by Rabbi Alan J Yuter
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are that of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the Union for Traditional Judaism, unless otherwise indicated.
While Jewish religious doctrine focuses upon what is taken to be divine law, to be studied with sincerity and urgency, most decisors pick the opinions that resonate to them and adopt legal positions to which they are ideologically or socially predisposed, choosing to ignore the views that are not socially appropriate, that offend sensibilities, and which do not reflect higher principles. Actual real-life decisions often reflect social approval and communal acceptance criteria, and ignore the religious value of both questioner and quest.
We will consider first the ideal framework regarding legitimate opinions, we will then turn to Orthodox Judaism’s acceptable parameters of pluralism, which will be followed by important illustrative cases, all of which turn upon the definition of these parameters. Specifically, Professor Saul Lieberman’s criticism of my own revered and beloved teacher, Prof. Baruch A. Levine’s senior sermon and Rabbi H. Lookstein’s entering a Church for an interfaith service will be unpackaged. We conclude by searching for a definition of what qualifies as an illegitimate opinion, a view that is not really compatible with the Judaism of the Written and Oral Torah. We will focus upon the learned Blog of Rabbi Gil Student, Hirhurim.[Musings]
Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik suggested that there are two kinds of Tradition, the Maimonidean normative order, with higher norms, de-oraita laws, middle range norms, de-rabbanan rules, and local folkways, minhagim usually but less precisely called “customs.”
Legal orders have two kinds of rules, posits H.L.A. Hart: [1] rules of obligation, in Judaism, called mitsvot, or commandments or precepts. God says/commands in the Torah, the contract between the Creator and Israel, the system of mitsvot. Higher grade norms determine the validity of lower norms. Just as a law of the State of Maryland may not override Federal law, unless there is a legislated statutory exception, rabbinic law may not override Torah law without a legislated statutory exception. Similarly, a folkway/custom may not override a de-oraita or de-rabbanan law without statutory exception. [e.g., matters of business convention, where customary usage is authorized to override official statute].
[2] There are also secondary rules called “rules of recognition,” whereby the validity of a legal norm is vetted. A valid rule must be promulgated and violates no higher norm in the legal order. All post-Talmudic rulings, being folkways/customs, are legitimate and valid if they do not violate higher norms and are accepted as custom by the living community. [The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979, 97-107, Maimonides, Introduction to Mishne Torah]
Rabbi Soloveitchik contends that there is also a folk culture tradition that is also religiously binding, basing himself on Deuteronomy 32:7, “we ask our father, he will tell us, our zeqenim, [elders, grandfathers] they will say/command us.” That such “tradition” exists amongst Orthodox Jews is beyond question. [see “Two Kinds of Tradition (Hebrew) Shiurim le-Zecher Abba Mori (Jerusalem: Aqivia, 1988), 220-239] This de facto tradition’s de jure normative valence is the subject of this paper. Literally [= peshat], the Scriptural passage should be read “ask your daddy, he will tell you, your granddaddy, he will say to you.” That conversation’s plain sense context is not tradition, but history! The first part of the verse has two stiches, “recount [following the Akkadian and Ugaritic meaning of the root zkr, as attested famously at Ps. 145:7] “recount the days of antiquity, understand the years of [each] generation.” The Hebrew word for understand, binu, is connected to years, shenot, alluding to change and comparison. Moses may be understood as commanding that we first learn chronology, yemot ‘olam, and then understand the chronology’s significance by engaging in historiography.
The Oral Torah cites this passage to justify the Hanukka candle blessing, whereby the celebrator praises God for the sanctity giving rite of kindling the Hanukka candle. Since the Hanukka event is post-biblical, how is it that God commanded such a blessing? Deuteronomy 17:10 finds God commanding Israel to obey the commands of the Israelite supreme court; Deuteronomy 32:7 is understood by the rabbinic homily on zeqenecha ve-yomeru lach, to be taken as “your elders, [i.e., the supreme court] will command you, understanding the semitic root amar as “command, as in Aramaic, Arabic, and occasionally, Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew.
Rabbi Soloveitchik’s creative, innovative midrashic reading of the Written Torah canon enjoys no precedent in the Oral Torah tradition that I could find, and I conjecture that his idiosyncratic reading of Deuteronomy 32:7 is motivated by a concern that without mimetic culture tradition, halakhic religious culture and community are not sustainable. On one hand, any act not forbidden is permitted, authorized, and is therefore a legal right, following mEduyyot 2:2; appeals to the canon that find no canonical precedent, the authorization of an individual rabbi to change Jewish law by means of a midrash halakha that has not been approved by the supreme court is not a legitimate or valid rule of Halakhic recognition.
Take for example the issue of women’s reading Megillah for men on Purim. The Talmud rules that women and men carry the same identical obligation to read the Megillah. Women would therefore be permitted to read Megillah for men.
Three responses to this issue are possible. We may permit the women to read Megillah for men, because the Oral Torah permits and authorizes the act, we may disallow the reading by women for men because we believe that the practice will be socially disruptive in our communities. We are permitted to forbid the permitted on policy grounds; an act that is legally permitted may not by socially appropriate. The first response reflects the Halakhic ideal; the second, legitimate Halakhic flexibility when needs are pressing. We may also invoke “Tradition” in order to forbid the practice because it offends our sensibilities. But this response is not legitimate because our sensibilities are not “Tradition.” God did not command Israel to reify its sensibilities into Covenant.
In the High Middle Ages, when women’s role in the Roman Catholic Church was becoming limited, women’s role in the synagogue was also undergoing constriction. It seems that it would be an error to invent a claim, and a Talmudically unattested commandment blessing that states that women are obliged to hear but not read the Megillah. The Oral Torah canon understands the Megillah obligation [1] to fall on both men and women and [2] the obligation for both women and men is reading. While it is true that the Tosefta denies women any obligation regarding the Megillah reading, the Babylonian Talmud by all normative accounts trumps the Tosefta. [See Rabbi Avraham Weiss, “Women and the Reading of the Megillah,” ed. Jacob J. Schacter, The Torah U-Madda Journal VIII (1998-1999 (New York, 1999), pp. 295-310, for the masterfully presented, cogently conceived, and on the merits irrefutable claim that women may read Megillah for men].
In North Western Europe, it is suggested that we must nevertheless take the Tosefta view into account and strike a compromise:
This position comports well with Rabbi Soloveitchik’s second sense of tradition, but it violates R. Soloveitchik’s first and Maimonides’ only sense of tradition:
Given Judaism’s rules of recognition being what they are, the following questions need to be addressed:
We are not denying the flexibility of Jewish law; we are objecting to the manipulation, misapplication, and misrepresentation of Jewish law. A communal Orthodox rabbi has a right to de-authorize women’s Megilla readings for several reasons:
In order to bring Jews back to religion and observant practice, Maimonides allows for the suspension – not abolition – of Biblical law. [Mamrim 2:4] Thus, while Torah law cannot condone the use of a combustion engine automobile on Shabbat, the emergency principle may be invoked to justify inconsistency in an emergency setting. Therefore, when Rabbi Louis Ginzberg permitted family seating in the synagogue, [Collected Responsa] and when Rabbi Aaron Lichtenstein argued that it is better that Jews in far away places, “Dallas and Dubuque,” drive to the Temple on Shabbat in order to avoid total assimilation, they were making the same realistic claim.
