Is Basketball Without Yarmulkas Kosher?

In a post called, "Chief Rabbis, Basketball and Tolerance," blogger Andrew Griffel in Ops and Blogs in  The Times of Israel argues as follows.

Once upon a time long long ago Rabbi Soloveitchik told MTA orthodox high school students that they could play in Madison Square Garden with or without wearing their yarmulkas and tsitsis. It was up to them.

The chief rabbis in Israel are not as tolerant as Rabbi Soloveitchik. Therefore the chief rabbinate ought to be abolished.

We agree with the conclusion, if not with the non-linear logic of the post. And now that the office of chief rabbi has turned 100% nepotistic, the end of the institution is just around the corner. See Israel elects new chief rabbis.

Finally, consider this remarkable video of orthodox couples who are marrying in Israel outside of the regulation of the rabbinate - חתונה בלי הרבנות - הוויה - טקס ישראלי‬‎.

כתבה ביומן בערוץ 1 ביום שישי, על זוגות שמעצבים את טקס החתונה בעצמם בלי הרבנות

עוד על חתונה יהודית בלי הרבנות באתר הוויה

www.havaya.info

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The Daily Beast: Dear Rabbi: Should I Shoot Women?

It happens. When you practice irrational thuggery in the name of religion it does not take long for an impressionable young person to get a really wrong idea. On the Daily Beast we read, "Dear Rabbi: Should I Shoot Women of the Wall?" by Sigal Samuel on Jun 6, 2013.

Fortunately (did we reach rock bottom yet?) there was no violence today as women prayed at the wall under a heavy police guard. It's getting clearer every day that Orthodox Judaism has decided to resort ever more often to bullying and thuggery against what it sees as weak Jewish opponents - women who want to pray. Not brave; not heroic. But the legacy of bullying vulnerable women via rabbinic decree goes back a long way to illustrious roots.

The Daily Beast reported, "In a disturbing QandA session, a 17-year-old Jerusalem yeshiva student asked a rabbi in an online forum whether it’s permissible under Jewish law to shoot and kill members of the liberal prayer group Women of the Wall when they gather at the Kotel. The boy was arrested today after Rabbi Baruch Efrati alerted police to the question—which, true to the rabbinic tradition of she’elot u-teshuvot (responsa literature, literally “questions and answers”), he nonetheless deigned to answer...."

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Rav Soloveitchik on Israeli TV

Ethan Isenberg writes to us that Rav Soloveitchik will be featured on an Israeli Broadcast Premiere Sat night. Lonely Man of Faith will be on Israeli TV in two parts, on successive Saturday nights: April 20 and 27, both at 10 PM. The 18th of Nisan marked the 20th yarhzeit anniversary of the passing of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.  This year, that date fell out on March 28 - 29.  Recordings are now available online of these memorial events: Yom Iyun at Beit Knesset "Ohel Ari" in Ra'anana, Israel, held on March 14 (3rd of Nisan) Yom Iyun at Yeshiva Chovevei Torah in New York, held on April 10 (30th of Nisan) Yom Iyun at Yeshiva University in New York, held on April 14 (4th of Iyar) Lonely Man of Faith is available on DVD. Click here to purchase the home version of the DVD. I recommend these books for you!

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The Master Talmud Performer: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

In honor of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's 20th yahrzeit we present this excerpt from our 2011 book - God's Favorite Prayers...

The Master Performer

L

et me give some background about my mentor, Rabbi Soloveitchik. His followers extolled him with a reverent nickname. They called him the Rav, simply the Master. I consider the Rav to be a master performer par excellence of the synagogue liturgy (when on occasion he led the services), a great pedagogue in the classroom, a scholar of note and interpreter of the substance of the performances of the synagogue. And finally, he was an amazing beginner.

In my family, we venerated the Rav above all other rabbis. We spoke of him with the utmost reverence that one would bestow only upon a truly saintly man. And he was one of the great Orthodox rabbis of the twentieth century. He was born into a rabbinic family in Eastern Europe. After mastering all of rabbinic literature, he studied philosophy at the University in Berlin. He was known not just as a rabbi but also as a Gadol—a title reserved for person of the greatest stature in Torah learning and highest authority in Jewish religious matters.

As a Yeshiva College senior, I started four years of learning in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s Talmud shiur. In my three post-graduate years of study with the Rav, I earned my ordination and became a rabbi.

I received in those four years so much from the Rav: a methodology of learning the Talmud, a theology of Judaism grounded in philosophy, and some secrets of exceptional pedagogy.

Let me expand on this last point. The Rav would sometimes, in an occasional moment of gently deprecating and surprising self-reflection, refer to himself as a poshutte melamed, the Yiddish description of a simple teacher of beginners. That statement puzzled me. Surely the Rav was the greatest Orthodox Talmudic sage of his generation. How could he represent himself in this ordinary way?

One day, I accidentally discovered what he might have meant. We rabbinical students convened at the fourth floor of the college building in an oversized classroom for our shiur, to begin studying a famous Talmud passage that was a discourse about the laws in Tractate Shabbat. That day, I was using a Talmud volume from a small, bound set that my uncle Rabbi Noah Goldstein had used when he studied in the Rav’s shiur. I found interleaved in this hand-me-down book a page of my uncle’s notes from the Rav’s discourse on this same Talmud passage, fifteen or twenty years earlier.

As we started reading the text, the Rav sat at his desk at the front of the class, as usual, with books of the Talmud arrayed all around him. He opened to the page for the day and began to perform the pedagogic magic in which he was so skilled. He started the class: “All right. Where were we?” He made it seem to us all as if he was looking at the text for the very first time. He made every question he raised appear as if he was discovering a problem afresh. Every answer and each explanation that he examined in the medieval commentators, Rashi or the Tosafot, he made appear to us as if it were new to him—a complete surprise.

Over the course of a class that lasted more than two hours, the Rav dramatically unfolded a complex and intricate exposition of the sugya, the text and its topic—and each stage of the discourse seemed so original and alive. Yet, as I followed along and read my uncle’s notes, I saw that the Rav was repeating—in order—each and every element of the shiur exactly as he had given it years before, insight by insight, question by question and answer by answer. He had all of us students in the room convinced that he had just newly discovered every element of his learning. Yet I had proof in front of me to the contrary.

I saw that day how the Rav had the ability to make every act of learning a new, exciting and living revelation. I have striven to emulate him ever since, to replicate this ability and to achieve as a learner and as a teacher some small element of this revelation.

Hanging over my desk where I write, I have a quotation from the great German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, “If the angel deigns to come it will be because you have convinced her not by tears but by your humble resolve to be always beginning: to be a beginner.” I believe the Rav echoed that sentiment in his teaching and learning and, certainly, in his praying.

