Torah Scroll Research Articles

“This One Fulfilled What Is Written in That One”: On an Early Burial Practice in Its Literary and Artistic Contexts

AbstractThis article deals with a surprising practice of placing a Torah scroll on a funeral bier and crying out: “This one fulfilled what is written in that one.” An allusion to this custom already appears in a Tannaitic haggadah that tells about the bringing of Joseph’s bones to burial in the Land of Israel. This practice seems to run counter to the tendency to distance the corpse from the realm of the sacred. I seek to examine it through literary motifs from eulogies and depictions of the death of various individuals, and through artistic findings from the realm of funerary art. This examination leads to conclusions about the significance of the presence of the Torah scroll in the context of funerals and burial rituals.

“He Unrolled the Scroll…and He Rolled Up the Scroll and Gave It Back”

“He Unrolled the Scroll…and He Rolled Up the Scroll and Gave It Back” Samuel E. Balentine Perhaps the most commonplace contemporary portrait of Judaism is the picture of devout Jews standing at the Western Wall of the remains of the Temple in Jerusalem reading a Torah scroll. The central components of this familiar image are a building and a book. Their association with one another is so conventional that the ironies and contradictions of their filiation can easily go unnoticed. Although they share common values and concerns, the building and the book exhibit divergent traits. The building is fixed; the book is portable. The book is read outside the building; its recitation parallels the rites practiced within. The book describes the rituals inside the building but is not part of them. The building requires lineage; the book demands literacy…the complex relationships between the building and the book—the Temple and the Torah—constitute the foundation of Judaism.1 This quote introduces William Scott Green’s article on “Levitical Religion.” His objective is to show that the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE “was not the end of Israel’s Temple‐centered religion of cult and sacrifice.” It was not the end, because during the exile Israel’s priestly leadership gathered and edited the community’s national traditions—narratives about its origins and destiny along with a set of behavioral principles and practices that defined its life in relationship to God and the world—into a text, which Judaism now recognizes as the Torah. The Torah was not a replacement for a lost religion; it was a compensation, an interim strategy for obedience to God in a world where politics and power had destroyed the very symbols that had once secured and nourished life in God’s presence. Green observes that although the Torah preserved a collective memory, it also modified, and more importantly transformed it. Now, the promulgation of a text, not a temple or an altar, serves as a guide to religious practice. In short, “Reading the Torah becomes a means for the Jews to relate to God.”2 A second citation from Green sharpens the point: Through the Torah, the Israelites in exile could relate to the Temple’s religion of cult and sacrifice by reading about it, by hearing about it, by thinking about it, but not by actually performing it. Mary Douglas envisions this as follows: “There is no tabernacle, the faithful are not moving around in it, all the movement is in the book they are reading, or hearing through their ears. Learning the book becomes a way of internalizing the tabernacle…” The Torah evoked a religion that Israel could not directly experience. In the religion it constitutes, the Torah becomes in itself what is described in the text, a portable point of contact between God and Israel, a textual Tabernacle.3 Green’s image of the complex relationship between “the building and the book” in Judaism set me to thinking. What would be the analog for Christianity? Several possibilities come to mind. We might think, for example, of one of the Protestant reformers (in this context, John Calvin, of course) reading Holy Writ from a grand church pulpit in Europe; of the Pope reading scripture at Saint Peter’s; or—and I apologize for this abrupt segue—of a Billy Graham crusade in Candlestick Park, of William Sloan Coffin preaching at Riverside Church in New York, of Robert Schuller preaching in the Crystal Cathedral, even Jerry Falwell, holding forth in Lynchburg, VA, with surround sound and video streaming, of course, to people and places far beyond. These and other images surely contribute to a portrait of the complex relationship between the Bible and the Church in contemporary Christianity. I have chosen to look elsewhere, however. The Gospel of Luke offers the following description of Jesus reading scripture in Nazareth. Whether or not it has contemporary significance is, I suggest, a question that lies at the heart of the issue we have met to consider. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He...

CAPTIVE GAZELLES IN IRAQI JEWRY IN MODERN TIMES IN RELATION TO CULTURAL PRACTICES AND VERNACULAR HOUSING

As late as in the first half of the twentieth century, there were some Jews in Iraq who kept gazelles for meat, even in urban homes. This was made possible by the features of vernacular housing this article explains. Far more prominent, however, was the use made in Iraq of gazelle hides in the manufacturing of Torah scrolls, which were ubiquitous in Iraq, and many were exported from there at various times. The prevailing custom of dedicating Torah scrolls (typically, in memory of one's deceased relatives) made it necessary for gazelles to be raised in captivity as hunting alone would not have been sustainable for generating a supply that would meet the demand.

