National Scholar Updates

“And afterwards, the Rabbanan Sabborai saw that Jewish women were becoming dependent upon the Gentiles to get divorces from their husbands by force … from which ruin emanates.”

—Responsum of Rav Sherira Gaon,

  Head of Academy at Pumpedita, Tenth Century[1]

Introduction[2]

            The problem of the agunah,[3] the Jewish woman whose husband will not or cannot give her a get, a religious writ of divorcement, thus forcing her to remain chained to a dead marriage, engendered enormous debate in the Orthodox Jewish community in America in the late twentieth century. The debate touched on many difficult emotional and philosophical issues for American Orthodox Jews. In an increasingly secular and rights-oriented America, the agunah issue served as a reminder that traditional Jewish thought was at ever-increasing odds with modern society. Especially as the women’s liberation movement took the national stage in the 1960s and 1970s, Orthodox women became sensitized to, and sometimes resentful of, how different their lives were under American law and Jewish law. At the same time, Orthodox rabbinic leaders saw themselves as increasingly on the defensive, fighting against feminism and other modern ideologies that, in their perception, threatened the stability of Jewish tradition. Lastly, Orthodox rabbis had to negotiate what they believed the proper relationship of the secular state apparatus should be to the internal Jewish communal problem of the agunah. All of these questions cut to the heart of how late- twentieth-century American Orthodox rabbis saw the relationship between Orthodoxy and modern America. 

The desire to differentiate themselves from the Conservative movement, and an ever-increasing fear of halakhic activism led Orthodox rabbinic leadership in America to foreswear any systemic halakhic solutions to the agunah problem by the late 1960s. However, as the Modern Orthodox community began to engage in debate about feminism and questions of equity in Jewish divorce law in the early 1970s, the Modern Orthodox rabbinate was forced to respond with some sort of a solution to the agunah problem. Seeing that Jewish women had already learned that the civil courts would assist them in obtaining their gittin, Jewish divorces, the rabbis understood that they could either let individual women access the civil courts on their own in a manner that might prove halakhically problematic, or they could channel the way Orthodox women used the civil courts to receive a get. By the mid-1990s, the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the rabbinic body of the modern/centrist Union of Orthodox Congregations of America, had supported the passage of two pieces of legislation in the State of New York and had adopted the use of a civil prenuptial agreement to be signed by couples to prevent situations of aginut, or “chained-ness.”

On the other hand, the right-wing sector of the American Orthodox rabbinate, those who maintained membership in the Agudath haRabonim or Agudath Israel organizations, never permitted a conversation about feminism to occur within their ranks. When right-wing Orthodox rabbis and community leaders discussed feminism in the twentieth century, they did so only in order to quash it as anti-Torah and destructive to Jewish tradition. Without public pressure from women within their ranks, the right-wing rabbinate did not feel the same urgency to come up with a workable solution to the agunah problem. Furthermore, right-wing Orthodox rabbis found the prospect of turning over the agunah problem to the civil courts to be potentially dangerous. Sympathy to the cause of women’s rights in state courts, they quickly realized, could undermine the power of Batei Din, Jewish courts, to decide issues of divorce law according to strict interpretations of halakha. The right-wing Orthodox rabbinate viewed the civil courts as a place for one thing only—receiving one’s civil divorce.

In one critical way, however, the Modern and right-wing Orthodox rabbinates remained unified throughout the twentieth century, and that was in their ultimate refusal to adopt a systemic halakhic solution to the agunah problem. The solutions adopted by both wings of Orthodoxy were imperfect and left many Orthodox women at the mercy of blackmailing husbands and corrupt Batei Din. Most of all, they were utterly reliant on the enforcement powers of the civil courts. In the end, feminist ferment went only so far in swaying the opinions and actions of the Orthodox rabbinate.[4]

Background: The Agunah Problem in the Modern Era

Although there is evidence of the existence of agunot in Jewish communities since the times of the Talmud, the combination of the decline of rabbinic authority and the rise in the incidence of divorce in modern European states, together with the massive Jewish migrations of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, exacerbated the problem significantly. In pre-modern Europe, Batei Din were vested with the power of the state to arbitrate litigation of a civil or religious nature for the Jewish communities. However, as Jews were emancipated in many Western European countries during the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, civil governments divested the Batei Din of their power, and expected that Jews would use state courts to settle their disputes. This led to a disintegration of Jewish communal authority that meant that a husband did not have to listen to a Bet Din that ordered him to give his wife a get. He could simply leave the religious community, move to a different jurisdiction, or even emigrate, leaving Europe for America or other countries. Such a man could even marry another woman in a new location without suffering the condemnation of rabbinic authority whence he came. This constellation of factors was toxic: When divorces were few and far between, and the Bet Din had coercive power in the Jewish community, the agunah problem was kept in check, but the greater number of divorces coupled with the ever-lessening power of the Bet Din created fertile ground for the growing of the modern agunah problem.[5]

            By the post-World War II era, due to a decline in international migration and increased affluence, occurrences of American Jewish husbands deserting their wives were becoming less prevalent. The agunah problem did not disappear, though. Instead, the majority of agunah cases became those in which a husband simply refused to grant his wife a get out of spite, or used get withholding as a tool to coerce his wife to give up claims to marital property or even custody of children.[6] Batei Din had few halakhic tools to prevent such agunah cases, and in many instances, in order to ensure that a woman would receive her get, rabbis encouraged women to submit to their husband’s financial and other demands. 

Turning to the Secular State

In 1953, in light of the new form of agunah that had emerged, the Conservative movement presented a new solution to the agunah issue. This solution became known as the “Lieberman Clause,” named after its drafter, Rabbi Saul Lieberman, the world-renowned halakhic authority and Talmud professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. This Aramaic clause, which was to be inserted into Conservative ketubot, was intended to reinvest the Bet Din with the power to order a husband to give his wife a get by using the secular courts to enforce compliance. It provided that upon civil divorce, either husband or wife could bring the other before the Conservative movement’s Bet Din for effectuation of a Jewish divorce. If either spouse either refused to appear before the Bet Din or refused to comply with the Bet Din’s order, the other spouse could seek redress in civil court. This was the first time that a body of American Jewish rabbis had created a policy that employed the secular state apparatus to assist in solving the agunah problem.[7]

            Due to the stature of Saul Lieberman, it initially appeared that the Lieberman Clause might gain traction beyond the Conservative movement. In the mid-1950s Lieberman met secretly with Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University (RIETS) to discuss creating a national Bet Din, recognized by both the Conservative and Orthodox movements as having exclusive authority with respect to issues of Jewish family law. According to the plan, Lieberman and Soloveitchik would jointly appoint the members of the Bet Din, all of whom would be Orthodox. Lieberman and Soloveitchik also agreed that the Lieberman clause would be revised to meet with Soloveitchik’s approval and included in Orthodox ketubot as well as Conservative ones. In the end, the plan never took effect because it was voted down by the RCA. Even the imprimatur of Soloveitchik was not sufficient to take away the sting of Lieberman’s participation.[8]

            Even in the Conservative movement, though, the Lieberman clause did not have the power to solve the agunah problem. Most importantly, it could only resolve agunah situations in which the couple had the clause physically present in their ketubah. Additionally, rather than presenting a systemic halakhic solution to the problem, the Lieberman clause was merely an arbitration clause that stated that the couple agreed to abide by the decisions of the Conservative Bet Din, and could enforce any Bet Din decision in civil court. The clause did not empower the Bet Din with any powers it did not previously have, neither did it present any halakhic innovation. Lastly, it was unclear whether the clause, as part of a religious document, was actually enforceable in a civil court.

            Despite the fact that the Lieberman Clause was more of a glorified arbitration clause than a halakhic innovation, both the Modern and right-wing Orthodox rabbinate united in strong and unyielding opposition to it. The RCA and the Rabbinical Alliance of America Bet Din issued a joint statement forbidding their members from officiating at any ceremony using the revised ketubah, and declaring that they would not recognize as valid any acts or decisions of the Conservative Bet Din. The statement warned that remarrying based on any such divorce could endanger the religious status of offspring of the new union.[9] The right-wing Agudath haRabanim also issued a scathing statement against the Lieberman clause, labeling Conservative rabbis “porshim miDarkei haTzibbur” (seceders from the correct ways of religious Jewry) and ordering that they not “be entrusted with any rabbinic functions.”[10]

But the Orthodox response extended beyond a halakhic critique. Herbert Berman, lawyer for the “Orthodox groups” opposing the Lieberman clause said that in addition to the halakhic problems, the clause created “serious legal problems” by potentially breaching the First Amendment by putting a secular court in the position of having to enforce the decision of a religious body, i.e., the Bet Din.[11] In a similar vein, Yeshiva University published a short pamphlet in 1955 entitled “New Provisions in the Ketubah: A Legal Opinion” in which legal scholar A. Leo Levin and Rabbi Mayer Kramer outlined ostensive legal problems with the Lieberman clause. In the introduction, Rabbi Morris Finer, Director of the Community Service Division of Yeshiva University laid bare the real reason behind the publication, declaring, “It is devoutly to be hoped that a viable solution might be developed, one that would be acceptable to the Orthodox rabbinate which alone possesses the collective scholarship and the religious authority to deal with the matter.”[12] While the legal questions raised by Orthodox leaders were valid—the Lieberman Clause had not yet been tested in any civil court, and would not be tested until the late 1980s—the way Orthodox leaders raised them showed that they meant to discredit the clause, not to engage in serious legal debate about a potential solution to aginut.

Meanwhile, individual Orthodox women began to realize that they could turn to another forum to seek receipt of a get—the civil courts. In 1954, a Queens, New York, trial court issued a significant decision in a divorce case called Koeppel v. Koeppel. Maureen and William Koeppel had entered into a post-nuptial contract that specified that each of them would appear before a Bet Din to execute a get. Maureen Koeppel filed suit against William Koeppel for refusing to abide by this contract. The court did not view the contract as constitutionally problematic, noting that “[c]omplying with his agreement would not compel the defendant to practice any religion. … Specific performance herein would merely require the defendant to do what he voluntarily agreed to do.”[13] Although the trial court ultimately dismissed Maureen Koeppel’s complaint for specific performance of the contract because she had already remarried at a ceremony officiated at by a Reform rabbi, it had, at least in theory, upheld an agreement to give a get. [14]

            The Koeppel case was significant on two levels. First, it showed that the secular courts would, in theory, uphold a contract to ensure the effectuation of a get.  However, there was a darker side to the Koeppel decision for the Orthodox rabbinate. The secular court did not understand, neither did it care, that according to Orthodox Jewish law, the Koeppels (especially Maureen) still needed a get to remarry. The fact that Maureen Koeppel managed to find a rabbi to remarry her did not change that reality. Indeed, any children born to Maureen Koeppel and her new husband would be mamzerim, and would not be allowed to marry anyone but other mamzerim under Orthodox and Conservative Jewish law. Therefore, if the secular court system was to be an acceptable agent for the Orthodox rabbinate in ameliorating the agunah crisis, it would have to be under very strict supervision of Orthodox rabbis.

            The combination of the Conservative movement’s adoption of the Lieberman Clause and the Koeppel decision evidenced a new trend of turning to the secular courts for assistance in solving the agunah problem. The secular court solution might have initially seemed unseemly to Orthodox leaders because the Conservative movement was the first to raise it, and because it certainly posed significant halakhic challenges. However, Orthodox rabbis began to realize that if they could shape how the secular courts assisted agunot, use of the secular legal system could prove extremely productive. Indeed, the first record of an American Orthodox rabbi suggesting the use of the secular courts as an avenue to help agunot occurred in the same year as the Koeppel court decision and the adoption of the Lieberman clause. None other than Rabbi Soloveitchik wondered:

[W]ould it not be possible through the legislatures of certain states to have legislation passed whereby there will be an understanding that a civil divorce would not become final until a satisfactory disposition, in keeping with halakhic standards, was made concerning the get?[15]

Secular legislation that comported with halakha would be the best of all worlds: Orthodox rabbis could solve the agunah problem without having to take a halakhic stand, and at the same time, could ensure that the state did not create more halakhic problems than it solved.

            Before the Orthodox rabbinate could proceed along this path, however, it was faced with responding to a proposed systemic halakhic solution.[16] In a book published in 1966 called T’nai Be-Nisuin U’ve-Get (Conditional Clause in the Marriage and Divorce Agreements), Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits, a Modern-Centrist Orthodox rabbi and scholar, presented a number of different possible halakhic solutions to the agunah problem, all of which were based in some way on making the nisuin, or the Jewish marriage, conditional. One solution Berkovits proposed was that the validity of a marriage would be made contingent on an agreement that the marriage would be invalidated if two years after its civil dissolution, the husband refused to give his wife a get. Another, based on the talmudic principle that “whoever marries does so with the agreement of the rabbis,” provided that the Bet Din could have the power to annul marriages under certain particular circumstances to be determined by halakhic authorities.[17]

            Initially, Berkovits’ proposals seemed to meet with lukewarm support from Orthodox rabbis. The revered European halakhist Rabbi Yehiel Yakov Weinberg responded to the book with cautious approval.[18] He wrote an extensive approbation in which he emphasized the importance of addressing the agunah problem, particularly at that time when more and more husbands were refusing to grant their wives gittin, and more and more women were simply remarrying in civil ceremonies.[19] In a similar vein, Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, the newly appointed Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, in a review of Berkovits’ book in 1966, noted that although the book would “no doubt meet with much determined opposition,” he hoped it would “be a powerful impetus to an intensified search for procedures” to solve the agunah problem.”[20]

However, Berkovits’ proposals soon met their demise. In 1968, the Conservative movement, discouraged by the failure of the Lieberman Clause to solve the agunah problem, adopted a combination of two of Berkovits’ proposals as law.[21] The Conservative Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards unanimously voted to adopt the insertion of a clause into the ketubah that made marriage conditional upon the husband granting a get without six months of a civil divorce. If the husband did not grant the get, then the bet din had the power to annul the marriage. This clause put an end to the agunah problem in the Conservative movement once and for all. Following the Conservative movement’s decision, Orthodox thinkers began to speak more critically regarding Berkovits’s proposals. In 1969, Menachem Kasher an Orthodox rabbi and editor of Noam, an annual journal on Orthodox Jewish thought, published an article forcefully attacking Berkovits’s book. The article included a letter from Rabbi Weinberg stating that he regretted ever having written his approbation in support of Berkovits’ book to begin with. The letter stated:

At the time that I wrote my letter, I was unaware of the discussion that had occurred in America…. Furthermore, I am surprised that the author [Berkovits], who certainly knew of the entire correspondence in this matter, dragged me into this controversy. Because of my poor health, I am not capable now of dealing with a matter of such serious implications and I regret ever having written the letter to him.[22]

As Marc Shapiro relates in a lengthy footnote in his book on Rabbi Weinberg, there is strong evidence, although no proof, that Kasher forged the letter. Until the end of his life, Berkovits claimed that the letter was a forgery, and Kasher never produced the original.[23] Whether or not the letter published by Kasher was forged, the damage to Berkovits’s work was done. Future writings by Orthodox rabbis regarding the agunah issue either categorically rejected Berkovits’s proposals or ignored them entirely.[24]         

            Thus, in the early 1970s, the agunah problem in America remained as unsolved as ever in Orthodox Judaism. Orthodox rabbis bemoaned the plight of the agunah, and some worked to solve individual cases for individual women, but no one offered any systemic solutions.[25] Luckily for the Orthodox rabbinate, divorce was still relatively rare among Orthodox Jews, and communal knowledge about the agunah issue was spotty at best. However, another element was about to be introduced into the agunah debate—the advent of Orthodox feminism. Whereas previously, it was non-Orthodox Jews who complained about the inequality of Jewish divorce law, the 1970s saw the emergence of a critique by individuals who remained squarely within the Centrist Orthodox camp.