There is in Judaism a set of public terms, idioms, and concepts in Jewish law. The five books of Moses, i.e., the Torah, present two alternative, overlapping, and necessary versions of “religion,” the mystical and the rational. The mystical religion emphasizes the religious spiritual enterprise, a hierarchical chain of being, and leaders who have charisma and followers who do not. This religion uses choreography, i.e., smells and bells, pomp and circumstance, images and melody, to transmit the numinous religious experience, a sense of transcendent enchantment, and an encounter with eternity. This is the Torah religion that is projected, promulgated, and presented by the functioning priests. The other religion, the “religion” encoded in Deuteronomy, is rational, the speaker is Moses and not God, and the narrator exhibits what Professor David Halivni calls the “predilection for a justified law.” Deuteronomy’s setting, unlike the setting of Leviticus, is mundane and disenchanted. God is not revealed in the sacred sanctuary but in the potential majesty of the challenge of every day. By referring to Deuteronomy as the “Second Law,” a Mishneh Torah, the rabbis of that Judaism in antiquity that composed the Mishnah, argues forcefully that God’s religion, Torah, no more and no less than the Lord’s word, [Isaiah 2:3] is not located in the person of the holy, charismatic human, but in the recorded words of the sacred object, the covenanted, canonical text.
Consider the differing Judaism’s of Maimonides and Nahmanides. For the latter sage, being holy requires that the law be observed, and more so. Leviticus 19:2 commands that Israel “be holy.” But the Scriptural passage does not say, teach, or prescribe how to be holy. Nahmanides sees the law of Israel to be a necessary but insufficient minimum for pleasing God. One must not be a law abiding scoundrel and stay away from impurity. For Levitical religion, impurity taboos possess potency and assume an enchanted reality. In Deuteronomy and rabbinic “religion,” impurity is a legal rather than a metaphysical category. We are often told that it is improper to judge the great rabbis of the past. If such judgments are indeed improper, it is because a hierarchical chain of being is assumed, where those higher on the political theological food chain are immune from being questioned by those hierarchically beneath them. Personal charisma bestows authority; the manifest meaning of the plain sense of sacred text does not. The claim that “It is not in Heaven,” [Deuteronomy 30:12] for Nahmanides refers to the possibility of repentance because authentic Torah is proclaimed by the charismatic and is not parsed in a collegial conversation regarding the meaning of the canonical record. bBaba Mesia 59b tells us that it is the Torah—and not the ability to repent—that is not in Heaven. Note well that for Nahmanides, deeply held feeling and the sense of inspired intuition are sources of Torah. Maimonides claims that the only way to be holy is to obey the commandments. [Moreh Nebuchim 3:7] Unlike Nahmanides, whose charismatic intuition is taken to be normative without argument or predilection for justification, Maimonides actually cites his source in the canon for his disenchant demonstration of normative Torah doctrine, Safra Qedoshim 10:9, which maintains that sanctity is acquired by commandment observance and implicitly, not by acts that are “felt” to be normative by charismatic characters. While there may indeed be support in the canonical trove for the Nahmanidean position, I have unhappily been unable to find it. However, in addition to the Safra source cited above and corroborating the Maimonidean position are the rabbinically ordained liturgical idioms, qaddeshenu be-mitsvotecha, sanctify us, using the pi’el, intensive conjugation, and the commandment blessing formula, asher qiddeshanu be-mitsvotav, where the celebrant of a precept praises God for the opportunity to become holy by means of the command performance. Ironically, this doctrine is actually Scriptural and in no way an invention of the rabbis. In the priestly context of Numbers 15:39, which ordains that the covenanted Israelite don liturgical tassels that [1] remind the Israelite to observe the commandments, and “to become thereby holy to God.”
Maimonides’s pre-Weberian claim that this world is disenchanted, that holiness is the acquired result of commandment observance alone, is explicitly justified by a canonical citation and further corroborated by the sourced citations recorded above. Nahmanides’ alternative claim, that intuitionally derived ritual rejections of this world are also sources of sanctification is not accompanied by attestation or demonstration. The idiom “sanctify yourself with what is permitted to you” may be taken in distinctly different Maimonidean and Nahmanidean ways. For the former, by only engaging in permitted activity, one obeys God and becomes holy; for the latter, the phrase should be taken to mean that one becomes holy by forbidding everything that is forbidden and some things that are permitted. The sad fate of Abihu and Nadab [Leviticus 10:1] indicates that defining divine dictates by intuition rather than a reasoned reading of the Torah literary canon is theologically incorrect, problematic doctrine.
That Maimonides’ view, that Torah propriety is determined by commandment observance exclusively, is a legitimate opinion because it is corroborated by the canon. If we claim that the Nahmanidean view is also a legitimate opinion, we must explain why this is so. If we accept a claim merely because it was declared by a divinely inspired, intuitionally endowed mystical charismatic, we are assigning to Nahmanides an infallibility greater than that enjoyed by Moses b. Amram, Israel’s first Moses. Professor Menachem Kellner, in Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism (Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Litman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2006), chapter 10, concedes that the mystical view is taken to be more popular. But what makes the Maimonidean view less “traditional” than Nahmanides only indicates that folk religion Orthodoxy, goes undiscussed. As noted above, R. Joseph Soloveitchik affirms folk tradition, and his erudite son, Prof. Haym Soloveitchik bemoans the fact that the Jewishly legitimate mimetic culture Orthodoxy is being superseded, to his view, by a very parochial book culture. We also note that Rabbi Menachem Genack insightfully associated R. Soloveitchik’s intuitive approach to Jewish Tradition with Nahmanides’ view, that the great rabbi’s intuition is a source of Torah law.
Nowhere in the canonical Oral Torah rabbinic library is charismatic intuition a normative source carrying the valence of a divine mandate; the most that could be claimed is that intuition provides the inspiration that moves the scholar to develop a demonstrated, deductive opinion. Therefore, according to the Oral Torah canon, appeals to intuition and charisma are Jewishly illegitimate. According to Judaism’s canonical library, which is both accessible and textual, Maimonides’ view makes sense, but Nahmanides’ view does not.
On December 11, 1954, Baruch A. Levine, my doctoral sponsor at New York University, delivered his senior sermon at the synagogue of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. This event is reported in Elijah J. Schochet and Solomon Spiro, Saul Lieberman: The Man and his Work (New York: JTSA, 2005), 163-165, and one version was reported to me in a personal communication by Professor Levine himself. It must be remembered that both individuals, Professors Levine and Lieberman, are renown for their intellectual honesty and scholarly integrity. According to the Schochet and Spiro report, Prof./then student Levine accused the patriarch Jacob, from the Seminary pulpit, of being guilty of “deviousness,” a rather unflattering designation. This world-class to be Bible scholar did not argue his case from intuition, culture, etiquette, or “Tradition”; he made his claim based upon the Biblical narrative’s literary facts, that Jacob’s very name means “crooked,” that Jacob conspired with his mother to deceive his father regarding the birthright that was by protocol due his to brother, and Esau, who complained, “This one [Jacob,Yaaqov] gypped me [ya’aqveni] twice.” Outraged by what he believed to be the student’s irreverence and arrogance, in Schochet and Spiro’s words, Professor Lieberman claimed that “Levine may have been guilty of vainglory in denigrating the sacred.”
