Jewish Theological Seminary Of America Research Articles

Who Are the Deities Concealed Behind the Rabbinic Expression “A Nursing Female Image”?

The Tosefta reads: "If a person found a ring on which was the image of the sun, the image of the moon, the image of a dragon (snake), he should bring it to the Dead Sea. And also a nursing female image ([np'%1] 7p' i mn-) and Sarapis."' Each component of this intriguing passage in the Tosefta deserves close examination; the current article will reexamine the phrase a "nursing female image," and attempt to identify the two pagan characters represented by this cryptic wording. Saul Lieberman, one of the leading scholars who attempted to answer this question, was of the opinion that this phrase refers to Isis nursing her son Horus ("Harpocrates" in Greek).2 Because the pair Isis-Sarapis was extremely common during the time of the Roman empire and especially in the second century C.E., the listing of Sarapis after the "nursing female image" probably led Lieberman to conclude that this

The Jewish Archival Survey: Tracing Jewish Records in the Former Soviet Archives

SUMMARY As the rigors of the Soviet-era prohibitions in the post-Soviet archives were eased in the early 1990s, students of Russian-Jewish history in the former Soviet Union, as well as from abroad, have been using this opportunity to search for records of the Russian-Jewish past. The Jewish Archival Survey, a joint program of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and the Russian State University for the Humanities has been among the earliest initiatives in this field.

SOME USES OF PUPPETRY IN JEWISH EDUCATION44

44 This article is based on the author's doctoral dissertation, The Uses of Ventriloquism in Jewish Education, (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2001). The findings in that document are appropriate to this article, because most modern ventriloquial presentations are, in essence, forms of puppetry.

Harvey Warren Meirovich. A Vindication of Judaism: The Polemics of the Hertz Pentateuch. Foreword by Ismar Schorsch. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1998, xvi, 304 pp.

Anyone who was personally privileged to meet the late J. H. Hertz, as was this reviewer from time to time in his student days, could not fail to be conscious of being in the presence of greatness. Short in natural height, he was a man of impressive stature. A commanding personality, he was easily the most outstanding individual ever to occupy the exalted position of chief rabbi of the British Empire (1913–46). He was courageous, energetic, eloquent, and determined, and he left an indelible impression on English-speaking Jewry. He bequeathed enduring, living monuments in the form of his Book of Jewish Thought (1917), his Commentary on the Torah and Haftorahs (1929–36), and his Commentary on the Prayer Book (1942–45), apart from numerous essays and addresses. As the Torah writes of Moses, “his hands were steady until the setting of the sun” (Exod. 17:12).

Neglected Areas of American Jewish History at the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History

The Feinstein Center for American Jewish History was created twelve years ago at Temple University in Philadelphia. Working with consor tiums of scholars as well as with individual researchers, the Center seeks to identify and to fill vacuums in the field of American Jewish history. The Feinstein Center began by emphasizing the Philadelphia story. As thousands of Jewish immigrants poured into the country at the beginning of the twentieth century and seemed likely to disappear into the melting pot, an unusually talented group of Philadelphians, including Judge Mayer Sulzberger, Rabbi Sabato Morais of Congregation Mikveh Israel, and scholar Cyrus Adler, joined with a number of prominent New York Jews to create several of the major institutions upon which modern American Jewish life would subsequently be built. They included, among others, the American Jewish Committee, the rejuvenated Jewish Publica tion Society, and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. The Center convened a conference of scholars to explore the role of the Philadelphia group, and later published their papers under the title When Philadelphia Was the Capital of Jewish America (1993) [ed. Murray Friedman-Ed.]. A vacuum exists at times because of a subject's newness. This was the case with the Soviet Jewry movement, which in the late-twentieth century succeeded in assisting more than a million and a half Jews to emigrate, primarily to Israel but also to the United States. The Feinstein Center focused attention on the movement in a conference of activists and scholars in New York City that yielded another collection of papers, A Second Exodus: The American Movement to Free Soviet Jews (1999) [ed. Albert D. Chernin and Murray Friedman-Ed.]. A subsequent volume by Andrew Harrison, Passover Revisited (2000), focused on efforts in Philadelphia to assist Soviet Jews between 1963 and 1998. The Center has also commissioned Professor Henry Feingold to write what it hopes will be the definitive history of one of the great exoduses of the entire Jewish historical experience.

Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides): The Wars of the Lord (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 581-585 Seymour Feldman. Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides): The Wars of the Lord, Vol. 3, translated with notes by Seymour Feldman, appendix by Tzvi Langermann. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society; New York and Jerusalem: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1999. Pp. 580. The Wars of the Lord is one of the most fascinating philosophicalscientific writings of the 14th century and reflects several new trends typical of this century. The work is of importance not only for students of Jewish thought, but also for anyone interested in medieval science and philosophy . Making it accessible to a wide readership is a significant undertaking , and the completion of Feldman's English translation of the book is very welcome. The Wars of the Lord was published in Riva di Trento in 1560 and in Leipzig in 1866. The second printed edition relies on the first, and both are quite defective. There are also many manuscripts, scattered in different libraries but easily available at the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in Jerusalem. A few partial translations into modern languages exist.' Prof. Feldman has been working on a complete translation for many years: a general introduction and Book I appeared in 1984; Books H-IV were published in 1987. With the publication of the present volume, which includes Books V-VI (but not V.l), the enterprise is accomplished. The first four books of the Wars, contained in the first two volumes of Feldman's translation, are more popular. The third volume, now published, is the longest and its contents the most difficult. Book V is Gersonides' astronomical-cosmological treatise. It is divided into three parts. The first is complete in itself and presents the author's mathematical astronomy. This highly technical part is not included in the printed Hebrew editions and is extant in a few separate manuscripts. The second and third parts deal with cosmological and cosmological-theological subjects. Although far from easy, these two parts are not restricted to specialist readers, as the first is. The sixth book consists of two parts and deals with the creation of the world. Book V.l was already translated into Latin in Gersonides' lifetime,2 and the first twenty chapters were edited and translated into English by Bernard R. Goldstein, who studied this work intensively. He also translated and 1 See vol. 1, "Introduction," pp. 63-64. 2J. L. Mancha, "The Latin Translation of Levi ben Gerson's Astronomy" in G. Freudenthal, ed., Studies on Gersonides: A Fourteenth-Century Jewish PhilosopherScientist (Leiden, 1992), pp. 21-46. 582THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW commented on other chapters in papers studying various topics in Gersonides ' astronomy.3 Feldman's is the first translation of Books V.2-3, VI. 1, and part of VI.2.4 In the present volume, as in the first two, the translation of each book is preceded by a synopsis. The volume includes an appendix by Tzvi Langermann, "Gersonides and Astrology," which is an important contribution to this volume and to the research on Gersonides' science and astrology. Most translations of medieval texts into modern languages are not based on critical editions, as the need for a translation is often felt more urgently than that for a critical edition. This is true of Feldman's translation. It is based on the two printed Hebrew editions and on three manuscripts selected by Charles Touati. This is a good compromise. The manuscripts are better than the printed editions, and many errors and lacunae in the printed editions are corrected in Feldman's translation. For example, in reading chapter VI. 14 in the Leipzig edition I had difficulty with a sentence that was syntactically correct and made sense, but did not support my understanding of the text: pt?> twn jiinìti tuo mona ww yyiinan riyiin ??a? >a yûon na tub ?.5 I checked several manuscripts and found the word "not" which was absent in the printed editions: yinn na tsb ??>. Feldman indeed selects the correct reading. My impression is that the text used for Feldman 's translation, even though not based on a critical edition, is nevertheless reliable. The translation itself is readable. Acquaintance...

A VINDICATION OF JUDAISM: THE POLEMICS OF THE HERTZ PENTATEUCH: A REVIEW ESSAY

�� Joseph Hertz, the first rabbinical graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1894), enjoyed a distinguished career as a pulpit rabbi in both the United States and South Africa. In 1913, he was elected Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, a position he occupied until his death in 1946. Between the years 1929 and 1936, Hertz edited and authored, with the help of a number of British colleagues, the first exclusively Jewish English-language commentary on the Pentateuch. This work ultimately found its way into the pews of most Jewish congregations in English-speaking lands and, throughout the twentieth century, remained the most influential Jewish commentary upon the Bible in both Great Britain and the United States. Indeed, the Hertz Pentateuch became the Jewish lens for viewing the biblical heritage of the Israel people in the English-language world. Countless numbers of Jews were schooled through its pages, and the impact of Hertz upon how English-speaking Jews understand the Bible has, unquestionably, been immense. In light of all this, a scholarly analysis of the work and its author has long been an academic desideratum. However, the task of filling in this lacuna in modern Jewish scholarship is a considerable one. After all, such analysis requires an author well versed in classical Jewish sources such as the Bible, midrash, and medieval Jewish biblical commentaries, as well as one knowledgeable in a number of other areas— biblical criticism, modern Jewish religious history, modern JewishChristian religious polemics, and modern European and American intellectual history. Fortunately, Harvey Meirovich, Dean of the Rabbinical School at Machon Schechter of the Israeli Masorti Movement, is such a scholar. Ordained a rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Meirovich also earned a doctorate in Jewish History at JTSA under the guidance of Ismar Schorsch. In A Vindication of Judaism, Meirovich provides an insightful account and full analysis of the