This phenomenon caused a two-pronged response. On the one hand, a feminist critique from within could not be shut down by simply claiming that the speakers were outside the pale of Orthodoxy. The agitators were the wives, mothers, and daughters of Orthodox rabbis, leaders, donors, and synagogue members. They could not be dismissed that easily. On the other hand, if not properly answered, feminism could cause significant damage to Orthodoxy by weakening the faith and commitment of those who had become sensitized to issues regarding equality of women. Over the next two decades, Centrist Orthodox rabbis learned to tread carefully around the feminist issue, both invalidating feminist arguments and incorporating more pro-woman language into Orthodox discourse at the same time.

Although the women’s liberation movement began in America in the early 1960s, feminist ideas took some time to percolate into the socially conservative and traditional Orthodox community. By 1972, however, discussions of women’s rights within Orthodox Judaism had become prevalent enough to be covered by the New York Times. One young Orthodox woman, Deborah Weissman, stated, “Most of us have had these feelings of being left out but we never conceptualized them. The women’s movement has galvanized us.” Defining Weissman’s statements as evidence of a new trend, the article went on to quote Dr. Irving Greenberg, a left-leaning Centrist Orthodox rabbi in Riverdale, New York, who noted:

At one time most people who felt strongly about such things checked out of the religion. Now we have people who are not leaving but are committed to the Orthodox experience and are challenging from within… they are ahead of their time, but I think they are the spearhead.”[26]

Although feminist ferment had already reached the Reform and Conservative movements of Judaism, the critique noticed by Greenberg was new both because it came from within Orthodoxy and because those engaged in it refused to leave. Rather than seeking greener pastures in a more liberal branch of American Judaism or by leaving Judaism altogether, these women wanted to see change within Orthodoxy.[27]

            It was not long before a modern Orthodox thinker explicitly labeled the agunah problem as a feminist issue. In a seminal 1973 essay, the left-leaning Rabbi Saul Berman, Chair of the Judaic Studies Department at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University, engaged in a critical exploration of women’s issues in Orthodox Judaism. Linking the agunah issue to the feminist critique of Orthodoxy, Berman declared, “From her complete silence at the traditional wedding ceremony, to the problem of the Agunah, the law seems to make women not only passive, but impotent to remedy the marital tragedies in which they may be involved….” He suggested a turn to the civil courts to “solve our problem for us” with the use of an ante-nuptial agreement that would require the parties to, at the dissolution of a marriage, “consent to and execute the issuance and acceptance of the Jewish divorce.”[28]

In the same year that Berman’s article appeared in Tradition, three different divorce cases addressing issues with respect to agunot were reported by New York courts.[29] Orthodox Jews were not immune to the increase in divorce rates in 1970s America, and as more Orthodox divorces made their way through the civil court system, the courts had more and more opportunities to weigh in on the agunah issue.[30] The decisions in these three cases would have a significant impact on the way the Modern/Centrist Orthodox community viewed the agunah problem. More than ever before, Modern/Centrist Orthodox rabbis would advocate a turn to the civil justice system to solve the problem for them, and more than ever before, they would realize how important it was for their hands to be guiding that system’s efforts.

The first of the three cases, Margulies v. Margulies, involved a stipulation signed by the couple after their divorce that provided that the husband would grant his wife a get. The husband failed to comply with this stipulation, and was held in contempt of court, for which he was fined, and ultimately sentenced to jail for fifteen days. Although the Appellate Division overturned the incarceration order, it replaced it with a $450 fine, stating “…[W]e can only conclude that the defendant never intended to carry out the terms of the open court stipulation and that he utilized the court for his own ulterior motives. Such behavior may not be countenanced.”[31] Later that same year, in a case called Rubin v. Rubin, a Bronx, New York, court cited Koeppel in upholding a couple’s post-nuptial agreement to give a get, stating explicitly that the New York courts “have recognized the validity of an agreement to obtain a Get.”

In Pal v. Pal, the last agunah case reported in 1973, the trial court upheld a post-nuptial agreement that not only specified that the parties had to effectuate a get, but also detailed how the rabbis on the Bet Din should be selected.[32] On appeal, the Appellate Division reversed, holding that the trial court “had no authority to, in effect, convene a rabbinical tribunal.” Because the trial court has interfered in the actual get giving process, a religious procedure, it had strayed into forbidden territory. However, it went on to say that the husband, by failing to grant his ex-wife a get in keeping with the divorce judgment, did not come into court with “clean hands.” Thus, while the court refused to uphold the trial court’s interference in the actual convening of a Bet Din, it also was unwilling to let Mr. Pal get away with refusing to grant his former wife a get as had been ordered.[33]

All three of these court cases showed that, at least in theory, New York courts were willing to enforce agreements to render a get. Orthodox rabbis concerned with the agunah problem took note, and began to ponder how the civil courts could best assist them in encouraging recalcitrant husbands to grant their wives gittin. One of the first ideas explored by Orthodox rabbis was the implementation of ante-nuptial agreements, as Saul Berman had suggested in his 1973 article on women’s rights. Ante-nuptial agreements in contemplation of divorce had, up until this point, been considered void by most states because they were deemed contrary to public policy for giving incentive to divorce. However, the law with respect to such agreements was changing in the early 1970s due to the increased social acceptability of divorce and the corresponding surge in divorce cases. The Modern/Centrist Orthodox community had taken notice of the new legal acceptability of such agreements, and rabbis published a number of articles in the early 1970s exploring the halakhic and legal ramifications of using some type of prenuptial agreement to prevent situations of aginut.[34] As divorce rates continued to rise, and rabbis from liberal branches of Judaism increasingly performed weddings for couples no matter the status of their previous marriages, Orthodox rabbis feared that if they did not figure out a way to solve the agunah problem, they would be faced with scores of mamzerim in the coming generations.[35] Furthermore, rabbis perceived the feminist critique of Orthodox divorce law as a threat to the stability of the Orthodox community. At the same time, however, Orthodox rabbis did not want to be seen as caving in to pressure from the feminist community, and they feared systemic halakhic solutions that empowered the Bet Din to grant a get when a husband was unable or unwilling to do so. Thus, any solution to the agunah problem would have to tow a fine line between solving the problem and not appearing too radical or transformative of normative Orthodox practice.[36]

Thus, while pressure by feminists and agunah activists on Orthodox rabbis to free agunot continued to increase during the 1970s and 1980s, the pressure did not lead to their desired results. Although the Orthodox rabbinate increasingly discussed more global solutions to the agunah problem in addition to its traditional focus on getting individual recalcitrant husbands to grant gittin, the solutions they came up with not only lacked effectiveness, but also outsourced the problem to the secular courts. At the same time, centrist rabbinic leaders maintained a constant barrage of criticism toward feminists and agunah activists for undermining God’s will and millennia of Jewish life and law.  

One of the first rabbinic responses to the link between feminism and the agunah problem was penned by Moshe Meiselman, then-Rosh Yeshiva at the Yeshivath Brisk in Chicago. Discounting Saul Berman’s feminist critique of Orthodox theology, Meiselman sneered, “What are the forces of the male dominated society of which Rabbi Berman speaks? They are none other than the Almighty Himself and the divinely inspired Psalmist, David, King of Israel.” Protesting that Orthodox Judaism was already sufficiently concerned with the lot of women, Meiselman declared, “It goes without saying that we must be concerned with the religious quest and observance of women. It also goes without saying, something that Rabbi Berman implicitly seems to deny, that this has always been true of religious leaders throughout the millennia.”[37] With respect to the agunah issue, Meiselman dismissed Berman’s potential solution of an ante-nuptial agreement out of hand. Like the Orthodox critique of the Lieberman clause, Meiselman couched his dismissal of the idea in both halakhic and legal terms. “One does not arrive at solutions as quickly and easily as Rabbi Berman suggests,” he scorned:

His form of antenuptial agreement, I have been told, would not be upheld in court. A secular court cannot enforce a contract to perform a religious act. While there are countless varieties of antenuptial agreements that could be drawn up, I seriously tend to doubt that most people would sign them.

Meiselman’s comments about the legal validity of ante-nuptial agreements were, of course, flawed. By 1975, the New York State courts had made it quite clear that they would, in fact, enforce a properly-worded contract to effectuate the giving of a get. Meiselman’s response to the agunah problem was to discount any proposed solution.[38]

            Meanwhile, the New York State courts continued to uphold agreements to effectuate gittin. In the 1976 case of Waxstein v. Waxstein, the court enforced a provision in the couple’s separation agreement requiring the husband to grant his wife a get, stating unequivocally, “A separation agreement is a contract, and if lawful when made will be enforced by the courts like any other contract….” The Appellate Division unanimously upheld the trial court’s ruling, and the Court of Appeals denied Arthur Waxstein’s motion for leave to appeal. The Waxstein decision left no question that the New York State courts were willing to enforce agreements to give a get.[39] 

At the same time, Orthodox Jews, especially women, were speaking out more and more about issues that troubled them in Orthodox Judaism, particularly the situation of agunot. The year 1977 saw a rash of articles in Jewish publications about women’s issues in traditional Judaism, and particularly about Jewish divorce law. One author, Blu Greenberg, who later became known as the “mother of Orthodox feminism,”[40] criticized the Orthodox rabbinate for inaccurately portraying Jewish law with respect to agunot, declaring, “men can no longer decide that it’s alright for women to suffer indiscriminately.”[41] At the 1977 RCA Annual Convention, the rabbinical organization took the unprecedented step of organizing a public session on issues of women and Orthodox Judaism. The all-male panel of three found themselves facing the difficult questions of rabbis’ wives, angry about the plight of agunot.[42]

More than just talking, Orthodox women were beginning to organize. In 1979, a group of women from the Young Israel of Flatbush in Brooklyn, New York founded an organization called Getting Equitable Treatment, or G.E.T. Gloria Greenman, the founder and first president said, “We were commiserating over a friend’s daughter (who had been unable to obtain a get), and I just said, ‘Let’s stop talking, let’s do something.’” The organization assisted women through the Bet Din process and advocated for the social shunning of recalcitrant husbands, including preventing them from receiving synagogue honors. By 1984 the organization had 400 members, most of whom were Orthodox. Greenman noted that G.E.T. had wrought significant changes in the attitudes of the rabbis. “The rabbis have felt the need more than ever to do something,” she observed.[43] 

            However, at least in writing, much of the Centrist Orthodox leadership claimed to be uninfluenced by feminist ferment. In 1978, Yeshiva University Press published a book as part of its Library of Jewish Law and Ethics that it touted as an “in-depth treatment of Jewish feminism.” The book, entitled Jewish Woman in Jewish Law, was written by Moshe Meiselman, the same rabbi who had critiqued Saul Berman’s piece on Orthodox women’s issues in 1975 and sported an Editor’s Forward written by Norman Lamm, the President of Yeshiva University.[44] Arguing that feminism “is based on a very definite value structure which is at odds with Jewish values on a number of basic points,” Meiselman defended the Orthodox status quo regarding the agunah problem, dismissing all those who had, throughout the past century, attempted to suggest systemic halakhic solutions as being “not sufficiently versed in the Jewish marriage and divorce laws.”[45] 

            After scathing critiques of the Lieberman and Berkovits proposals, Meiselman concluded, “The only remedy that seems to be consistent with Jewish law is the one specifically suggested by the Talmud—the use of the secular judicial system.”[46] However, although he reviewed in detail the New York case law on the subject, Meiselman equivocated even about this possible solution. “At this time,” he wrote, “it is still unclear what direction the courts will take.” “Fortunately,” Meiselman reassured his readers, “cases where husbands refuse to grant divorces when required by Jewish law are few and far between, and a beth-din very often has sufficient power, by using social pressure, to secure compliance with its decision.”[47]

Unwittingly, Meiselman created a template for the late twentieth century American Orthodox party line in his analysis of the agunah problem. He created a pattern of (1) discounting any systemic halakhic solution, (2) minimizing the problem, (3) calling for a solution that used the secular judicial system, and (4) refusing to outline what such a solution might look like. Meiselman’s book did not bring the Orthodox establishment any closer to solving the agunah problem; it simply supported the status-quo. However, in one way Meiselman’s book represented a sea change: By the late 1970s, the Centrist Orthodox rabbinate was addressing the feminist critique of Orthodoxy and the issue of agunot more frequently and in a more in-depth fashion than ever before. While solutions were not forthcoming, the issue was no longer being ignored.[48]

The arguments of Meiselman and others like him did not stop the feminist critique of Orthodoxy. In 1981, Blu Greenberg published a book on Orthodox feminism entitled On Women and Judaism, in which she devoted an extensive chapter to the issue of divorce in Jewish law. After reviewing the history of rabbinic debate over the issue, Greenberg called for a systemic halakhic solution to solve the problem once and for all. To rabbinic leadership who would call her ideas anti-halakhic, Greenberg responded thus:

To say [rabbis’] hands are tied, or to say they can resolve an individual problem, but not find a global solution, is to deny their collective responsibility. Worse, it bespeaks a lack of rabbinic will to find a halakhic way. What they are really saying is they are not worthy of the authority vested in them, for well they know that the only person whose hands are tied is the woman whose family must pay blackmail.

