The mysterious accompanying angels on Friday night

Responding to Yosef’s provocative telling of his dreams and in the broader context of fratricidal strife, Ya’akov’s response appears measured and controlled: “and his father shamar et hadavar”. But how exactly is this response to be understood?

The simplest meaning of the word “shamar” means to guard: that Ya’akov sensed that there was more to Yosef’s dream than youthful delusions of grandeur and leadership that the brothers attributed to him. Nevertheless, wanting to avoid further conflict (and perhaps being somewhat unsure as to the precise implications of the dreams), Ya’akov opted to remain silent at this juncture and to keep his thoughts to himself. His efforts do not appear to be wholly successful with the subsequent passage seeing an almost fatal escalation of his sons’ deep disagreement.

Rashi, however, does not pursue this line of interpretation. Instead, he provides biblical precedent for a rarer rendering of the term “shamar” – explaining it to mean “looked forward to” and “anticipate”. This approach carries a stronger implication that Ya’akov was fully aware of the message of Yosef’s dream – the primary reaction being excitement and anticipation rather than caution and concealment.

On a weekend away a few years ago in the north of Israel, I found myself unwittingly gatecrashing a Barmitzvah party at which the speaker linked Rashi’s interpretation to another biblical verse containing this term: Veshamru Benei Yisrael et HaShabbat La’asot et haShabbat ledoratam – The Jews shall guard Shabbat, making the Shabbat and everlasting covenant throughout the generations. The speaker suggested that the term “vashmru” in this verse can be interpreted as Rashi interprets Ya’akov’s response: How can the Jewish people ensure that their children and future generations observe the Shabbat covenant? By looking forward to it excitedly. By making it a focal point of their family’s activity and attention.

My initial thought was that this was a nice drash which allowed the speaker to tie together several disparate ideas that he wanted to mention in connection with the celebrating family. Reviewing a section of Rambam’s Moreh Nevuchim recently, however, I started to wonder if this suggestion might have firmer basis in our tradition.

The Talmud (Shabbat 119b) teaches that:

Rabbi Jose the son of Judah said, two ministering angels — one good angel, and one "evil" angel — accompany a person home on Friday night from the synagogue. When they arrive home, if they find a candle lit, the table set, and beds arranged nicely, the good angel says, "May it be G‑d's will that next Shabbat be the same," and the evil angel is compelled to respond, "Amen!" Otherwise, [if the home is not prepared in honour of Shabbat,] the evil angel says, "May it be God’s will that next Shabbat be the same," and the good angel is compelled to respond, "Amen”.

Comparing this passage to other similar accounts of accompanying angels, Rambam identifies these angels as none other than the good and evil inclinations which motivate people to act in a positive or negative manner.

This passage would appear to be underlining the great importance of preparing for and anticipating the Shabbat as well as a vital lesson in the nature of our free will and character training. Each time we make a correct choice, we have not only performed a single good act. Rather, as Rav Dessler teaches, we move along our future “window of choice” by training ourselves to act well on subsequent occasions.

What these angels may represent, therefore, is that if the person has suitably prepared for and anticipated the Shabbat, this will affect his character and the proper behaviour will become internalised as part of his nature. The “evil angel” will therefore be “forced” to answer Amen to the prediction that the person will be drawn to prepare properly again for the next Shabbat. If the pattern continues, this mode of conduct is likely to be observed by his children and become “an everlasting covenant throughout the generations”. The opposite of course is also true.

Finally, there are those who object – on Maimonidean grounds – to petitioning the angels to bless them in the Shalom Aleichem song. I wonder if a correct understanding of Rambam’s interpretation of this Gemara indicates that this is little more than a statement of hope that the Shabbat home and table has been prepared sufficiently to meet angelic approval – and that his good inclination will gain the upper hand ahead of the next weeks’ showdown.

For comments and discussion of this post on Facebook click here.

Talmudic scholarship: when and why was the Vilna text canonized?

One of the primary themes of Talmud Reclaimed is the exploration of how and why the study of Talmud has evolved over the 1500 or so years which have elapsed since its composition. Some changes – such as the increased focus on abstract conceptual analysis and the diminishing practice of determining practical halacha directly from the Talmud – are relatively easy to track historically and explain in religious terms. Far more difficult is to understand how rabbinic Talmud study has come to disregard girsaot – variant Talmudic manuscripts – and essentially canonize the version of the text chosen in the 16th century Bomberg edition and later popularized by the Vilna Shas.