These words of public rebuke were presented by Prof. Lieberman to the entire senior Jewish Theological Seminary Talmud class, a most humiliating experience for the senior rabbinical student.
Both Professors Levine and I continue to revere the late Prof. Leiberman. I personally maintain and, in a future paper hope to demonstrate, that Prof. Lieberman charted a path in Jewish life and learning that speaks to the essence of a sincere, authentic modern Orthodoxy, rather than the Conservative Movement with which he was academically affiliated. With time, these two Jewish giants made their peace with one another. But King Solomon once said, “there is no one so right in the land that one does only good and does not sin.” [Ecclesiastes 7:20] In Israel’s sacred canon, God denies to God self sovereign immunity in order to endow humankind the right to question God with impunity.
Applying the hermenteutic of Oral Torah Judaism, no biblical or rabbinic norm passage forbids the practice of challenging heroes, authority persons, or for that matter , God. from Abraham to Ezekiel and Moses to Joshua and from Jeremiah to Job, exercised this right. The claim that it is improper to criticize Biblical heroes is itself improper unless a norm in the Oral Torah is cited. I suspect that a lay person who will criticize a Biblical hero based upon Torah norms will also hold living rabbinic leaders to account, and by conditioning laypeople to obsequious passivity, great rabbis in the Nahmanidean tradition become immune from accountability.
Professor David Berger, an Orthodox historian who is unsympathetic to secular biblical criticism [in private communication], in his “On the Morality of Patriarchs,” in Understanding Scripture, 56-57, seems to confirm Prof. Levine’s reading because he concedes that Jewish medieval Bible commentaries were not shy when expressing their reasoned opinions, “patriarchal immunity from criticism, even in a traditional society, evidently had its limits.” This immunity is grounded in the absence of a prohibition in the Oral Torah.
I believe that Prof. Lieberman’s opinion, that Prof. Levine violated the “sacred,” is itself an illegitimate opinion, even though its author was, for those who knew him, the greatest Torah scholar of the age.
And I believe that Prof. Lieberman’s behavior, publicly rebuking Prof. Levine, was highly improper. In pagan thought, disagreeing with authority people is both theological heresy and political treason. Not so in Judaism. There are several problems with Professor Lieberman’s approach to and reproach of Professor Levine:
I am certain that Prof. Lieberman realized that he had committed these three wrongs, and by subsequently awarding Prof. Levine the co-prize for the best sermon of the year, Prof. Lieberman, who knew the sources and views cited above, realized that he had acted wrongly and, more importantly, he was honest enough to own up to his error.
There are those who will claim that we cannot have a conversation regarding the patriarchic characters. This opinion is a legitimate matter of personal taste, but it is not a matter of Jewish law. For Jewish law to be violated, the norm recorded in the legal canon and not the mimetic culture sensibility has to be violated. By holding Professor Lieberman, the Jewish Theological Seminary’s greatest scholar and Orthodox Judaism’s preeminent 20th Century Talmudist, to the same benchmarks as other Jews, glory is given the Author of the Law, the One Who sanctifies people through the commandments, and who requires that Jews live a rule of rules and not a rule of rulers.
When conceding [bBaba Mezi’a 59b] that humans and not God, that the finite findings of foibled creatures and not the divine dictate that determine divine truth in everyday life, God also concedes that “my sons have bested Me.” The ethical greatness of Professor Lieberman was that he realized and owned up to his wrong, awarding the “sermon of the year” to the sermon he wrongly condemned, as the prophet says, ve—haya he-‘aqov le-mishor, the crooked, like Jacob, will be made straight, and Prof. Lieberman moved from being a hierarchically superior teacher to the horizontal relationship of a peer who is first amongst equals in the search for Torah truth, which is no less than the insignia seal of God.
Consider the view of Rabbi Tsvi Yehuda Kook, reported by Rabbi Shelomo Aviner, Ateret Yerushalayim website, Toledot, 5770:
Our Rabbi immensely loved every Torah scholar. He would mention a Torah scholar with an awe of holiness and rejoicing of the heart. When he met many Torah scholars, whether or not they were his students, he would hug and kiss them – just as Yehoshafat, King of Yehudah did (Ketubot 103b). He rejoiced in their honor, and was distressed when they were the subjects of derision or worse, when they scorned others. He was exceedingly severe with one who shamed a Torah scholar, and would not be silent until he objected, even with Torah scholars who stumbled in this matter.
Our Rabbi stood before his students who were Torah scholars, and would say that the honor of Torah scholars requires one to be fastidious.
Our Rabbi honored every Torah scholar, even he if he disagreed with him, and he instructed his students to act in the same manner. When he heard a student repeat an expression which he himself had used disagreeing with another Torah scholar, he chastised him: “That which is permissible to me is not permissible to you.” Occasionally when he thought that a Torah scholar erred, he spoke harshly, but on subject and with respect.
[In this context, our Rabbi relied on what is related in the book “Keter Shem Tov” that the Ba’al Shem Tov, founder of the Chasidic movement, had a fierce opponent, Rabbi Nachman of Horodneko, who would constantly criticize him. One time that same rabbi heard his students speaking against the Ba’al Shem Tov, and he castigated them, saying, “How dare you speak that way against a holy man!” They responded, “But you yourself spoke out against him.” He then replied with exceeding severity, “that what that is permissible for me to speak is not permissible for you.”
Note well the words in bold [emphasis mine]. The Orthodox Judaism that privileges intuitive Torah legislates different rules for different people, a doctrine neither attested nor tolerated in the Oral Torah canon [Deut. 18:36]. This doctrine also approaches the violation of affirming “two powers,” or two standards of normativity. [bHagiga 15a] It is my anecdotal experience that every great scholar who was close to and trained by Professor Lieberman was/is meticulously gentle, personally generous, and sensitive in dealing with their students, and Prof Levine was no exception to this rule. We recall that Israel in its canonical version canonizes books, not people.
A major difference between the Judaism of the Written and Oral Torah and popular culture Orthodox Judaism is the way their respective leaders demand to be addressed . According to the former Judaism, the leader is respected according to legal protocols and norms [Maimonides, Laws of Torah Study 5] There is no evidence in the canon for a prohibiting criticism. But two conflicting sources appear in Tractate Shabbat. bShabbat 56a reports that R. Samuel b. Nahmani said that he who says/claims that David sinned is in error. This is an individual report and is presented in descriptive as opposed to normative or command syntax. Those who posit the “ that is permissible for me to speak is not permissible for you” doctrine posit that R. Samuel b. Nahmani’s opinon is binding law, ignoring and suppressing the alternative view. bShabbat 30a reports that David asked to be forgiven for his iniquity, ‘avon – a delict far more grievous than a sin, or het – which according to Rashi refers to David’s seduction of Batsheva. By arguing that the bShabbat 56a must be construed as a generic prohibition, and bShabbat 30a, be suppressed, in spite of the plain sense of Scripture, one expresses a Jewishly popular but nevertheless canonically illegitimate opinion. Consequently, by ignoring the bShabbat 30a passage, one projects the culture bias that Professor Lieberman accepted uncritically in his criticism of Professor Levine. Both Professors Levine and Lieberman are champions of peshat, the actual philological meanings of words when they were said or recorded. And it is the reasonable reading of the canon’s actual data and not the superimposed, self-serving doctrines that determine that sacred trove’s normative, covenantal claims.