Greenberg went on to warn rabbis of the potential results of their inaction: “Growing numbers of Jews [will] solve their problems elsewhere.”[49] The fact that Tradition published two extensive reviews critiquing Greenberg’s book showed that hers was a voice that the Orthodox rabbinate could not ignore.[50]

            Interestingly, however, when rabbis finally acted to implement some solution to the agunah problem, the action did not come from the centrist camp, but rather from the right-wing Agudath Israel. A number of reasons likely contributed to this development. First, even in the early 1980s the Agudah still had more experience advocating for specifically Orthodox Jewish causes in the public sphere than the RCA or OU.[51] Additionally, while Centrist Orthodox rabbis remained fearful of appearing to cave to feminist pressure, right-wing Orthodox rabbis were sufficiently distanced from feminist ferment. Lastly, Centrist Orthodox rabbis were far more concerned with their standing in the eyes of the right wing than vice-versa, and likely feared the reaction of the right to any solution they might raise to the agunah problem.

In 1981, the same year as Greenberg’s book was published, Rabbi Moshe Sherer, President of Agudath Israel of America, gathered a group of nationally-known Jewish lawyers, Alan Dershowitz, Nathan Lewin, and Aaron Twersky at the Agudah’s offices in New York City. Sherer, who had close connections with Speaker of the New York State Assembly Sheldon Silver, believed he could get some form of legislation passed in this area, and he wanted these lawyers to help him come up with what the legislation should be.[52] The proposed law ultimately drafted by the group required the filing of an affidavit by the plaintiff in any divorce action that stated that “to the best of his or her knowledge, he or she has … taken all steps solely within his or her power to remove all barriers to the defendant's remarriage….; or that the defendant has waived in writing the requirements of this subdivision.”[53] Before sending it to Sheldon Silver, the Agudah sent the draft bill for approval by rabbinic heavyweights including Rabbi Moses Feinstein. All the rabbis consulted gave the bill their stamp of approval, assuring that a get given as a result of this law would not qualify as a halakhically invalid “get meuseh,” a coerced get.

Despite several objections on church-state separation grounds, the Get Bill passed with ease through the New York State Legislature and was signed into law by Governor Mario Cuomo on August 10, 1983.[54] At the ceremonial signing of the bill into law, Sherer triumphantly declared, “This is a happy day for many sad people.” The Centrist Orthodox rabbinate also touted the new law. The Orthodox Union, at its 84^th National Convention in 1983, passed a resolution entitled “Divorce,” which read:

All member congregations are urged to deny the benefits of membership; and community sanction to men who refuse to grant their wives a get following civil divorces….The Orthodox Union and its constituent synagogues shall work to create legislation in all states comparable to New York’s [Get] Law, which seeks to ensure that all impediments to a successful civil divorce, including the granting of a get, are removed before a divorce is granted.

The publicity surrounding the law said nothing about the possibility of halakhic solutions to the problem. Indeed, the Agudah scored a public relations coup, portrayed in the press as an activist and politically savvy organization that used its power to help agunot.[55]

Notwithstanding all the hoopla surrounding passage of the 1983 Get Law, the actual effectiveness of the law was minimal at best. The law was only effective against plaintiffs in civil divorce actions in the State of New York. Thus, in the far more common situation in which the recalcitrant husband was the defendant in the divorce action, he would not be required to file an affidavit before receiving his divorce. And of course, the law could do nothing to help women seeking a get outside New York. In the wake of the passage of the 1983 Get Law, the only solutions offered by the Orthodox rabbinate for the plight of agunot were communal sanctions, and the largely ineffective law itself. [56]

At the same time, Centrist Orthodox rabbis continued to rail against feminists and their arguments on behalf of agunot. Rabbi Emanuel Feldman, the Associate Editor of Tradition published a contemptuous critique of Blu Greenberg’s On Women and Judaism in 1984. He scathingly declared the book to be

a recounting of feminist arguments of the most conforming sort, papered over with occasional halakhic rhetoric which barely conceals that which lies underneath: imprecise scholarship, slippery logic, and major conclusions often based on nothing more than personal feelings, emotions and intuitions.[57]

Feldman concluded that Greenberg’s book was “an object lesson in how not to approach the halakhic system,” one that created “a web of confusion in which halakhah—and ultimately, women themselves—emerge the losers.”[58]

However, another response to feminist ferment also emerged. The OU began to take pains to be seen as concerned with women’s status in Orthodox Judaism. That same year, it passed a resolution entitled “The Orthodox Woman in Contemporary Society” which read:

The Orthodox Union supports women in their ongoing quest for greater involvement within the Orthodox community.… Rabbis and congregations are urged to seek to increase the participation of women in Torah study programs.… Member congregations shall take all necessary steps to enable female members to participate more fully in synagogue programs.

Such a resolution, although toothless, portrayed to the Orthodox rank-and-file that their rabbinate was concerned with women’s issues and helped bolster arguments that the Orthodox rabbinate was not ignoring women’s complaints about Orthodox Judaism.

Meanwhile, in 1983 the highest court in New York State issued the strongest statement of any American civil court yet about the enforceability of an agreement to give a get. The case, Avitzur v. Avitzur, interestingly involved a couple who had been married using the Conservative ketubah that incorporated the Lieberman Clause into its text. Following the couple’s civil divorce in 1978, Boaz Avitzur refused to comply with the Lieberman Clause and grant his ex-wife a get. The case ultimately ended up in the Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York State, which ruled that the Lieberman Clause of the ketubah was enforceable just like any other contract; there was “nothing in law or public policy to prevent judicial recognition and enforcement of the secular terms of such an agreement.”[59] Boaz Avitzur appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States which declined to hear the case, thus allowing the decision of the Court of Appeals to stand.

As the first decision by the highest court of any state to address issues of get acquisition, Avitzur was closely watched by the Orthodox community.[60] It did not take long for Orthodox leadership to analyze the meaning of Avitzur from both a legal and halakhic perspective. Amazingly, such analyses often continued to discount the possibility of using a civil agreement to ameliorate the agunah problem. Rabbi J. David Bleich, now a Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva University, reiterated the oft-stated Orthodox rabbinic claim that “there were, and indeed still are—many serious questions regarding the enforceability of [an ante-nuptial] agreement in civil courts.” Such arguments held little water in the wake of Avitzur, a fact Bleich begrudgingly admitted when he wrote that the decision in Avitzur “serves to endow this document with some legal authority.” [61]

In the years following the Avitzur decision, though, due to continued pressure from women within their ranks and incontrovertible evidence of acceptability from civil courts, Centrist Orthodox rabbis became increasingly open to the idea of prenuptial agreements, even if not in the form taken by the Lieberman Clause. Indeed, J. David Bleich himself published an article in Tradition in 1986 arguing in favor of a particular format for a prenuptial agreement which he argued would address both halakhic and American legal issues.[62] A few years later, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, a well-respected member of the Centrist Orthodox rabbinate’s more liberal wing, published a book entitled Women and Jewish Divorce: The Rebellious Wife, The Agunah and the Right of Women to Initiate Divorce in Jewish Law, a Halakhic Solution. The book argued for a systemic halakhic solution to the agunah problem, but realizing that adoption of any such solution would be nearly impossible, Riskin concluded with a far more practical call for the use of prenuptial agreements that would cause a husband to pay his wife a specific sum on a daily basis until he gave her a get.[63]

As Centrist Orthodoxy warmed to the idea of prenuptial agreements to prevent agunot, right-wing Orthodoxy continued to avoid acknowledging the extent of the agunah problem and remained steadfast in its opposition to any innovation to solve it other than communal sanctions and the 1983 New York Get Law. In a 1988 Jewish Observer article dedicated to discussion of marital problems and divorce in the Orthodox world, Aaron Twerski, one of the attorneys who had worked on the 1983 Get Law, came out staunchly against taking divorce disputes to civil court. While Orthodox agunah activists had often claimed that the Bet Din system favored men over women, Twerski assured his readers that “in fact, batei din that deal with family law problems are staffed with fine, ehrliche rabbanim—men of integrity who do their utmost to deal with the issues honestly, conscientiously, and in a manner consistent with Torah principles.” Not once in the entire article did Twerski mention the word “get” or “agunah,” although he discussed many other issues that could arise in a matrimonial dispute, including counseling, child custody battles, and impact of divorce upon children.[64]

The Agudah also worked to discredit feminists who criticized the rabbis for not solving the agunah problem. In 1990, the Jewish Observer published an article by Rabbi Yissochar Frand that was a scathing critique of feminism in general, and Blu Greenberg specifically. Frand firmly closed the door on the possibility of any halakhic innovation to assist agunot, declaring emphatically, “What was assur (forbidden) yesterday, remains assur today, and what is mutar (permitted) today was always mutar…. Halacha is not an amorphous area wherein changing social needs can be legislated….” Railing against feminism as a “subtle and insidious” threat to Judaism, Frand discounted feminist critiques of the Orthodox rabbinate’s failure to help agunot. He objected that the rabbis cared enormously about agunot, relating a hagiographic story that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein suffered from a stomach ailment that flared up each time he had to deal with an agunah question.  “Yet,” he protested, “these militant feminists claim that the rabbis don’t care!” Like his rabbinic predecessors had done with respect to other civil court solutions, Frand insisted that “according to legal experts in the U.S., this type of [ante-nuptial] agreement is probably not enforceable in most jurisdictions.” Frand’s solution to the agunah problem was social ostracism until the husband gives a get. He admitted that a recalcitrant husband could go to a different community and avoid such punishment, and also that there were cases in which such a “scoundrel could buy… himself a beis din which rules in his favor.” Despite this, Frand concluded his discussion by invalidating any legal or halakhic solution to the agunah problem, saying that Orthodox Jews “must continue to seek social cures for what is essentially a social malaise.”[65]

Such arguments were no longer working for many Orthodox women denied a get, and they and their attorneys increasingly turned to civil courts to obtain relief. The courts responded. In 1992, a New York Appellate Division decision called Golding v. Golding opened a window into the internal workings of some Batei Din during agunah cases. David Golding told his wife that he would not give her a get unless she gave into every demand he made with respect to the divorce settlement. The parties appeared before a Bet Din, and the rabbis presented Mrs. Golding with a document in Hebrew listing all of her husband’s demands and told her to sign it or she would not receive her get. Fearing becoming an agunah, Mrs. Golding signed the document. The court held that the settlement was invalid because it constituted “inequitable conduct” and that there had been “no indication of rabbinical arbitration.” Despite the evident coercion that existed in the Golding case, an Orthodox rabbi quoted by the New York Times in an article about the decision continued to claim that Batei Din took care to make sure that women would not be victimized by any “spitefulness or revenge on the part of husbands.”[66]

Cases like Golding were embarrassing to the Orthodox rabbinate. Not only did they portray Jewish divorce law as inequitable and unfair to women, they also exposed the failings of some Batei Din to act ethically in protecting women’s rights. While the Agudah continued to deny the existence of a problem, the Modern/Centrist Orthodox rabbinate, with its more rights-oriented congregants, was no longer able to do so. Thus, in 1991, as the trial court’s decision in the Golding case was winding its way through the Appellate Division, the RCA issued a resolution acknowledging the abuses taking place, and acknowledging that such abuses were a “chillul Hashem,” an embarrassment to the Jewish community. Among other things, the resolution called for the RCA Halacha Committee to develop a legally and halakhically valid pre- or post-nuptial contract that would help solve the agunah problem, and condemned “in the strongest terms” using the withholding of a get as a form of blackmail. This was the strongest institutional statement yet to come from an Orthodox rabbinic body acknowledging the existence of a serious problem of abuse of the get process.[67]

As the RCA was passing its 1991 resolution, a New York state trial court was hearing another agunah case that would soon become notorious in the Orthodox world. The case, Schwartz v. Schwartz, involved the divorce of a well-known couple in the Orthodox community—Naomi Schwartz’s father was the publisher of the national Centrist Orthodox weekly newspaper, The Jewish Press. Her husband, Yehuda Schwartz refused to give her a get unless she turned over a large number of shares in the Jewish Press. The case was splashed across the pages of the Jewish Press for close to a year, and was even picked up by other mainstream New York periodicals.

More than any previous agunah case, Schwartz v. Schwartz raised awareness in the American Jewish community and in New York State at large, about the agunah problem and the suffering of agunot. Articles about the case related in lurid detail the regularly-occurring instances of husbands blackmailing their wives to turn over property and large sums of money in exchange for a get. One article in the Village Voice detailed the particularly egregious case of a man who was separated from his Holocaust-survivor wife. The man refused to give his wife a get unless she turned over the money she received in war reparations from the Germans. Another article, published in New York Magazine, detailed the story of a woman whose husband was withholding her get. As the article related, the woman ended up receiving the get because her husband “dragged her for a block as she held on to the open door of his car, breaking her leg. She got her get after giving him $15,000 and agreeing not to file assault charges.” The press depicted the Orthodox rabbinate as sexist and patriarchal, and therefore unwilling to find solutions to such abuses.[68]

Ultimately, the court in Schwartz v. Schwartz, pointedly noting “the unequal allocation of power between spouses to terminate a religious marriage—particularly where the partners are of the Jewish faith,” allowed Naomi Schwartz to bring in evidence of Yehuda Schwartz’s coercion and withholding of the get at the future hearing on property division.[69] At that hearing, the court held that, because he withheld the get, Yehuda Schwartz forfeited his claim to a substantial amount of marital property totaling $184,500. In the interim, in October 1993, he finally gave his former wife her get.[70] 

In the wake of the Schwartz ruling, Sheldon Silver, the New York State Assemblyman who had proposed the 1983 Get Law, proposed another bill to assist agunot. This bill essentially codified the holding of the Schwartz court, providing that a judge could consider the existence of a barrier to remarriage as a factor in the distribution of assets in a divorce action in the State of New York. It was passed unanimously by both the Assembly and the Senate in 1992, and was signed into law by Governor Cuomo later that year. As in the case of the 1983 Get Law, Orthodox organizations sent letters to the governor urging him to sign the new get bill into law. However, this time, there was a glaring difference: while three centrist Orthodox organizations—COLPA, the National Council of Young Israel, and the OU—wrote in support of the law, the Agudah did not. Indeed, the Agudah strongly opposed the law, even threatening to fight for its repeal, because its rabbinic leadership felt that it would cause violations of the prohibition against a get meuseh, a coerced get. If a husband faced financial repercussions for withholding a get, the right-wing Orthodox rabbinate argued, this constituted coercion on him. Since a get meuseh was halakhically invalid, the 1992 Get Law could cause the invalidation of numerous gittin, with all the requisite problems such invalidation would create.[71] 

The Agudah’s articulation of its opposition to the law showed its hostility toward feminist activists as well as its ongoing passivity regarding any possible solution to the agunah problem. In a 1993 Jewish Observer article, Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, the Director of Government Affairs and General Counsel for the Agudah, acknowledged the existence of an agunah problem, but quickly added:

To be sure, there is ample basis to cast a skeptical eye on the claims that have been advanced by certain “aguna activists” about the alleged magnitude of the problem within the Orthodox Jewish community. There is also good reason to beware the larger agenda of the some of these activists, whose rhetoric often cultivates disrespect for established halachic procedures and rabbinic leaders, and who use the aguna issue to promote some of the most insidious anti-Torah values of contemporary secular feminism.