Torah and Magic: The Torah Scroll and Its Appurtenances as Magical Objects in Traditional Jewish Culture

AbstractThis essay deals with a little noticed aspect of the Torah scroll in Jewish life and practice—namely, the usage of the scroll and its accessories in the context of sympathetic magic. The Torah is undoubtedly the holiest text in the Jewish tradition, and early on rabbinical authorities set a code that determined the fitting rules of conduct towards the scroll upon which it is written. In the course of time, the Torah scroll and the appurtenances associated with it emerged as the most sacred tangible objects in Jewish tradition and folk culture. Select Torah scrolls in various communities, especially in the lands of Islam, were elevated to a special position and were considered as possessing extraordinary protective powers. Aside from miraculous stories told about such scrolls, the popular beliefs in the power of the Torah scroll in general are best reflected in the ornamental appurtenances which enhanced the physical appearance of the sacred object. Thus, costly ceremonial objects such as the tik (Torah case) or rimonim (Torah finials) were decorated in several communities with magical designs and carefully selected texts, which reflect ideas of Jewish magic in general and are reminiscent of Hebrew amulets in particular.

We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust (review)

Reviewed by: We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust David Cesarani (bio) We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust. By Hasia R. Diner. New York: New York University Press, 2009. xiii + 494 pp. For several years the debate over postwar responses to the Jewish catastrophe has simply recycled the same data, with partisans declaring that the cup is either half empty or half full depending on their point of view. Now, thanks to the mountain of evidence she has excavated, Hasia Diner has landed a knockout punch on those who assert that after 1945 American Jews were silent about the fate that befell the Jewish communities in Nazi-occupied Europe, preferring to forget about it while busily integrating into American society and enjoying the postwar boom. This is not to say that Diner has answered all the questions hanging over the manner in which American Jews during the 1950s treated recent Jewish history. But within the terms of her inquiry it is hard to see how it would be possible to do a fuller or a better job. Her book will change the landscape of postwar American Jewish history irrevocably; the textbooks will have to be rewritten. [End Page 338] Diner’s methodology is simplicity itself: she has gone back to the sources. She has waded through countless sermons and liturgies written to commemorate the murdered Jews of Europe. She has looked at the record of meetings organized by an array of Jewish organizations to see how their leaders and members reflected on the war years. She has examined every major national periodical, and many minor local ones, serving American Jews. She has gone from the assiduous collators of the Jewish Book Annual to the history books, novels, books for children, textbooks, prayer books and anything else that touched on the recent genocide. She has also listened to recordings of radio broadcasts and tracked down TV programs that handled the subject. The weight of evidence is crushing. If her narrative has one stylistic weakness it is due to the unavoidable necessity of repeating the same thing over and over again. Even before the war had ended American Jews began commemorating their brethren slaughtered in Europe. Each section of the community did so according to its own particular traditions. The non-Orthodox were most able to draft new prayers or adapt old ones; secular Jews, especially in the Jewish labor movement, quickly established dates and patterns for memorial meetings. Religious and nonreligious sentiments converged on Passover as a key time in the Jewish calendar for remembrance because it overlapped with the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. During the 1950s, Rabbi Rufus Learsi’s memorial haggadah was distributed to over 10,000 communal organizations and printed annually in over thirty Jewish periodicals. Dozens of Torah scrolls from destroyed communities in Europe were brought to the United States and distributed to congregations that made their reception and display a focal point for memorial activity. Contrary to the notion that little was written or published about the genocide, Jewish institutions launched research projects, collected material, and built up libraries. YIVO led the way, but the Institute for Jewish Affairs and the American Jewish Committee all contributed to a wave of publications. The Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Labor Committee channelled funds to survivor historians in Europe whose research fed back into public awareness in America. Within just a few years reviewers in Jewish Social Studies, notably Philip Friedman and Koppel Pinson, were bemoaning the sheer volume of historical works on the Nazi period. There was certainly no inhibition against exploring the subject. American Jews raised prodigious amounts of money for the survivors and sent aid of all kinds, including rabbis and social workers (such as Pinson). In campaigning for the improvement of conditions in displaced persons camps and struggling to enlarge the quotas for immigration to [End Page 339] the U.S., they constantly invoked recent horrors. Their incessant campaign against British restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine and for the Zionist cause unhesitatingly drew on sympathy for Jews as the survivors of Nazi...

The Story of the Torah Scrolls from the Collections of the Jewish Museum in Prague after the Second World War

The Jewish Museum in Prague (JMP) was founded as an association in 1906.2 The largest expansion of its collections occurred in tragic circumstances during the Second World War, when almost all the Judaica, books, manuscripts and archival documents of the former Jewish religious communities in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were gathered in the depositories of the Central Jewish Museum in Prague.3 At the time, the museum was administered by the Jewish religious community in Prague, which was put under so-called ‘national trusteeship’ after the end of the war.4 In 1949, with a view to maintaining the completeness of the museum’s collections, the legal successor to the pre-war Jewish communities – the Council of Jewish Religious Communities in the Czech Lands (hereafter cited as the Jewish Council) – definitively renounced its restitution claims to items that had been shipped to the museum during the war.

