Torah Study Research Articles

Changes in the Understanding of Work in Religious Zionist Thought: Rabbi T.I. Thau as a Case Study

In Jewish religious texts, Torah study is placed at the top of the hierarchy of values. This suggests that work as such is of no religious significance; work is rather a prerequisite for the real essentials of life. The Mizrachi religious Zionist movement, founded in 1902 by R. Yitzhak Yaakov Reines (1839–1915), introduced a markedly different view. The movement upheld a concept of work as a religious value, not only an existential need. Later religious Zionist thinkers developed a dialectical notion of the mutual integration of the Torah and labor; this eventually became the motto of the Bnei Akiva youth movement that they inspired. With time, the theological approach of R. Kook the Elder (ReAYaH) and of R. Kook the Younger (RTziYaH) became dominant in religious Zionism. R. Kook the Elder founded the yeshivah at Merkaz ha-rav in Jerusalem, which he also headed; his son eventually succeeded him. To date, the yeshivah has produced a great number of students and rabbis, who made the teaching of the two Rabbis Kook the legacy of the religious Zionist community as a whole. The aim of the present article is to trace the changes taking place in the religious Zionist attitude toward work as this is articulated in the thought of a student of the two Rabbis, Kook whom many regard as the continuator of their teaching today. This is Rabbi Tzvi Israel Thau (b. 1937), one of the most influential rabbinic figures associated with religious Zionism, President of Yeshivat har ha-mor and the spiritual leader of the Torah academies referred to as “yeshivot of the line [ha-kav]”.

Work as a Value in the Writings of Rabbi Y.Y. Reines

Religious texts in the Jewish tradition uphold a notion of work as an existential need. It follows that work is of no religious significance in itself. Torah study has traditionally put it at the top of the hierarchy of Jewish values. The approach most clearly discernible throughout Jewish history has seen work as a prerequisite to be satisfied in order for the real essentials of life to be addressed; this approach became dominant almost to the exclusion of any other. Nota bene: seen in this way, work is a must, but not a religious value in itself. R. Yitzhak Yaakov Reines (1839–1915), one of the greatest Torah1 scholars of Lithuania, founded the Mizrachi religious Zionist movement in 1902.2 The movement upheld the notion of work as a religious value, not only as an existential need. Bnei Akiva, the youth movement associated with the Mizrachi, emblazoned the motto of “Torah and Labor” upon its banner. The present article sets out to trace R. Reines’ thought and the idea of labor in his theological teaching. His thought continues to have a significant impact on religious Zionists in the State of Israel and throughout the world.

A Revolution in the Name of Tradition: Orthodoxy and Torah Study for Girls

A Revolution in the Name of Tradition: <i>Orthodoxy and Torah Study for Girls</i>

Learning from the Past: Considering the Ethics of Appropriation

Learning from the Past: Considering the Ethics of Appropriation

The Jewish community in nineteenth century Palestine: evidence from the Montefiore censuses

Initial findings from five recently transcribed censuses of the Jewish community in nineteenth century Palestine, commissioned by Sir Moses Montefiore. This article discusses each census and presents uncorrected population figures. It describes how the Jewish community was rapidly changing: the population increased almost fourfold between 1839 and 1875, primarily due to immigration from Ashkenazi countries. The Jewish community was majority Ashkenazi by 1875. Analysis of the census data gives us detailed information about the community, such as the fact that Ashkenazim were significantly more likely than Sephardim to be engaged in full-time Torah study, whereas individuals who had immigrated to the land of Israel were slightly less likely. It also suggests that immigrations occurred at all ages, although the average age of an immigrant when they came to Palestine was 36.

The Secret Faith of Maestre Honoratus: Profayt Duran and Jewish Identity in Late Medieval Iberia by Maud Kozodoy