The Rav’s ability to find the freshness in learning and in praying inspires this book. In part, in this extended discourse, I try to present content for fresh solutions to the frustrating issue of how to escape the monotony of the repetitive rituals of prayer. Indeed, it is a challenge to rediscover meaning and insight continually within the routine. It’s easier said than done—to be a beginner.

I try here in this volume to present as new my humble discoveries of voices and personalities in the prayer book to satisfy my own need to find what is fresh in what I repeat daily, weekly and annually. And in the spirit of my teacher the Rav, I aspire throughout this volume to provide you, the reader, with insights that will allow you to discover your own ways to always be a simple beginner in the appreciation and practice of your own praying.

To help us appreciate an important representative example of the expression of the artist-poet-musician archetype in the synagogue services, I now turn to a sample of the Rav’s comments on a few of our liturgy texts.

A Shofar Opera Libretto

H

ere, then, is the traditional libretto of a shofar opera in three acts. These texts are more familiarly known as the foundational High Holiday prayers in the Musaf Amidah. I interleave into the prayers below a selection of a few basic examples of the insights that the Rav and other interpreters of the past have taught about the Rosh Hashanah Additional Service.

In fact, this is not a complicated section of the Jewish liturgy. To expand on what I said just above, the Kingship-Covenant-Revelation liturgy—Malchiyot, Zichronot and Shofrot—accompanies the sounding of the ram’s horn in the additional service on Rosh Hashanah, as follows.

Act 1: The prayer opens with the Aleinu, a text that characterizes the dramatic archetype whom I call in this book the celebrity-monotheist.

Historians of the liturgy believe that the Aleinu originally found its way into Jewish prayer as this inaugural segment of the Malchiyot—Kingship prayers. Later, it was appropriated into the daily prayers and became the closing liturgy of every service.

In this Rosh Hashanah context, the Aleinu announces the theme of God the King and the section after it provides us with our first set of selected biblical passages:

It is our duty to praise the Lord of all things, to ascribe greatness to him who formed the world in the beginning, since he has not made us like the nations of other lands, and has not placed us like other families of the earth, since he has not assigned unto us a portion as unto them, nor a lot as unto all their multitude. For we bend the knee and offer worship and thanks before the supreme King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be he, who stretched forth the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, the seat of whose glory is in the heavens above, and the abode of whose might is in the loftiest heights. He is our God; there is none else: in truth he is our King; there is none besides him; as it is written in his Torah, “And you shall know this day, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath: there is none else.”

We therefore hope in you, O Lord our God, that we may speedily behold the glory of your might, when you will remove the abominations from the earth, and the idols will be utterly cut off, when the world will be perfected under the kingdom of the Almighty, and all the children of flesh will call upon your name, when you will turn unto yourself all the wicked of the earth. Let all the inhabitants of the world perceive and know that unto you every knee must bow, every tongue must swear. Before you, O Lord our God, let them bow and fall; and unto your glorious name let them give honor; let them all accept the yoke of your kingdom, and do you reign over them speedily, and forever and ever. For the kingdom is yours, and to all eternity you will reign in glory.

The theme of the Aleinu announced above is that God is King, he is One, there is no other and that all the peoples of the earth will come to acknowledge that. I will explain at length below, in the chapter called “The Celebrity’s Prayers,” that this prayer speaks for a particular archetype of the synagogue. The viewpoint and personality it communicates believes in the coming of an age of struggle that will see the ultimate victory of the Israelite people over all the nations, of the Lord over all the contending gods.

And, now, let us see how the liturgy writer makes the ten assembled verses that follow in the New Year prayer try to articulate this theme.

The Rav observed that the verses, as we shall now see, are drawn first from the Torah, then from the Writings, then from the prophets. He asked why this is so, considering that the canonical Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible as we have it today, is ordered Torah, Neviim (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings). To answer, he says simply that the prayer writer wanted to address God’s actions in chronological order, past (as found in the Torah), present (as found in the Writings) and future (as foretold in the Prophets).

The first three verses from the Torah do not express the complete idea of the liturgy. In fact, the idea of a King-God triumphing over other gods and the coming of an ultimate era where all peoples will worship him is not found in the Torah. Instead, the verses pick texts that have echoes of God called “King” or of his “reign.”

[1] As it is written in your Torah, “The Lord shall reign forever and ever (Exodus 15:18).”

[2] And it is said, “He has not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither has he seen perverseness in Israel: the Lord his God is with him, and the trumpet shout of a King is among them (Numbers 23:31).”

[3] And it is said, “And he became King in Yeshurun, when the heads of the people were gathered, the tribes of Israel together (Deuteronomy 33:5).”

The next three verses from the Writings do express more of the ideas of the complete narrative embedded in the liturgy. In fact, the idea of a King-God ruling over other nations is a present theme in the Psalms. Yet the story of the coming of an ultimate era where all peoples will worship God is not found there. The verses again pick texts with echoes of God called “King” or of his “reign.”

[4] And in your Ketuvim it is written, saying, “For the kingdom is the Lord’s, and he is ruler over the nations (Psalms 22:29).”

[5] And it is said, “The Lord reigns; he has robed him in majesty; the Lord has robed him, yea, he has girded himself with strength: the world also is set firm; that it cannot be moved (Psalms 93:1).”

[6] And it is said, “Lift up your heads, O you gates, and be you lifted up, you everlasting doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who, then, is the King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O you gates; yea, lift them up, you everlasting doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who, then, is the King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory. (Selah.) (Psalms 44:7-10)”

The last of the Psalms citation is actually four verses. The Rav notes that they express a single kingship theme, a “challenge to humanity to voluntarily recognize the dominion of God.”

The next set of three verses is from the Prophets. They do express the complete idea of the liturgy because the idea of a King-God triumphing over other gods and the coming of an ultimate era where all peoples will worship him is derived from the prophetic works of ancient Israel. The verses from the books of Isaiah, Obadiah and Zechariah directly support the notion of the ultimate triumph of our one true God over the others after a day and time of judgment over the nations of the earth.

[7] And by the hands of your servants, the prophets, it is written, saying, “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God (Isaiah 44:16).”

[8] And it is said, “And saviors shall come up on Mount Zion to judge the Mount of Esau, and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s (Obadiah 1:21).”

[9] And it is said, “And the Lord shall be King over all the earth: in that day shall the Lord be One and his name One (Zechariah 14:9).”

The final verse is again culled from the Torah, a bookend closing off the set of ten. It cites one of the best-known verses of the Torah and a centerpiece of the liturgy itself, the first verse of the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4. That passage also does not express the complete idea of the liturgy because, while, in fact, it does declare the monotheistic unity of one God, it does not relate a struggle with the other deities or hint at a coming age when the oneness of God will be realized for the whole of the earth. For the purposes of this kingship liturgy, it appears to be enough that the verse declares God to be one. Specifying literally that God is King is not a necessary component for the inclusion of the verse.