Israel Abrahams: Master Teacher of Liberal Judaism

Solomon Schechter departed England in the spring of 1902 to become president of the reorganised Jewish Theological Seminary of America. His post as Reader in Rabbinic and Talmudic Literature at Cambridge University was taken up by 44-year-old Israel Abrahams who remained at the post until his demise at age sixty-seven.1 Israel Abrahams hailed from a distinguished pedigree. His father Barnett Abrahams served as a Principal of Jews' College but died from rheumatic fever before his thirtythird birthday. Israel's mother, born Jane Rodrigues Brandon, traced her family tree to fugitives from the Spanish Inquisition.2 Entering Jews' College, London, in 1872, Israel Abrahams remained connected to the institution for thirty-three years where he taught English and Mathematics (1881-1899), Homiletics (1894-1903), and acted as Senior Tutor (1899-1905). As a prolific popular writer, his articles appeared in Anglo-Jewry's oldest newspaper, the Jewish Chronicle (1885-1919), including a weekly column that ran for almost twenty-five years. From 1919 until his death he wrote serially for the organ of Liberal Judaism, the Jewish Guardian? As scholar, Abrahams was both a founder (1893) and editor, until his passing, of the Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England . Earlier, in 1888, he joined with his beloved friend and colleague, Claude Goldsmid Montefiore (1858-1938) to publish the nondenominational journal, The Jewish Quarterly Review.

The Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas , and: Cláper (review)

Claper, by Alicia FreilichTo most Americans the republics south of the Rio Grande are the stuff of benign neglect. Only the occasional sweep of illegal aliens, the momentary drug bust, the quick vacation on some tropical beach may briefly lift our eyelids as we tsk-tsk our bemusement at those underdeveloped folk. Generally, we don't really care. The world conducts its serious economic and cultural business in New York, or London, or Tokyo, or Singapore. Who cares about a bunch of vilde chayes on the pampa plains? Where are the pampas, anyway?I use vilde chayes intentionally, since Jews are by and large no better informed than their fellow Americans. The Jewish world runs on a U.S.-Israel axis, with Europe included because it's where our grandparents came from and where the Holocaust occurred. But Latin America? Ah, yes, what about those Nazis in Argentina?Happily, change is in the air. Academe, at least, has discovered not only that there are Jews in Latin America, but that they are vibrant, creative, with something to say to other Jews and culture-makers. In departments of history, sociology, cultural studies, and Latin American and Brazilian literatures a new discipline is emerging: Latin American Jewish Studies. (Jewish Studies has been slow to recognize the newcomer.) A confluence of fortunate -- and less fortunate -- circumstances has put LAJS on the map, with literature often leading the way.Why now? Writers in Latin America are today asserting their Jewishness, however problematically. This wasn't always so. Until recently, Latin American Jewish intellectuals were often immigrants outside the mainstream or native-born Jews whose concerns had little or nothing to do with Judaism. Argentina's Alberto Gerchunoff was an early exception; that is why his book has been reprinted.Harsh dictatorships in the seventies served as a painful impetus for change. Young Latin American Jews identified with progressive and democratic forces found themselves under a double siege -- as Argentines, Chileans, Brazilians, or Uruguayans, and as Jews. Repression and exile led many to reconsider their Jewishness as a paradigm of suffering and resistance and as a source of cultural memory and pride. The result was an outpouring of Latin American Jewish creativity: organizations, journals, conferences, publishing houses, fiction, critical works. Democracy's return intensified the awakening.The Jerusalem-based Association of Jewish Writers in Spanish and Portuguese currently serves as the intellectual address for a network of authors living in Latin America, Spain, France, Israel, and the United States. It publishes Noaj, an important literary journal whose name echoes with biblical intimations of catastrophe, survival, and rebirth. The association has sponsored heady writers' symposia in Buenos Aires, S...o Paulo, Miami, and Jerusalem, and calmer scholarly events with AMILAT, the Israeli Society for Latin American Jewish Studies.In Buenos Aires, Argentine-Jewish intellectuals are spearheading the publication of novels, story collections, and anthologies. They are reediting books by previous generations of Latin-American Jewish authors who wrote in Yiddish, Portuguese, and Spanish, creating their ancestors even as they look to the future. Marcos Aguinis, Ricardo Feierstein, Gererdo Mario Goloboff, Alicia Steimberg, and Elihau Toker are some of those identified with the new activism, which has spilled over into Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela.A corresponding surge of interest has overtaken the North, spurred by the decadeold Latin American Jewish Studies Association. LAJSA members are teaching courses in Latin American Jewish history and literature at major U.S. universities, correcting the prejudiced, homogenizing picture of "Latin Americanness." (Are Freilich, Gerchunoff, or Aizenberg Hispanic names? …

On Stoves, Sex, and Slave-girls: Rabbinic Orthodoxy and the Definition of Jewish Identity