Zweibel went on to argue that “there are situations where a husband may be fully justified in not wanting to give his wife a get, or where a wife is not entirely without blame herself for her husband’s recalcitrance.” Although he closed by reminding readers that “we must not lost sight of the seriousness of the aguna problem and of the urgent moral imperative it places on us,” Zwiebel did not offer any solution to the agunah problem; he simply discredited the 1992 Get Law and those who supported it and renewed the decades-old vague call for rabbis to give “careful study” to proposed solutions.[72]

The 1992 New York Get Law proved far more effective than its 1983 predecessor in addressing individual cases in which a recalcitrant husband refused to give his wife a get, however it, too, was limited in its ability to systemically solve the agunah problem. First, it only affected divorce cases filed in the State of New York. While the vast majority of Orthodox Jews in America lived in New York, there were certainly large Orthodox communities in other states with agunot who could not be helped by the New York Get Laws. Furthermore, the 1992 law would do nothing to assist an agunah who had no significant marital assets at issue. Without the division of the marital estate to hold over a recalcitrant husband’s head, there would be no economic impetus for him to grant his wife a get. The same held true for very wealthy men who had retained assets outside their marriages. Such men would not need the assets from their marriage, and thus would not be pushed to give gittin to their former wives.

While agunah activists celebrated the 1992 Get Law, they also recognized its shortcomings and continued to argue for a systemic halakhic solution to the problem. As the ranks of activists grew through the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Modern/Centrist Orthodox rabbinate found it more and more difficult to ignore or discredit their voices. In addition to G.E.T., another agunah rights group called Agunah, Inc. had been founded in 1987 by a group of Orthodox women agunah activists, including Rivka Haut. Whereas G.E.T. worked behind the scenes to advocate for individual women to receive their gittin, Agunah, Inc. took a more activist path. Women from Agunah, Inc. spoke out frequently about Batei Din that permitted husbands to blackmail their wives in return for a get, and issued repeated calls for systemic halakhic action on the part of the Orthodox rabbinate to solve the agunah crisis. They led protests in the streets of Brooklyn, in front of the homes of recalcitrant husbands, and even at two of Agudath Israel’s Annual Conventions. On a more national level, a 1989 documentary about Jewish feminism in the United States, Canada, and Israel presented Orthodox feminist Alice Shalvi publicly calling Orthodox rabbis to task for not working harder to solve the agunah problem. “If the rabbis really heeded the basic meaning of Judaism,” she declared, “they could not possibly behave in as uncompassionate a manner as they do without relating to the pain and … misery” of agunot.[73]

 Thus, as feminist ferment and publicity about the agunah problem continued to grow and spread, the Centrist Orthodox rabbinate found itself forced to offer a more substantive solution or risk appearing uncompassionate and closed-minded in the face of women’s suffering. In 1993, the Centrist Orthodox Caucus unveiled a new prenuptial agreement that would, it claimed, solve the agunah problem for those who signed it. The agreement, drafted by Rabbi Mordechai Willig, provided that every day that husband and wife are separated without a get, even prior to the issuing of a civil divorce, the wife was entitled to receive a per diem sum of money for her support. The husband and wife also contracted to appear before an agreed-upon Bet Din to arbitrate the get. If the wife should fail to appear before the Bet Din, or fail to abide by its decision, the husband’s financial obligation toward her would terminate.

As one of the roshei yeshiva at RIETS, Willig had the stature and halakhic authority in the centrist Orthodox world to draft such a document. No friend of feminism, Willig had been one of the famed “RIETS 5,” a group of five rabbis at RIETS that had issued a proclamation in 1984 outlawing Orthodox women’s prayer groups. Willig would not be accused by other Orthodox rabbis as pandering to the left-wing of Orthodoxy or to feminists.[74] Furthermore, in contradiction to his forebears who painted such agreements as dangerous inventions of those not sufficiently concerned with halakha, Willig presented the prenuptial agreement as being rooted in a centuries-old precedent, arguing that this should assuage the “reluctance of rabbanim to introduce innovations to the institution of marriage.”[75]

The Centrist Orthodox rabbinate quickly rallied around Willig’s prenuptial agreement, celebrating the agreement as an effective tool to reduce the number of agunot in America. One Orthodox rabbinic leader went so far as to call it “a light at the end of the tunnel” for the agunah problem. The RCA immediately adopted a resolution in June 1993 calling upon its members to utilize Willig’s or another rabbinically approved prenuptial agreement prior to performing any wedding, an act “which will aid in our community’s efforts to guarantee that the get will not be used as a negotiating tool in divorce proceedings.” The Orthodox Caucus disseminated copious information about the agreement, ultimately publishing a booklet in 1996 containing the text of the agreement and instructions for its use together with articles about the history of the agunah problem, the halakhic justification for the Willig prenuptial agreement, and a list of approbations for the agreement received from halakhic authorities in America and Israel. While a number of Centrist Orthodox rabbis since the 1970s had proposed the use of prenuptial agreements to help solve the agunah problem, many others had objected to such agreements as unhalakhic. The Willig prenuptial agreement ended all of these objections.[76]

Agunah activists greeted the news of what quickly became known as the “Willig prenup” with less excitement than did their rabbinic leaders. Although they were relieved that the rabbis were finally attempting to implement a more global solution to the agunah problem, they saw the RCA’s embracing of the Willig prenup as too little, too late. Pointing out that prenuptial agreements similar to Willig’s had been in use for years, they complained that rabbinic leaders were “the last to endorse the agreements.” Furthermore, like every solution implemented by rabbis in the twentieth century, they recognized that the Willig prenup was flawed in its ability to protect women from becoming agunot. Of course, like the Lieberman Clause, the Willig prenup was only helpful if the couple signed it. Even once signed, the goal of the agreement was not to get the woman her get, but rather to get the couple to appear before the Bet Din. Under the agreement, if the wife failed to appear to the Bet Din, or failed to abide by the Bet Din rulings, she forfeited her right to the “support payments” from her husband. Rather than ensuring that each woman who signed the Willig prenuptial agreement would receive a get, the agreement merely ensured that the couple would submit to the authority of the Bet Din, authority that had over and over again failed to help agunot. Additionally, like all the civil court solutions, the Willig prenuptial agreement would not assist women whose husbands had disappeared, had become insane or otherwise incapacitated, had no assets, or were wealthy and vindictive. Lastly, in order to enforce the financial provisions of the prenuptial agreement, a woman would have had to file suit in civil court, a process sure to cost her copious legal fees and a great deal of time. Rather than solving the agunah problem, the Willig prenuptial agreement merely ensured that the Batei Din would retain their control over Orthodox Jewish divorce cases, control that had done little over the past century to help agunot in America.[77]  

The Agudah, for its part, did not embrace the use of prenuptial agreements. Rather, it continued to insist on the efficacy of the 1983 New York Get Law and the use of social sanctions to assist agunot. Using the 1992 Get Law or the Willig prenuptial agreement to obtain a get required a woman to use the secular court system, something the Agudah was loathe to permit its members to do. Indeed, in 1993, the Jewish Observer published another article by Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, which warned readers that halakha mandated that they litigate all matters in the Batei Din, not civil courts.[78] The fact that women almost always fared better in terms of property division in civil court was of no concern to right-wing Orthodox rabbis. In fact, many right-wing Batei Din refused to hear cases if the woman had already filed suit in civil court. The end of the twentieth century saw few developments to assist agunot in the right wing Orthodox world.[79]

Conclusion

In the waning years of the twentieth century, the strongest champions Orthodox women had in their fight against becoming agunot were the civil courts. Throughout the century, Orthodox rabbis had failed to put forth effective solutions to solve the agunah problem, preferring to use the secular state apparatus resulting in solutions that were flawed and inadequate. In the wake of the decision in Schwartz v. Schwartz, Rivka Haut wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times saying:

The Orthodox rabbinate has abandoned the Torah principles of justice and compassion, persistently refusing to implement Jewish law appropriately and to provide true justice, leaving it up to the civil courts of this state to protect Jewish women and children. Perhaps the rabbis will now follow the model set by civil court judges and will utilize Jewish law in order to help those who abide by it.

Haut’s letter reflected the view of agunah activists and Orthodox feminists that a solution to the problem had not been achieved.  Although permitting an open dialogue about women’s rights ultimately forced the Centrist Orthodox rabbinate out of its passivity about the agunah problem, the solutions it implemented were flawed at best. The right-wing Orthodox rabbinate, by never opening itself up to feminist ferment, was able to offer up a largely ineffective law as its only solution to the agunah problem. In the end, twentieth century American Orthodox women, like their tenth-century forebears, were dependent on the non-Jewish world around them to protect them from get extortion and to save them from becoming agunot.  

            Tanakh lies at the heart and soul of Judaism. The Talmud and Midrash, Jewish philosophy and mysticism, and Jewish thought all find their deepest roots in the Bible. For millennia, Jews and other faith communities have been transformed by this unparalleled collection of 24 books. Tanakh is accessible and enjoyable to small children and to the most sophisticated scholars and thinkers. It is a singular privilege to encounter its sacred words, to engage with its eternal messages, and to be galvanized to greater ethical and social action and spiritual growth as a result of our study.[1]

            From the perspective of contemporary religious students of Tanakh, we have remarkable opportunities today. Scholars publish critical editions of our classical commentators so that we have access to the most accurate texts from our greatest teachers. Scholars discover and publish previously obscure rabbinic works, enabling us to broaden our understanding of the range of interpretation in the classical period. They also advance the field of biblical study in areas including, but not limited to, literary analysis, archaeology and history, and linguistics. The information readily available in books, online resources, and classes is breathtaking.

            At the same time, however, these opportunities also pose serious challenges to our enterprise. How do we balance this flood of knowledge and methodology with the fact that many scholars in the field are not Orthodox Jews and therefore bring their own assumptions and biases to their work? Are there means for sorting through which information and methodology is beneficial for our religious growth and which must be discarded or modified? Ultimately, the litmus test of success for our study of Tanakh is that it deepens our religious commitments and inspires us to greater ethical behavior. How do we shape the contours of this discussion to maximize those benefits and characterize that process with intellectual honesty and integrity?

When we learn and teach Tanakh properly, we convey a sense of holiness and reverence, coupled with respect for individuality and intellectual struggle with our most sacred texts and traditions. Tanakh has the singular ability to inspire and edify people of all ages and backgrounds. The potent combination of rabbinic commentary and contemporary scholarship enables our minds, hearts, and souls to complement one another in a holistic spiritual and intellectual experience. The maturation of sophisticated Tanakh study provides us with a system with which to navigate the complicated contours of scholarship and religious growth. Rabbis and educators have the immense responsibility to sort through available information, commentaries, and methodologies in order to steer the discussion for the benefit of the community.

In theory, the text analysis in the yeshivah and the academy could be identical, since both engage in the quest for truth. The fundamental difference between the two is that in the yeshivah, we study Tanakh as a means to understanding revelation as the expression of God’s will. The scholarly conclusions we reach impact directly on our lives and our religious worldview. In the academy, on the other hand, truth is pursued as an intellectual activity for its own sake, usually as an end in itself. There also are no accompanying beliefs in the revelation of the text.

The ostensible conflicts between traditional and academic scholarship have led some scholars, including several who identify with the Orthodox community, to conclude that traditional faith is incompatible with scholarship. This supposition has led some to reject traditional belief outright, or to radically redefine faith to make it compatible with their scholarly conclusions, or to radically reinterpret classical sources in an attempt to justify such paradigm shifts as being within tradition. These positions have led to counter-reactions in some Orthodox circles that adopt excessively dogmatic and restrictive positions to prohibit scholarly inquiry or peshat learning altogether. Both sides may be motivated by a profound and authentic religious desire to connect to God and the Torah, but they distort aspects of tradition and create dangerous and unnecessary rifts between us.

In Ad HaYom HaZeh, Rabbi Amnon Bazak, one of the bright stars at Yeshivat Har Etzion and its affiliated Herzog College, offers a sophisticated understanding of Tanakh and our faith axioms while simultaneously being fully open to contemporary scholarship. Addressing the fact that many in the Orthodox world disregard contemporary academic scholarship, Rabbi Bazak offers three reasons why such willful ignorance is inexcusable: (1) On educational grounds these issues are widely publicized, and therefore rabbis and religious educators must be able to address them intelligently. (2) Many of the questions are genuine, and must be taken seriously on scholarly grounds. (3) We often gain a better understanding of Tanakh with the aid of contemporary scholarship.

Rabbi Bazak’s central premise is that we must distinguish between facts and compelling tools of analysis, which must be considered in our learning; and the assumptions of scholars, which we reject when they conflict with traditional beliefs. Rabbi Bazak argues that nothing based on facts forces one to choose between faith and scholarship.[2]

The growing popularity of what Rabbi Shalom Carmy calls the “literary-theological” approach to Tanakh study has been transforming the way we approach our most sacred texts. This methodology demands a finely tuned text reading, along with a focus on the religious significance of the passage. The premises of this approach include: (1) Oral Law and classical commentaries are central to the way we understand the revealed word of God, and (2) it is vital to study biblical passages in their literary and historical context.[3]

Over the past two centuries, analysis of literary tools, comparative linguistics, and the discovery of a wealth of ancient texts and artifacts have contributed immensely to our understanding the rich tapestry and complexity of biblical texts. Much also has improved since the 1970s as a result of the literary revolution in biblical scholarship. After generations of dissecting the Torah and the rest of Tanakh, many Bible scholars have recognized that the Torah and later biblical books can be analyzed effectively as unified texts. Every word is valuable. Passages are multilayered. Understanding the interplay between texts is vital.

Great traditional scholars of the previous generation such as the authors and editors of the Da’at Mikra commentary series,[4] Professor Nehama Leibowitz,[5] and Rabbi Mordechai Breuer,[6] exemplified different aspects of how one could benefit from the information and methodology of academic Bible scholarship through the prism of traditional faith. Similarly, the prolific writings of leading contemporary rabbinic scholars such as Yoel Bin‑Nun,[7] Elhanan Samet,[8] and Shalom Carmy[9] are intellectually and spiritually stimulating, as they benefit from the academy while working from the viewpoint of the yeshivah.[10]

The ideal learning framework espouses traditional beliefs and studies as a means to a religious end while striving for intellectual openness and honesty. Reaching this synthesis is difficult, since it requires passionate commitment alongside an effort to be detached while learning in order to refine knowledge and understanding.