 [10] And in your Torah it is written saying, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One (Deuteronomy 6:4).”

The Rav says that the tenth proof text verse in each of the three sections is part of the closing appeal of the liturgy. The first part concludes with a reiteration of the basics of the main story line, and a “request” that God will reveal his reign as king over all the earth. The closing petition of the prayer then continues:

Our God and God of our fathers, reign you in your glory over the whole universe, and be exalted above all the earth in your honor, and shine forth in the splendor and excellence of your might upon all the inhabitants of your world, that whatsoever has been made may know that you have made it, and whatsoever has been created may understand that you have created it, and whatsoever has breath in its nostrils may say, the Lord God of Israel is King and his dominion rules over all.

[Our God and God of our fathers, accept our rest.] Sanctify us by your commandments, and grant our portion in your Torah; satisfy us with your goodness, and gladden us with your salvation: [and in your love and favor, O Lord our God, let us inherit your holy Sabbath; and may Israel, who hallow your name, rest thereon]. O purify our hearts to serve you in truth, for you are God in truth, and your word is truth, and endures forever. Blessed are you, O Lord, King over all the earth, who sanctifies [the Sabbath and] Israel and the Day of Memorial.

[And then the shofar is blown.]

Act 2: The next theme of the Rosh Hashanah Musaf to be announced is Zichronot, that God remembers his covenants with Israel. This theological statement begins with a liturgy that states an underlying assumption of the High Holidays, namely that an all-knowing God will judge all nations and all individuals on this day, the day that he created the world. God also knows all the thoughts and merits of each individual and judges them. And then the prayer switches abruptly to Noah as the example of one man who was spared the harsh judgment brought upon the earth and whose covenant with God protects us from destruction:

You remember what was wrought from eternity and are mindful of all that has been formed from of old: before you all secrets are revealed and the multitude of hidden things from the beginning; for there is no forgetfulness before the throne of your glory; nor is there anything hidden from your eyes. You remember every deed that has been done: not a creature is concealed from you: all things are manifest and known unto you, O Lord our God, who looks and sees to the end of all generations. For you will bring on the appointed time of memorial when every spirit and soul shall be visited, and the multitudinous works be remembered with the innumerable throng of your creatures.

From the beginning you did make this your purpose known, and from aforetime you did disclose it. This day, on which was the beginning of your work, is a memorial of the first day, for it is a statute for Israel, a decree of the God of Jacob.

Thereon also sentence is pronounced upon countries—which of them are destined to the sword and which to peace, which to famine and which to plenty; and each separate creature is visited thereon, and recorded for life or for death. Who is not visited on this day?

For the remembrance of every creature comes before you, each man’s deeds and destiny, his works and ways, his thoughts and schemes, his imaginings and achievements.

Happy is the man who forgets you not, and the son of man who strengthens himself in you; for they that seek you shall never stumble, neither shall any be put to shame who trust in you. Yea, the remembrance of all works comes before you, and you enquire into the doings of them all.

Of Noah also you were mindful in your love, and did visit him with a promise of salvation and mercy, when you brought the waters of the flood to destroy all flesh on account of their evil deeds. So his remembrance came before you, O Lord our God, to increase his seed like the dust of the earth, and his offspring like the sand of the sea.

The Rav finds in the liturgy several themes. First, God’s dominion over humankind crosses all of time from the beginning to the end of days. Second, God sees all and remembers all, every act of every individual. Third, God relates uniquely through the covenant to the Jewish people.

And, now, let us see how the liturgy writer makes the ten assembled verses in the prayer try to articulate the themes. The first three verses are from the Torah. They do not express the complete idea of the discursive liturgy but appear to focus on God remembering his covenants with Noah, and with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

[1] As it is written in your Torah, “And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that were with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided (Genesis 8:3).”

[2] And it is said, “And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob (Exodus 2:24).”

[3] And it is said, “Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob; and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land (Leviticus 26:42).”

The next three verses are from the Writings. They also do not express the full range of ideas of the introductory prayer. Each verse alludes to remembrance of a covenant:

[4] And in your Ketuvim it is written saying, “He has made a memorial for his wondrous works: the Lord is gracious and full of compassion (Psalms 91:4).”

[5] And it is said, “He has given food unto them that fear him: he will ever be mindful of his covenant (Psalms 91:5).”

[6] And it is said, “And he remembered for them his covenant, and repented according to the multitude of his loving-kindness (Psalms 106:45).”

The final set of three verses is from the Prophets. Again, each verse alludes to remembrance of a covenant:

[7] And by the hands of your servants, the prophets, it is written saying, “Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus says the Lord, I remember for you the kindness of your youth, the love of your bridal state; how you went after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown (Jeremiah 2:2).”

[8] And it is said, “Nevertheless, I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish unto you an everlasting covenant (Ezekiel 16:60).”

[9] And it is said, “Is Ephraim a precious son unto me? Is he a caressed child? As often as I spoke against him, I earnestly remembered him. Therefore my heart yearns for him: I will surely have mercy upon him, says the Lord (Jeremiah 31:20).”

The Rav develops a homily based on the choice and order of the three verses above. The first two promise that God will remember Israel as innocent and worthy, as young people who have not yet become corrupt. This is like a father’s love, says the Rav. His compassion is aroused when he remembers when his children were young.

The nuance in the third verse is that Israel is depicted as though still a child. This is like a mother’s love, says the Rav. A mother can always vividly see her children as her babies and thereby have compassion for them more immediately.

The last verse, below, is again culled from the Torah, a bookend closing off the set of ten drawn from a chapter in Leviticus where the idea of the covenants is treated in detail. The verse is embedded in the closing liturgical statement, at the end of the paragraph that evokes the dramatic covenant of the Torah that God made with Abraham at the binding of Isaac on Mount Moriah:

Our God and God of our fathers, let us be remembered by you for good: grant us a visitation of salvation and mercy from your heavens, the heavens of old; and remember unto us, O Lord our God, the covenant and the loving-kindness and the oath which you swore unto Abraham our father on Mount Moriah: and may the binding with which Abraham our father bound his son Isaac on the altar appear before you how he overbore his compassion in order to perform your will with a perfect heart. So may your compassion overbear your anger against us; in your great goodness may the fierceness of your wrath turn aside from your people, your city and your inheritance.

Fulfill unto us, O Lord our God, the word in which you have bidden us trust in your Torah through the hand of Moses your servant, from the mouth of your glory, [10] as it is said, “But I will remember unto them the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the Lord” (Leviticus 26:45).