The examination of manuscripts is an area of expertise which attempts to identify the most accurate version of the original Talmudic teachings. This undertaking involves searching for variant manuscript texts of parallel passages and the making of careful comparisons between their language in order to identify what may very well be evidence of copyist errors or inserted commentary. To a great extent, this expertise and practice is generally found in the halls of academia rather than Yeshivot – but why is this the case?

While at first glance this form of forensic analysis would seem to be very distant from Yeshiva-style Talmudics, Talmud Reclaimed demonstrates how traditional commentators from the medieval era were not only aware of the potentialities of manuscript analysis, but enthusiastically embraced and pursued it. From Sherira Gaon to Rashi, Rambam to the Ba’alei Tosafot, traditional Talmudic commentators made frequent reference to their own dealings with manuscript analysis and redaction of the Talmud within their substantive commentaries.

Sherira Gaon, Ritva and Ramban, for example, all identified significant passages of Talmud as having been later insertions of scribes. If one accepts the principle that the Talmud bears particular authority because of the status of Ravina and Rav Ashi, it becomes crucial to determine which parts of the Talmud were not included by them but were subsequently added. For this reason, the pursuit of accurate manuscripts was a matter of great importance to Rambam, who made considerable efforts to identify later insertions and scribal errors, and who changed some of his earlier explanations and rulings as a result of his findings.

In his codification of the laws governing the repayment of loans, Rambam reveals that [t]here are versions of the Talmud which state that when a person tells a colleague:

"Do not repay [a loan] unless witnesses are present" and the borrower claims: "I fulfilled the stipulation and repaid you in the presence of so-and-so and so-and-so, but they have journeyed overseas or died," his word is not accepted. This is a scribal error. For this reason, the halachic authorities erred because of those texts. I have researched ancient versions of the text and I found that they state that the borrower's word is accepted. In Egypt, a portion of an ancient text of the Talmud written on parchment, as was the custom in the era approximately 500 years before the present era, came to my possession. I found two versions of this law among those parchments. Both state: "If he claims: 'I fulfilled the stipulation and repaid you in the presence of so-and-so and so-and-so, but they have journeyed overseas or died,' his word is accepted."…Although these texts have been carefully edited, this appears to be the ruling based on the judgment of the Talmud.” [Hilchot Malveh Veloveh 15:2]

Several further examples of legal rulings and interpretations being revisited as a result of manuscript analysis are discussed in the chapter.

Having shown not only the legitimacy – but even the desirability – of careful examination of Talmudic manuscripts, we are left with the question of why it has been so broadly neglected in traditional circles in the modern era.

Talmud Reclaimed argues that an unintended consequence of the codification and popularization of the Shulchan Aruch is that modern rabbinic scholarship of the oral law has increasingly gravitated into two categories: developing and clarifying halachic rulings and the more abstract “Lomdus” analysis which reached its most powerful expression with Brisk. While both of these schools of contemporary Yeshiva scholarship are ultimately built upon the Talmud, they are clear departures from the widespread medieval commentaries which focused primarily upon the peshat – plain meaning – of the Talmud, and pursued the clarification of its laws and underlying principles only as a secondary project. For this reason, rabbinic interest in girsaot and the skills necessary for their clarification have gradually been lost to the Yeshiva world.

The increasingly popular Daf Yomi project, while focusing around the text of the Talmud, typically engages with it in a more superficial manner, and if anything has intensified the modern embrace of the text, pagination and format of the Vilna Shas to the extent that it has effectively been canonized in popular thought. Perhaps the strongest authoritative endorsement of this canonization of the Vilna Shas can be found in the words of the Chazon Ish who argued that divine providence had guided the version of Talmud used by earlier sages and that it is inconceivable that they relied on a mistaken manuscript based on a scribal error (Kovetz Iggrot, Letter #32). Ironically this view itself appears to represent a significant departure from the girsaot methodologies of the earlier sages which it seeks to revere.

Rabbi Yechiel Ya’akov Weinberg lamented how, in contrast to medieval scholars who proactively researched manuscripts and were willing to highlight apparent mistakes and propose amendments, later scholars abstained from this practice. There are however exceptions. Even as late as the close of the nineteenth century we find that the analysis of Rabbi Raphael Rabinowitz’s Dikdukei Soferim– a work which lists variants between the printed edition and other manuscripts – received glowing approbations from leading rabbis of his generation. This positive response suggests that, while neglected, the discipline remained a valued pursuit within some parts of the traditional camp. Be that as it may, the prevailing attitude to manuscript authentication in the modern era is that this practice is unessential and perhaps even a distraction from primary Talmud study.