Reviewed by: The Secret Faith of Maestre Honoratus: Profayt Duran and Jewish Identity in Late Medieval Iberia by Maud Kozodoy Rebecca Lobel Kozodoy, Maud, The Secret Faith of Maestre Honoratus: Profayt Duran and Jewish Identity in Late Medieval Iberia (Middle Ages), Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015; cloth; pp. 336; R.R.P. US $59.95, £39.00; ISBN 9780812247480. Maud Kozodoy’s study of Profayt Duran reveals a compelling portrait of a late fourteenth-century Spanish physician, astronomer, and philosopher whose works were defined by his Jewish intellectual roots. Assuming the Christian name Honoratus de Bonafide after his forced conversion in 1391, Duran served as court physician and astronomer to King Joan I of Aragon: a public display of his professional talent in the most prestigious sciences of the time. Privately, though, Duran wrote under the Hebrew pseudonym Efod, producing a wide array of texts, primarily anti-Christian polemics, which were intended specifically for a Jewish or converso audience. Through a sophisticated exploration of his works, Kozodoy offers a concrete analysis of Duran’s legacy and – most importantly – his philosophical position on the collapse of Iberian Jewry in the wake of unprecedented persecution. Writing exclusively in Hebrew, Duran’s works are a glimpse at the regular exchange of ideas within Spanish Jewish intellectual circles through the circulation of epistles and manuscripts. Any enthusiast of medieval philosophy, medicine, or mathematics will enjoy this aspect of Kozodoy’s book, as the works of Duran are a profound synthesis of both Christian and Jewish approaches to science. Those interested in conversos will also enjoy it, since Duran’s biography, explored in Part I, is in many ways typical of a Catalonian Jew; forced to adapt outwardly as a New Christian, Duran covertly nurtured a deep and evolving Jewish identity, as demonstrated by his scholarly works. Steeped in the rationalist philosophical tradition of Maimonides, Duran used the virtue of reason to privilege science over other means by which to understand his world. Kozodoy shows Duran’s intellectual approach in Part II through compelling case studies, including his adept use of geometry and astronomy to create Heshev ha-Efod, a superb lunar and solar Jewish calendar designed specifically for use by conversos. Duran’s essay on the number seven as mispar kolel, a perfect number, is also fascinating; when Kozodoy compares it to Oresme’s similar Christian treatise on the number three, it becomes clear how each thinker used arithmology to prove the verity of their religion through the evidence of numerical patterns in Creation. These works are [End Page 222] decidedly polemical, an attempt by Duran to show the accuracy and truth of Judaism over Christianity through mathematics and philosophy. Duran’s literary works share the same polemics displayed in his more scientific treatises. Kozodoy demonstrates this through her analyses of Duran’s satire Al tehi ka-avotekha (‘Be Not Like Your Fathers’) and the epistle Kelimat ha-goyim (‘The Disgrace of the Gentiles’), which both critique Christian theology as irrational and philosophically erroneous. Duran refutes Christian themes including the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and the divinity of Jesus through informed and cautious study and articulate rebuttal. As Kozodoy notes, there is evidence that Duran learned Latin and used it in his study of the Gospels, showing his mastery of Christian doctrine from within the tradition. It is difficult not to be impressed by Duran’s ability to navigate both Jewish and Christian society, religion, science, and philosophy; a survival skill acquired, most unfortunately, against his will as a forced convert. Part III covers the last surviving texts of Duran, which are, according to Kozodoy, the most important and most evolved. In both Eulogy for Abraham ha-Levi of Girona and Ma’aseh Efod (‘The Works of Efod’), Duran establishes the central importance of kavvanah, or spiritual intention, given the woeful inability of most conversos to participate in Jewish rituals or observance. This preference for ‘wisdom’ over ‘deed’ (p. 163) and the spirit over the body privileged Torah study over ritual performance, giving conversos practical instructions to keep hope for a future where they might be able freely to return to Judaism. Kozodoy notes Duran’s characterisation by seventeenth-century Rabbi Joseph Delmedigo...

TheNehuteias Traveling Agents and Transmitters of Cultural Data between the Torah Study Centers in Babylonia and in the Land of Israel during the Third and Fourth Centuries CE

This article suggests a new reading of some traditions, sayings, and anecdotes in the Babylonian Talmud attributed to four sages who lived between the middle of the third and the beginning of the fourth century CE, arguing that they should be identified as travelers’ tales. These four sages are portrayed in our sources as travelers and transmitters of Torah knowledge who traveled between the two main centers of Torah study, in Babylonia and in the Land of Israel. By assigning to them tales drawn from the wide well of travelers’ tales, created and told on the Eastern trade routes, by the Talmudic editors, these traveling sages became a link in the wide net of transmission of travelers’ tales.

Introduction: The Mediterranean Voyage

Introduction: The Mediterranean Voyage

Collection Development and Censorship in Torah Studies Libraries in Israel

A Torah studies library is a type of Jewish library specializing in biblical and rabbinical literature. One of its characteristics is its process of collection development and censorship. This study primarily aims to discuss the collection development policies in Torah libraries, particularly censorship implemented as part of a policy, with an emphasis on how prohibited books are rejected. A qualitative-narrative research technique was used, allowing the viewpoints of the “selectors” to be examined. To present a broad picture, various types of Torah studies libraries were chosen for the study.