To benefit from contemporary biblical scholarship properly, we first must understand our own tradition—to have a grasp of our texts, assumptions, and the range of traditional interpretations. This educational process points to a much larger issue. For example, studying comparative religion should be broadening. However, people unfamiliar with their own tradition, or who know it primarily from non-traditional teachers or textbooks, will have little more than a shallow basis for comparison.

Religious scholarship benefits from contemporary findings—both information and methodology. Outside perspectives prod us to be more critical in our own learning. On the other side of the equation, the academy stands to benefit from those who are heirs to thousands of years of tradition, who approach every word of Tanakh with awe and reverence, and who care deeply about the intricate relationship between texts.[11] The academy also must become more aware of its own underlying biases.[12]

Ultimately, we must recognize the strengths and weaknesses in the approaches of the yeshivah and the academy. By doing so, we can study the eternal words of Tanakh using the best of classical and contemporary scholarship. This process gives us an ever-refining ability to deepen our relationship with God, the world community, and ourselves. It also enables us to build bridges within our community.

Dr. Norman Lamm has set the tone for this inquiry:

Torah is a “Torah of truth,” and to hide from the facts is to distort that truth into myth.… It is this kind of position which honest men, particularly honest believers in God and Torah, must adopt at all times, and especially in our times. Conventional dogmas, even if endowed with the authority of an Aristotle—ancient or modern—must be tested vigorously. If they are found wanting, we need not bother with them. But if they are found to be substantially correct, we may not overlook them. We must then use newly discovered truths the better to understand our Torah—the “Torah of truth.”[13]

The eternally relevant vision of the Torah and prophets is available for the taking. What we make of the journey is up to us, to learn and transform, and work on building the ideal self and society envisioned by our prophetic tradition as we develop our own relationships between God and humanity through the inspired words of Tanakh.

Our early morning daily liturgy challenges us: “Ever shall a person be God-fearing in secret as in public, with truth in his heart as on his lips.” May we be worthy of pursuing that noble combination.

In the modern period, several distinguished thinkers have denied that there is such a thing as Judaic values. For them, Judaism is so radically legalistic that it does not recognize any ethical demands that are not grounded in halakha. Quite aside from this philosophical position, there is a prevalent attitude in the contemporary observant Jewish community that regards the sole goal of religious life as adherence to halakha.

In this article, I argue that an approach to Judaism that is limited to observance of Jewish law is inconsistent with numerous classical, medieval, and modern rabbinic sources. Indeed, these sources emphasise and present perspectives on life that transcend concern with halakhic rules. An approach to life based on Torah ideas carries serious implications, both for character development and for standards of behavior that complement the demands of halakha.

In the final section of the article, I expand on these sources to elucidate the pivotal importance of outlook, character development and ethical and spiritual behavior for a Torah life. While this would be true in any generation, it is all the more crucial that we address these concerns in our own time. The relative neglect of these matters in Jewish scholarship and Jewish life is highly regrettable, and the need to redress that neglect is essential.

Reducing Judaism to a Legal System

In his book, Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State, the late Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz contends that Judaism does not “consist of a specific ethic.” Leibowitz argues that Judaism produced no ethical theory of its own and “made no pretences of representing a specific moral point of view.”[1] According to Leibowitz’s thesis, Judaism consists of halakha—the body of commandments that are to be observed for the sole reason that God commanded them and without appeal to any underlying or overarching value system.

The position that Judaism is defined exclusively by the legal decisions of halakha was also embraced by such an eclectic range of scholars as Baruch Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, Immanuel Kant, and Marvin Fox. [2]

The limitation of Judaic norms to halakha, far from being confined to the writings of philosophers, is a pervasive feature of contemporary Jewish religious life. The late Rabbi Yehuda Amital contrasts this common attitude with the religious approach that was prevalent in his youth:

We live in an era in which educated religious circles like to emphasize the centrality of Halakha, and commitment to it, in Judaism. I can say that in my youth in pre-Holocaust Hungary, I didn't hear people talking all the time about "Halakha." People conducted themselves in the tradition of their forefathers, and where any halakhic problems arose, they consulted a rabbi.... The impression created is that there is nothing in Torah but that which exists in Halakha, and that in any confrontation with the new problems that arise in modern society, answers should be sought exclusively in books of Halakha.[3]

R. Amital deplores a commonplace equation of Judaism with the observance of halakha. This attitude sometimes manifests itself in subtle ways. Rabbi Micha Berger notes that, even those diligent students who show up for “Mussar Seder” in yeshiva, often choose the Laws of Lashon haRa as their topic of study. Such subject matter, although of undeniable importance, is focused on halakhic behavior rather than character development. The emphasis is on behaving in accordance with Jewish law rather than developing an attitude toward life that is rooted in Torah sources.[4]

Rabbi Eugene Korn[5] presents an insightful explanation for the development of this attitude within the observant Jewish community. R. Korn notes that, over the generations, Jews have been threatened by Greek and Roman culture, the Church, the Enlightenment, rationalism and post-modernism. The Jewish community responded with a reaffirmation of their commitment that generated an antipathy toward explaining the underlying values behind specific mitzvot as well as more general philosophical reflection on the purpose of God’s covenant with the Jewish people. The latter pursuits were deemphasised in favor of a focus on the importance of authority. Historical explanations aside, it behoves us to ask whether this approach to Judaism is consistent with the approach of Torah authorities throughout the generations.

In 1942, Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler delivered a provocative talk at the Gateshead Kollel. Central to R. Dessler’s presentation was the thesis that a Jew can observe all the laws of the Shulhan Arukh and still only reach “the aleph of Judaism.” R. Dessler’s student, Rabbi Aryeh Carmel, testifies that this assertion stimulated a good deal of heated discussion. In this next section, I will discuss some of the sources that I believe underlie the position that Judaism requires us to transcend observance of the laws of the Shulhan Arukh.

The Centrality of Judaic Values: Worldview, Character, and Behavior

A proper understanding of Jewish sources reveals a concern, not only with proper conduct, but with the development of an appropriate worldview. In a pertinent verse in Sefer Mishlei, we are told that “Without a vision, the people perish.”[6] Indeed, a true understanding of Jewish tradition is one that includes a vision for the Jewish People and for the world.

The importance of outlook and attitude can be understood through analysis of the Rambam’s statements regarding the importance of the mitzvah of tsedaka. In Hilkhot Matanot Aniyim, the Rambam writes: “We are obligated to be meticulous with the mitzva of charity more than with all [other] positive commandments.”[7]

As Rabbi Judah Goldberg has noted,[8] there seems to be no halakhic basis for Rambam's assertion that one must take more care over the mitzvah of tsedaka. Halakha does not distinguish between the legal force of the obligation of tsedaka and that of other positive commandments. The actual basis of the Rambam’s position can be seen from his affirmation that “tsedaka is a mark of the righteous descendants of our father Abraham.” The Rambam quotes from Sefer Bereshit, where Hashem reveals the reason why He singled out Abraham for a special relationship:

For I have known him in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of God to do righteousness [“tsedaka”] and justice, so that God may bring upon Avraham that which He has spoken of him. [9]

We see in from this that the Rambam’s basis for his emphasis on the mitzvah of tsedaka is not based on its legal status but through identification of tsedaka as fundamental to the Jewish mission and to our identity as the progeny of Abraham.

In modern times, the importance of developing a Judaic philosophy through which one understands and evaluates one’s life experience was emphasised by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch:

The ideal of a perfect personal and national life, along with an understanding of the ultimate goal of all human development, are to be derived from the knowledge of the Torah. It is this ideal and this understanding that, first of all, must become the standard by which to measure and evaluate the modern non-Jewish world with all its spiritual, moral, and social phenomena that mark the lives of men and nations.[10]

As Dayan Isidor Grunfeld explains, Rabbi Hirsch understood that such philosophies should be extrapolated from halakhic texts.[11] In a similar vein, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik supports the development of what he calls “reconstructionist explanations” to discern what religious ideas are presented through the laws. Although R. Soloveitchik rejects the legitimacy of asking about the reason that Hashem gave us particular commandments or even how observance of mitzvoth achieves its desired effect, he does endorse the quest to find the meaningfulness of mitzvoth for the individual and society. According to R. Soloveitchik, Torah-observant Jews should not suffice with compliance to halakhic obligation but should ask themselves the question: “How can I integrate and assimilate this mitzvah into my religious consciousness and outlook?”[12]

On other occasions, R. Soloveitchik emphasised the importance of basing one’s worldview on an understanding of Tanakh. The Rav’s dismay at the failure to read the Bible in this way is instructive:

Many Jews don’t look to the Bible for guidance, and its spiritual message, so indispensable for man today, is completely ignored... the most beautiful aspect of the Bible is its Weltanschauung, its world view, its spiritual outlook upon both the world and man.[13]

The approach exemplified by Rambam and advocated by R Hirsch, R Soloveitchik and others is that Judaism teaches a philosophy of life which, while sometimes grounded in halakhic texts, is not limited to commitment to their specific imperatives. The development of a Judaic worldview impacts on another important facet of Torah life—character development. In the understanding of our Sages, Jews are not only expected to develop a worldview but also to develop certain virtuous dispositions.

Indeed, in Shabbat 113b, Abba Shaul is quoted as emphasising the imperative to emulate the characteristics of Hashem: “Be like Him! Just as He is gracious and compassionate, you shall be gracious and compassionate!”[14]

This understanding is supported by the Rambam in Hilkhot De’ot, where he explains the mitzvah of walking in the way of God to require an emulation of His attributes. He writes that this involves developing the characteristics of grace, mercy, and holiness. The Rambam continues:

In a similar manner, the prophets called God by other titles: "Slow to anger," "Abundant in kindness," "Righteous," "Just," "Perfect," "Almighty," "Powerful," and the like. [They did so] to inform us that these are good and just paths. A person is obligated to accustom himself to these paths and [to try to] resemble Him to the extent of his ability.[15]

These rulings are consistent with Rambam’s writing in Hilkhot Teshuvah. In a statement that explicitly negates the notion that Judaism is concerned with behavior alone, the Rambam writes:

You mustn’t say that teshuvah (repentance) only applies to sins that involve action such as promiscuity and robbery and theft. Rather, just as a man needs to do teshuvah for sins involving actions, so too he needs to search to identify his evil attributes. He must do teshuvah for anger and for hatred and for jealousy and for frivolity and for the pursuit of money and honor and for the pursuit of foods and the like. He must do teshuvah for all of these.[16]

The character traits listed by the Rambam do not violate any particular negative transgression. Nevertheless, as Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein argues, the fact that the Rambam uses this term to describe them suggests that, to the extent that they are corrosive to one’s optimal spiritual personality, they are sinful.[17]

The same understanding was advanced in the sixteenth century by Rabbi Eliezer Azkiri in his Sefer Hareidim. In his explanation of the mitzvah to walk in the ways of Hashem, R. Azkiri cites the rabbinic interpretation that one should emulate the merciful and gracious attributes of God and that one should adopt the golden mean with regard to all character traits.[18]

According to the Vilna Gaon, the development of appropriate character traits is not only essential but foundational to our lives as religious Jews. In Even Shelemah, the Gaon is quoted as comparing the relationship of Torah to the soul to that of rain and the ground. Just as rain causes the growth of whatever was planted prior to the rain, so too “Torah causes what is in his heart to grow”:

If what is in his heart is good, his fear [of God] will grow; if what is in his heart is a “root sprouting poison weed and wormwood” then the bitterness that is in his head will grow. As it is written, “the righteous will walk in it, and sinners will stumble in it” (Hoshea 14:10, as explained by Hazal), and as it is written, “To those who go to the right side of it, it is a medicine of life; to those who go to its left, it is a deadly poison,” (Shabbat 88b)... One who is lazy in weeding out an evil middah is not helped by all the legal fences and protections that he practices. For with any disease which is not cured from within...even the fence of the Torah, which protects and saves, will be useless because of his laziness.[19]

The Vilna Gaon’s position, based on classical sources in Hazal, carries a remarkable message! If a person whose character traits are desirable learns Torah, he becomes even greater as a result. But learning Torah without attention to character refinement will simply produce more forceful personalities with inappropriate character traits.

As Rabbi Soloveitchik explains, developing appropriate character traits also impacts on the performance of mitzvoth:

When a person visits the sick, he must join in with their pain; when he comforts the mourners, he must mourn with them in his heart; and when he gives a person charity, he must bear that person’s burden and empathize with his pain.[20]

Elsewhere, the Rav gives homiletical expression to this approach when he discusses Hashem’s choice of the Patriarchs and His choice of the Jewish nation at Sinai. The patriarchal covenant is compared to the process of ibud, or treating parchment in order to render it suitable for being used as a Torah scroll. The Sinai covenant is compared to the actual writing of the letters on the scroll. The meaning of this analogy is that, just as the letters of the scroll cannot be written without ibud, the Jew cannot properly observe the laws of the Sinai covenant, unless he performs ibud on his personality—that is to say, he develops a character that is modeled on that of the Patriarchs. The Rav explains that this ibud involves efforts to control desire and passion as well as the development of empathy and compassion toward others.[21] From Rav Soloveitchik’s discourse we learn that, in seeking to develop a character in line with Jewish norms, we must model ourselves, not only on the divine attributes, but also on the characteristics of our biblical ancestors.

Thus far, we have discussed the importance of developing both a Judaic worldview and a character modeled on our understanding of the divine characteristics and the examples set by our biblical role models. Both worldview and character relate primarily to the internal world of the intellect and emotion. However, the relevance of Jewish values extends beyond these realms and into the sphere of behavior. Our sources are clear that a Jew must not suffice with ensuring his conduct is consistent with Jewish law. In addition to halakhic compliance, he must behave in a way consistent with broader values.