The Jewish Museum in Prague During the Second World War

The Jewish Museum in Prague has as many as 40,000 items in its collections, the uniqueness of which is underlined by the exceptional circumstances under which most of them were acquired by the museum. Nearly all of the items were confiscated during the Second World War from Jews who were sent to concentration camps and from Jewish communities that were closed down. Many visitors share the commonly held view that the Nazis brought Jewish ritual objects from the whole of occupied Europe to Prague so that after their victory they could create a 'museum of an extinct race'. In reality, however, things were not that simple and what seems to be an attested and undoubted fact is more like a self-perpetuating legend. The issues relating to the war-time Jewish Museum in Prague have recently been covered in detail by my colleague Magda Veselska, who specializes in the history of our institution and its prominent personages and who describes the fate of its collection of Torah scrolls.

Jüdische Gemeinden, Vereine, Stiftungen und Fonds: "Arisierung" und Restitution (review)

Judische Gemeinden, Vereine, Stiftungen und Fonds: Arisierung und Restitution, by Shoshana Duizend-Jensen. Veroffentlichungen der Osterreichischen Historikerkommission, Bd. 21/2. Vienna-Munchen: Oldenburg Verlag, 2004. 347 pp. euro49.80. Before the Anschluss in March 1938, the Viennese Jewish Community was one of the richest and liveliest in Europe. It ran schools, a home for the elderly, a hospital, and a home for blind Jews, to mention just a few of its institutions. Out of 200,000 Austrian Jews, most of them residents of Vienna, approximately 130,000 managed to escape Austria and 70,000 were killed in the Holocaust. In her book, a work commissioned by the Austrian Historians Commission, Shoshana Duizend-Jensen shows that in addition to the famous Jewish community of Vienna, 34 Jewish communities existed in the Austrian provinces. They owned property and ran synagogues. There were also more than 600 Jewish clubs and associations in Austria, such as the famous sport club Hakoah, a variety of religious and Zionist societies, fraternal lodges, and 325 charitable foundations. Jewish life in pre-war Vienna was active and heterogeneous. After giving an overview of the property owned by the Jewish communities and the numerous Jewish institutions before the Anschluss in 1938, Duizend-Jensen analyzes their Aryanization and liquidation, and finally discusses the complicated question of restitution. She shows that the liquidation was done in step-by-step fashion, whereby the so-called Stillhaltekommissar fur Vereine, Organisationen und Verbande played the major role. While some clubs were dissolved immediately after the Anschluss, a few-mainly the Zionist associations-were permitted to exist for a while. The assets of those that were dissolved were transferred to the Stillhaltekommissar fur Vereine, Organisationen und Verbande and, to a major extent as well, to the Viennese Jewish community, whereby 25-40 percent of all assets were retained by the National Socialists in the form of fees such as the Aufbauumlage and Verwaltungsgebuhr. The Viennese Jewish Community, on the other hand, was forced to use all the money transferred to it to support impoverished Jews and to finance the emigration and finally the deportation of Austrian Jews. It was also put under great pressure to sell its own property far below its market value. As Austrian historian Doron Rabinovici1 has shown, the Jewish community was put into a very difficult position after the Anschluss. The National Socialists appointed the leaders of the Jewish community and forced them to fulfill their demands, which went as far as supporting and financing the deportation of those who failed to emigrate. By forcing the Jewish community to sell all the assets of Jewish institutions, the perpetrators could relieve themselves of the responsibility of supporting the impoverished Jewish population.2 Duizend-Jensen also discusses the expropriation of synagogues and prayer rooms (Betstuben) during the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9, 1938 when synagogues were burned all over Germany and thousands of Jewish men sent to Dachau. In Vienna alone 42 synagogues were demolished and the land on which they had stood was Aryanized by individuals as well as by the city government. In addition, more than 110 prayer rooms were also dissolved. Duizend-Jensen points out that, like the synagogues, most of the prayer rooms also possessed ritual objects such as torah scrolls and prayer books, all of which disappeared or were destroyed. …

From Spain to the Balkans: Textile Torah Scroll Accessories in the Sephardi Communities of the Balkans