ON STOVES, SEX, AND SLAVE-GIRLS: RABBINIC ORTHODOXY AND THE DEFINITION OF JEWISH IDENTITY· Daniel Boyarin University o/California, Berkeley In an enormously influential paper, "The Significance of Yavneh," historian Shaye Cohen produced a virtual revolution in the depiction of rabbinic Judaism, arguing that at Yavneh there was "created a society based on the doctrine that conflicting disputants may each be advancing the words of the living God."l Indeed, more than once, directly contradictory interpretations are validated by a heavenly voice intoning: "these and these are the words of the living God." The opinion of every member of the House of Study is equally valid. Statements such as this have been taken up in much contemporary writing on rabbinic Judaism as encoding either radical undecidability in the theoretical sense or radical pluralism in the social sense. No one, it is suggested, can exercise control over interpretation according to the rabbinic system of midrash, for the Rabbis allegedly understood that no textual interpretation is ever defmitive, even that of the Author himself. Somewhat less lyrically, but equally idealizing, we sometimes find this structure described as one of a radical democratization of interpretation within the rabbinic polity.2 The first Mishna of the tenth chapter of Tractate Sanhedrin reads: "All Israel have a place in the next world, and these are they who have no place in the next world: One who denies that the resurrection of the dead is a dogma of the Torah; one who denies that the [oral] Torah is from heaven, and [Jewish] Epicureans." This passage, which has been nominated the "Pharisaic Credo" by Louis Finkelstein,3 seems to be promulgating, perhaps for the first time in a Judaism, a "rule of faith" for who is "orthodox," or even genuinely Israel, and who is not. Resurrection and the revealed Oral Torah are precisely the • I am providing the text here just as it was delivered orally at the University of Wisconsin on March 28, 1999, with only minimal and vital annotation added. A much fuDer version of the argument has appeared in Exemplaria, 12.1 (Spring, 2000). 1 S. J. D. Cohen, "The Significance of Yavneh: Pharisees, Rabbis, and the End of Jewish Sectarianism," HUCA 55 (1984) 51. 2 M. Halbenal, People ofthe Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 7. 3 L. Finkelstein, Introduction to Tractates Fathers and The Fathers of Rabbi Nathan, (Hcb.: New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950), pp. 212-238. Hebrew Studies 41 (2000) 170 Boyarin: Stoves, Sex, Slave-Girls major doctrinal points at issue between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Epicureans are included here in my view, because they also deny a life after death. It seems, therefore, doubly difficult to posit "the emergence of the ideology of pluralism to replace the monism which previously characterized the temple and the sects."4 Pace Cohen, the most straightforward interpretation of the Mishnaic passage seems to be that the three who are denied a place in the next world are indeed not Israel. Otherwise the text logically contradicts itself. It hardly bears out, therefore, Cohen's claim that "This is not the work of a sect triumphant but of a grand coalition."5 All Israel indeed, but an "orthodox" Israel which denies the very name Israel to Sadducees. Another important text in the Mishna will support this conjecture: The daughters of the Sadducees, as long as they are accustomed to follow the ways of their fathers, have the same status [in matters of menstrual purity] as Samaritan women. When they have separated themselves [from the ways of their fathers] and follow the ways of Israel, they have the same status as Israel. Rabbi Yosi says: "They always have the same status as Israel unless they separate themselves to follow the ways of their fathers." [Nid. 4:2]6 Following methodological canons established by my teacher Saul Lieberman,7 I would argue that this text has to be historicized vis-a-vis the time of its production, that is, the late second century. Whether or not the text means to refer to Sadducees contemporary with Rabbi Yosi and the Mishna, in any case the contrast between them...

A Catalogue of Fragments of Halakhah and Midrash from the Cairo Genizah in the Elkan Nathan Adler Collection of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (review)

A Catalogue of Fragments of Halakhah and Midrash from the Cairo Genizah in the Elkan Nathan Adler Collection of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (review)

A Comparative Study of the Ritual of Ordination as Found in Leviticus 8 and Emar 369 (review)