Ever the gracious gentleman and gentle scholar, Prof. Levine realized that his mentor repented of his imprudent denigration of his student’s motives by awarding him the senior homiletics prize, for his sermon. By awarding this prize to his talented, precocious protégé, Professor Lieberman realized that the observation of Rabbi Naftali Berlin, Ruah Hayyim 1:3, that a student ought not to defer to the teacher, for sometimes the student is correct.
What happened
The Jewish Telegraph Association reported that Rabbi Haskell Lookstein violated Jewish law and policy by entering an Episcopal Cathedral prayer sanctuary in order to attend the President Barak Obama inauguration service. Also reported is the response of the Rabbinical Council of America, of which both Rabbi Lookstein and this writer are members,
“The long-standing policy of the Rabbinical Council of America, in accordance with Jewish law, is that participation in a prayer service held in the sanctuary of a church is prohibited….. “Any member of the RCA who attends such a service does so in contravention of this policy and should not be perceived as representing the organization in any capacity.”
The Rabbinical Council hereby maintains that:
It is forbidden by Rabbinic law to enter a sanctuary where ‘avoda zarah, “alien cult,” mistaken to be “idolatry” but in reality, a “religion” not promulgated by Torah, is practiced. The sources are well catalogued by R. Obadiah Yosef, Yehavveh Daat, 4:45. For the Jewish people, Christianity is “strange religion,” or ‘avoda zarah, there is a rabbinical edict, correctly documented by R. Yosef, that entering a room that is designated for the practice a religion that is ‘avoda zarah foe Jews is forbidden. In light of contextual realities and other positions taken, we shall show that the Rabbinical Council’s taking Rabbi Lookstein to task is inconsistent with other rulings and policies that it affirms and is therefore is therefore an incorrect, and therefore illegitimate opinion.
According to the pre-eminent modern Orthodox sage, Rabbi Daniel Sperber, “How Not to Make Halakhic Rulings,” Conversations 5 (Autumn 2009/5770), 67-68, raises the following questions:
While I am personally not persuaded either by the views of Meiri and Rabbi Tam, and I maintain that the restrictive Maimonidean view is probably the theoretically correct view, as R. Yosef concedes, supra., that even for Maimonides we ought not to reside in idol worshiping cities, clearly an impossible situation.
Looking for leniency, citing Taz, YD 141, it is claimed by Rabbi Yosef, supra, without even a scintilla of canonical textual evidence, that non-Jews are not idolaters if they accept the Trinity. This view seems to be shared by R. Isserles, OH 156 and Tosafot to Bekhorot 2a, s.v. shema. [For a great defense of the Trinity being consistent with monotheism, see Anselm’s Monogolion.]
Rabbi Sperber correctly, cogently, and most critically, courageously, argued
The Rabbinical Council’s treatment of Rabbi Lookstein is an illegitimate course of behavior, given its acceptance of Rabbis Meiri, Jacob Tam, and Moses Isserles as “Masoretic Sages.” The Rabbinical Council’s acceptance of what would seem to violations of rabbinic law, like permitting the women’s modesty wig [bShabbat 64b], clapping and dancing on Holy Days [bBetsa 30a], and praying to angels, to be discussed below, shows that its invocation of “Tradition” is at best inconsistent. Ironically, the late R. Soloveitchik also forbade the married woman’s wing, with no call that violators be censured, even though this rabbinic norm carries equal valence to the norm regarding entering a church. [See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHJOZMe8hNc] If a “reform,” i.e. an apparent violation of Oral Torah law, is accepted by the institutional Orthodox franchise, that “reform” will be accepted as [if it were] “Tradition.” But if a suggested practice deviates from the accepted social norms of the Orthodox street, even if that practice violates no legal norm, that innovation will be rejected. Furthermore, no position that Haredi Orthodoxy maintains will ever be categorized as illegitimate by the “modern” Orthodox Rabbinical Council, like the military draft in Israel of Orthodox men and women, as evidenced by its refusal to endorse the requirement at bSota 44b. For this “Orthodoxy,” correct doctrine proceeds from the unquestionable intuition—and will—of men, but not by a consistent application of the sacred text. R. Lookstein’s “sin” was “violating” Orthodox social taste and not Jewish Law as understood by precedents already accepted the Rabbinical Council of America.
In Hakira 7 (2009) the “Zoo Rabbi,” Noson Slifkin examines the following claims:
After several pages of meticulous citations, the moderate Haredi Rabbi Slifkin concludes that
“This essay should not be misunderstood: I do not believe it acceptable for a person to believe in a corporeal God. In a future essay, I hope to explain why even if Rashi maintained this view, it can still be rated as heretical to believe it today. Rashi said it, but we cannot. (p. 101)
Rabbi J. David Bleich believes that there are dogmas in Judaism, against Moses Mendelssohn [With Perfect Faith (New York: KTAV, 1983), p. 1]. R. Bleich adds that the view that the Messiah already arrived during King Hezekiah’s time [bSan 99a] was legitimate in its time but, following the subsequent rabbinic consensus, becomes heretical. [p. 4] Maimonides believed that believing that God has a body is a heretic [Repentance 3:7]. This position follows Slifkin’s, that correct doctrine is determined by contemporary rabbinic consensus and not persuasive textual analysis, which is the position adopted in this study.
Nevertheless, R. Abraham b. David denies that this correct belief is a dogma, because and “bigger and better [authority persons] than he [= Maimonides] believed that God had has a body [ad. loc.]. Note well that while R. Abraham b. David disagrees with Maimonides, which is legitimate, his diction is uncongenial if not disrespectful and to my view regrettable and unacceptable. The implied doctrine suggested by R. Abraham b. David, that religious truth resides not in the religious documentary canon but in the “bigger and better” rabbinic person, does not seem to fit the view that it is the cogency of the claim that grounds Jewish normativity [bHullin 90b]. In R. Abraham b. David’s version of Orthodoxy, plebian rabbis have no right to measure and evaluate great rabbis based upon their own reading of the Torah Law, i.e. to have and to express an opinion. The doctrine that what is permissible to Rashi or Raabad is not permissible to moderns is absurd. God gave one Torah to all Israel. Great men are held to higher, and not lower standards. According to Nahmanidean Orthodoxy, where intuition is the ultimate source of Torah truth, dissent is met with de-legitimating ridicule, not reasoned refutation. There is in this Orthodoxy two sets of hermeneutic rules.