For you are he who remembered from eternity all forgotten things, and before the throne of whose glory there is no forgetfulness. O remember the binding of Isaac this day in mercy unto his seed. Blessed are you, O Lord, who remembers the covenant.

[And then the shofar is blown.]

Act 3: The final section, Shofarot, blasts of the horn, deals with the notions of God’s revelations to Israel at Sinai. The Rav emphasized that Maimonides directly linked the shofar to repentance. Its sounds rouse the Jew from his slumber to recognize his sins and seek forgiveness. And recall that the shofar itself is bent, says the Rav. According to the Talmud, this symbolized a person humbly bent over in prayer.

You did reveal yourself in a cloud of glory unto your holy people in order to speak with them. Out of heaven you did make them hear your voice and was revealed unto them in clouds of purity. The whole world trembled at your presence, and the works of creation were in awe of you, when you did thus reveal yourself, O our King, upon Mount Sinai to teach your people the Torah and commandments, and did make them hear your majestic voice and your holy utterances out of flames of fire. Amidst thunders and lightning you did manifest yourself to them, and while the shofar sounded you did shine forth upon them.

The theme is clear and unambiguous. God revealed himself to Israel, and the shofar accompanied those events. The first three verses from the Torah spell this out:

[1] As it is written in your Torah, “And it came to pass on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunders and lightning, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the sound of the shofar exceedingly loud; and all the people that were in the camp trembled (Exodus 19:16).”

[2] And it is said, “And the sound of the shofar waxed louder and louder; Moses spoke, and God answered him by a voice (Exodus 19:19).”

[3] And it is said, “And all the people perceived the thundering and the lightning, and the sound of the shofar, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they were moved and stood afar off (Exodus 20:15).”

The next three verses from the Writings extend the theme of the prayer. The shofar is used in celebration and praise of the Lord, God the King. The set concludes with an added bonus set of verses from Psalms.

[4] And in your Ketuvim it is written, saying, “God is gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a shofar (Psalms 47:16).”

[5] And it is said, “With trumpets and sound of shofar shout joyously before the King, the Lord (Psalms 98:6).”

[6] And it is said, “Blow the shofar on the new moon, at the beginning of the month, for our day of festival; for it is a statute for Israel, a decree of the God of Jacob (Psalms 81:45).”

[6a] And it is said, “Praise you the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his abundant greatness. Praise him with the blast of the shofar: praise him with the harp and the lyre. Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and the pipe. Praise him with the clear-toned cymbals: praise him with the loud-sounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise you the Lord (Psalms 150).”

The Rav explains that the verses above describe how revelation from God is not confined just to a past event at Sinai and a future messianic time. A more subtle form of revelation is accessible in the present to every Jew who can experience God’s presence and know that he is not alone. The Rav calls this need to find God in the here-and-now a “halakhic imperative”—a requirement of Jewish law. To pray properly, a person must feel he is in proximity to God.

The Rav adds that the last set of verses [6a] breaks the structure of the prayer. The verses are not just proof texts of the theological theme of the section. They are a burst of song in God’s presence. The Jew today must visualize himself as if he was at the Temple in the days of old in the presence of God. And, hence, he needs to break out in song.

The last set of verses from the Prophets extends the message. The shofar is not just a sign of God’s revelation to Israel. It heralds God’s ultimate, universal revelation to all the nations of the earth. In this manner, the final section here serves as a bookend to the opening section of the first part of the liturgy above in Malchiyot, where God’s dominion over the nations of the earth is announced.

[7] And by the hands of your servants, the prophets, it is written saying, “All you inhabitants of the world, and you dwellers on the earth, when an ensign is lifted up on the mountains, see you, and when the shofar is blown, hear you (Isaiah 18:3).”

[8] And it is said, “And it shall come to pass on that day, that a great shofar shall be blown; and they shall come who were lost in the land of Assyria, and they that were outcasts in the land of Egypt; and they shall worship the Lord in the holy mountain at Jerusalem (Isaiah 27:13).”

[9] And it is said, “And the Lord shall be seen over them, and his arrow shall go forth as the lightning: and the Lord God shall blow the shofar, and shall go with the whirlwinds of the south. The Lord of hosts shall be a shield unto them (Zechariah 9:14).”

So be a shield unto your people Israel with your peace.

Our God and God of our fathers, sound the great shofar for our freedom, lift up the ensign to gather our exiles; bring our scattered ones among the nations near unto you, and gather our dispersed from the ends of the earth. Lead us with exultation unto Zion, your city, and unto Jerusalem the place of your sanctuary with everlasting joy; and there we will prepare before you the offerings that are obligatory for us.

And again, the last verse is culled from the Torah, and embedded in the concluding liturgy, and extends and associates the shofar with the sacrifices of the Tabernacle.

The Rav points out that [8] implies at the end of days that God himself will sound the shofar. Hence, this suggests that the revelation of the future in the age of the messiah will replicate that of the past when God revealed himself with the sound of a shofar at Mount Sinai.

As is commanded us in your Torah through the hand of Moses your servant, from the mouth of your glory, [10] as it is said, “And in the day of your gladness, and in your set feasts, and in the beginnings of your months, you shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; and they shall be to you for a memorial before your God: I am the Lord your God” (Numbers 10:10).

For you hear the sound of the shofar and give heed to the trumpet-blast, and there is none like unto you. Blessed are you, O Lord, who in mercy hears the sound of the trumpet-blast of your people Israel.

[And then the shofar is blown.]

There’s much more to be said about the theology and artistry of the prayers. My purpose is to show, through the liturgy of the dramatic central part of the Rosh Hashanah additional service, how the performer—the artist-poet-musician—weaves Bible verses together to create from many Bible-strands some elaborate liturgy-fabrics, the cloth of the expressions of synagogue prayers. 

I discovered along my spiritual journeys that the other ideal people that I met in the synagogue took all of this biblical material and much more and performed it so as to express their inner—sometimes mystical—longings in accord with their distinctive, slightly otherworldly personalities, as we see on the next leg of our journey, when we meet the mystic and her prayers. 

