torah states ..."Perfect shall you be with Hashem, your God”." (Hilchot Avoda Zara 11:6)

Many people with whom I have spoken, whose understanding of Judaism is strongly coloured by kabbalistic thinking, find Rambam’s position here difficult to fathom. From their perspective, God’s creation of the world included a powerful and dangerous ‘sitra achra’, the concept of a ‘dark side’ which is widespread in Kabbalistic texts. These forces of evil, which feed off sinful conduct, are understood to be responsible for evil in the world. Crucially for our topic, this dark side also allows for ‘darker arts’ which are believed to be able to manipulate and overcome natural forces with their powers of impurity.

According to this kabbalistic approach we can well understand why the Torah would want to prohibit any manipulation of or association with such forces of evil. But according to those such as Rambam who deny the existence of such a system of dark forces, how are we to understand the Torah's repeated warnings and severe penalties for those who partake in these darker arts?

Ibn Ezra, in his commentary on the Torah’s discussion of ov and yidoni magical practices, strongly rejects the suggestion that denying the efficacy of such practices makes their prohibition harder to understand:

“Those possessing empty brains assert that, were ovot and magical practices ineffective, the Torah would not have forbidden them. Yet I say the opposite is the case, for the Torah does not prohibit truth but falsehood, as is proven by [the prohibitions against] idolatry”.

Rambam, who places the halachot of sorcery and divination within Hilchot Avodah Zarah goes further, viewing them as an adjunct of idolatry, explaining that pagan priests would feign 'supernatural powers' in order to attract worshippers to their idolatrous cults.

An examination of Rambam's writings elsewhere suggests a further profound significance to these prohibitions. In Moreh Nevuchim (3:37) Rambam discusses the scope and functions of the Torah's prohibition against pursuing pagan superstitions, explaining it to include whatever is believed by the nations to be effective for supernatural rather than scientific reasons. This is reflected by a Talmudic teaching (Shabbat 67a) that "anything which is 'refuah' is not darkei Emori". Rambam explains this to mean that any cure which was understood — even erroneously — to be naturally effective, does not belong to the category of darker arts.

In Rambam’s understanding, since the laws of the natural world are a product of divine wisdom, they therefore represent an important means for acquiring awe, love and knowledge of God. With this in mind, Rambam's assertion that "these things [darker arts] corrupt all paths of truth" means that such trickery and fabrication corrupt humanity’s understanding of God's world, and lead it away from attaining knowledge of Him.

Any practice which can be demonstrated to be effective, however, is necessarily a reflection of God's wisdom in creating the world. If magical rites and superstitions were actually efficacious, the Torah would have had no cause to prohibit them. The problem with these imagined products of trickery lies primarily in the claim that they involve the use of powers which lie above God's natural laws, therefore wielding the ability to control and manipulate them. This creates an impression of the existence of additional and distinct supernatural powers — a dark side to be served and appeased — which makes sorcery and necromancy natural bedfellows of idolatry.

First posted on Facebook 10 April 2022, here.