Usually unaddressed by Orthodox Judaism’s latter day heresy hunters is the view of R. Joseph Albo,
But a person who upholds the law of Moses and believes in its principles, that when he undertakes to investigate these matters with his reason and scrutinizes the texts, is misled by his speculation and interprets a given principle otherwise than it is taken to be meant at first sight; or denies the principle because he thinks that it does not represent a sound theory which the Torah obliges us to believe; or erroneously denies that a given belief is a fundamental principle, which however he believes as he believes the other dogma of the Torah which are not fundamental principles; or entertains a certain notion in relation to one of the miracles of the Torah because he thinks that he is not thereby denying any doctrines which is obligatory upon us to believe by the authority of the Torah, –a person of this sort is not an unbeliever (כופר ‘heretic’). He is classed with the sages and pious men of Israel, though he holds erroneous theories. His sin is due to error and requires atonement [Sefer ha-‘Ikkarim, ed. and tr. Isaac Husik (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1946), I, 2, vol. 1, pp 48-50]
Accordingly, as long as one accepts the working principles of Torah, which for R. Albo, God exists, holds humankind accountable, through and by means of a divine Torah [Ikkarim 1:4], one’s opinion is normative, the Orthodox consensus notwithstanding. Consider mSanhedrin 10:1, where one is required not to orally deny [and one is not even required to affirm these doctrines!] the Divinity of Torah and the resurrection of the dead. At HM 25 and 34, Maran Yosef Caro takes a similar position regarding Jewish law. Well intentioned error is subject to correction, and the person who makes the error is not branded as a heretic. The assignation of “heresy” requires the legislation of a Bet Din ha-Gadol, not the consensus of a lesser, self-selected synod. To make the contrary claim, made by Rabbis Bleich and Slifkin, that a Jewishly binding dogmatic theology is determined by the Great Rabbis of the day, is to concomitantly violate the legal norm encoded at Deuteronomy 4:2, that God’s word correctly given from the moment of Sinai, is in no need of additions or subtractions. “Great rabbis’ consensus” applies up to and including Rabina I and Rav Ashi; and is the Talmud of Babylon and not any post-Talmudic consensus that provides Torah’s validating benchmarks.
Therefore, while we agree with R. David Berger, a scholar of Jewish messianism and the Lubavitch Messianist scandal, who argues that the belief that the no longer still living 7th Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, remains the Messiah, is incorrect, unwise, and foolish, following R. Albo, the theologically wrong doctrine rises to the level of error but not of heresy. See David Berger, The Rebbe, the Messiah and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (London and Portland: Litman Library, 2001) 131-132. But no supreme court of Israel validated Maimonides’ thirteen principles of faith to legal doctrine. There is no collective “we” that accepted Maimonidean theology, nor was there any collective authorized to accept Maimonidean theology as binding on all Israel. At Shabbat 19:8, Maimonides rules that a woman may wear a wig in an unenclosed courtyard [where there is no eruv]. Given that Maimonides, or for that matter R. Soloveitchik, did not approve of the Tosafist eruv, the selective cherry-picking of Maimonidean opinion comports well with the intuitive doctrine “that which is permissible to me is not permissible to you.” With this method, the intuition of the great rabbi and not the text of the canon is ultimately normative.
Albo’s view of dogma – and he was a biblical literalist – is more moderate and tolerant than most contemporary Orthodox thinkers. I was once chided for advocating the Maimonidean position on divine corporeality because such advocacy would indeed render Rashi a heretic, a socially untenable position. My well-intentioned and well-meaning interlocutor assumed that I even had Rashi in mind; only subsequently did I become aware of and became convinced by R. Slifkin’s careful and more crucially, honest research that determined based on the evidence that Rashi was a corporealist.
Applying the Maimonidean methodology to Maimonides’ own rulings, we find that:
I believe that Chabad Messianism to be in error, but that it may not be classified as heresy. Those who believe that the Rebbe is a divinity are indeed heretics. I avoid purchasing Chabad meat not because of its tolerating Messianic error, but because Chabad’s “enhanced” kashrut standards implicitly supersedes and demean the Oral Torah’s standards that are canonically attested and socially accepted by mainstream Orthodox Jews. This Chabad standard is a communally divisive and socially corrosive policy that conditions the community to regard Chabad Judaism to be “more Orthodox” than others within Orthodoxy. Note well that deviationism on the Left is considered to be intolerably terrible, like R. Lookstein’s entering a church, but Chabad, because of its self-projected Orthodox “image,” gets a pass, as correctly and courageously noted by Berger, 138-9.
Rabbi Berger’s principled stand corroborates our findings; Orthodoxy’s official religion, ‘Torah,’ and mimetic culture religion, are two very different religions. The former is cited selectively by great rabbis blessed with sacred intuition in order to delegitimize deviants who look to the revealed Oral Torah canon rather than to them for guidance.
According to the canonical bHullin 40a, making offerings to the archangel Michael is zivhe metim, an act of avoda zara, of unauthorized and false religion. Yet the mimetic Orthodox culture religion recites the idiom barechuni le-shalom, “bless me in peace,” and the Malbim to I Samuel 2 argues that one may not argue that it is theologically improper to pray to angels. Popular religion pseudo-Orthodox street culture religion makes the following misplaced points:
These four points may be parried by the following official religion Halakhic retorts:
If it is permitted to Maimonides and Rabbi Abraham b. David to argue over God’s corporeality, then it is our right to do so as well in our time. My own, personal resolution of the issue is that:
Jewish law defines a wicked person [rasha] to be ineligible to serve as a halakhic witness. Unless one’s deeds reach the threshold whereby the perpetrator is considered to be wicked, the wrong being performed does not disqualify the person of the perpetrator. According to Exodus 23:1, one “may not place one’s hand [ = legal capacity = serve as an accomplice] with a wicked person [rasha] to be a violent [ = an improper, an illegal] witness.”