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Rav Soloveitchik's Dissertation at the University of Berlin

In honor of the 20th yahrzeit of the Rav's passing (on Hol HaMoed Pesach, the 18th of Nisan, in 1993) and of the 110th year since his birth (Feb. 27, 1903) we offer to our readers a link to a scan of my teacher Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's doctoral dissertation in the field of philosophy written at the University of Berlin. (It is in German and the scan is a PDF file): "Das Reine Denken Und Die Seinskonstituierung Bei Hermann Cohen" by Josef Solowiejczyk. ("Pure Thought as the Constitution of Being in Hermann Cohen's Philosophy")

Manfred Lehmann wrote briefly about this dissertation and the Rav's biography:

...It is reported that the Rav would have liked to write his dissertation on Maimonides and Plato, but since no experts in these subjects were available in Berlin, he chose a field of pure philosophy, tempered with mathematics.His chosen field was the philosophy of Hermann Cohen, the famous Jewish philosopher of the so-called neo-Kantian school of the University of Marburg. For this study his main teacher was Professor Heinrich Maier, the greatest expert in Cohen's philosophy at the time. Maier's curriculum vitae shows a great variety of philosophical subjects, which he had mastered before specializing in Cohen's philosophy. As a result, the Rav's dissertation of 110 pages deals largely with Professor Heinrich Maier's own interpretations of Cohen, rather than with Cohen himself. Its title is as esoteric as its contents: "Das reine Denken and die Seinskonstituierung bei Hermann Cohen." ("Pure Thought as the Constitution of Being in Hermann Cohen's Philosophy" -- my free translation).

In going through this dissertation it strikes me that not a single Jewish word or source appears in it...

The last page has the Rav's biography, as translated by Lehmann:

I, Josef Solowiejczyk, was born February 27, 1903, in Pruzna, Poland. In 1922 I graduated from liberal arts `Gymnasium' in Dubno. Thereafter I entered in 1924 the Free Polish University in Warsaw where I spent three terms, studying political science.

In 1926 I came to Berlin and entered the Friedrich Wilhelm University. I passed the examination for supplementary subjects at the German Institute for Studies by Foreigners and was then given full matriculation at the University. I took up studies in philosophy, economics and Hebrew subjects.

I wish to express my sincere and hearty thanks to my highly honored teachers, 'Geheimrat,' Professor Dr. Heinrich Maier and Professor Dr. Max Dessoir. Furthermore, my thanks go to Professor Dr. Eugen Mittwoch and Professor Dr. Ludwig Bernhard.

I recommend to you my recent book
 which was inspired in many ways by 
the archetypal teachings of the Rav -- "God's Favorite Prayers"

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What made Rav Soloveitchik a great Talmud teacher?

When we published this short essay in 2005 in the Commentator, the YU undergraduate newspaper, we were proud to extol our rebbe in the most glowing terms we could imagine. After further review, as they say in the NFL, we still feel that way...

R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Indelible Beginner

In the fall of 1969, as a college senior, I started four years of learning in Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik's Talmud shiur. In my family we venerated the Rav above all other rabbis. We spoke of him with the utmost reverence that one would bestow only upon a truly saintly man.

I received in those four years so much from the Rav: a methodology of learning, a theology of Judaism and, above all, a secret of pedagogy.

Let me explain briefly this last point. The Rav would sometimes in an occasional moment of surprising self-reflection refer to himself as a "poshutte melamed," just a teacher of beginners. That statement puzzled me. Surely the Rav was the greatest sage of our generation. How could he represent himself in this ordinary way?

One day I accidentally discovered what he meant. We convened on the fourth floor classroom for our shiur - about to begin studying a famous sugya in Massechet Shabbat. That day I was using a Talmud volume from a small shas that my uncle had used when he studied in the Rav's shiur many years earlier, in the fifties. I found interleaved in this book a page of my uncle's notes (i.e., Rabbi Noah Goldstein, my dad's brother) from the Rav's discourse on this sugya fifteen or twenty years earlier.

As we started reading the text, the Rav began to perform the magic that he was so good at. He made it seem to us all as if he was looking at the text for the very first time. He made every question he raised appear as if he was discovering a problem afresh. He made every answer and explanation that he examined in Rashi or the Tosafot appear to us as if it was new to him - a complete surprise.

The Rav dramatically unfolded a complex and intricate exposition of the sugya - and each stage of the discourse seemed so new and alive. Yet as I followed along and I read in my uncle's notes, I saw that the Rav was repeating each and every element of the shiur exactly as he had given it years before, insight by insight, question by question and answer by answer. He had me convinced that he had just discovered every element of his learning. Yet I had proof in front of me to the contrary.

I saw that day how the Rav had the ability to make every act of learning a new, exciting and living revelation. I have striven to emulate him ever since to replicate this ability and to achieve as a learner and as a teacher some small element of this revelation.

Hanging over my desk as I write this I have a quotation from the great German Poet Rainer Maria Rilke, "If the angel deigns to come it will be because you have convinced her not by tears but by your humble resolve to be always beginning: to be a beginner."

I believe the Rav would agree.

//repost from 8/2009//

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Free at Last from Friday through Sunday: Six People You Meet in Synagogue

For the Passover holidays, the Talmudic Blog and Talmudic Books is giving away a new book:  Six People You Meet in Synagogue.

In this book, the author, Tzvee Zahavy, presents six ideal personalities of Jewish prayer and their respective prayers.

This is a condensed version of the author's previous work, God's Favorite Prayers (Talmudic Books, 2011) where he first developed the notion of the six distinct prayer archetypes: the performer, the mystic, the scribe, the priest, the meditator and the celebrity.

Six People You Meet in Synagogue
For Kindle from Amazon: FREE for Passover -- from Friday through Sunday, March 29-31.

Check Out all the Talmudic Books
See the Kindle Edition Talmud in English
ALSO FREE for Passover -- Ponder the Questions of Whence and Wherefore -- FREE 

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Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's Haggadah for the Passover Seder by Rabbi M. Genack

Rabbi Menahem Genack published, The Seder Night: An Exalted Evening: The Passover Haggadah: With a Commentary Based on the Teachings of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. A Haggadah in English and Hebrew (2009).

We think it's a great book and happily added it both to our collection of Haggadahs and to our library of works about the teachings of my teacher, the Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. It is a handsome and professional volume, clearly written and packed with content based on the Rav's torah teachings.

Genack was known as one of the best students in the class when I was in the Rav's shiur back in college and in rabbinical school. He's pursued a career of Jewish service and teaching and continues over the decades to shine as an exemplary disciple of the Rav.

Like most books that present the Rav's torah, this one approaches the task with great reverence and nostalgia. Those are great characteristics for me and for the other several thousand students who personally sat at the feet of the Rav and gave themselves over to him as his uncritical disciples. Genack writes his condensed accounts of the Rav's lectures with the clarity that I need to hear again the Rav speaking. He was a charismatic teacher with a wealth of learning that he imparted in many ways.

In his public talks, the Rav emphasized the experiential side of Orthodox Judaism. He often spoke poetically, I think to prove two important points.

First, he wanted to prove a personal point, to show the world that he was not a cold Litvak, not just a product of the Lithuanian Yeshivas who valued only factual erudition and cold logic.