While the text of the Vilna Shas may have become hallowed in the popular perception, scholars now have access to an ever-increasing array of manuscripts, such as fragments from the Cairo Genizah, the Munich Manuscript and Yemenite sources, none of which were available to those who compiled the Bomberg edition of the Talmud. How far should these hitherto unavailable manuscripts be explored?

For traditional Talmudists who face this challenge today, it is a question of priority rather than legitimacy. As Professor Daniel Sperber argues:

“These requirements necessitate the competence in philological and lexicographical disciplines, rarely to be found in the standard yeshivah “bohur” (student). Perhaps the advantages to be gained from such long and hard-won knowledge are so marginal that the investment in them is not considered worthwhile. But is the process of their mastery to be viewed as bitul Torah? If it is intended to deepen one’s understanding of Torah, surely it comes within the category of “amala shel Torah”, the toil and labor of Torah!”

Priority in traditional halls of study is likely to continue to be placed on substantive study of Talmudic law and the wisdom that derives from it. The determination of the correct Talmudic text should certainly not be ignored. Instead, advised Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein

“the beit midrash can reap benefits from work now largely initiated on the outside”.

This would seem to imply that the process of manuscript identification plays a secondary, supporting, role to standard Talmud and can therefore be happily delegated to academic scholars who are well trained in the necessary skills.

For more about Talmud Reclaimed: An Ancient Text in the Modern Era visit www.TalmudReclaimed.com .

For comments and discussion of this post on Facebook, click here.

Lot: a tragic yet enigmatic figure?

It is understandable that, in Torah portions containing key events such as the founding covenants of our nation and God’s command for Yitzchak to be sacrificed, characters peripheral to the primary Patriarchal plot will struggle to hold the attention of most readers. One such supporting role in recent parashiyot is that of Lot, the unfortunate nephew of Avraham.

The popular view, which arises from Rashi’s presentation of accompanying midrashic material, perceives Lot as a redundant and even obstructive third-wheel in the Abrahamic juggernaut – a burden on Avram and Sarai as they traipse through treacherous territories facing various trials and tribulations from menacing monarchs.

However another understanding of the role of Lot emerges from the analysis of a number of other commentators. Judaism Reclaimed explores the position of the Radak and Netziv, for example, who portray Lot in a more positive light as primary student and heir apparent of Avram’s venture.

From the Torah’s first mention of Avram and Sarai’s divinely-ordained odyssey, we are informed of “the souls which they made in Haran” – as Rashi explains: “Avram converted the men and Sarai the women”. However the verse mentions Lot here as well seemingly implying that he too played a role.

When Avram and Lot’s shepherds quarrel, they separate on good terms and travel in their own directions. Lot’s decision to relocate to “sinful and wicked” Sodom is portrayed in a negative light by Rashi, who accuses him of prioritizing his portfolios over his spiritual welfare. Lot’s conduct in Sodom however, does not clearly point to a man who is betraying his Abrahamic roots.

Rather than focus on financial gain, Lot appears in yesterday’s portion as having pursued a leadership role as a judge who could perhaps re-educate and set a positive example for the sinful Sodomites. When strangers appear at the gates of the city, Lot takes a courageous moral stand, persuading them to stay in his home despite the clear and obvious dangers involved.

Lot of course is a deeply flawed hero, as the continuation of the story makes apparent. The fact that he is willing to cast out his daughters to the frenzied mob in order to save the guests demonstrates – as the Maharal points out – that he is only superficially mimicking the acts of his teacher, Avraham, without effectively internalizing what kindness and love for others really entails. Perhaps the aspiring kiruv-rabbi bit off more than he could chew by aspiring to single-handedly realign the moral compass of Sin City? Either way, his appalling actions show the biblical reader why, while he may have been deserving of being saved from Sodom, Lot was not worthy of being a building block of the Chosen Nation.

Avraham, however, does not seem to have been aware of the severe shortcomings of his prime student. When God informs him that Sodom and the five towns are set for imminent destruction Avraham is dumbfounded. Despite God having made it clear that these towns are thoroughly evil, Avraham seems inexplicably convinced that a righteous remnant remains that can positively influence the city’s morality. After all, his loyal student had – several years earlier – left him to set up the first Aish/Chabad house in Sodom: Surely there must be 50, 45, 40, 30, 20, 10 local residents who had been positively swayed by his efforts?!