The article deals with the development of three accessories of the Sephardic Torah scroll: the Torah binder–a narrow and long strip which fastened both parts of the scroll; the Torah wrapper–which protects the parchment; and the Torah mantle–the exterior covering of the Torah scroll. These textile accessories originate in the Talmudic mapppah/ miṭpaḥat , a square piece of fabric which, in the ancient period, was used to wrap the Torah scroll. This object turned out to be the origin of the European means of protecting and adorning the Torah scroll. While in Ashkenazi communities only the Binder and the Mantle are customary, the uniqueness of the Sephardi tradition is an additional accessory–the Wrapper. The Wrapper, a fabric equal in height to that of the parchment, is wound around the staves, and is customary to this very day in the Sephardic Diaspora. Although the Binder and the Mantle are common to all European and Sephardi communities, in the latter these ceremonial objects have unique visual features. One of them is the use of precious fabrics, mainly brocades and gold embroidered fabrics. Such a magnificent background did not encourage the development of dedicatory inscriptions, on the one hand, but on the other it did encourage the recycling of precious textiles that had previously served in other capacities in daily life. The article is based on the documentation of ceremonial objects from various collections as well as on Rabbinic literature and field research in Sephardi synagogues in Israel and abroad.

R. Judah he-Hasid and the Rabbinic Scholars of Regensburg: Interactions, Influences, and Implications

R. Judah he-Hasid and the Rabbinic Scholars of Regensburg:Interactions, Influences, and Implications Ephraim Kanarfogel (bio) Scholars of Hasidei Ashkenaz during the last hundred yearshave paid little attention tosections 1592 and 1593 in the Parma edition of Sefer Hasidim (hereafter SH).1 To my mind, however, these sections shed considerable light on several questions about the nature and role of the German pietists that have been raised recently. After presenting an analytical summary of these sections, I propose to locate them not only within the larger context of SH but also more broadly within medieval Ashkenazic rabbinic scholarship and culture. A preamble identifies SHP 1592 as a written document (ketav) that had been sent to the leading rabbinic scholars of Regensburg. The document contains, in essence, a halakhic policy question with regard to synagogue practices. The questioner, an otherwise unknown Ephraim b. Meir, describes a situation in which "sinners had become dominant" (gavrah yad 'ovre 'averah) within the community. These people sought (undeserved) honor by consistently performing gelilah, the tying (wrapping) of the Torah scroll. Twelve such individuals had together pledged the hefty sum of twelve zekukim to charity for the year. This would entitle each member of the group to perform gelilah for one month. In Ephraim's opinion, this donation was undertaken in order to convey the message that the group's members contributed more than anyone else in the community (including Ephraim), an assertion that was intended primarily to embarrass the others and to enhance the group's honor. [End Page 17] Ephraim, whose position in the community is not identified, adds that he was able to discourage the plan as a whole, although he agreed to implement an unspecified part of the arrangement in order to ensure that the local charity fund would reap some benefit. Indeed, Ephraim expresses a degree of hesitation, since the amount that might have accrued to the charity fund would thereby be diminished. Ephraim indicates that he therefore decided to send his query (to Regensburg) to "my masters (rabbotai), R. Barukh and R. Abraham, and the Hasid R. Judah," and to seek their instruction. Ephraim pledges that he will abide by whatever they decide, even if they rule that the group is entitled to receive the honor of which in his view they are not worthy "since there are some among them who do not know even one verse of the Torah." He also notes that he is pursuing this matter not for personal gain but in order to prevent the denigration of the Torah. Moreover, he is concerned that if twelve people share the gelilah for one year, some of these individuals might decide that they want to do gelilah during the following year and others will demand it for themselves, leading to a confrontation that might cause bloodshed ('ad she-tihyeh retsihah benehem)! Ephraim concludes by again reassuring the rabbinic scholars that he will abide by their ruling in any case, whatever his own preferences. Moreover, he expresses his willingness to continue, with their approval, to perform gelilah over any objections from the group, while paying the same amount to charity that he had typically given for this honor in the past. The rabbinic response appears in SHP 1593. The scholars ruled that since the poor would profit from the offer made by the group, its members, although they did not intend principally to honor Heaven but rather to achieve honor for themselves, should not be prevented from tying the Torah. As for the individual who was able to perform gelilah until now (ostensibly the questioner, Ephraim b. Meir), since his intention was sincere, if he were to continue to give the same amount of charity that he had before, Scripture would consider it as if he were still tying the Torah scroll. As Mal 3.16 indicates (and as the Talmud amplifies in bKidd 41a), the Almighty hearkens also to those who think of His Name (ule-hoshve shemo) in undertaking their religious actions, and considers that one who wished to fulfill a precept but was prevented from doing so did in effect perform that precept. Indeed, since Ephraim would now desist from performing gelilah solely in...