Second, he had a program in his work, to create and express a form of Orthodox Judaism that was on par with the other great religions of the world. For him that meant in his time and place and out of his training in Europe that he had to demonstrate the validity and fecundity of Orthodox Jewish religious experience. He believed that he was the Jewish Rudolph Otto or William James and that from his teachings the world would see that Orthodoxy stands proudly next to any form of the esteemed Protestant religions of the Old or New World.

The Rav had another mission in his teaching and preaching. That was to transmit the Brisker Torah, the innovative conceptual insights of his own and his family's heritage of learning. So the Rav sought to investigate the phenomenology of Orthodox Judaism, to seek out and abstract the core idea from each performance of the numerous commandments and from each recitation of the many prayers.

Rabbi Genack succeeds in presenting all sides of the Rav in his publication, though he does so without the kind of self consciousness that I have just evoked above.

But now for the other question. How does this book play in Peoria? How will people who were not long-time students of the Rav react to this book? This book is not for the ordinary Jew who never studied with the Rav and it's not for the non-Jewish scholar or layperson. A Reform or Conservative or even an Orthodox Jew who never knew the Rav would need much more translated from the insider's notes and nostalgia of this book to the vocabulary and syntax or religious discourse in its more common and less private forms.

All told, this is a very good work in its genre. //repost from 2009//

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Update on the Insults: A Battle Over a Book: Haym Soloveitchik v. Talya Fishman

Our once-upon-a-time teacher at Yeshiva University has panned a new book about rabbinic cultural development.

It's a veritable battle over a book, Haym Soloveitchik v. Talya Fishman.

The book is Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Jewish Culture and Contexts).

The review by Haym is locked away to subscribers only at the Jewish Review of Books. We infer from hearsay and from the rejoinder that it is quite negative.

Fishman is busy issuing several rejoinders to the review, the first part is here - Response to Haym Soloveitchik “The People of the Book: Since When?” in Jewish Review of Books, Winter 2012, pp. 14-18.

She starts off, "Reading Professor Soloveitchik’s remarks, I was unable to recognize the book that I wrote." She then makes a methodical case for the inaccuracies and errors of Haym's review.

Haym, near the beginning of his review - the part not hidden by JRB - says this: "The standard version of when, where, and how the Talmud attained its normative standing runs like this: Sometime between the years 600 and 725 C.E. a group of mostly anonymous scholars known as savoraim collected and edited a vast number of the halakhic discussions that had taken place in the rabbinic academies of Mesopotamia from 200 until the middle of the 5th century. The result was the Babylonian Talmud (the Bavli)."

That whole long sentence is fictional not factual. We are sure that anonymous people did no such thing, and if they did, that can never be proven or disproved because they are anonymous! What utter nonsense. But the reliance on the anonymous authority and his activity (we know how busy anonymous was) is the most obvious primary nonsense element of rabbinic discourse. Haym invokes the busy accomplishments of "a group of mostly anonymous scholars" - and how impressive it is to us that they were busy and yet anonymous at the same time.

Why do we invoke such sarcasm? Because anonymity is a manipulative device to cloak the sources of authority and prevent any challenge to it. It should never be used in a scholarly narrative. Authors and editors work hard and deserve their accolades or criticism.

We grew up believing that Ravina and Rav Ashi edited the Bavli. That still works for us. There were no Savoraim in the story that we were told and that we have no reason to doubt.

Our most authoritative teacher was Haym's dad, the Rav. We are sure he endorsed the real "standard version" of when the Talmud was published and by whom it was edited, and that its "normative standing" was immediate.

And by the way, "normative standing" is in the eye of the beholder. Any individual Jew can deviate from any Talmudic precept that they wish and their "normative" status remains the same. They remain a Jew, they remain Jewish and their God still loves them. Unless they write a nasty review of a worthy book.

Update: Our friend David sent us Haym's JBR review, which concludes as follows:

...A work of this sort usually needs little review; a brief notice in a scholarly journal and it sinks under the weight of its own insuficiencies. And so I thought when I read Becoming the People of the Talmud with bewilderment upon its appearance last spring. Instead—as I noted at the outset, it received the Jewish Book Council’s prestigious Nahum M. Sarna Memorial National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship, one that has been given in recent years to Moshe Idel, Elliot Wolfson, and Dan Miron. The most charitable construction that can be put on the award is that the committee never read the book. It is also possible that its members (whose identities are not made public) know even less of rabbinics than does the recipient. Both accounts leave unexplained, however, why a committee would give an award to a book that it had not read, or, alternatively, why a committee would bestow an award upon a book in a field about which it knows nothing.

Nahum M. Sarna, the outstanding scholar whose name graces the prize the Jewish Book Council awarded, was a biblicist, however, like one or two other academicians of the past generation, he had a deep familiarity with the entire classical Jewish literature. His memory deserves better, as does Jewish studies.

There is no excuse for Haym to issue this closing attack on the integrity and competence of the Jewish Book Council. And even worse, it boggles our imagination that JRB or any professional journal would publish such awful and ignorant words of insult.

Talmudic Analysis
The end vitiates the remainder of the review, which may contain valid critiques of the book. But in our view they are not the right critiques.

What needs to be examined is the basic notion of the "normative standing" of the Talmud for Jews. First off, we are not sure what "normative" behavior was or is. Especially in a decentralized, tribalized and otherwise fragmented set of communities, the whole idea of "normative" Judaism holds little water unless and until it is spelled out.

When we taught medieval Judaism, we never taught that the Talmud was "normative" because we did not know what that could or would mean. We did teach a more nuanced account of the activity of that era within the realms of Judaic rabbinic creativity. The means of Jews learning what Judaism taught was not the Talmud in any direct Protestant-like way. The more ancient Talmud was filtered heavily by the medieval authors of commentaries, codes and responsa. Oral or written, the point is that the medieval rabbis determined which parts of the Torah and Talmud were relevant to their times, which were not, how they related, and how they might be disseminated and enforced.

The story of the middle ages is not how Jews became the people of the Talmud. It is a narrative about how the writers of commentaries, codes and responsa helped to navigate some communities through the everyday and traumatic moments of their religious, social and personal lives.

No matter how much we venerate those treatises, live people can not be anything "of" dead books. And trying to craft a story of how they are "of" inert codexes makes no sense to us and its details are boring at best.

That is the main cognitive methodological logical and dramatic error we find in both the learned book  and the pungent review under scrutiny. They fail to account for the  life and personality of the Judaism of that age.

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How Peter Salovey is related to Rav J. B. Soloveitchik

In a comment to a Yale Daily News story, Peter Salovey, president of Yale explained his relationship to Rav Soloveitchik. (Hat tip to Billy.)