Marc Shapiro offers anecdotal support for this proposition from an encounter he had with a pre-eminent sage of the late twentieth century. Shapiro relates that he once went to Gateshead to interview Rabbi Betzalel Rakov, the Gateshead Rov, about the latter’s relationship with Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg. Prior to the meeting, Shapiro visited the local Jewish book store. He was informed that, if he were a yeshiva student, he could purchase a book at a discounted price. When Shapiro later met with R. Rakov, he asked him if it would have been acceptable for one of the yeshiva students to buy the book at a discount and for Shapiro to reimburse him. R Rakov replied that there was certainly no halakhic problem involved. But he then added: “Yet it would not be ethical.”[22]

R. Rakov’s response would seem shocking to those who assume that Judaic norms can be reduced to halakhic rules. In actual fact, though, R. Rakov is following in the tradition of the Ramban who wrote explicitly that it would be impossible for the Torah to provide instruction for all morally challenging scenarios. The nature of moral decision-making is too dependent on the specific context and situation within which they occur to be defined, in all instances, by technical halakhic rulings. In many instances, the answer to a moral question cannot be answered by learning the relevant area of halakha but, rather, by the application of ethical principles to the given dilemma.[23]

Shapiro’s anecdote does not reveal R. Rakov’s understanding of the basis for his judgment that the behavior in question was unethical. As we shall see, however, our traditional literature presents a number of approaches to moral judgment that complement the Jew’s compliance with halakhic imperatives.

An intimation of such an approach can be found in Rabbenu Bahya’s introduction to Duties of the Heart. Quoting a wise man who had referred to wisdom in the hearts of the wise, he explains that “[t]he meaning is that wisdom is implanted in man’s nature, in his character and his powers of perception.” This intellectual stimulus, explains Rabbenu Bahya, helps man to praise truth, denigrate falsity, choose righteousness and condemn injustice. Rabbenu Bahya identifies a moral compass within the recesses of man’s intellect that he understands to be, in some instances, a reliable arbiter of correct behavior. It is not clear from this passage, however, that he understands that this can lead to moral judgements that are not already incorporated within halakha.

Such an approach, is, however, affirmed by the Rambam who writes in his Guide for the Perplexed that a person will be rewarded for doing what is right and honorable and punished for any deed that he understands to be improper, even if it is not specifically forbidden.[24] According to the Rambam, an action can be considered neutral from the vantage point of halakha but recognized by the moral intuition to be inappropriate behavior.

This understanding was affirmed in a different context by the thirteenth century talmudic commentator, Rabbi Menachem Meiri. In explanation of the Talmud’s requirement that human beings be treated with the reverence due to a Torah scroll, the Meiri writes that humans are endowed with the capacity for discerning, with their own minds, obligations that are not explicitly stated in the Torah.[25] Hence, it is Meiri’s view that human beings possess an innate moral sense with which they can discern ethical imperatives and that, amongst them, there are obligations that are not required by halakha.

In more modern times, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch writes at some length about the moral law that he understands to be implanted in every man. He often writes of “the conscience which is embedded in every human beast” and he stresses that this human conscience is a manifestation of the voice of God.[26] For R Hirsch, therefore, while revelation is encapsulated in the obligations and strictures of halakha it is also manifest in the moral conscience.

We see from the foregoing discussion that, according to an important strand of Judaic thought, a person is expected to use his moral intuition as well as his halakhic knowledge when deciding how to behave. Some of our authorities explicitly recognize this intuitive capacity as a receptivity of human beings to the wisdom of Hashem.

For many authorities, however, the source of Judaic values lies more in Torah sources than the moral intuition.[27] Although the knowledge of halakha is a non-negotiable for the committed Jew, it is necessary to learn both halakhic and aggadic texts with an eye for their underlying values.

One concept that has been used as a foundation for Jewish norms beyond halakhic compliance is the notion of imitatio Dei. In the Gemara in Sotah, the rabbis interpret the imperative to walk in the way of God[28] as mandating the performance of benevolent actions such as clothing the naked, visiting the sick, comforting mourners, and burying the dead.[29] As discussed above, the concept of imitatio Dei was understood by the Rambam and others to require the development of dispositions. Nevertheless, the Rambam also adhered to the interpretation requiring certain modes of behavior on this basis:

This commandment is also repeated in the verse: “Walk after God your Lord.” This too is explained as emulating the good deeds and fine attributes which are used to allegorically describe God, Who is immeasurably exalted over everything.[30]

Another key concept in the understanding of Judaic norms is the paradoxical obligation of lifnim mishurat haDin (going beyond the letter of the law).[31] This principle is applied to the returning of lost property and helping a stranded donkey driver load his donkey,[32] the paying of compensation for a loss caused only indirectly,[33] and returning a purchased parcel of land to the original owner who had reason to regret having sold it.[34]

That this obligation is of the utmost importance can be demonstrated by reference to the statement of Rav Yochanan, who cites the failure to go beyond the letter of the law as the reason for the destruction of Jerusalem.[35] We see from this the concept of lifnim mishurat hadin that even a generation that complies with all the regulations of Jewish law can be found so guilty as to be deserving of the destruction of the Temple.[36]

According to the Ramban, the requirement to act lifnim mishurat hadin is required by the biblical verse instructing us to “do what is upright and good in the eyes of God.” Rabbi Simcha Zissel Broide, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Hevron, explains the Ramban’s approach as requiring an extrapolation of general principles of behavior based on an in-depth study of mitzvoth:

“And do the right and the good” is not a specific mitzva but a general mitzva: to delve deeply into the understanding of mitzvot and the reasons behind them; to comprehend and contemplate and appreciate, through the mitzvot that we are commanded to perform, also those obligations that are not explicit. We must develop an understanding of what is really God’s desire from us, and what is good and right in His eyes.[37]

Hence, from the Ramban’s perspective, legal imperatives legislated by the Torah constitute a non-exhaustive list of examples of how the ideals of Judaism can be realised. Study of the underlying principles facilitates their application beyond the scope of halakhic observance.

The acceptance of an extra-halakhic norm in Judaism is the unmistakable conclusion from numerous rabbinic sources. According to Hazal,[38] a person who fails to pray for another in need is categorized as a sinner. Although such a person would not be in violation of any specific halakhic rule, his insensitivity and inaction warrants such a description. Indeed, according to the Talmud, taking a loaf that a pauper was about to pick up, raising one’s hand to strike another, and making a vow in God’s name even though one fulfills it, stigmatize the perpetrator as wicked even though there is no violation of halakha.[39]

In the ninth century, Rabbenu Bahya ibn Paquda wrote Duties of the Heart, one of the great classics of Jewish ethics and spirituality. In the middle of his Gate of Service of God, he asserts that halakha “divides human actions into three categories: commands, prohibitions, and permitted acts.” However, in his ensuing elaboration, Rabbenu Bahya explains that those actions that might be regarded from a technical perspective as permitted are, from the vantage point of a broader Judaic ethic, either obligatory or prohibited.

If one is engaging in a (halakhically permissible) activity in order to fulfill his basic needs, he is, in fact, fulfilling a commandment.[40] To engage excessively in that which is technically permitted—whether it is drinking, eating, wearing extravagant dress, living in overly large homes, talking excessively or being overly preoccupied with money and material possessions—is contrary to many principles found in Sefer Mishlei and to the spirit of certain passages in Sefer Devarim. They are, states Rabbenu Bahya, contemptible because they bring a person to engage in that which is prohibited. If, on the other hand, a person takes less physical sustenance than he needs then, if he is motivated by piety, his behavior is appropriately classified as a mitzvah. On the other hand, if one takes less than necessary in order to save money or in order that he be praised, then this is, in fact forbidden.

On the basis of this analysis, Rabbenu Bahya affirms that “it is now evident that all human actions are either commanded or prohibited.” Rabbenu Bahya, when discussing the technical legal status of human actions, had affirmed the existence of the category of the permitted. He now insists that even that which is halakhically permissible must be considered in the light of broader axiological considerations to be either praiseworthy or reprehensible.[41]

For the Rambam, too, The norms of the Torah extend beyond the obligations and prescriptions of halakha. In Mishneh Torah, he rules that it is permissible to depart from the land of Israel to learn Torah or to engage in commerce. Indeed, it is permissible to dwell outside the land of Israel indefinitely in the circumstance of a severe famine. After recording this ruling, the Rambam continues:

Even though it is permitted to leave, it is not pious behavior, for behold, Machlon and  Kilyon were two giants of their generation and they left out of great distress and they incurred destruction from God.[42]

Hence, according to the Rambam, leaving in such circumstances is halakhically permissible but could be so inappropriate as to warrant premature death! [43]

Congruous with this passage is the Rambam’s ruling that “a person who separates from the ways of the community” is “as if he were not from [the Jewish People]” and “has no share in the World to Come” even if “he has not committed any transgressions.”[44]

It seems remarkable that the Rambam considers excluding someone from the World to Come even though he has not committed any transgressions! However, this position is well understood when Judaism is seen as not merely avoidance of transgression and observance of precepts but also as an existential bond to the Jewish nation and its destiny. Indeed, Rav Soloveitchik has referred to this passage as an example of the Rambam’s ascribing importance to the covenant established amongst the Jewish People through their common experience in Egypt, in addition to the covenant that was forged at Sinai.[45]

Perhaps the most famous affirmation of the unacceptability of a minimal compliance with Jewish law is found in Ramban’s celebrated commentary to the mitzvah of kedoshim tiheyu (be holy). In this passage, Ramban claims that a person could “indulge in perversion with his wife, or many wives, and revel in wine, eat meat to excess, and use foul language to his heart’s content” and still not be in violation of halakha as “there is no prohibition against this explicit in the Torah.” In a revealing phrase, the Ramban explains that such a person would be in the category of a “scoundrel with the permission of the Torah.”[46] This means that a person can live in a way that is in accordance with the regulations found in the Torah and still behave in such a way that, from the perspective of the value system of the Torah, is deeply reprehensible.[47]

In his Shaarei Teshuvah, Rabbenu Yonah listed the different categories of people who do not merit a share in the next world (considered the most severe of all punishments). Included in those categories are those who cannot receive the divine presence, namely, scoffers, liars, fawners, and talebearers.[48] Despite the exceptional condemnation allocated to the perpetrators of such behavior, it is striking that only the last of these practices is explicitly forbidden by the Torah.[49]

In the nineteenth century, Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin contrasted a life of compliance with halakha with the more exemplary conduct of our forefathers:

And this was the praise of the Patriarchs, that besides their being tzaddikim, hassidim, and lovers of God in the most perfect way, they were also yesharim; that is, they conducted themselves toward others, even toward despicable idol worshippers, with love; they cared about providing for their benefit, as that keeps the world in existence. Thus, we see that our patriarch Avraham prayed for the city of Sedom, even though he hated them and their king with the utmost enmity due to their evil ways, as is clear from his statement to the king of Sedom; still, he sought their survival… For this reason, the book of Bereishit, which delineates the actions of the Patriarchs, is known as sefer ha-yashar.

According to the Netziv, the Patriarchs were not merely righteous but were upright (yashar). Far from being limited to righteous behavior, they behaved with love and care toward all human beings.[50]

Judaic Values and Contemporary Jewry

In the previous section, we have demonstrated that there is a pervasive theme in the writings of Torah authorities to the effect that Judaism requires us to develop a worldview based on Judaic sources. We have argued that such a worldview carries consequences for our approach to character development. Both the character traits that Jews must develop and the worldview that they must adopt carry implications for how they must behave. In this section, we will explain the significance of this emphasis for the Jewish religious life. Although these areas of normative Judaism are essential for any generation in history, we will argue that they are particularly vital for the current Jewish generation. This importance renders the neglect of these areas all the more regrettable and the need to redress that neglect, all the more essential.

Rabbi Yehuda Levi has compared one who carefully studies halakha but fails to develop a Torah worldview to a person who drives very carefully and takes good care of his car but forgets to check whether he is on the correct road and going in the right direction.[51] This analogy is most apt and we will have more to say later on in explanation of the religious significance of an individual’s worldview. Before doing so, however, I would like to apply R. Levy’s analogy to the Jewish community. As rabbis and religious communal leaders, we rightly seek to promote the observance of halakha. But, in the light of the sources discussed in the previous section, we must also develop an understanding of what the values (other than keeping halakha) a Jewish community should represent. Jewish leaders in every generation must develop a vision for their community—a vision that is based on a sound understanding of Torah sources. It is essential to teach the Jewish community which road we must travel on and in which direction.

Indeed, it is often this very vision that is lacking in our own generation. In Seymour Fox’s 1973 essay, “Toward a General Theory of Jewish Education,” he argues that issues such as insufficient hours of study and a lack of qualified personnel and curricula were really symptoms of a deeper problem: the lack of a vision of what should be achieved through Jewish education.

“In short,” writes Fox:

I maintain that the most urgent problem facing Jewish education today is its lack of        purpose and, consequently, blandness... [I]t is my feeling that the investigation of most forms of Jewish education, except for the ultra-Orthodox, would reveal that their curricula and methods of teacher training bear little resemblance to what the leadership of the given movement, school, or institution claims to be central in its conception of education.[52]

The need for a strong focus on outlook and values in contemporary Jewish education can be further substantiated through reference to the attitude of contemporary Jews toward charity and social justice. In the course of this article, the importance of loving kindness from a Torah perspective has been supported by reference to the raison d’être of the Jewish People, the goal and imperative of imitatio Dei and the example set by the Biblical patriarchs. Despite this, the bestowal of loving kindness is amongst those mitzvoth for which halakha does not define a set measure.[53] This means that the extent to which one is focused on giving to others, and, in many respects, the way in which one does so are not determined by the halakha but must be decided based on Judaic values. As such, a significant facet of a Judaic outlook would be concerned with our attitude toward these issues.