As noted above, Deuteronomy 25:2 defines the case where “if the wicked person is worthy of lashes,” indicating that lashes are administered when expiating the sin the wicked person’s bad behavior. [bSanhedrin 10a, bMakkot 2b]
The definition of “wicked person” is supplied by the Oral Torah canon. bSanhedrin 27a reports that Rava taught “rasha, de-hamas baeinan,” the wicked person is one whose actions reach the threshold of hamas, violence. Taking interest on a loan from a Jew, a negative command [Exodus 22:24], renders the perpetrator, the taker of interest, a wicked person, as well. [bSanhedrin 25a]
In his legal compendium, Maimonides explicates the canonical material with an aim to clarify the legal norms encoded in those materials. He issues the following rulings:
The relevant rules are summarized in Shulhan Aruch Hoshen Mishpat 34:
Therefore, on the basis of the conceptual, legal compendia,
What is particularly problematic is the responsum of the late, pious, Rabbi Moses Feinstein: [Iggarot Moshe Orah Hayyim 5:43]. Official religion Judaism as defined by Jewish law forbids praying to any being other than God, as noted above at bHullin 40a, which outlaws praying to angels, and Deuteronomy 18:11, which outlaws praying to the souls of the dearly departed. R. Feinstein argues that there is precedent for praying to angels in the piyyut/liturgical poetry ritual. In his contemporary classic, Ish Hahalakhah [Halakhic Man], Rabbi Joseph B Soloveitchik argues that the Ashkenazi Rabbi Asher is correct, that piyyutim ought to be recited, and Maimonides, who is not favorably disposed to liturgical poetry [a] is wrong and [b] is not considered by him to be an prototypically ideal “Halakhic Man.” Although the bHullin 40a passage is part of the official Oral Law canon, the poetry and its theology, are not. R. Feinstein argues that the authors of the piyyut liturgy were “gedolei Yisroel,” “the great one’s of Israel,” a term that as we contend confers upon its bearer the valence of implicit covenantal canonicity to whom ideological privilege is attached and to whom criticism or challenge, even from canonical texts, is disrespectful, irreverent, and therefore heretical. Opinions of gedolei Yisrael are legitimate, regardless of what is written in the canonical text/tome because these rabbis provide walking updates of God’s never changing will. Ever the master of writing in an implicitly evocative literary code, R. Feinstein writes that the “the great one’s of Israel,”tiqqenu ve-hinhigu” i.e.,enacted and initiated the practice, of reciting this liturgical literature. The attentive reader immediately recognizes R. Feinstein’s absolutely brilliant rhetorical tour de force. The idiom “tiqqenu ve-hinhigu” is Maimonides’ formulation at Introduction to the Mishnah Torah, who is cited as a support for R. Feinstein’s view, even though R. Feinstein endorses a position and hermeneutic that Maimonides explicitly rejects. R. Feinstein will never threaten Orthodox mimetic usage by challenging the popular practice to plead to spirits with piyyut prayer poetry. For R. Feinstein, those who are lenient, allowing praying to angels, is that these angels “must” have been conduits of sacred energy appointed by God to carry prayers to God, and to this view, there is no prohibition regarding praying to angels or, for that matter, to the souls of deceased people. Indeed, R. Feinstein suggests that the post-mortem souls of the dearly departed are more effective emissaries because, unlike angels, the dearly departed remember and understand the angst of the human condition. According to this view, the Torah’s God is not really omniscient and requires the special prayer pleaders to serve as appropriate and expertly efficient intermediaries and advocates for the departed.
Feinstein’s modern concept of “great one of Israel,” or godol, represents [a] a personal version of Judaism and [b] a version of Judaism that has its roots in medieval times. Iggarot Moshe Orah Hayyim [henceforth IMOH] 5:10 permits the use of non-Jewish names not because the canon does not record a prohibition [mEduyyot 2:2] but because gedolim were given non-Jewish names. IMOH 5:24 reports that a gadol—but not any rabbi, may disagree with another gadol. Since Rabbi Elijah Kramer of Vilna, a.k.a. the ga’on, the “genius” or “excellence,” was accepted as great, he was allowed to issue independent rulings and reasonings. In point of fact, R. Kramer argued is position from the perspectives of a philological and reasoned reading of the canon, and did not believe that he needed permission to argue the case that he felt was true. According to Oral Torah Orthodoxy, it is the rule of the Court [Bet Din ha-Gadol] and not the rule of the great rabbi, even if that great rabbi is R. Eliezer the Great, and even if his view is confirmed by an oracle. For a precedent for R. Feinstein’s Orthodoxy, see R. Moses Isserles’ Introduction to his Shulhan ‘Aruch glosses, where he affirms that the opinions of great men like Rabbis Jacob Tam and Eliezer b. Joel are by definition normative.
This debate is also found in Bet Yosef Hoshen Mishpat 25. R. Caro contends that one errs by issuing rulings that contradict the textual canon, or devar Mishnah, which for R. Caro [a mystic] and his legal mentor, Maimonides [a rationalist] agree is the Talmud of Babylon. Maimonides most strident critic, R. Abraham b. David, disagrees and argues that one may not deviate from past culture and that canonicity resides in the great person, presumably if not modestly himself. After all, R. Abraham “knows” that Maimonides is theologically incorrect for believing that those who believe that God having a body are heretics because “greater and better” rabbis than Maimonides, by dint of his own divinely assisted intuition makes them “greater and better,” believed that God does have a body.
In IMYD 3:131, R. Feinstein appears at first glance to decline to rule on the Sabbatical year requirement to allow the Land of Israel to lie fallow, and he avoids discussing the merits of the case. However, he refers and defers to the Israeli Brisker Rov Soloveitchik and Rabbi Abraham Karelitz, who live in Israel, who rule restrictively regarding the Sabbatical year in Israel, and happen, like R. Feinstein, to be sympathetic to if not members of Agudas Yisroel, a non-Zionist Orthodox group. Rabbi Abraham Kook, who ruled leniently on the Sabbatical year produce, and who was chief rabbi and who authored the lenient ruling on the Sabbatical that appears in Responsa Mishpat Kohen, n. 71, had a different view. See also n. 73 and 74, where R. Kook invokes the hora’at sha’ah principle in order to rule leniently. Other than in emergency ruling, R. Kook’s positions reflect the standard and not very lenient rulings of his Eastern European traditions. But for our purposes, R. Kook is for R. Feinstein not a canonical sage or godol worthy of having opinion, given this citation that does not even address R. Kook’s innovation on its conceptual merits.
IMYD 4:35 expresses R. Feinstein’s approval of gedolei Torah who learn only Torah over those who also engage in secular learning. At first glance, this statement is odd because his son-in-law, R. Moshe D. Tendler, has a Ph.D. in and is a professor of Biology. IMOH 2:18 legitimates the opinion of latter day saintly gedolim, who permit a minor to count in a prayer quorum, against the plain sense of the Talmud [bMegillah 23b] that requires that the prayer quorum be [1] ten [2] adult [3] male [3] Israelites. In other words, the greatness of the person holding the minority view is sufficient to regard that view as valid. For Oral Torah Orthodoxy, the fact that the view was rejected makes that position invalid until and unless a later, legitimate norm creating body reverses the decision by legislation. IMOH 2:102 argues that the custom regarding the recitation of tal u-matar in the Holy Land depends upon the authority of R. Kramer [the Ger”a] and R. Sheneor Zalman of Liady, but avoids discussing the merits of their views, following R. Abraham b. David, for whom canonicity resides in rabbinic charisma and not in rabbinic competence. IMOH 3:63 allows peanut usage and peanut oil on Passover because there were places in Europe where the practice obtained and there were at that time gedolim who were lenient. Again it is culture and charisma, not statute or reasoning, that for R. Feinstein determines proper Orthodox usage. In a short responsum outlawing the use of a microphone on Shabbat and even on Yom Tov [when the transfer of fire is permitted, conceding for the sake of argument, that electricity really is fire according to Biblical law] [IMOH 4:84], R. Feinstein makes the following claims:
On one hand, R. Feinstein claims that congregants of an Orthodox synagogue that uses a microphone are acting improperly, [IMOH 4:91.6] but at IMYD 2:5, R. Feinstein concedes that an otherwise Orthodox ritual slaughterer who uses a microphone is a partial heretic, and must be accepted only with great reservations. Given that
IMHM 2:76 rules that benei Torah “ought not to smoke” cigarettes because of a doubt regarding putting their lives in danger. Doubtful danger involves an absolute violation, and not a mere disapproval. IMYD 3:35 outlaws smoking marijuana and hashish because these drugs destroys the body; in point of fact, R. Feinstein’s ruling seems to reflect a culture antipathy to countercultural, libertine rebellion. In this case, R. Feinstein condemns what he takes to be an inappropriate appetite release, but not does not do so when dealing with rabbis, the Orthodox culture elite [a] who on one hand smoke and [b] by dint of their “greatness,” are immune from scrutiny, review, or criticism. In IMYD 2:49, R. Feinstein argues
These three claims confirm the following implicit doctrines:
When Rabbi Natan Slifkin wrote in Ḥakirah, the Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought, that Rashi believed that God has a body, complaints were to be heard. What did Rabbi Slifkin, a Haredi rabbi with Haredi sensibilities and blessed [or cursed] with a probing, curious mind, write that was deemed to be so improper?