My Friends,

Here's how the family tree grows, as I understand it:

First there was Joseph Ha-Levi Soloveitchik of Slobodka and Kovno. He had a son Isaac. Isaac had two sons, Moses and Abraham. Moses had a son, Joseph, who was the rabbi of Kovno and was married to the daughter of Chaim Volozhin. Joseph had two sons, Isaac Zeev and Elijah Zevi. Isaac Zeev was the father to Joseph Ber (Beis Ha-Levi). His son was Chaim Brisker whose sons included Velvele Brisker and Moses. Moses was the father of The Rav, Joseph Dov (Ber) Soloveitchik.

Meanwhile, back to Elijah Zevi. He had a son Simcha (The Londoner), who had a son Zalman Yosef, who had a son Yitzchak Lev (Isaac Louis, my grandfather, who changed the name from Soloveitchik to Salovey when he immigrated to this country from Jerusalem), who had a son Ronald (Azreal), who fathered three children, one of them me!

So, my great-great-great grandfather (Elijah Zevi) and Joseph Dov (Ber) Soloveitchik (The Rav)'s great-great grandfather were brothers.

That should clear things up, no?

My sources for this are the Encyclopedia Judaica; Shulamith Soloveitchik Meiselman's excellent book, The Soloveitchik Heritage: A Daughter's Memoir; and family legend.

Thanks for the interest in my family.

Warmly,

Peter Salovey

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Is Yale President Peter Salovey Jewish?

Yes, Yale President Peter Salovey is a Jew. He is also a psychology professor, a bluegrass musician (see article) and a cousin of my rabbinic teacher, Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Hat tip to Billy for bringing this to our attention. Here is an article from the Yale Daily News that describes the president's rabbinic relationships.

Salovey’s rabbinic legacy
BY AHRON SINGER

In 19th-century Europe, a Rabbinic dynasty arose that would change the face of Orthodox Jewry and the face in Woodbridge Hall. The dynasty’s name would become synonymous with both brilliance and leadership — the Soloveitchiks. Since the mid-19th century, each generation of the Soloveitchik family has produced, and continues to produce, distinguished scholars and important spiritual leaders.

The family traces its origins to Chaim of Volozhin (1749-1821), founder of the Volozhin Yeshiva, a new and ambitious model in Jewish education, which effectively centralized and internationalized the Jewish academy. The academy endures as a model for present-day ultra-Orthodox institutions. Chaim Soloveitchik, his great-grandson, went on to become one of the greatest Talmudic scholars of the 19th century, renowned for his highly analytical, innovative and strict teaching of Jewish law, known as the Brisker method. His religious philosophy was profoundly insular, thriving in the isolated Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.

The most well-known of these great Rabbis was perhaps Chaim Soloveitchik’s grandson, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the former dean of Yeshiva University. His influence remains so immense that in some circles he continues to be referred to as simply “The Rav” (The Rabbi). He holds a place as the intellectual inspiration of the Modern Orthodox movement for his work on Torah Umadda — the synthesis of traditional Jewish law and secular knowledge.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Soloveitchik family fractured into three. One section of the family became leading proponents of ultra-Orthodox Jewry. They rejected modernity and formed Yeshivas in Israel and the United States which attract the sharpest minds of the ultra-Orthodox world. Another branch embraced Joseph’s ideology of synthesis — balancing the traditional with the modern.

A third branch of the family took a different approach. They embraced modernity and fully involved themselves in secular culture. They Americanized and changed their name — to Salovey.

With Peter Salovey’s ascendancy to the helm of Yale, this third branch of the family has reached its moment. They represent the stream of Jewish Americans who involved themselves in contemporary society, as their traditional Jewish observance waned. However, they also represent the historic, brute force of Soloveitchik brainpower in the academy. As Yale’s President-elect, Peter Salovey manifests his part in the familial triad, each branch paving out its fruition in different Jewish approaches to the modern era. The Soloveitchik family represents ultra-Orthodox, modern Orthodox and now, secular intellectual streams.

In many ways, the family is a microcosm of the American experience and the conflict between modernity and tradition. Yale also exists in a constant tension between the old and the new — the humanities versus the sciences, elitism versus egalitarianism, national versus international, athletic versus intellectual and well-born versus merit. As he inherits these current issues from President Levin, Salovey must determine where on the trajectory he will draw the line between tradition and progress.

It is certainly no easy task to live up to, filling the shoes of giants like Levin, Brewster, Stiles and Pierson, on the one hand, and Chaim and Joseph Soloveitchik on the other. Salovey represents the confluence of the old and the new, needing to perform a balancing act between heritage and change. As president he can draw upon the Talmudic genius and educational innovation of his namesake, along with an allegiance to the progress of modern psychology and institutional administration.

Yale should be proud it will have a president bearing this distinguished heritage and welcome the years to come with open arms. President Salovey should face the issues of our time with the merit of intellectual accomplishment he holds, and by the precedent of tradition and heritage that he bears.

Ahron Singer is a junior in Timothy Dwight College. David Lilienfeld contributed writing.

44 New Talmudic Books for Kindle | The Amazing 36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English | Whence and Wherefore | God's Favorite Prayers

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Is Philosophy Jewish?

No, philosophy is not Jewish. Philosophy originated in ancient pagan Greece. The practice of philosophy is not at all Jewish. In fact we believe philosophy is antithetical to both biblical and Talmudic modes of thought.

Yes, prominent Jews have written philosophical books, including Maimonides, Rav Soloveitchik and our dad. Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy wrote a wonderful book about cosmology and religious philosophy called Whence and Wherefore. If you haven't bought a copy yet, do so today.

An article by Jim Holt that our dad would have liked appeared today, "What Physics Learns From Philosophy" also titled "Physicists, Stop the Churlishness" on NYTimes.com.

It begins in a rather adversarial manner:

A KERFUFFLE has broken out between philosophy and physics. It began earlier this spring when a philosopher (David Albert) gave a sharply negative review in this paper to a book by a physicist (Lawrence Krauss) that purported to solve, by purely scientific means, the mystery of the universe’s existence. The physicist responded to the review by calling the philosopher who wrote it “moronic” and arguing that philosophy, unlike physics, makes no progress and is rather boring, if not totally useless. And then the kerfuffle was joined on both sides.

This is hardly the first occasion on which physicists have made disobliging comments about philosophy. Last year at a Google “Zeitgeist conference” in England, Stephen Hawking declared that philosophy was “dead.” Another great physicist, the Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, has written that he finds philosophy “murky and inconsequential” and of no value to him as a working scientist. And Richard Feynman, in his famous lectures on physics, complained that “philosophers are always with us, struggling in the periphery to try to tell us something, but they never really understand the subtleties and depths of the problem.”...

Our dad understood that you must respect the scientist of cosmology and offer to engage him in dialog. That is what he does in his brilliant book.