Hebrew Studies 41 (2000) 278 Reviews 'of the priestly system, and as a fresh way of examining the interconnectedness of rituals and the world-view they reflect. Sarah Diamant Jewish Theological Seminary ofAmerica New York, NY 10027 sadiamant@jtsa.edu A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE RITUAL OF ORDINATION AS FOUND IN LEVITICUS 8 AND EMAR 369. By Gerald A. Klingbeil. Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998. Cloth, $139.95. There is no question that the burgeoning literature on ritual studies should illuminate the familiar texts in biblical law, but the application of these new perspectives is no simple task. This new monograph on two ordination texts makes a credible effort that nevertheless remains unsatisfying at several levels. Klingbeil's volume is set up as a comparative study with a "phenomenological " approach to both the rituals and the texts that recount their procedures . Three core chapters examine two selected texts in isolation: Leviticus 8, describing the actual ordination of Aaron and his sons (chaps. 3 and 4), and Emar (VI.3) 369, the account of how the storm god's chief priestess is to take office (chap. 5). The biblical text naturally calls for discussion of general interpretive issues in past scholarship (chap. 3), before the chapter devoted to ritual comment, whereas the Emar text is a fairly new discovery with more manageable bibliography. The comparison is reserved for a brief fmal chapter (6), with a resume of conclusions to close (chap. 7). In selecting isolated texts from these separate settings, Klingbeil intends to recreate as far as possible an anthropological ritual study, where the obseryer can describe systematically the many facets of ritual practice, with an eye toward the effect of the whole. To this end, Klingbell gives his full attention to each text on its own terms, and thus does justice to the interpretive issues of both. In spite of the comparative format, it seems that Klingbeil means his primary contribution to be the study of ancient ritual with a carefully defmed method, informed by broader study of religion. After a short introduction (chap. 1), chapter 2 undertakes an extensive dis- Hebrew Studies 41 (2000) 279 Reviews cussion of issues in ritual studies, and concludes by sketching the strategy to be pursued through the book. This strategy evaluates Leviticus 8 and Emar 369 according to nine categories inspired by Gorman and Grimes: structure , sequence, context, space, time, objects, roles, actions, and sound (pp. 48-51). Klingbeil follows up this functional interest consistently and does construct each analysis, including the fmal comparison, around this frame. Throughout, the book is characterized by thorough familiarity with secondary literature in the relevant fields, with attention to both European and American scholarship, not to mention South African. Altogether, this book offers a serious discussion of biblical and ancient Syrian ritual, but the net profit is still disappointing. Whether in Leviticus 8 or the Emar text, Klingbeil's interpretations depend heavily on other recent work, especially Milgrom's Anchor Bible commentary and my monograph on Emar 369. The sophisticated theoretical framework does yield some fruit, as with the detailed movement of priests at the entrance to the tent of meeting (pp. 157, 164), but such details do not coalesce into fresh interpretations of each whole. In the case of the Emar priestess, Klingbeil embarks on a complete review of the ritual components that is very similar to my own, with little new to suggest. The comparison of the two texts should be the most original section, but even here the observations rarely push beyond what is visible without the theoretical framework, and one looks for more. For instance, I notice that the initiates of both texts are cloistered for seven days, but in contrasting locations that reflect different notions of sanctuary function. Emar's priestess stays at home before moving into residence at the storm god's temple, while Aaron and his sons complete their sacred passage by inhabiting the tabernacle, which does not appear to be their permanent home. In spite of Klingbeil's careful theoretical approach, his final interpretive stance provokes as many questions as it resolves. He reiterates that his phenomenological approach is essentially ahistorical, but sensibly founds his comparison on texts...

A Vindication of Judaism: The Polemics of the Hertz Pentateuch (review)

Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 383 Reviews A VINDICATION OF JUDAISM: THE POLEMICS OF THE HERTZ PENTATEUCH. By Harvey Warren Meirovich. pp. 304. New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1998. Cloth. The intellectual challenge facing Judaism at the start of the now-closing century distressed Solomon Schechter, "the new century does not open under very favorable auspices for ludaism. Our Scriptures are the constant object of attack, our history is questioned, and its morality is declared to be an inferior sort." No prior generation could have assessed matters otherwise , given the millennial competition of Judaism and Christianity in the West, Judaism and Islam in the East. But what made acute a fonnerly chronic problem was, "that attitude of the younger generation, who if not directly hostile, are by dint of mere ignorance sadly indifferent to everything Jewish.... They are bound to end in that cold critical attitude toward Judaism terminating in drifting away from it altogether." When he became chief rabbi of the British Empire, reading the crisis as one of intellect and faith, Joseph Hertz detennined to meet the crisis by hitting head on the Protestant challenge to the Hebrew Scriptures and their historicity and morality. The liberal Protestant theologians maintained that the Scriptures are not (historically) true, and the religion they set forth is inferior. He also took as his task to answer Refonn and Liberal Judaism in its British fonnulation, arguing against its critique of ritual in the name of morality and its articulated policy of compromise and conciliation with (liberal) Christianity. The result was a commentary, the Hertz Pentateuch, with its polemics against liberal Protestant anti-Judaism and against Liberalludaic anti-Orthodox-Judaism. In this over-researched, under-reflected-upon, but enlightening dissertation , Harvey Meirovich, a Jewish Theological Seminary of America professor in Jerusalem, provides the defmitive account of a subject that, in retrospect, proves less interesting than it ought to have been. For the real problem of Hertz's Pentateuch is not addressed: why, in all, did it exercise so marginal an influence in synagogue life, despite its wide circulation, so that after three generations in the pews, one would do well to fmd a single position Hertz in particular argued that is broadly accepted as nonnative by the faithful, or as persuasive for that matter. Its early sales were trivial and, in the United States of America, scandalously sparse. Hertz thought a commentary would do, but it was the text that served in synagogue worship , along with the translation. Today the commentary and excurses are something of an intellectual joke, a museum of dead ideas and spent arguments . Contemporary Orthodoxy has produced its own media for the reception of the Torah, Refonn Judaism never gave way before Hertz's on- Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 384 Reviews slaught, and so far as Conservative synagogues went, the Hertz Pentateuch, like much else, was a mere fonnality, not a focus and source of a living faith like Rashi's counterpart. Hertz fought over issues few today (outside of Protestant fundamentalism) find acute and crafted a Pentateuch of ephemeral points and trivial observations. Meirovich places Hertz solidly into Conservative Judaism as the Jewish Theological Seminary defined matters in its fonnative age: a literate and enlightened Orthodox Judaism of intellect, integrated into the religious world of the time and place, for Jews who rejected self-segregation but affumed Judaism in its classical system. Hertz not only was the Jewish Theological Seminary of America's first graduate but maintained a lifelong relationship with the school and asked for a job there when he held a pulpit in Johannesburg. In shaping his commentary, moreover, Hertz occupied that very ground that the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and Schechter's Conservative Judaism had taken for itself: [1] engagement with the scholarship of the age, and [2] apologetics in the face of attacks on the beliefs deemed normative. At what cost? Hertz bought into the Protestant framing of issues, so argued against much, but for very little. He obtusely engaged on the critics' own grounds, allowing the anti-Judaism of the liberal Protestants to define the tenns of debate. This was little short of Pickett's charge at Gettysburg and yielded the...