Women Heroines of Torah Study as Portrayed by Rabbi Joseph Mesas in &lt;em&gt;Naḥalat Avot&lt;/em&gt;

Positive attitudes towards in-depth study of Torah by women are widely regarded as a post-modern feminist phenomenon. It is therefore of great interest to see earlier sources composed in a traditional milieu that express deep admiration for women choosing as their life’s vocation immersion in the highest levels of Torah study—even if in order to do so they must forfeit the conventional roles of wife and mother. Rabbi Joseph Mesas’s lesson on Mishnah Avot 6:1 is a fine example of such a source, and it is to the analysis and discussion of his teaching that this article is devoted.

The Torah in Transition: Imitative Aspects from Codex to Database

Because the significance of a sacred text comes not only from its content but also its format and materiality, the rise of digital formats is especially a concern for the Jewish community, the ‘people of the book’ (Am ha-Sefer) whose identity is rooted in the Torah. Drawing together scholarship on the history of the book in its changing formats and an illuminative case study of the Jewish Torah in its digital iterations, the Jewish case presented here is instructive but certainly not unique. Despite dramatic changes in reading technology throughout history, readers have time and again used a new technology to perform the same functions as that of the old, only more quickly, with more efficiency, or in greater quantity. While taking advantage of the innovation and novelty which characterize digital formats, a concerted effort to retain much older operations and appearances continues to be made in this transition as well. The analysis in this article aims to further dispel the misguided notion of technological supersession, the idea that new reading technologies ‘kill’ older formats in a straightforward model of elimination.

From Teacher to Scholar to Pastor: The Evolving Postwar Modern Orthodox Rabbinate

From Teacher to Scholar to Pastor:The Evolving Postwar Modern Orthodox Rabbinate Zev Eleff (bio) In September of 2012, Rabbi Avi Weiss reflected on the Orthodox rabbinical school he had founded in Riverdale, N.Y. more than a dozen years before. The emphasis of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School (YCT) on “practical rabbinics,” said Weiss, makes it unique in its “approach to rabbinic education.” Although his faculty provides students with the material to become “knowledgeable,” Weiss said, he stressed the importance of the pastoral elements, observing, “The rabbinate is about simply being there for people.”1 That sentiment was well understood by one of Weiss’s graduates. Speaking to a researcher, the young rabbi confessed that he had chosen YCT because of the importance the seminary placed on counseling. “Of the different things that rabbis do,” he said, “that’s one of the most important for me, so I wanted to go to a place where I would get taught that.”2 Most probably, the young rabbi’s alternative choice of a seminary would have been Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS). Although the school’s curriculum has never matched YCT’s offerings in pastoral training, RIETS recently reconfigured its curriculum to reflect more inclusively the professional portfolio of today’s American Orthodox rabbi.3 Ever cautious of criticism, RIETS carefully measured its curricular changes to ensure that traditional Torah learning would remain paramount within its study halls. YCT has not shared these concerns, at least not to the same degree. Criticism toward YCT’s belief in innovative Orthodox rabbinic training has been forthcoming. Ever since YCT, a liberal Orthodox seminary, was founded in 1999, moderates at Yeshiva and interested parties within right-wing Orthodoxy had been quick to label the seminary as “Orthodox-lite.”4 Many [End Page 289] of the complaints centered on the school’s pastoral courses that were drawing considerable time away from Torah study. In response, Rabbi Asher Lopatin, YCT’s newly appointed president, claimed in 2013 that it was precisely their pastoral training that “forged successful careers” for the school’s graduates.5 Time and again, however, those opposed to the curriculum at YCT have rejected this model of rabbinic training. Instead, they argue, Orthodox rabbis imbued with Torah knowledge have fared well and have adequately met the needs of their communities and congregations without exposure to a significantly revamped rabbinical school curriculum. Neither side is totally correct. Over the years, traditionalist rabbis have styled themselves—as have some of their more liberal counterparts—as learned men steeped in Torah knowledge.6 But that classic rabbinic profile was also bound up with two other important matters. First, rabbis responded to the changing expectations of their laypeople. Second, elements beyond the insular Orthodox community compelled the Orthodox rabbinate to adapt to new conditions.7 By and large, the Orthodox rabbinate has succeeded. Although still the smallest of the major religious movements in American Judaism, Orthodoxy has persisted despite the most ominous predictions.8 For their part in securing the community’s vitality, Orthodox rabbis have adjusted to internal and external forces. But versatility has probably not been enough. More than that, the traditional rabbinate has persevered because it was able to adapt while simultaneously maintaining a rabbinic image that was unquestionably Orthodox in character. On the other hand, the Orthodox rabbinate has struggled when it could neither adapt to its surroundings nor present a concrete religious identity. [End Page 290] Prologue On March 1, 1940, RIETS held its quadrennial ordination ceremony. The evening’s featured speaker was the school’s leading scholar, Rabbi Moshe Soloveichik. The sage offered a clear message to the eighteen graduates: In response to Hitler’s European conflagration, he asserted, “American Judaism has been charged with the mission to stand at the breach and expand and raise the dissemination of Torah in this country, and to save the surviving remnant and continue the long tradition for which our fathers gave their lives.”9 Soloveichik’s words struck emotional chords with many, reminding American Orthodox Jews of their grave responsibility.10 His words probably also concerned some of the young rabbis seated in the auditorium that night. Chances are...