In a pattern that would be repeated with Yishmael and Eisav, Avraham’s loyalty to his student and nephew leads him to grasp in vain at the hope that Lot is sufficiently righteous to continue his path. Only when God’s hints become increasingly clear and impossible to ignore, Avraham is forced to accept the reality of Lot’s failure and the Torah proceeds to the creation of the next generation of Avraham and Sarah’s family as the continuation of their covenant and teachings.

First posted to Facebook 17 November 2024. For comments and discussion, click here.

Can God change His mind?

In a popular post last month, this group explored a suggestion (advanced by the Seforno and developed by Rabbi S. R. Hirsch) that God’s initially “universal” plan for the world was recalibrated and amended to seek out a single “Chosen Nation” which would receive and transmit His Torah. While that post addressed the issue from the perspective of Choseness, the very idea of God appearing to change His mind and resort to Plan B raises thorny theological problems.

Judaism Reclaimed highlights Rav Hirsch’s approach to tackling this difficulty. Focusing on a close grammatical reading of the relevant biblical phrase, he argues that none of these amendments represented a 'change of God's mind', but rather a tailoring of the divine plan in response to human conduct.

“And God regretted (vayinachem) that He had made man upon the earth, and He became grieved in His heart.” (Bereshit 6:6)

Crucially the Torah employs the active form of the verb "vayinachem" rather than the reflexive form of the verb "vayitnachem", which would have implied that God changed himself. This usage supports the idea that the element of change was caused by a factor — the exercise of human free will — that was inherently external to God rather than being intrinsic to His original plan.

The word vayinachem appears again in response to Israel’s repentance and Moshe’s prayer in the immediate aftermath of the Golden Calf:

“God reconsidered (vayinachem) the evil He had said He would do to His people.” (Shemot 32:14)

This can be seen in contrast to the word vayitnachem – which the Torah itself tells us cannot be applied to God:

“God is not a man that He should lie, nor is He a mortal that He should change His mind (veyitnecham).” (Bemidbar 23:19)

Interestingly, while Rav Hirsch in this instance steadfastly rejects the literal implication of the Torah’s text, he nevertheless makes it clear that he opposes the position advocated for by Rambam which seeks to reinterpret and explain any biblical terms which appear to impute physicality to God.

“Scholars have philosophised about these expressions [anthropomorphism], in order to keep us far from ascribing to God material features. This gives rise, however, to the danger that the Personality of God will become increasingly blurred and indistinct to our perception. Had that been the Torah’s intention it could easily have avoided such expressions … Belief in the Personality of God is more important than the speculations of those who reject the attribution of material features to God.”

Elsewhere Rav Hirsch explained further how: “the maturest mind of the philosopher knows no more about the essence of God than the simple mind of the child”.

As Judaism Reclaimed proceeds to analyse in a subsequent chapter, Rav Hirsch’s position comes very close to that of earlier rabbinic authorities who took biblical descriptions of God at face value. Marc Shapiro, in The Limits of Orthodox Theology, invests great effort to collect and present rabbinic statements which, taken superficially, reflect belief in a physical deity. While he sees medieval rabbinic commentator, Moshe Taku, as the “most significant" example of rabbinic corporealism, leading scholar of medival rabbinic mysticism, Joseph Dan begs to differ, writing that:

"He [R’ Taku] insists on the literal acceptance of the prophets' descriptions of their visions as well as the anthropomorphic references to God in talmudic-midrashic literature. He does not do so because of his belief in the literal veracity of these descriptions; he only insists that they represent the maximum that can be conveyed concerning God's essence and appearance, and that any further inquiry cannot lead to valid conclusions. God chose to reveal to us in the scriptures whatever is found in them: man should be satisfied with that, and ask no more questions. It is not that Rabbi Moses Taku believed in an anthropomorphic God; most probably, he did not.”

Having addressed claims of rabbinic belief in a physical deity, Judaism Reclaimed then proceeds to demonstrate, however, that none of this would be likely to impress Rambam, who states with equal force that any attempt to worship or connect “without knowledge” to God such as by attributing physical features to Him:

“does not in true reality mention or think about God. For that thing which is in his imagination and which he mentions is his mouth does not correspond to any being at all and has merely been invented by his imagination”. (Moreh Nevuchim 3:51)

Since, for Rambam, connection to God is an absolute reality and achieved primarily by means of the intellect, the quality and existence of such a connection is directly affected by the correctness of a person’s intellectual perception of God. He cannot accept, therefore, the notion that one should just accept the biblical text at face value. Instead biblical indications about the incorporeality of God combined with a powerful rabbinic tradition serve as signposts to scholars seeking to maximise their understanding of and relationship with God.