Rabbi Soloveitchik does other things in his writings. In for instance "The Lonely Man of Faith" he proclaims his opinions as existentialist philosophical postulates. We've read a new edition of the essay with an introduction by Reuven Ziegler, The Lonely Man of Faith (Maggid Books, Koren Publishers 2012).

The essay talks about human needs to attain elusive goals called "dignity" and "redemption". In our view in its thrust it never actually goes beyond a highly personal brand of theology and into the mainstream discourse of any brand of philosophy that we know of.

We wish that our incredibly gifted teacher had spent more of his of energy in his writings explaining the Talmud in accord with the Brisker method of study. The Talmud and its modes of thought are core to what is Jewish. Philosophy is extrinsic to Judaism and ought not be assumed to be a Jewish endeavor.

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On “Reflections on the Influence of the Rov on the American Jewish Religious Community” by Dr. Tovah Lichtenstein

Notes by Tzvee Zahavy on "Reflections on the Influence of the Rov on the American Jewish Religious Community" by Dr. Tovah Lichtenstein

Dr. Tovah Lichtenstein, the daughter of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (the Rov) wrote an essay, "Reflections on the Influence of the Rov on the American Jewish Religious Community." (TRADITION 44:4, 2011, Rabbinical Council of America, pp. 7-22.) In it she is up front in her self-assessment and thus characterizes her observations as opinion. She says at the outset, "I hope that my understanding of the Rov's influence on the community in which he lived will ring true to those who knew him and who wish to appraise his contributions to the American Jewish religious community."

She further limits her scope to appraising her father's,

a.       impact upon the religious community

b.       its commitment to Halakha

c.       its public stance in relation to the general society

d.      its self-image

This limited range is disappointing. We would prefer from the daughter of a noteworthy figure some new inside knowledge, perhaps about her father's self-appraisal of his successes or failures. A daughter's mere opinions about abstract issues concerning her father can be highly personal and more than likely they are biased.

Dr. Lichtenstein's agenda is also a bit vague in its four bullet point goals because we don't have rigorous definitions for them. We don't know what metrics if any measure a person's "impact on" a community. We don't know the parameters of the "community", who is in and who is out. We don't know how to measure the sweep of a community's "commitment to Halakha". We don't know what a community's "public stance" entails. We don't know what "general society" means and we don't know how to determine a community's "self image". Ambiguities abound in the statement of the mission for this essay, making it hard to impossible to assess the success of the exercise.

Be that as it may, we do appreciate the intellectual vigor of the opening paragraphs including the notion that the writer explored hypotheticals in thinking about her father's career.

Sometimes, I entertain myself by playing "What if" games. What would have happened had my father been elected as the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv in 1935? As is widely known, he was a candidate for that post, but was not chosen. Had he been selected, and had he appeared on the Israeli stage immediately after Rav Kook's passing, what, I often wonder, would the Religious Zionist community be like today? And, I continue the game – what would the non-haredi Orthodox community in America be like today, if the Rov had left the United States in 1935?

In answering her last "what if" scenario, Lichtenstein concludes that, "Without him, the overwhelming majority of this community might have disappeared, absorbed into the Conservative movement."

Contrary to Lichtenstein's assertion, we believe that this did in fact happen. Although no one disappeared a large number of Jewish families affiliated with Conservative Judaism as it grew substantially from 1935 to 1985, deriving most of its membership from the ranks of the liberal Orthodox community.

Employing a battleground rhetoric, Lichtenstein next explains, "The Orthodox community in the 1940s and 1950s was under threat from the religious left, which demanded reforms." In the academic history of the religion, the more usual narrative of the emergence of Conservative Judaism was not one of threat and response. Sociologists recount the postwar population shift to the suburbs and the adaptation of synagogue and ritual to the new forms of social organization and to the practical needs of the times.

The next claim that Lichtenstein makes with certitude assures us that, "The current existence of a thriving and dynamic community of Torah scholars, of ba'alei battim involved in the general culture and deeply committed to Talmud Torah and shmirat mitsvot, may be attributed, in no small measure, to the influence of the Rov."

In order for us to assess the validity of this statement we need to know how the author arrived at it. The writer tells us that the Rov exercised his influence on the community through several prominent themes and characteristics of his teaching and personality which she labels:

1.       confidence in the truth of Torah

2.       supremacy of the Halakha

3.       pride in the tradition

4.       participation in general culture

5.       translating the Jewish experience into philosophical categories

a.       sacrifice

b.       the creative aspect of Torah study

c.       the religious experience

We do agree that these notions, moods and motivations are found in the work of the Rov and could serve as inspirations to members of a community. Still it is not clear to us how any part of the Rov's religious teaching and opinions reached the public and how it is known to the essay author that it was these five themes, to the exclusion of all other factors, which had a preservative affect on the "current existence" of the community. Lacking any expert opinion connecting the dots, we are left at best with a few well-intentioned and respected personal opinions.

At the conclusion the author asks, "What is the long-term influence of my father, the Rov…?" For the Israeli community she cites actual data, "Four of the Rov's books have been translated into Hebrew, including Family Redeemed, which has sold more copies in Israel than in the United States. His writings are quoted in high school textbooks, and courses are given in institutions of higher learning that deal with aspects of the Rov's thought."

Regarding the Rov's "lasting influence" in the United States, Lichtenstein observes a few imprecise new trends in Orthodox circles, such as these two:

·         A "shying away from general culture and a commitment to Zionism"

·         "…those who are turning to the left, having lost their confidence in the truth of the Torah"

Lichtenstein sees a serious challenge of the current day as follows expressed by those who say that, "The Torah in the 21st century needs to accommodate itself … to the New Age, with its demand for sexual freedom and egalitarianism." And indeed these may be looming tests to a traditional culture's sexual mores and gender assumptions. Yet we do not see how Lichtenstein connects these to the work of her father in the past generation.

We feel personally vindicated to read the concluding section of this essay which characterizes the Rov as a persistent and partially successful performer of Judaism. In writing our recent book, God's Favorite Prayers (Teaneck, 2011), we struggled long and hard to find the dominant archetype for the Rov in our scheme of the ideal theological types that we find in the prayer book. We ended up setting him in the "performer" archetype, that form of expression and personality that carries the Torah-traditions forward in dramatic ways in the synagogue.

Lichtenstein laments that her father was not able to transmit sufficiently his performative qualities to his students. As the Rov wrote, "I did not see great success in my work on the experiential plane." ("Al Ahavat ha-Torah u-Geulat Nefesh ha-Dor," 420) Lichtenstein assesses, "While many speak in his name, few disciples are able to integrate and implement his way. Perhaps his message is too complex and demanding."

Yes, the Rov left a complicated legacy. We think that overall it would benefit him greatly if he was appreciated mainly for what he was best: a truly masterful interpreter of Torah and great dazzling performer and breathtaking artist of Jewish theology.

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