Finding Our Way: Jewish Texts and the Lives We Live Today

Notes

Notes INTRODUCTION 1. Gershom Scholem, "The Meaning ofthe Torah inJewish Mysticism," in his On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (Schocken Books, 1965), p. 65. The mystics talk about the 600,000 aspects of Torah, a number parallel to the traditional concept that 600,000 stood at Sinai to receive the Torah. 2. Franz Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (Schocken Books, 1955), p. 98. 3. Ibid., p. 96. 4. Ibid., p. 99. 5. Israel Schemer, "In .Praise of the Cognitive Emotions," Teachers College Record 79, no. 2 (December 1977), pp. 171-86. 6. "Affective and cognitive processes cannot be readily separated," says Daniel N. Stern, one of the leading researchers in this area. See his discussion in The Interpersonal World ofthe Infant (Basic Books, 1985), pp. 38-42. 7. For more on this issue, see Janet Aviad, Return to Judaism (University of Chicago Press, 1983). 8. In the paragraphs that follow I try to make a few concise statements about a massive historical and literary phenomenon, rabbinicJudaism. For a more extensive introductory presentation on this subject, see chapters 2 and 3 in my (ed.) Back to the Sources; Reading the Classic Jewish Texts (Summit, 1984). See the bibliographies in those chapters for suggestions for further reading on these topics. See also the overview byJacob Neusner, The Oral Torah (Harper & Row, 1986). 9. Joel Rosenberg, "Meanings, Morals, and Mysteries: Literary Approaches to Torah," Response 9, no. 2 (Summer 1975), p. 71. 10. To be sure, there were rabbinic sages who had their own skepticism about this hyperintensive mode of reading. In a famous statement Rabbi Ishmael declared , "The Torah speaks in human language" (Talmud, Keritot l1a), by which he meant that sometimes peculiarities or repetitions in the Bible are simply a matter ofits literary style. 11. Martin Buber, "On National Education," in his Israel and the World (Schocken Books, 1963), p. 160. 12. Ibid., pp. 160-61. 13. Ibid., p. 161. 14. Ibid., p. 160. 235 Notes CHAPTER ONE 1. Avot: a tractate ofthe Mishnah devoted entirely to statements ofan ethical or spiritual nature. Also known as Pirkei Avot (see Glossary). 2. Robert Goldenberg, "Law and Spirit in Talmudic Religion," injewish Spirituality , vol. I, ed. Arthur Green (Paulist Press, 1986), p. 232. 3. See the recent study by Samuel C. Heilman and Steven M. Cohen, Cosmopolitans and Parochials: Modern Orthodox jews in America (University of Chicago Press, 1989), particularly pp. 18-21 and their discussion of issues such as attitudes toward premarital sex among the Orthodox, pp. 174-79. Some research, (such as Heilman's in a forthcoming work and the studies done by Menahem Friedman of Bar Han University in Israel) has suggested that the questions raised by modernity affect even the most "insulated" of Jews, the ultra-Orthodox, though they are framed in different language. Thus, the incongruity one can witness any day in New York ofa black-frocked, bearded Hasid wearing a Sony Walkman over his sidelocks! 4. I have always thought of this story as exemplifying the peculiar relationship between the world of "fact" and the world oflaw. We see the same concept, to use a more mund~ne metaphor, in the way rules of play work in games. Let's say we are watching a baseball game. The runner is racing to the base, the ball is thrown, the decision must be made-is he safe or out? It is the umpire, the "rabbi" at the ballpark, we might say, who will decide. Now we all know that sometimes in the realm of fact or "truth" that decision will be wrong. We see the replay on television. The runner is safe, yet he is called out. But "truth" in the divine sense is irrelevant. We do not wait for the divine voice ofjudgment, the instant replay's eye. Truth is in the human world-even if it is wrong. In similar fashion, the rabbis asserted their own responsibility for determining the law: It is not in heaven, they proclaim. . 5. "The Proem in the Aggadic Midrashim," in Studies in Aggadah and FolkLiterature , ed. Joseph Heinemann and Dov Noy (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1971), pp. 100-123. My translation here uses the emendation of the talmudic text presented in Heinemann's article. 6. Ibid., p. 103. 7; Note that this same impulse operates among "centrist Orthodox" Jews. Writing about this group in their recent study ofAmerican Orthodox Jewry, sociologists Samuel C. Heilman and Steven M. Cohen state: "They remain· rather individualist and even eclectic in their willingness...