Find out more at www.TalmudReclaimed.com.

First posted on Facebook 10 November 2024. For comments and discussion, click here.

Chance or guided providence?

As I flitted through the reporting of Al Jazeera, BBC and the Tehran Times last week, one repeated theme I noticed in the anti-Israel media was the attempt to downplay the significance of Israel’s achievement in its “lucky” killing of Yihyeh Sinwar. But while it seems true that Sinwar’s demise did not involve the same degree of intelligence and planning as that of others such as Nasrallah, does it automatically follow that it should just be attributed to good luck?

On what will be a particularly poignant Simchat Torahin a few days’ time, we will read the final poetic portion of the Torah in which God is depicted as “rochev shamayim - Rider of the heavens”. This cryptic description is expounded by Rambam towards the end of the first section of Moreh Nevuchim, where he sees it as providing an important insight into the nature of the relationship between God and the physical world. Not only does “rochev” denote that God is separate from the world and not a force within it (a statement which powerfully rejects any notions of pantheism/panentheism), but it also indicates that God controls and moves the world just like a rider who “makes the beast of burden move and go where he wishes”.

This second aspect of “rochev” got me wondering if we could take the rider metaphor one step further. Some brief research on forums of horse-riding enthusiasts confirmed my suspicion that the way in which riders guide their horses can be extremely subtle – barely detectable to the casual observer:

“Someone recently asked me an interesting question: “Can my horse read my thoughts?” This person went on to describe the extraordinary bond he has with his Arabian horse, and his belief that the horse knows how he feels and where he wants to go without being cued. What appears to be a telepathic connection develops from experience and sensitivity and emerges when the horse and rider are working together in harmony with a common mind and purpose.”

What does this all mean for our understanding of hashgacha– the way in which God is perceived to manage and govern His world?

Judaism Reclaimed dedicates long chapters to an exploration of Rambam’s view of the subject. On the one hand, Rambam’s worldview sees God as having a constant will with which He established unchanging rules of nature. Certainly, those approaching Maimonidean thought from the academic perspective tend to downplay any possibility for miraculous or providential interference with the natural order. Rambam himself comments on a Mishnah in Avot:

“They (the sages) did not believe in the constant renewal of God’s will, but at the beginning of creation (God) put the nature of things into the world, both the way in which things should act regularly – this is ‘nature’ – or the abnormal manner in which they should act rarely – this is a ‘miracle’. All is equal.”

But does this tell the whole story?

As David Hartman pointed out in his Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest, once it has been stated that God used His knowledge of ‘future’ necessity in order to build miracles into the natural world from its origin, it makes no difference, from a strictly logical perspective, whether one admits to one or a thousand such miracles.

The Moreh Nevuchim also contains several intriguing comments which suggest that Rambam’s position on providence may be more complex than is commonly thought. First, in 1:35, Rambam states that “the character of His governance … the ‘how’ of His providence are truly the secrets of the Torah”. Later, at the peak of the famous palace parable, Rambam describes the highest category of those who seek God – the prophets in the king’s inner chamber – as turning their intellects “to know His governance of them in whatever way is possible”.

In his Iggeret Techiyat HaMeitim, Rambam explicitly considers the historical fate of the Jewish nation to be providential:

“…we believe that the blessings which come from obedience [to God] and the suffering from disobedience, for this nation, become a sign and a wonder”.

Returning to our opening question, to what extent should Sinwar’s death – along with a number of other events from the past year – be attributed to good or bad fortune?

Drawing upon the Torah’s horse-riding metaphor, at times it may be impossible to detect any guidance or direction from the rider – yet when one examines the horse’s entire journey around the race track or obstacle course it will be abundantly clear that it could not have achieved what it did unaided.

So too at times with our national fate. It may be possible to explain away each isolated event via natural cause and effect. But, taking a step back to appreciate the broader – sometimes historical – perspective, the series of events that we have experienced over the past year(s) and indeed throughout Jewish history appear far too unusual to be attributed to natural phenomena alone.

I am reminded now of an Israeli spy series “Tehran” that I watched a couple of years ago. At the time I thought that the show was well written and put together – my only complaint was that the final episode in each season just seemed way too far-fetched. Too removed from reality. Today the show’s drama and unexpected twists and turns cannot even begin to compete with what we have been witnessing on the news cycles.

We continue to pray to the Rochev Shamayim for the protection and success of our soldiers and swift return of all our hostages as we await the final dramatic episodes of the festive season.

First posted on Facebook 20 October 2024. For comments and discussion, click here.