It is, therefore, of great concern that contemporary Jews do not seem to have heard this message. Commenting on the efforts to secure Jewish continuity in England over the last two decades, Dr. Jonathan Boyd, Executive Director of the Jewish Institute for Policy Research in London, reports a worrying state of affairs. Although many Jews are involved in supporting Israel and fighting anti-Semitism, far fewer are regularly involved in charity work. Indeed, the research shows that over a third of Jewish students polled disagreed with the idea that being Jewish is about volunteering or donating to charity or supporting social justice causes. While the aforementioned activities certainly do not amount to an adequate expression of Judaism, the failure to identify them as core aspects of a Torah life suggest that Jewish leaders and educators have failed to communicate this core Jewish value. Boyd perceptively expresses concern about a generation of Jews who seem to have been shaped more by the negative forces that seek to do damage to the Jewish People than by Judaism’s own positive internal values system.[54]

On the other side of the pond, the evidence suggests that young Jews in the United States do, indeed, engage in charitable activity. However, the very same reports record that the vast majority of such Jews fail to connect such volunteerism to Jewish identity or Jewish values.[55]

Given the nature of many of the programmes advanced under the banner of “tikkun olam,” this should not come as a surprise. Often, such projects lack any distinctive Judaic basis and simply resemble what is being done by people of conscience the world over. If this is the case, it is difficult to see how such activities, while valuable in their own right, can constitute a meaningful expression of distinctive Jewish values. As Dr. Yehudah Mirsky has noted, humanitarianism, social justice and ecological advocacy are not distinctively “Jewish” as such. Mirsky writes:

[E]ncouraging young people who are otherwise indifferent to or estranged from Jewish life to engage in humanitarian work with no distinctive—let alone transformative—Jewish dimensions other than the label "Tikkun Olam" will strengthen neither Jewish identities nor Jewish life. [56]

Indeed, if Jewish educators and communal leaders are to engage contemporary Jewry with the substance of Jewish tradition, what is necessary is not the promotion of a bland social justice agenda. Rather, there is a need for a serious exploration of the way in which Judaic values and Jewish life can illuminate problems and potential solutions to issues of broad human concern that might otherwise go undiscovered.[57]

Our recognition of the disparity between Torah values and the outlook of contemporary Jews compounds our conviction that we must address the question of how we can model an educational and communal structure to actualise a vision for a community representing Jewish values. In accordance with the ideology of Torah im derekh erets, the Torah’s value system can and should be applied to the whole range of worldly endeavours.[58] Contemporary Jews must be taught that Torah has relevance to all areas of human life and should not be seen as confined to technical halakhic questions. In this respect too, our generation often falls short. In explaining what he sees as one of the main causes of defection from Judaism, Rabbi Berel Wein identifies our failure to articulate a national vision:

The Torah [has ideas], but someone has to articulate them. What’s our attitude toward the poorer sections of society? Toward the Arabs? Toward anything?... We don’t say that we are going to fix the world; we don’t say those things even though it is part of our heritage, even though that’s part of Torah.[59]

If we neglect to articulate these values, people will see Judaism as unconnected to the issues and realities with which they grapple. At worst, this results in a failure to engage the present generation of Jews. At best, those who are faithful to Judaism will be divided personalities, unable to integrate Judaic wisdom with their worldly activity.

We have argued throughout this article that a focus on the observance of halakha must be balanced by a concentration on the Judaic worldview, character and behavior that extends beyond compliance with Jewish law. Nothing could be further from the intent of this writer than the claim that values provide an alternative to adherence to halakha. On the contrary, a focus on Jewish values should reinforce halakhic observance. Our success in inspiring our students and communities to keep halakha will be enhanced immensely if we develop and disseminate a consciousness of the underlying values of Jewish laws. Professor of psychology and education Aharon Hersh Fried, has written cogently in this vein. With regard to the halakhot relating to appropriate speech, Fried emphasises that children will observe these laws when an appreciation is developed for their underlying values:

We must teach our children to respect others and to refrain from disparaging others. Much time and effort is spent on teaching our children the issurim involved in speaking lashon haRa. Thus we teach them that there are 16 lavim involved in every lashon haRa.   But that is not enough. Unless and until we teach children to respect other people’s privacy, and unless we teach them that sticking our proverbial noses into other people’s business is inherently disgusting, they will not cease to find “heteirim” for speaking lashon haRa, if only for the most “juicy pieces.”[60]

While Fried refers to the education of children, the same principle holds for our own efforts to adhere to halakhic strictures as well as to our endeavours in educating and guiding adults toward mitzvah observance.

This approach is effective in reinforcing halakhic commitment as it elicits a sense of the meaningfulness of the observance of a given mitzvah. However, the significance of the appreciation of the spiritual meaning of the mitzvot is not confined to its resulting in a more punctilious observance of mitzvot. R Soloveichik has emphasised the intrinsic importance of avodah she-ba-lev—worship of the heart—in every religious act:

The ritual as well as moral actions must be endowed with emotional warmth, love and joy and the mechanical act converted into a living experience. Of course, all this unattainable if there is no message to deliver, no idea to suggest, no enriching meaning. In order to offer God my heart and soul, in order to serve Him inwardly, one thing is indispensible- understanding, the involvement of the logos.[61]

The Rav explains that an appreciation of the spiritual meaning of a mitzvah is essential, not only as a means of decreasing the rate of halakhic infraction but as facilitating the passion and spiritual connection that should characterise our avodat Hashem.

While these considerations are relevant to every generation, there is reason to believe that they are particularly essential in our own time. Writing about educational priorities in Hareidi schools, Jonathan Rosenbloom has warned that

[I]n our headlong pursuit of covering ever greater amounts of material in the classroom— which is too often the criterion by which our educational institutions compete—we have come to view middos development or explaining the deeper meaning of the mitzvos as something not quite serious, something "ba'al teshuvish."[62]

A failure to concentrate on such elements can lead to an erosion of halakhic commitment. In her study of formerly Orthodox Jews who had left the path of halakhic observance, Faranak Margolese enquired as to the level of spiritual enrichment that such Jews had experienced in the context of halakhic practice. Only 24 percent of respondents felt that their community had fostered spirituality while 56 percent declined to agree that “Orthodox Judaism will make you more spiritual.”[63] What this shows is that our community has been unsuccessful in communicating to its members the spiritual richness that can be found in a halakhic observance based on an appreciation of its underlying meaning. The Jewish poet, Roger Kamenetz, relates that a young woman once told him that “to her, Judaism is an old man saying no.”[64] Unless there is an appreciation for the positive values expressed through Jewish practice, halakhic observance will often seem like a set of arbitrary restrictions, dissociated from its true spiritual richness.

Having reflected on the importance of defining communal and individual objectives based on Torah values and understanding mitzvot in such a way that facilitates a committed and passionate observance, we must now reflect on the duty to measure one’s behavior against the standards of Jewish ethics. Referring to both Rav Amital’s observations of the contemporary Jewish scene and the Ramban’s aforementioned condemnation of an unspiritual life within halakhic boundaries, Marc Shapiro has commented insightfully on the occurrence of legal scandals amongst those purporting to be observant Jews:

A major problem we have is that it is often the case that all sorts of halakhic justifications can be offered for these illegal activities. One whose only focus is on halakhah, without any interest in the broad ethical underpinnings of Judaism, and the Ramban’s conception of Kedoshim Tihyu, can entirely lose his bearings and turn into a “scoundrel with Torah license.[65]

Shapiro’s comments are confirmed by Rosenblum’s description of the low priority accorded to middot development. He notes that such concerns tend to get “pushed toward the bottom of a crowded curriculum.” More fundamentally, Rosenblum bemoans the prevalent attitude that “developing good middos is treated as something primarily of concern for young children.”[66] A failure to inculcate a Torah approach to character beyond the stage of infancy is likely to perpetuate a society in which immoral and unspiritual behavior is overlooked due to a veneer of halakhic acceptability.

All the considerations we have discussed above constitute essential elements of a Torah life. They affect our standing before Hashem and apply independently of how they are perceived by other human beings. Nevertheless, there is no denying of the centrality of considerations of Kiddush Hashem (and its opposite) to our mandate as committed Jews or of its relevance to the matter at hand. We recall the warning of Chazal concerning the potential for those who claim fealty to Torah to bring the name of Hashem into disrepute:

He who studies Scripture and Mishnah and serves scholars, but is not honest in his business dealings and whose conversations with his fellow-beings are not calm. What do people say about such a person? “Woe to so-and-so for having learned Torah...”.[67]

Conversely, the potential exists to glorify the Torah and its Author:

The Name of Heaven shall become beloved through you; [this obligated a Jew to] study Scripture and Mishnah, serve scholars, conduct his business dealings honestly and converse with his fellow-beings in a calm manner. What do people say about such a person? “More power to his father who taught him Torah, more power to his teacher who taught him Torah, woe t those who did not learn Torah.”[68]

The concept of Kiddush Hashem incorporates a concern, not only for correct behavior but for how that behavior is perceived. Bnei Torah will not succeed in sanctifying the Name of Hashem if our way of life is seen to be lacking in moral rectitude and spiritual depth. When we read that 60 percent of formerly observant Jews interviewed by Margolese declined to affirm the position that “Orthodox Judaism will make you a better person,”[69] we must ask ourselves questions about the reputation of our community and how it is impacting on the reputation of Hashem.

In a powerful and candid article, Rabbi Ilan Feldman accounts for the decreasing tide of Kiruv in exactly these terms. While the goal of Torah observance is to give expression to the glorious spiritual nature of man, R Feldman notes that those who enter the observant Jewish community “will not necessarily discover giants at all”! R Feldman asks the reader to picture a committed family man who respects wisdom and volunteers for good causes joining a world in which Shabbat table talk assesses political candidates “purely on selfish concerns of the religious community, with little concern for their impact on broader society.” Such attitudes, while deeply problematic in their own right, are distinctly unattractive and, according to R Feldman, lie at the heart of the decreasing tide of kiruv in our generation.[70]

Conclusion

We have argued that both the philosophical position and the sociological attitude that limits Judaic norms to halakhic observance are inconsistent with numerous principles advanced by our great rabbis, from Talmudic times until the modern era. We have discussed the potential consequences of a failure to study, teach and implement Torah ideas relating to worldview, character development and standards of behavior that raise the bar higher than halakhic practice. Such neglect can lead to a lack of clarity in our own lives and those of our students and communities as to how our lives should be guided by the distinctive principles of a Torah worldview. In some cases, a mechanistic halakhic life, unconnected to a deeper sense of meaning and purpose, can lead to attrition from the ranks of the religiously committed. In the best case scenario, the mitzvah observance will lack the passion that is expected of one who has the privilege of fulfilling the ratson Hashem. As Ohavei Hashem, we yearn for a world in which humanity recognises the Chosen People as reflecting the highest ideals and the greatest wisdom. We will move closer to this goal when we complement our essential commitment to halakhic knowledge and practice with a concerted effort to learn, develop and disseminate a Torah understanding of how we can live our lives in the light of Hashem—leHagdil Torah u-leHadirah.

The practice of halakha changes. Every shift in materials, technology, economic structure, and political framework necessarily creates new practical halakha. Can plastics be kashered? Is the completion of an electrical circuit forbidden on Shabbat? May Jews own stock in a corporation that serves hametz in its cafeteria over Pesah? How should we relate to a secular but Jewish State? What are our responsibilities in a secular multi-faith democracy? No matter what answer one chooses, any unprecedented situation creates unprecedented practical halakha.  

The fact of practical change, however, can be explained in many different ways. One can argue for the existence of an unchanging, abstract halakha, and understand practical change as the assignment of new cases to existing categories: Are plastics ceramics or glass? Conversely, one can argue that halakha has no necessary trans-temporal identity, and is merely whatever the Jewish people decide it is at any given moment. Plastics may be ceramics today and glass tomorrow, and a category unto themselves the day after, and the day after that the question may seem wholly irrelevant to religious life.

Modern Orthodoxy is driven in part by a valorization and hyperawareness of change, by identification with “There cannot be a House of Study without creative contribution” (BT Hagigah 2b), far more than with “The new is forbidden by the Torah” (Mishnah Orlah 3:9 as creatively repurposed by Hatam Sofer). We therefore must grapple seriously with the profound theological and practical challenges posed by the acknowledgement of change, including the following:

1. The legitimacy of our worldview and the authority of our halakhic interpretations are grounded in the claim that they represent a current embodiment of a living tradition extending back to Sinai. Change raises the question of identity: If we are not thinking and practicing the same way as our ancestors, what justifies our claim to be their Torah heirs? The power of this question is roughly proportional to the radicalness of the halakhic and hashkafic changes we acknowledge.

2. In the absence of a recognized central authority, change in our community inevitably happens piecemeal and haphazardly. What maintains us as a community when our thoughts and practices vary widely? To what extent should change be limited by the desire or necessity to have all members of our community be able to eat together, pray together, recognize each other as Jewish, and so forth?

3. Change raises the question of standards. If conformity to the past is not necessary, how do we distinguish legitimate from illegitimate changes? Might this be an issue of quantity as well as quality? Is this a decision we make with complete autonomy, or are we to some extent constrained by the opinions of other Torah communities that we acknowledge as legitimate even while we disagree with them profoundly? Must we sharply distinguish ourselves from Conservative Judaism’s theories of change, or can we say that we disagree only with its application of those theories, or even that change is not necessarily a point of denominational disagreement?

4. Change increases responsibility. Rabbis who proclaim the immutability of halakha can, when confronted by moral challenges to halakha as it stands, proclaim their deepest sympathies and yet contend that they cannot change anything. Acknowledging change means that the status quo has much more limited deference, and that critiques, even those rooted in externally derived values, have more force. This has been brought home to me many times at events related to agunot.

Modern Orthodoxy urgently needs a persuasive theory and compelling rhetoric of halakhic change to deal effectively with these issues. We have a great deal of philosophic work to do before we get there. My goal in this article is to advance the conversation by addressing some implications, strengths, and weaknesses of a rhetorical device that is often understood as representing a theory: the assertion that “halakha evolves.”

Why is saying “halakha evolves” different than saying “halakha changes”? Theories are often embodied in metaphors, and metaphors for liberal arts subjects are often drawn from science (which itself relies more on metaphors than is commonly acknowledged). For at least the past 150 years, the most popular scientific metaphor for change has been Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Saying that “halakha evolves” implicitly makes the claim that the process of halakhic change shares vital characteristics with the process of biological change that Darwin described and sought to explain.

But this metaphor needs to be interrogated to see what it means, and whether it is true and useful either intellectually or rhetorically.

A fundamental challenge to the intellectual usefulness of the evolutionary metaphor is that scientific theories are descriptive and predictive, whereas a theory of halakha will in addition be prescriptive. Any claim about how halakha has developed in the past carries with it the implicit argument that similar development should be expected and approved in the future. This confusion between facts and values, between “will be” and “ought,” is familiar from Social Darwinism, and theorists of halakha should not fall prey to it.

A fundamental challenge to the rhetorical usefulness of the evolutionary metaphor is that it (deliberately) alienates those who reject evolutionary science from our halakhic community. “Halakha evolves” has the effect of connecting the acceptance of halakhic change with willingness to engage contemporary science. This is good for morale, and builds support within our community, which has little outward tolerance for obscurantism. But I suspect that it also creates a bias against our position among people who have ranged themselves against macro-evolutionary biology, and makes them less willing to consider our position legitimate. 

Why should this matter? Darwin famously sought to account for the origin of species. Speciation classically occurs when two populations with a common ancestry diverge to the point that they can no longer interbreed. There are two potential halakhic analogues to this process:

1. when scholars from two halakhic camps no longer allow each other’s ideas to fertilize their Torah conversations
2. when the halakhic positions of two halakhic communities lead them to forbid intermarriage with each other.

Each of these, I submit, should be avoided—the halakhic locus for my contention is the prohibition of lo titgodedu, “Do not form factions.” So we might be better off keeping these two issues separated.  