Reflection: The Holocaust as Retributive Justice

The Holocaust as Retributive Justice Reflection: The Holocaust as Retributive Justice Daniel J. Lasker Ben-Gurion University ofthe Negev 97 In the fifty years since the end ofthe Holocaust, theologians ofevery persuasion have tried to make sense ofthat terrible event. One explanation, popular especially among the theological right wing ofJudaism (known as lfaredim in Hebrew, or "ultra-Orthodox" in English), contends that the Holocaust was visited upon the Jewish people as a punishment for their sins. While there is no unanimity as to what the sin was, there is general agreement that ultimately God was the author ofthe Holocaust, just as He is the author of all history. Ifthe Jewish people suffered greatly in the Holocaust, God must have had a good reason for inflicting this pain upon them. God's reason is' often explained by a number of theologians as divine retribution. Understandably, this explanation has found many detractors who find it deeply offensive. Neil Gillman, professor ofphilosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, has written: "One response that is almost universally rejected by all thinking segments ofthe community is that the Holocaust is God's punishment for Israel's sin. Ifthe Holocaust accomplished anything, it effectively killed the doctrine ofretribution as the key to Jewish theodicies. It may have worked for centuries, but today it is viewed as an obscenity. It has not been invoked by any but the most traditionalist wings ofthe Jewish community, by those who maintain the sanctity ofthe past, come what may. To everyone else, the sheer disparity between the 'explanation' and the event is so wide that it just does not merit serious consideration" (Sacred Fragments, Philadelphia, 1990, p. 202; all emphases in quotations have been added). From Gillman's point of view, anyone who maintains the theory that the Holocaust was divine retribution cannot be said to be part of the "thinking segments of the community"; such a theory does not even "merit serious consideration." Is Gillman's claim defensible? It seems to me that all ofthe arguments offered against the theory ofdivine retributive justice are basically emotional and not rational. This does not mean that those who have' argued for the Holocaust as retributive justice have proven their point. I intend to argue solely that those who say that we must come up with a new theodicy/theology'or that the Holocaust must serve as a new point ofdeparture because traditional theodicy/theology has failed, have not demonstrated this fact. My contention is valid regardless ofwhat reason is given for the divine retribution. 98 SHOFAR Spring 1997 Vol. 15, No.3 Furthennore, the discussion here is irrelevant to the question as to the existence of God. Obviously, ifone feels that slbe has proven the non-existence of God, then this also would prove that the Holocaust could not have been direct divine retributive justice. I am dealing, however, mostly with those who believe in God but do not believe that God was the cause of the Holocaust. This would include those who say that the Holocaust was possible because ofGod's hiding His face (hester panim, the view ofEliezer Berkovits or Joseph Dov Soloveitchik), or that the Holocaust was the occasion of a new divine command ("the commanding voice of Auschwitz" in Emil Fackenheim's tenns), or that Death of God theology must replace traditional theology/theodicy (such as Richard Rubenstein). The source ofthe idea ofdivine retributive justice in Judaism is in the Bible. The flood is visited upon the inhabitants of the earth because of their wicked ways. Sodom and Gomorrah were overturned because of the evil of their inhabitants, and the Temple was destroyed as a result ofIsrael's turning away from God. The underlying assumption ofboth the narrative and legislative portions ofthe Bible is that the righteous are rewarded and the evil-doers are punished. Deut. 11:13-21 (said twice daily in the traditional liturgy as part ofthe Shma) promises the Israelites that ifthey follow God's ways they will receive rain in its season and enjoy great prosperity. Other passages promise health, expanded boundaries, and peace. If, however, the Israelites do not fol1ow God's way, they will receive the exact opposite: famine, poverty, constricted...