Setting Times for Torah Study in R. Shneur Zalman of Liady's Thought

This study presents the ideas about setting times for Torah study in the writings of R. Shneur Zalman of Liady (Rashaz) as one of the elements that formed the inclusive concept of mystical experience in the Ḥabad movement. The article argues that in his teachings Rashaz invested common experiences and the precepts of normative, non-mystical Judaism with mystical meanings, and thus proposed a new, inclusive concept of mystical experience. The reinterpretation of the precept of setting times for Torah study in Rashaz's writings was one of the factors that greatly contributed to the re-evaluation of the role of ordinary people in religious life, and to shaping Ḥabad's inclusivist vision of mysticism.

Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages ed. by P. H. Cullum, Katherine J. Lewis (review)

Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages. Edited by P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis. [Gender in the Middle Vol. 9.] (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, an imprint of Boydell and Brewer. 2013. Pp. x, 214. $99.00. ISBN 978-1-84383-863-0.)This work is the result of the conference on Religious Men in the Middle Ages, which took place at the University of Huddersfield in July 2012. The editors, P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis, are to be commended for so quickly producing a fine set of essays and bringing them to publication. The various chapters of the work seek to advance our understanding of the Herrenfrage, or the idea that the concept of masculinity was undergoing rapid changes during and after the period of the Gregorian reforms, especially in relation to more stringent insistence on clerical celibacy. This book is particularly good in demonstrating the vitality of male clerical and monastic forms of life into the Middle Ages and helps to redress what perhaps had been an overemphasis of medieval female religiosity over the last twenty-five years.Cullum and Lewis provide an exceptionally helpful introduction wherein they situate the current state of scholarship regarding male religiosity as it relates to gender. This is a very useful tool, which will enable students and scholars to understand the emphases and directions of contemporary study. Indeed, nearly all the contributors include useful historiographical discussions at the beginnings of their papers-something of broad usefulness to the reader, especially when the research becomes very specialized.Although this is fundamentally a book about Christian Europe and the various experiences of maleness within the context of clerical and religious life, the first chapter by Michael Satlow discusses gender as it relates to Torah study among European rabbis. This provides a foil for the rest of the work, with its interesting description of how values relating to masculine aggression became transposed into academic study of the Torah and religious argumentation. Rachel Stone follows with an exposition of Hincmar of Rheims and his understanding of masculinity. She usefully explores both his ideal theory and the reality he confronted, closing with the interesting notion that clerical masculinity was defined in relation to other men, rather than in opposition to femininity. Jennifer Thibodeaux provides a fascinating glimpse into anticelibacy critics in the period following the Gregorians. She carefully details how much of the struggle was focused on control of the male body. …

Daily Commodities and Religious Identity in the Medieval Jewish Communities of Northern Europe

The Hebrew chronicle written by Solomon b. Samson recounts the mass conversion of the Jews of Regensburg in 1096.’ The Jews were herded and forced into the local river where a ‘sign was made over the water, the sign of a cross’ and thus they were baptized, all together in the same river. The local German rivers play another role in the accounts of the turbulent events of the Crusade persecutions. They were also the place where Jews evaded conversion, drowning themselves in water, rather than being baptized by what the chronicles’ authors call the ‘stinking waters’ of Christianity. Reading these Hebrew chronicles, one is immediately struck by the tremendous revulsion expressed toward the waters of baptism. Indeed, in his analysis of the symbolic significance of the baptismal waters for medieval Jews, Ivan Marcus has suggested that baptism by force in the local rivers was so traumatic that they instituted a ritual response during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. One component of the medieval Jewish child initiation ceremony to Torah study was performed on the banks of the river, expressing Jewish aversion to baptism (see Fig. i).