Menstruation in sacred spaces. Medieval and early-modern Jewish women in the synagogue

How sacred is the Synagogue? Can a woman enter this holy place while menstruating? What is more sacred: the space, or the Holy objects within it? In the classic sources of the Halakhah, the Jewish Law, one can find no restrictions on women from entering a synagogue while being in the state of Niddah, the state of menstrual impurity. Nevertheless, in the medieval period, more and more sources indicate that many women avoided going to the synagogue when at this state. Why? Was this custom created by women, or by men? Where did it originate? The article suggests it was the same religious mentality that pushed Jewish and Christian women to avoid going to their respective Houses of Worship while menstruating. The custom was socially problematic, as it prevented women from participating, at least passively, in the service, and from being a visible part of the community in its weekly reunion. It is suggested that in order to solve this issue, the notion of the sacrality of the synagogue was reduced to some extent in the mind of many Jewish women in the early-modern period. The Sacred was the Torah Scroll, the holiest object in the synagogue, and not so much the Synagogue itself. By doing that, women created a new viable solution: they could enter the synagogue without feeling to be transgressing its sacrality. Their respect to the Holy was shown by them avoiding looking at the Torah Scroll when it was presented to the worshippers.

Triple-Deckers and Eagle Lecterns: Church Furniture for the Book in Late Medieval and Early Modern England

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me: because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek.’ When Jesus stood up to read these verses from Isaiah at the start of his public ministry, as he began to reveal himself as the Word in the synagogue of Nazareth, the book ‘he had opened’ at the reading desk was one of the Torah scrolls, brought out for him from the Ark of the Law, the imposing reserve which is, from age to age, the most sacred part of any synagogue. Holy Scripture has always been a public book, a treasure for each synagogue, and for the commonwealth of the Christian community sacred as text and object. But the mystical sanctity of the Bible, and holy books in general, has raised a perennial problem. Precious books have usually been hedged round by restrictions to protect them from the profane, even at the cost of obscuring the public approach which is a necessary part of assembled worship. In this episode in the life of Christ, when the listeners grew too ‘filled with wrath’ for him to continue, we meet the deep and recurrent tension between the community’s need to hear the Word, and the conflicting desire to shield its essential sanctity, which accompanied the book from Judaism in transition to the Christian Church.

Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary (review)

Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, for Rabbinical Assembly and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 2001. 1560 pp. $72.50. For close to sixty years, Joseph Hertz's The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (London: Soncino Press, 1936) was a fixture in American synagogues, arguably serving as the for many, if not most, American Jews. However, Hertz has long been considered dated and its polemics against both Christianity and modern biblical scholarship out of touch with contemporary views. It is, therefore, not surprising that replacements have begun to appear. The first came from Reform movement, which published The Torah, A Modern Commentary in 1981. Although it drew on a wide range of thinkers, Jewish tradition was shortchanged, as symbolized by omission of biblical accent marks (trope), which are used for Bible's ritual chanting, and minimization of traditional Sabbath lections (parashot). Barely a decade later, Orthodox community produced an English commentary of its own. However, ArtScroll Humash (Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications, 1993) paid even less attention to modernity than Reform commentary had given to Jewish tradition. Now Conservative movement, out of which Hertz, first graduate of its Jewish Theological Seminary of America, emerged, has produced its own commentary for synagogue use. Drawing title from Proverbs 3:18, which is recited before Torah scroll during Jewish worship, its goal is to be reverential but not apologetic (p. xix) by embracing both tradition and modernity. It is also proudly Jewish. Although non-Jews are seldom mentioned by name, especially in commentary, it quotes a remarkable range of Jewish thinkers from almost every century and stream of Jewish history. Jewish practice is also regularly identified, typically as what we do, and there are frequent references to Conservative movement's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards. Both commentary and short essays which follow are fully conversant with findings of contemporary biblical scholarship. Biblical statements are not automatically accepted as true, and readings from ancient versions are pointed out along with instances in which translation deviates from Masoretic text it supposedly follows. There are also frequent references to relevant findings from ancient Near East, although Der Allah inscription goes strangely unmentioned as does generally accepted connection between book of Deuteronomy and Judah's King Josiah. Most striking is book's openness to diversity. The organizers of this project have gone out of their way to involve a broad range of movement's constituents, including important scholars who work outside of its own institutions. Following a format that recalls Daniel Bomberg's classic Rabbinic Bible (Mikra'ot Gedolot), each page includes both Hebrew text and 1985 Jewish Publication Society translation as well as three commentaries -- one, based on recent JPS commentary series, which presents text's straightforward meaning (peshat), a second that is more homiletical (derash), and a third that describes relationship between text and Jewish observance (halacha l'ma-aseh). …

Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred Ground at Judaism's Holy Site (review)