The Midrash on Proverbs (review)

Hebrew Studies 37 (1996) 212 Reviews very familiar with the content Bronner presents or new to the material, she has succeeded in providing a volume which is both illuminating and insightful . Alice L. Laffey College ofthe Holy Cross Worcester, MA 01610 THE MIDRASH ON PROVERBS. Burton L. Visotzky, trans. Yale Judaica Series 27. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Cloth, $28.50. Midrash Mishle, the midrash on Proverbs, is a compact, exegetical midrash that ranges over all thirty-one chapters of the book of Proverbs, but skips large sections of the text (including all of chaps. 3 and 18 and most of chaps. 4, 7, 12, 17,24,27, and 29). It bears some stylistic affinities to Seder Eliahu and the Tanhuma midrashim and shares some materials with Avot de Rabbi Natan. Its castigation of "the person who comes before God with [knowledge of] Scripture in his hand, but none of Mishnah" (chap. 10 [po 56]; cf. Seder Eliahu Rabbah, chaps. [14] 15f.), together with other statements that appear to be directed against Qaraites, suggest a date in the early Islamic period (eighth through tenth centuries C.E.; Visotzky argues for a ninth-century dating). The work's provenance remains uncertain ; while stylistic affinities with other midrashim suggest Palestinian origin, the references to Shi'ur Qomah (meditations on the physical dimensions of God's body; chap. 10 [pp. 57-58]) and the endorsement of at least one synagogue custom mooted by Rabbinites and Qaraites in the diaspora (chap. 1 [po 19]) might support a locale in Babylonia (pp. 10-12). Burton L. Visotzky's literate and thoroughly idiomatic annotated translation of the text, offered here in the format of the Yale Judaica Series, concludes the tripartite study of this work that was inaugurated in his 1982 Ph.D. dissertation at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and continued in his 1990 publication of a critical, annotated edition of the text (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America). Visotzky supplies a carefully reasoned fourteen-page introduction to the work. His annotations to the translation strike an admirable balance between brevity and thoroughness ; nothing critical for an understanding of the text is missing here. (Lengthier annotations may sometimes be found in the dissertation and the Hebrew Studies 37 (1996) 213 Reviews critical edition; for the scholarly reader, none of the three publications renders the other two superfluous.) Useful indices are provided as well. In his introduction, Visotzsky characterizes Midrash Mishle as marking "a watershed in the historic development of midrashic literature. for it stands at the point where Midrash gave way to commentary" (p. 2). This over-dramatizes matters, I believe, for the specific stylistic traits of the text to which he refers-notably the frequent "contextual" linking of a verse to the one that precedes and/or follows it--can be found in other midrashic literature of roughly the same period or slightly earlier (specifically, Seder Eliahu and some of the Tanhuma materials). While not found too frequently in the earlier Byzantine Palestinian midrashim. the technique is nonetheless thoroughly midrashic in its deployment here: a series of sequential verses is shown to be thematically or consequentially linked through the construction of a thematic "essay" or "narrative" that moves the reader from one verse to the next. The transition is often made through the use of a rhetorical question (such as, "What is written following this?" and "How do we know this? From what Solomon said..."). The rhetorical markers thus are common midrashic ones and differ from those found in, for example, Saadia's Ta/sir. The closest stylistic parallel is probably that of the exegetical "essays" in Seder Eliahu. That the use of this style in both documents might relate to cultural preferences in the Islamic milieu, as Visotzky suggests, certainly remains a possibility, but the connection. I think, is not so straightforward. In the context of an excellent translation, the following minor observations may be made: In note 3 on page 36, Visotzky notes the oddity of his English rendering , "for they lent primogeniture to good deeds," for the equally odd Hebrew phrase, lbkrw m(sy rwbym. in the context of a rabbinic interpretation of Exod 4:22, which refers...

Jewish Theological Seminary of America Library. Broadside Collection. Hamden, Conn.: Micrographic Systems of Connecticut for The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992. 3 microfilm reels. $35.00 per reel + shipping

Reviews the broadside collection published by the Jewish Theological Seminary on microfilm, provides highlights from the collection, and evaluates the organization, cataloging, and indexing of the material.