The Kollel Movement in the State of Israel: A Pedagogic and Ideological Typology

In Israel, the contemporary Haredi kollel (institute for advanced Torah study for adult men) is caught between two institutional visions: one sees the kollel as a selective, temporary framework to train future educators, rabbis, and leaders, while the other views the kollel as a non-selective phenomenon of indefinite study for people who have few career options. This tension has resulted in several types of contemporary kollels and a number of religious ideologies that promote full-time study for adult men. The article examines three different models of Haredi kollels and analyzes how they manage the friction between temporary and permanent kollel study. It articulates an abstract typology of ideological justifications that are advanced to support long-term kollel study.

Ḥasdai Crescas on the Philosophic Foundation of Codification

Ḥasdai Crescas briefly adumbrated his halakhic methodology in the introduction to his philosophic work, 'Or ha-Shem. He followed Maimonides by arguing for the importance of a comprehensive and succinct legal code and opposed himself to those who ascribe independent value to Torah study. However, Crescas disputed Maimonides on the proper goals and character of a legal code. Unlike Maimonides, he designated his code for Torah scholars and focused on the bedrock principles that are the bases for particular laws. According to Crescas, these principles allow the codifier to capture the infinite and boundless halakhah in a finite and accessible form. They also serve as exegetical rules that allow the Torah scholar to create new laws. In this regard, the halakhic enterprise resembles the process of creation and the scholar resembles God.

Modes of Cleaving to the Letters in the Teachings of Israel Baal Shem Tov: A Sample Analysis

The present study proposes to understand R. Israel Baal Shem Tov’s approach to cleaving as dealing predominantly with the oral dimension of the letters, namely, with their sounds while they are articulated in recitation of prayer or Torah study. This approach implies a more active type of engagement with the letters than has been assumed in earlier hasidic scholarship, which emphasized cleaving to the visual aspect of the letters. Moreover, according to some teachings of the Baal Shem Tov, a variety of modes of cleaving to letters corresponds to the four cosmic worlds in Kabbalah.

Sacrifice, Scripture, and Substitution: Readings in Ancient Judaism and Christianity. Edited by ANN W. ASTELL and SANDOR GOODHART.

Astell and Goodhart hope to redress the lack of ‘serious engagement’ with René Girard by biblical scholars and cultural anthropologists (p. 19). The introduction is long-winded and dense, but most of the articles are readable and could be used in seminary classes. The book is divided into ‘Sacrifice’, comprising an interview with Girard and eight articles, and ‘Scripture’, comprising twelve articles that test Girardian theory against particular biblical texts. The Girard interview will help newcomers get the basics of his theory, but does not seem to say anything new. Girard continues to make a totalizing claim for his theory, stating ‘there is no great scientific discovery that is not systematic. Only systematic thinking works’ (p. 58). The eight articles that follow deal with aspects of sacrifice or Eucharist, but have little to do with Girardian theory. The article by Ryba offers some useful discussion of substitution and equivalency, but then bogs down in dense mathematical formulae for sacrificial exchange. Ryba draws on multiple theories of sacrifice, without sufficient distinction: the animal is a substitute for the human (p. 90), is a meal shared with God (p. 94); the blood is purificatory … or apotropaic (p. 95) … or (in the Eucharist) metamorphic (p. 98). Fishbane’s article covers rabbinic texts where repentance or Torah study act ‘as if (ke-’ilu)’ one had offered sacrifices (pp. 121–6), even atoning for sins that sacrifices could not (p. 135).

What is Work? Insights from Non-Intuitive Cases

Contributors to the sociology of work seldom say what work is, perhaps relying on a taken-for-granted understanding. That understanding is (usually) no longer limited to paid employment, as social scientists know that such a definition overlooks or devalues the work done mainly by women in the home; it also fails to capture informal sector and voluntary work. But a critique of older/narrower definitions (rooted in an appreciation for the need to capture a wider range of forms) has not yet been convincingly accompanied by a more comprehensive ‘positive’ definition. This paper argues for a definition rooted in the *value* created by work; if an activity creates value, then it merits designation as ‘work’. That approach to definition by no means answers all the questions we might raise about work; instead, its utility consists in the way it forces us to confront those questions (when normally they are elided, especially in public discourse, by a ‘market fundamentalism’). In particular, it compels us to ask: what do we value, and how is value to be recognized/rewarded beyond market exchange? The discussion builds on analysis of two groups whose activities have at best a tenuous connection to conventional notions of work: Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jewish men (engaged mainly in full-time Torah study, not paid employment) and French farmers, whose incomes derive more from public subsidy than from success in markets. The elements of their situations that seem distinctive are found in fact to be quite pervasive, even for activities that are ‘obviously’ work.