This ideological conflict also defines the Orthodox ideological quandary. On one hand, Maimonides appears to be logical, textual, and correct. R. Abraham b. David has what is taken to be a “holy mouth” but argues, on the basis of intuitive, charismatic assertion, that “bigger and better” authorities than Maimonides deemed divine incarnation to be an acceptable doctrine. R. Abraham b. David is actually consistent to his system. Only holy mouths of the great rabbis who, by means of their being holy people, are able to engage in Toraitic divination. R. Abraham b. David’s unabashed rudeness toward Maimonides’ person would be intolerable unless R. Abraham b. David is himself a “greater and better” rabbi who, unlike the Biblical loses, may not subject to review. Recall that Maimonides is for R. Soloveitchik the intuitive Nahmanidean not a Halakhic Man; Maimonides did not regard charismatic intuition to be a source of God’s word, unlike Rabbis Feinstein, R. Abraham b. David, and Nahmanides [to Leviticus 19:2 and Deut. 30:12, where Repentance is not in Heaven [i.e. accessible and doable] but Torah, the word of the Lord, must be divined by human divines because unlike repentance, it remains in Heaven for great rabbis to decode]. It is assumed that if Rashi maintained this or that view, the view must by definition be deemed to be legitimate because Rashi the sacred person maintained the view.
Kesef Mishnah’s resolution, that believing that God has a body is a wrong, mistaken, but nevertheless innocent belief, resonates to me. Maimonides’ own position is consistent nevertheless. If God assumes a human form, then a human, a “bigger and better” godol, or great man may presume to assume God’s voice and declare God’s will with his own embodied “holy mouth.” For Maimonides, any incarnation doctrine is theologically ominous because it is also politically dangerous. On a folk religion level, an anthropomorphic deity is more imminent and therefore more accessible to the client community. Speaking as the spokesman for folk religion Orthodoxy, R. Abraham b. David’s peerless “holy mouth” may not be challenged, so Rashi’s standing, saintliness, and authority may similarly not be subject to peer review. When humans are not subject to review, the tyrant may assume divinity. For an unchallenged ruler, [a] the ends justify the means because [b] in the end, the ruler is mean.
It is suggested that latter day rabbis cannot judge historically earlier great rabbis who, by dint of their antiquity, carry greater sanctity and correctness than rabbis in our corrupted present. There are two caveats to this claim. [a] Since we do not inhabit the universe of our ancestors, we do not stand in their place, and for this reason alone we may not stand in judgment of them [mAvot 2:4]. [b] Those identifying with the R. Abraham b. David school maintain that we may not judge early authorities at all; they are early and great, we are late and by definition deficient. They have holy mouths, we do not. [c] And since latter day great rabbis received the “Tradition” from the previous generation, they possess the authority of apostolic succession.
Slifkin’s “heresy”/choice is his examining of the record and confronting the anomaly well identified by the Kesef Mishnah; the official and actual Orthodox Judaisms are thus, upon inspection and reflection, not really congruent—or for that matter even compatible. That Rashi maintains a belief that contradicts Maimonides, that corporeality can be an accepted theological view, may be negotiated. Praying to angels, as in the penitential Machnise Rahamim and the Sabbath eve’s Shalom Aleichem, which finds its celebrants asking angels “barechuni le-shalom,” that angels be entreated to bless humans, a singularly divine prerogative in the Jewish official religion theological system, is to say the least problematic. Rabbi Moses Feinstein, IMOH 5:43, sensitively affirms both Orthodox Judaisms when dealing with talking/praying to spirits other than God:
1. Dogma and How to Read the Bible
Rabbi Gil Student is a serious, learned, centrist Orthodox blogger, opinionated, and popular theologian. His opinions reflect the actual folk religion of non-Haredi Orthodoxy, whose platform is dogma, dialogue is restricted to pre-approved insiders—ideas that to his determination undermine Torah are not considered or published, and Halakhic praxis is determined by the accepted great rabbi consensus, not by a reasoned or defended exegesis. His views are important, they set culture parameters regarding what is a legitimate opinion, and he is as yet not been subject to academic review.
Student’s 10/2/10 blog makes the following points:
And in the YU Commentator 8/12/2009, Student affirms that
While Rabbis Weider and Student reflect a legitimate opinion regarding revelation, their claim that other opinions are illegitimate is itself illegitimate. Consider that:
Prof. James Kugel sees the Torah as a Jewish coffee table book, the religious reading and meaning[s] of which is the intersection of the Divine call and human response. The reader necessarily brings her/his life and culture baggage, what Marcel Foucault calls episteme, to any reading, and the history of the reading is a benchmark whereby historically accepted dogma and the world inhabited by the reader intersect.
The above being said, I would hope that the Higher Criticism deconstruction not blind the reader to the world and word of God, the textus receptus of the canonical Torah Whose ultimate Author is “our Rock, perfect in the plurality of His work,” but whose human transmitters have transmitted a maculate record of Tradition. R. Weider’s position accurately reflects the historical Orthodox attitude; but the actual norms, or legislated norms of the Oral Torah, trump popular opinion, mental habit, and elite religion intuition precisely because [a] these norms alone carry the valence of Revelation that R. Weider so passionately affirms and [b] post-Talmudic opinion may not override legislated Talmudic law. And we do not disqualify observant Jews for not conforming to Maimonides’ suggested, contested, and post-canonical thirteen faith requirements.
Weider also seems concerned with the marketing of the institutional Orthodox franchise. He is not fearful of heresy; he only wants heresy to be clearly labeled and appropriately avoided. What R. Weider cannot accept is an Orthodoxy that is measured by the commands of its canon and not the intuitions and mental habits of yesteryear. Normative Jewish legitimacy for R. Weider and R. Student is in part determined by the collective conscience of the affiliating community, and not that sacred, readable library that has God as its ultimate Author and phonetics, morphology and syntax as its working hermeneutic.
2. What is Traditional about the Orthodox Tradition of R. Gil Student?
On his blog of Thursday, June 18, 2009, R. Student cites with reverential assent a summary, compiled by R. Elyakim Konigsberg, of R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s position regarding matters of Jewish law, from transcribed lectures. The content of the post was confirmed by an oral communication from R. Stuart Grant, who was present for these lectures. The content and claims of the lecture are:
Like any such collection, the essays [of R. Allen’s book] vary in length, depth and approach. However, I generally found them to be excellent. I always consider a good sign of intellectual honesty when you cannot generally predict what conclusion a writer will have to a halakhic question… That is not what I expected from a Conservative rabbi.