Women of the Wall (WoW), a group formed to hold women-only public prayer services at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, is one of the more controversial outgrowths of the twentieth-century collision of Jewish traditions with the women's movement. The collection of essays and reminiscences under review, edited by two of the group's American members, presents a continuum of insider viewpoints on the decades-long gender conflict sparked by WoW's activities at the Wall. In a concise, helpful introduction, the editors explain that WoW had its genesis in December 1988, when approximately seventy women attending the first International Congress for the Empowerment of Jewish Women went together to worship and read aloud from the Torah in the women's section of the Western Wall plaza. According to Bonna Haberman, who was among those who went to the Wall that day, their action was partly a response to a proposal she had put forward at the conference for a regular Rosh Hodesh (New Moon) women's prayer group meeting at the Wall. The tremendous impact that service had on those who participated in it sparked off a local initiative to follow through on Haberman's proposal. Women of the Wall came into being. After considerable deliberation, WoW embraced the practices of women donning tallitot (prayer shawls), praying aloud in public, and reading from the Torah scroll, all prohibited to women according to conventional Orthodox interpretations of Jewish law. In keeping with the Orthodox religious commitments of several founders, the group refrained from reciting devarim shebikedushah, prayers that traditionally may be recited only in the presence

A Sheet of Parchment from a 10th or 11th Century Torah Scroll: Determining its Type among Four Traditions (Oriental, Sefardi, Ashkenazi, Yemenite)

A Sheet of Parchment from a 10th or 11th Century Torah Scroll: Determining its Type among Four Traditions (Oriental, Sefardi, Ashkenazi, Yemenite)

Judaism and Disability: Portrayals in Ancient Texts from the Tanach through the Bavli (review)

Reviewed by: Judaism and Disability: Portrayals in Ancient Texts from the Tanach through the Bavli Mayer I. Gruber Judaism and Disability: Portrayals in Ancient Texts from the Tanach through the Bavli, by Judith K. Abrams. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1998. 236pp. $49.95. In this book Judith K. Abrams presents scholar and layperson alike with a masterful study of the treatment of the physically and cognitively challenged in the authoritative sacred texts of Israel from the Iron Age through the Babylonian Talmud circa 500 C.E. (her date, which follows the traditional date given by Sherira, head of the academy of Pumbeditha [c. 970–1000 C.E.]). She exhibits total mastery of the relevant passages in Hebrew Scripture, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Mishnah, Tosefta, the Talmuds and Rabbinic midrash. She makes creative use of the work of the important pathfinders in 1) twentieth century Jewish biblical studies (Haran, Kaufman, Knohl, Milgrom, Weinfeld); 2) the contemporary scientific study of rabbinic literature (Halivni, Jaffee, Kraemer, Neusner); and 3) the post-modern study of the body in Judaism (Boyarin, Eillberg-Schwartz). Abrams is equally at home in the history of medicine and in anthropology and sociology. The depth and breadth of Rabbi Dr. Abrams’ knowledge is a tribute not only to the author of Judaism and Disability but also to her mentors at Hebrew Union College, where she earned her rabbinic ordination and at Baltimore Hebrew University where she earned her Ph.D. A generation ago Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer, spiritual leader of the Jewish congregation for the deaf in Greater Chicago (Bene Sholom), reported to the Chicago Board of Rabbis the grave difficulty that deaf Jews had in receiving a fair hearing [End Page 115] within the Jewish community. Wrongly assuming that every deaf person should be defined as cheresh (deaf and dumb; consequently in a subcategory of shoteh [imbecile]), rabbis and congregations refused to provide prayer groups of deaf Jews with Torah scrolls and other necessary appurtenances of public worship. Finding that the Jewish community turned a deaf ear to their pleadings, hearing-impaired Jews often fled to the welcoming arms of Christian churches. In a feature article concerning the treatment of the handicapped in the State of Israel in the Hebrew daily newspaper Ma’ariv (February 10, 2000) Tali Barzilai Sonenfeld writes: “Israel is insensitive to the physically handicapped; it does not see the blind, nor does it hear the deaf.” Consequently, she explains, elevators in public buildings lack buttons with captions in Braille for the blind; many government buildings provide no wheelchair access, and few ATMs are situated low enough to be operated from a wheelchair. Moreover, she reports, the head of one supermarket chain asked Ms. Sonenfeld please not to report that the chain would, if asked, help handicapped customers carry their purchases to their vehicles: “We do not want the handicapped taking advantage of us.” Rabbi Dr. Judith Z. Abrams shows that the basic sacred texts of Judaism—Hebrew Scripture, Mishnah, Tosefta, the two Talmuds, and the vast midrashic literature produced in Byzantine-age Palestine—constitute a treasure-trove of insights as to how the physically and cognitively unchallenged can learn to treat as peers the blind, the lame, the deaf, as well as the cognitively challenged. The author explains that the priestly heritage of Judaism exemplified by Lev. 1–16 created an ideal of physical perfection, which may rightly be compared with the qualifications required for admission to that elite military corps, the United States Marines. Building upon Israel Knohl’s thesis concerning the ideological differences between the priestly heritage exemplified by Lev. 1–16 and the Holiness Code contained in Lev. 17–26, Abrams demonstrates that Lev. 19 brought the ideal of physical perfection required of Temple priests into the popular realm by requiring Israelites to respect and treasure all human bodies. The logical consequence is Lev. 19:14, which prohibits cursing the deaf and putting a stumbling block before the blind. The next logical step is contained in ancient Rabbinic exegesis (see pp. 42–45). The rabbis saw in these prohibitions not only special consideration toward those persons whose physical disabilities often lead to their marginalization but also 1) a general prohibition against dealing...