Heightening Ideology, Diminishing Community: A Review Essay

100 SHOFAR Winter 1994 Vol. 12, No.2 HEIGHTENING IDEOLOGY, DIMINISHING COMMUNI1Y: A REVIEW ESSAY by Chaim 1. Waxman Professor of Sociology Rutgers University The Coming Cataclysm: The Orthodox-Reform Rift and the Future of theJewish People,.by Reuven P. Bulka. Brooklyn, NY: Mosaic Press, 1984. 126 pp. One People? Tradition, Modernity, andJewish Unity, byJonathan Sacks. London: Uttman Ubrary ofJewish Civilization, 1993. 254 pp. A People Divided: Judaism in Contemporary America, by Jack Wertheimer. New York: Basic Books, 1993. 267 pp. Until recently, it seemed that American Judaism was essentially consensus-oriented, that the lines between its denominations or "branches " were more or less established organizationally, and that the ideological distinctions among them were of decreasing social significance. Within the past decade, however, the significance of religious ideology reasserted itself. One of the first to elaborate on the growing significance of the ideological divides was the Canadian Orthodox rabbi and psychologist, Reuven P. Bulka, who titled his book on the subject The Coming Cataclysm : The Orthodox-Reform Rift and the Future of the JeWish People. Bulka's brief tract presented the problem as entirely ofReform making and emphasized their deviation from tradition, especially with respect to divorce and conversion procedures. He was so disturbed that he predicted that"if present trends remain unchecked, the policies which prevail within Reform Judaism ... can very likely result in a cataclysmic split within the North American Jewish community ... and the separation-cum-divorce" of Orthodox and Reform Judaism "into a mainstream and a,new reli- Heightening Ideology, Diminishing Community 101 gion...." Bulka's work was largely regarded as an exaggerated jeremiad which could safely be ignored, especially since it was published by a house which caters almost exclusively to the sectarian Orthodox community. Earlier this year, the erudite Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth,Jonathan Sacks, wrote a book with essentially the same theme, One People? Tradition, Modernity, and Jewish Unity. In a much less combative style, Sacks undertakes an exhaustive exploration of approaches for, both Orthodox and Reform to adopt in order to stave off the ideological chasm which threatens the unity of the Jewish people. Even if his solutions are less than ideal, he provides penetrating analyses which are informed by incisive perspectives from the sociology of religion as well as modern Jewish thought. Most recently, Jack Wertheimer, a professor of history at the Jewish Theological Seminary ofAmerica, wrote A People Divided:Judaism in ContemporaryAmerica , a penetrating, even ifsomewhat skewed, detailed analysis of developments within American Judaism, especially during the past two decades. Wertheimer, too, sees American Judaism beset by deep strife and, although he disclaims long-term forecasts, implies that the issues are very deep and do not leave much room for optimism in terms of their resolution. One of the most fascinating aspects of the three analyses is how each of the authors sees the same issue from his own unique perspective. All see the same rift. However, Bulka sees Reform as the villain. Sacks is much less combative but asserts that on certain matters, all Orthodox are fundamentalists , implying that liberalism is the problem. Wertheimer, from the vantage point of his position at Jewish Theological Seminary, sees Conservative Judaism as "centrism," the implication being that it is "the golden median" and the Orthodox and Reform are the extremes whose mutual reactions are polarizing. Indeed, Wertheimer spends a considerable amount of time on what he perceives as the extremist tendencies in both Orthodoxy and Reform, while suggesting that Conservatism has succeeded in bridging the gap in its midst which the late Marshall Sklare analyzed, namely, that between its rabbinic seminary and its community-at-large. When I read Bulka, in 1984, I thought he was exaggerating the conflict and its implications. Just a year earlier, I had published a book on America's Jews in which I pointed to numerous signs of strength and growth. In my concluding chapter, I was critical of the sociologist Herbert Gans, who had described American Judaism as "symbolic Judaism." As a self-described "survivalist," that is, one who is committed to Jewish survival, who saw signs of strength and growth, I had difficulty accepting 102 SHOFAR Winter 1994 Vol...

Yohanan Muffs. Love and Joy: Law, Language and Religion in Ancient Israel. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992. xxvi, 240 pp.

Yohanan Muffs. Love and Joy: Law, Language and Religion in Ancient Israel. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992. xxvi, 240 pp.

Love and Joy: Law, Language and Religion in Ancient Israel. By Yochanan Muffs. New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992. 240 pp. $29.95

Journal Article Love and Joy: Law, Language and Religion in Ancient Israel. By Yochanan Muffs. New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992. 240 pp. $29.95 Get access Ira Sharkansky Ira Sharkansky The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Church and State, Volume 36, Issue 4, Autumn 1994, Pages 856–857, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/36.4.856 Published: 01 October 1994

Toward the Documentation of Conservative Judaism

The Ratner Center for the Study of Conservative Judaism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America has embarked on a program to collect and accession the historical records of the Conservative movement, the largest religious movement of synagogue attenders in the United States. With funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the center has completed a first phase of accessioning the records of synagogues, rabbis, and the central educational institution of the movement. It has also developed a documentation strategy that will shape its programs into the next century.