Ever faithful to the franchise model of Orthodox Judaism, it is the conclusions that are reached rather than the method or mindset that are taken to the issues and questions that concern R. Student. Hence his summary:Click here to read moreEvE
While conceding R. Allen’s learned competence and sincere commitment to Judaism, R. Student finds invaliding “post-Orthodox” flaws in Rabbi Allen’s approach:
After outlining what he takes to be the facts of R. Allen’s narrative, R. Student first outlines his objections, and then justifies his position:
By claiming that Judaism is “closed system” and “time honored tradition,” R. Student indeed reifies his parochializing version of Judaism into the Orthodox Judaism of the historical record. In order to clarify the peshat/grammatical sense of Scripture, Rabbi Hai Gaon consulted with the Syriac catholicus. [Sirat R. Hai; see Steinschneider, Die Arabische Literatur, § 85], we are to accept truth if true, regardless of the source, [Maimonides, Introduction to Eight Chapters], and R. Moses Isserles, the same authority who ruled to override the ritual license that the Oral Torah granted to women and that a custom may override a statutory Oral Torah norm, in Responsum 7 R. Isserles justifies the application of Aristotle for the finding of truth. Apparently, what is permitted to R. Isserles is not permitted to R. Allen. Furthermore, R. Student complains that R. Allen “rejects mystical and non-rational practices regardless of how common and well-established they are.” For the Torah’s view regarding “common and well-established” practices that are presented as if they are Torah when they are not, we recall Leviticus 4:13 and Deuteronomy 4:2. Torah is “the word of the Lord [Isaiah 2:3], not the “common and well-established” practices of men [or women]. Mysticism and non-rational practices not legislated as mandatory are at best “acceptable,” their being “common” and “well-established” is, for R. Student, a more proper source of normativity than philosophical relativism. R. Allen is praised because he does not resort to Talmud criticism. In R. Moshe Bleich’s landmark essay, “The Role of Manuscripts in Halakhic Decision-Making: Hazon Ish, his Precursors and Contemporaries,” published in a vetted, refereed journal, called by of all names, Tradition 27:2 (Winter 1993), indicates that while the Hazon Ish would not rely on manuscripts for determining a normative basis for the law, Maimonides indeed relied upon the best manuscripts of rabbinic literature available to him. For the former sage, what is done is what ought to be done; and it is this mystical, non-rational ideology animates popular religion Orthodoxy, including the Judaism of R. Gil Student. For the latter sage, Maimonides, truth is empirical but not imperial; accurate manuscripts are required because if God’s actual words are recorded in sacred texts and what the words mean determine what Jews ought to do. If we take God seriously, we need to read accurate texts correctly, in order to render appropriately accurate rulings. However, for the non-rational mystic, for whom “Tradition” is a closed unreadable system, the citation of inconvenient facts that contradict Orthodox street religion is “post” or non-Orthodox, critical thinking is itself worthy of criticism because for R. Student’s Orthodoxy truth resides in the charisma of the right reverend rabbis, and not in rightly reasoned rational readings. Accurate texts are not only unnecessary, since Torah authority resides in the person of important people, giving deference to the “stature of the work’s author,” philologically accurate readings threaten the mystical, comfortable, non-rational authority of rabbis to use religious language in order to manipulate religious behavior by usurping the religious power that is invested in the exoteric religious text. Since R. Student’s religion does not issue rulings according to Rabina and R. Ashi’s Talmud or Maimonides’ Compendium, the stature heretofore referred is political and not intellectual, authoritarian but not authoritative, social and not religious.
For R. Student, R. Allen is moving from the heresy of Conservative Judaism to the “truth” of Orthodox Judaisim as he understands it, but by ordaining a woman rabbi, a practice accepted in Liberal streams but not by Orthodoxy, Rabbis Sperber and Weiss are said to reject the religion of “Tradition” and the ruling of R. Isserles, that a woman may not rule or possess authority, and therefore are “post-Orthodox” because they reject a ruling of R. Isserles, which to his view is canonical for Ashkenazi Jewry. By R. Student’s definition and disposition, Rabbis Isserles and Hai Gaon provide precedent for an open responsa writing genre and Rabbi Abraham ibn ‘Azra is a heretical Bible critic.
Like his Rashei Yeshiva teachers, R. Student speaks ex cathedra; his Judaism is defined by proclamation rather than by persuasion or demonstration. It is the stature of the sage and not the cogency of the claim that is for him normative. By defining believing, behaving, and belonging observant Jews as “post-Orthodox,” R. Student invents norms not in attested in the rabbinic canon, [a] it is “improper” to cite non-religious authorities], [b] he presumes to know how the Torah was composed [written by Moses at Sinai, in spite of explicit claims made by the Torah’s Author in the Torah itself], and [c] that Tradition is defined by people of stature and not by the philological sense of what for Orthodox Judaism ought to be taken to be God’s inerrant word.
Rabbi Student’s treatment of R. Allen is respectful and decent. R. Student is a man of conscience and considerable, if not critical, academic Jewish learning. However, he has been conditioned by his community and its conventions to define his particular Judaism as “the” Judaism that alone is Orthodox. By viewing authentic Judaism’s more informed alternatives as post and therefore not really Orthodox, and defending his reading the alternative outside Orthodoxy’s legitimate pale by selecting specific post-canonical views and assigning to those views canonical valence, R. Student advocates a Judaism whose “god” is culture, whose tradition is convention, and for which God’s word is mediated by the canonical person but not in the readable record of the canonical library.
In our view, R. Student’s Judaism is founded upon non-canonical assumptions because his normative benchmark for deviance is the Orthodox institutional franchise, not the actual, textual contours of Orthodoxy’s sacred canon. While his opinions are, in part, in error and therefore from our point of view inaccurate, he tries to be informed, he is widely – and – wildly read, he is a believing, behaving, and belonging Jew. His challenge is powerful; modern/open/liberal Orthodox Judaism have found in this thoughtful opinionator a worthy critic. May we be worthy of and rise to the challenge.
In sum, we find that:
God is king in Israel. Any great person who is too high to be held to account, is too low a person to be considered to be a great person.
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Educated and first ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Rabbi Alan J. Yuter earned additional ordinations from Yeshiva University, supervised by Rav Moshe D. Tendler, and the Israeli Chief Rav Mordecai Eliahu. He further received Yadin Yadin from Rav David Weiss Halivni and earned a PhD in modern Hebrew Literature from New York University.
A founding member of the UTJ, Rabbi Yuter served as a faculty member at the UTJ’s rabbinical school and has held multiple pulpits, including extended stints in Springfield, NJ, and Baltimore, MD.
Rabbi Yuter is a prolific writer on ritual and philosophical issues, underpinnings of halakha, Biblical criticism, and much more. His essays can be found on UTJ’s Viewpoints . He is also a frequent contributor for The Institute of Jewish Ideas and Ideals.
In addition to his activities with the UTJ, Rabbi Yuter teaches at Torat Reva in Jerusalem and is associated with the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding, affiliated with Ohr Torah Stone in Efrat.
Rabbi Yuter and his wife Linda reside in Israel.