The Other and the Ordinary: Demystifying and Demusealising the Jew

The German public's perception of Jews is problematic in more than one way: besides an aggressive and latent anti-Semitism, less malicious clichés and even well-meaning efforts to relate to Jewish topics often fail to grasp the reality of Jewish life. Jews are predominantly associated with the Shoah, and thus with National-Socialism. They appear in research projects, documentary films, political debates and historical museums. If Judaism is portrayed as a contemporary culture at all, it is exoticised through visual topoi such as synagogues and kippot, Torah scrolls and paeyes, and transformed into a mysterious and obscure religion. Germans’ imagination of their Jewish fellow-citizens have little in common with the reality of Jewish life in Germany today.

An Eschatological Drama: Bavli Avodah Zarah 2a–3b

The homily near the beginning of Tractate Avodah Zarah of the Babylonian Talmud, folios 2a–3b, surely must be numbered among the most fascinating rabbinic compositions. A brilliant creation of the rabbinic imagination, the homily depicts the inauguration of the “world to come.” A richly detailed eschatological drama unfolds as God places a Torah scroll in his lap and summons those who busied themselves with Torah to collect their reward. While rabbinic literature teems with static descriptions of the glorious miracles that await the righteous in the next world and parallel illustrations of the painful sufferings the wicked should expect, extended narratives of the initial stages of the process are rare. Not the nature of the world to come, but the test for admission is the subject at hand.

Other Tales: Museum Objects and the Engendering of Jewish Knowledge

120 SHOFAR Fall 1995 Vol. 14, No.1 OTHER TALES: MUSEUM OBJECTS AND THE ENGENDERING OF JEWISH KNOWLEDGE by Paula Chaiken Paula Chaiken is the Education Coordinator at the Spenus Museum ofJudaica, Chicago. She also teaches a course on gender and Judaism to high-school students. "What can you tell me about this object?" I asked the group of high school students visiting Spenus Museuml from a Reform congregation in Chicago's northern suburbs as we stopped in front of an 18th century North African Torah scroll. A student described the Torah's appearance, explained its contents and discussed how it may have been used in communal worship long ago. "And what is special about the way in which a Torah is produced?" I asked. The students explained how a Torah is written with a quill and naturally-produced ink on parchment made from the hide of a kosher animal by a soler, a professional scribe. I elaborated, "The scribe works for a very long time to create a Torah. He may spend years working on one, as it has to be perfect." One boy looked puzzled. He was upset by my choice of pronoun and asked, "Does the scribe have to be a man?" "Well," I hesitated. "Traditionally, the soler is a man. Though there are many talented female scribes who write ketubbot (marriage contracts), I don't know of any recorded instances of a Torah having been written by a woman." 'Spertus Museum, Chicago, Illinois, is the largest Jewish Museum in the midwest. Its Judaica collection includes objects from 5,000 years ofJewish life, as well as the Bernard and Rochelle Zell Holocaust Memorial; The Paul and Gabriella Rosenbaum ARTiFACT Center, a hands-on children's archeological museum; and temporary exhibitions illustratingJewish art, history and culture. Other Tales: Museum Objects 121 His question sent us on a new journey. We had not set out to talk about the roles ofmen and women inJudaism but the museum experience made it possible. We continued our tour guided by the question. We came to a case containing another Torah from Westphalia, Germany in the late nineteenth-century. There was no synagogue there, so Moses and Zipporah Pagener housed the community Torah in their home. I explained how Zipporah Pagener had wanted to keep the Torah in a special place so she donated the finest cloth available, her wedding dress, to serve as a parokhet, a Torah ark curtain. The students heard this story as they looked at the piece of wedding dress. .As we admired the parokhet, one student asked, "How do we know Mrs. Pagener wanted to donate her dress?" "We don't," I answered honestly. And I thought to myself, "This is the difficult part. .As museum Visitors, we have the power to make the objects tell stories, which means we generally make them tell the stories we want to hear." I preferred to believe that Zipporah had chosen to give her dress out of love and commitment to the Jewish community because I don't want to believe that someone else made the choice for her. .As a group we pondered the question: Did Zipporah choose to give up her finest dress to cover the Torah or did she watch passively as her husband decided the Torah ought to be dressed better than she was? .As we arrived in front of the case filled with objects used on Shabbat the students felt confident that they understood women's obligations concerning the Jewish day of rest. "My mom lights the Shabbat candles every Friday," one girl called out. I told her that her mother is observing one of three mitzvot (commandments ) that women perform: lighting Shabbat candles, taking hallah (setting aside and burning a piece of the dough as a reminder of providing sustenance for the Temple priests) and going to the mikveh.2 Her friend commented that all of the pairs of candle holders in the case-from Poland, Israel, England-probably held candles which were lit by women in Jewish communities throughout the world. "And polished by them, too," I commented as we noticed the brass and silver. We arrived at the life-cycle section of the...

Between Exile and Return: S. Y. Agnon and the Drama of Writing (review)

Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 129 Reviews and the Jesus of the Gospels, understand and proclaim that the sacrifice of human and animal victims is connected with violence. The Gospels, indeed, completely uncover this relationship. This discovery or revelation represented by the biblical texts is at least partially obscured by Hobbs. Perhaps this is because he does not give enough attention to religion, myth, and sacrifice in the biblical texts and traditions. An adequate hermeneutic should be able to delineate how deeply rooted ancient Israel was in older sacral or mythical concepts which were the basis of the cultures out of which it emerged. At the same time this very hermeneutic will show the uniqueness of Israel's breakthrough, a breakthrough which is usually unknowingly assumed in our religious and cultural heritage wherever and whenever we comprehend the arbitrariness of persecution and scapegoating and support the rights of victims. James G. Williams Syracuse University Syracuse, NY 13244-1170 BETWEEN EXILE AND RETURN: S. Y. AGNON AND THE DRAMA OF WRITING. By Anne Golomb Hoffman. pp. 236. Albany: State University of New York, 1991. Cloth, $16.95. Anne Golomb Hoffman walks a delicate tightrope in providing the student of Agnon with new and complex tools of psychoanalytic and comparative literary analysis while not subjugating or sacrificing Agnon to her hermeneutics. Agnon remains in the foreground even as Hoffman advances intriguing views comparing Agnon with Kafka, Jabes, Thomas Mann, and Joyce. She does this with the help of Freud, Lacan, feminist theory, and much more. Of significant help to Hoffman in keeping her delicate balance is her ample utilization of the more traditional critical apparatus of Shaked, Kurtzweil, Band, Barzel, and Holtz as well as her full attention to archival minutiae, her novel treatment of Agnon's voluminous, posthumously published works, and her erudition in ancillary fields of Jewish thought and textual study. Framing Hoffman's study, moreover, is a metaphorical leitmotif which singles out in Agnon themes of writing, authorship, discontinuities and tensions within the text, and a mythicizing of books. All of these Hoffman interprets as a kind of Jewish cosmic reflection of avant- Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 130 Reviews garde cultural ideas. The net result is a unified and clear-if somewhat labyrinthine-intellectual midrash on Agnon, yielding luminous insights into Hoffman's individual case studies of Agnon's work and an amazing demonstration of his embrace or approximation of so many modernistic tendencies. Introducing her first section, entitled "Comparative Agnon," Hoffman analyzes both Kafka's "In the Penal Colony" and Agnon's "The Legend of the Scribe" as "dramas of inscription." Both authors depict for Hoffman the risky adventure of "becoming one with the text." She assesses in both, as well, a daring reversal of sexual archetypal roles, as when Raphael embraces his wife's dress in the ecstatic ending of Agnon's story. Agnon's scribe's famous characterization of the religious fervor necessary for writing the Torah scroll as "standing in icy water on a snowy day" Hoffman reads as a "narcissistic" immersion in text. She interprets the haunting mirror of the story and Raphael's "falling" into it as equally narcissistic, and she views the conclusion as a negation and correction of this self-centered and stereotypical outlook. At the same time, Hoffman adopts a reading of the Kafka story as "a high-tech rape of the condemned man whose position is essentially female as the 'stuff' that is written on," and she merges Kafka with Agnon in concluding: ''The gender of writing as a masculine engraving of a female body is undone in each of these stories through dramas of inscription that demonstrate the fluctuating positions of the participants, precluding any stable identification of them." Hoffman further pursues the analogy to Kafka in comparing "The Hunger Artist" to the hunger in Agnon's "A Whole Loaf." She utilizes Avraham Holtz's theory of the "open-ended" parable in "A Whole Loaf' in assessing the indeterminacy of this hunger and the many discontinuities of the vexed metaphor of Agnon's tale. All of this she frames with a discussion of Edmond Jabes's virtuosity in inventing and exploring quasi- "rabbinic" models of textual and intertextual dialogues...