It must be noted that the interbreeding standard for speciation can be challenged in a variety of ways. Claddists focus on the extent of genetic difference rather than on the compatibility of genitalia, and many intuitively distinct species, such as lions and tigers, turn out to be biologically compatible and reproductively separated only by practicality, such as incompatibility of habitat or waking hours. It is not clear to me which concept of speciation is the best analogy to the halakhic factionalization that the Torah opposes.

Now scientific theories themselves change (evolve?) over time, and this has been particularly true of the Theory of Evolution. For example: Is evolution gradual, as Darwin himself thought, or characterized by “punctuated equilibrium,” that is, by long periods of stability interrupted by brief periods of dramatic change, as Stephen Jay Gould proposes? Clearly, “halakha evolves” will have very different implications depending on which version of the theory one adopts as metaphor.

My sense is that most users of the phrase intend it gradualistically, as a way to respond to concerns that proposed changes might snowball. But that approach did poorly explaining the fossil record, and it might do as poorly explaining the history of halakha. Perhaps we are living in the midst of a halakhic equivalent of the Cambrian explosion. It is not obvious to me that we should only legitimate incremental change, or that all the changes currently being considered within Modern Orthodoxy are incremental.

Darwin’s theory became much more attractive once it was paired with Natural Selection, or “survival of the fittest,” as its causal mechanism. Natural selection is often taken to suggest that change over time inevitably works out for the best, as only those mutations that increase “fitness” survive. So too, we might think, halakhic change is always for the good over time, as the negative changes will die out and the positive changes will reproduce, and overall the halakha that emerges will be fitter.

But this is a misunderstanding of both science and halakha. Survival of the fittest is a tautology: It cannot independently predict anything, as we cannot know in advance what is fittest. Moreover, short-term fitness often leads to medium-term extinction. Halakhic Judaism is not parallel to the entire arena of life, nor even to the animal kingdom; it is at most a species, and thus every mutation puts it at risk of extinction. Biological evolution is horribly inefficient, and can afford to be, but halakha does not have the same luxury.

The second great modification of Darwin came with the discovery of genetics. This field itself has been in almost constant flux, but here are two ongoing developments that I think are significant for the halakhic analogy. First, the connection between genotype and phenotype grows ever more complex—the same gene or set of genes can find radically different expression depending on environment and a whole set of iterative genetic “switches.” Second, mutations more and more seem predictable, in the sense that we know which proteins in which places on the DNA strands are most likely to be replaced, and by which other protein. This means that wholly new “mutations of first impression” are extremely unlikely.

Put together, these developments suggest that even radical changes are rarely unprecedented, and that significant biological changes are rarely the result of a single mutation. If halakhic change is analogous to biological change, then “halakha evolves” is not a good description of what happens when a particular halakhic responsum drives a social change. On the other hand, the recognition that an organism with a fundamentally stable genotype can, under the right circumstances, produce radically different phenotypes might provide a very useful analogy to halakhic change: “Even that which a veteran student will rule in the future in the presence of his teacher was already said to Moses at Sinai” (Yerushalmi Peah 2:4).

Genetic change occurs in two ways: recombination through sexual reproduction and mutation. The intellectual analogue of sexual reproduction is serious, open-minded conversation. A culture in which students can have only one teacher, or learn in only one school, will produce the equivalent of inbreeding. At the same time, a specific genetic combination, especially if many of the genes involved are recessive, will often survive only if it is given the opportunity to reproduce for some time in an isolated breeding group. To what extent is Modern Orthodoxy an established subspecies whose health will be enhanced by mingling its genes with a larger population, and to what extent does it yet need to be sheltered?

Mutations happen all the time, but particularly harmful mutations are often the result of extreme environmental pressure, such as radiation. Some mutations are helpful when carried but harmful when expressed, or helpful in some environments but damaging in others. If the analogy is valid, we should be careful to distinguish halakhic changes that arise from unending regular engagement with Talmud Torah, and those that reflect engagement with external thoughts and realities, and perhaps be more suspicious of the latter. Or perhaps we should see takkanot as radical mutations, and interpretations as new expressions of the existing genome. Perhaps viral insertion and symbiosis leading to incorporation have halakhic analogues as well.

Regardless, a fundamental failing of the analogy may be that halakhic change is not, cannot be, and ought not be blind. I might argue that Modern Orthodox halakha should be seen instead as the product of an expertly supervised breeding program.

In sum: The evolutionary analogy can be intellectually stimulating, but it does not serve as shorthand for a compelling account of halakhic change. We must also acknowledge that where the analogy seems apt, its implications may challenge rather than support the legitimacy of particular Modern Orthodox innovations.

A variety of other analogies may yield more consistently authentic and useful results. Within the realm of science, for example, the Copenhagen model of quantum mechanics, in which only probabilities exist before the act of measurement “collapses the wave-function,” seems to me a useful and true way of describing the relationship of halakha decision-making, or pesak, to abstract study of halakha. The idea that the self is constructed via narrative, that we are the same people we were as infants because we can tell coherent stories using the word “I” throughout, may be very helpful in determining the parameters of change. But these and others have yet to be effectively exploited and synthesized.

Out of a vast array of intellectual resources, a Modern Orthodox conception of halakhic change awaits formulation.

I

Neither of the Torahs, Written or Oral, seems to have anything to say about “spirituality” as such. The concept, like the Hebrew word for it, ruhaniut, is evidently much later, perhaps medieval. Yet anyone who has even a passing familiarity with Tanakh, Talmud, Midrash, and the later rabbis, knows that many of these texts and sages (among whom we may wish to count the masters of the Kabbalah) embrace the substance of what we now often call spirituality:

that is, a personal, meditative encounter with the Transcendent or Holy, which is essentially individual and autonomous. They also include moral, ethical, and metaphysical perceptions (as distinct from halakhic mandates) that may seem to come to our mind directly from a transcendent Source, or (in the wonderful expression of the Quakers) as from an “inner voice.” We may think also of the self-generated kavanah of passionate prayer, and the spiritually elevating joy of song and dance, much beloved among Hassidic and “Carlebachian” devotees. Maimonides believed the essential part of our human, and thus of our Jewish, vocation to be something profoundly personal—our “knowledge” and “intellectual apprehension” of a Primary Reality, Matsui Rishon.

Alongside this personal experience that many of us think of as spirituality, there is the elaborate fabric of halakhically prescribed behavior, which is regarded as being divinely mandated. Something like a universal consensus of Torah sages holds, I think, that the two—the experience and the behavior—are inseparably linked, mutually animating, equally necessary, equally obligatory. Though we may distinguish them analytically, we may not dispense with either. 

Though late in coming—to speculate why would be an intriguing temptation— awareness of “spirituality” has, thus, long since arrived in Jewish life, and indeed (as the subject of this issue of Conversations amply testifies) in Orthodox Jewish life (even though in Orthodoxy the halakhot of prescribed Jewish behavior are given particular emphasis, and “observant” is the most usual epithet of approval). But as with the other touchstones of Torah and Jewish culture, including halakhic observance itself, the actuality of Orthodox spirituality never quite catches up with the ideal, and for us to contemplate our tradition’s ruhaniut may be to deplore what can often seem its elusiveness, to bridle at the challenges it encounters from time to time in our individual and communal lives. The problem is substantial and (pending messianic fulfillment) ongoing, and defies easy solution, or even easy description. What I hope to do here is to consider several aspects of the matter from contemporary perspectives, and then to invoke a few potent rabbinical ideas that, I believe, may help us address the specific “perplexities” at issue.                            

Halakha and Moral/Ethical Sensitivity

   Let us proceed, in the conversational spirit of Conversations, by recalling two articles that appeared in the Spring 2010/5770 issue.

   In “Sounds of Silence,” Pinchas Landau deplored that (as he sees it) American Orthodox Jews, and most egregiously their rabbinical leaders, generally failed to express moral indignation at the ongoing financial corruptions and distortions of principle that harmed so many people during the recent, and continuing, economic crisis. In what he perceives as this dereliction, Landau finds evidence of a larger, more sinister problem: “Many people, including—or perhaps especially—rabbis and educators actually have no clear idea what ethical and moral issues are. More precisely, they have great difficulty distinguishing between legal/halakhic and moral/ethical treatments of issues, preferring to subsume the latter in theological, or even mystical, conceptual frameworks.” His conclusion is a severe indictment: “Orthodox Judaism, as currently conceived and practiced, is morally challenged.” Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits had put the matter even more provocatively: “Orthodoxy is, in a sense, halakha in a straitjacket” (Essential Essays on Judaism, p. 101).

Halakha and Autonomous Spiritual Experience

   In the same issue of Conversations, a daring and original article by Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo addressed other dimensions of the problem (“On the Nature and

Future of Halakha in Relation to Autonomous Religiosity”). From his perspective as a

teacher of Jewish philosophy, R. Cardozo has encountered a frustrated craving for “spiritual satisfaction” among “countless young Jews who search for an authentic Jewish religious way of life, but are unable to find spiritual satisfaction in the prevalent halakhic system as practiced today in most Ultra- or Modern Orthodox communities.” These students seek “to experience the presence of God on a day-to-day basis. Beyond ‘observance,’ they look for holiness and meaning.”

   Concluding that “we need to find new paths to Jewish spirituality,” R. Cardozo

affirms provocatively a principle that, by logical necessity, one should expect to be axiomatic in Orthodoxy, but that appears to be often ignored: that “Judaism is an autonomous way of life” that expects us “to respond as an individual to the Torah’s demands.”

 Defectors from Judaism in Search of Spirituality

Contemplating Rabbi Cardozo’s Orthodox Israeli students and their failure to find “spiritual satisfaction” in the Judaism of their experience calls to mind the quite different, yet in a sense parallel, constituency of spiritually dissatisfied young American Jews of whom Professor Rodger Kamenetz had written over 15 years earlier in his notable and well-remembered The Jew in the Lotus (1994). Though few of them seem to have had an Orthodox background comparable to that which had probably nourished (but nevertheless dissatisfied) R. Cardozo’s students, they too—most significantly—used the word “spiritual” to denote what they missed in the Judaism they knew. Less committed to their formal Jewish identities by family and social bonds, they eventually sought “spiritual” satisfaction in the Asian religions of Hinduism and (especially) Buddhism.

   A few Jews are known to have embraced Buddhism more than a century ago, but it was in the 1950s and later—the period of the “beat generation” and its aftermath—that the Asian religions came to exert a strong attractive power on significant numbers of young Americans inclined to religious or cultural experiment, who happened to be, for a variety of reasons, disenchanted with their family’s Christianity or Judaism. In the latter half of the twentieth century, this became one of the conspicuous features of “hippie culture”; and the greatly disproportionate number of young Jews who adopted Buddhism (either in place of, or in addition to, their religion of birth) was widely noted.

It was also, of course, profoundly deplored in traditional Jewish circles, and the “cults,” as Buddhism and Hinduism were often derogatorily called, have been perceived by some as a major menace to the stability and continuity of Jewish life in America. The matter is complex, and has been much studied and discussed.  

    Writing in 1994, Kamenetz reveals (pp. 7–9) how important had been (and we may presume still is) the Jewish presence among recently fledged American Buddhists:

In the past twenty years, [Jewish Buddhists] have played a significant and disproportionate role in the development of this second form of American Buddhism. Various surveys show Jewish participation in such groups ranging from 6 percent to 30 percent. This is up to twelve times the Jewish proportion of the American population, which is 2 ½ percent. In these same twenty years, American Jews have founded Buddhist meditation centers and acted as administrators, publishers, translators, and interpreters. They have been particularly prominent teachers and publicizers. . . Today in American universities there is an impressive roster of Buddhist scholars with Jewish backgrounds, perhaps up to 30 percent of the total faculty in Buddhist Studies.

Kamenetz’s book provides copious examples of the Jewish experiences and perceptions that underlie these figures. He tells, for instance, of a friend of his, Marc, who described his religious position with metaphors Kamenetz found both eloquent and depressing: “I have Jewish roots and Buddhist wings.” He comments: “I knew what Marc meant by wings. Buddhism had gotten him somewhere spiritually in a way Judaism never had” (pp. 12–13). For some of the Buddhist-oriented Jews he met and talked with, their Buddhism complemented but did not wholly replace their Judaism. Others, like the poet Allen Ginsberg, seemed to have discovered, or retained, nothing of spiritual substance in their Jewish experience, which they rejected with scorn.

As a sophisticated, synagogue-bred Jew who, despite his spiritual dissatisfaction, always rejected categorically the notion of tampering with his Jewish identity and commitment, Kamenetz himself seems to embody in an accessible and understandable form the syndrome he discusses in others. Though writing from a quite different perspective with respect to education and commitment, his critical survey of Orthodoxy can be regarded as complementing those of Pinchas Landau (Orthodoxy is “morally challenged”) and Rabbi Cardozo (Orthodox students are “unable to find spiritual satisfaction in the prevalent halakhic system”):

I recall an evening in Jerusalem with a group of baalei teshuvah, Jews who had converted to Orthodoxy. To them it all boiled down to one proposition: either God had given Jews the Torah on Mt. Sinai or had not. And they asked me to choose. I felt like I was being grilled. The emotional undertone of today’s Orthodoxy, at least as I’d encountered it, seemed excessively self-righteous and self-isolating. It came down to little things, customs, such as the refusal of Orthodox men to shake a woman’s hand. I knew there were reasons for it: if she were menstruating they could not touch her, nor could they ask her point blank. But it seemed to symbolize a self-enclosure, another barrier or boundary between men and women, and also between Jews and contemporary life. I had imagined that someone obeying God’s law would feel more joy. I didn’t always feel that joy. There often seemed a neurotic quality to the obedience, a Judaism by the numbers that I couldn’t relate to. (p. 22)  

This two-level manifestation of spiritual dissatisfaction with their Jewish experience—with Orthodox experience, in the case of R. Cardozo’s students, with an experience more diverse (rarely Orthodox, often synagogue-based, sometimes secular), in the case of Professor Kamenetz and the Jewish Buddhists—strongly suggests that the problem is not exclusive to one level or another of Jewish religious life, but may be endemic. Those of us who are most particularly concerned with the challenge to Orthodoxy may be disposed to find R. Cardozo’s dissatisfied students more disturbing than Professor Kamenetz’s Jewish Buddhists. But we would be unwise to dismiss with a cynical shrug the religious frustrations of those other young Jews who, having found their own Jewish experience spiritually impoverished, have turned to Asian religion to try to acquire “wings.”

I think of a line of Chaucer’s that expresses what I should consider an enlightened Orthodox perspective on the matter: “If gold can rust, then what should iron do?” What seems evident is that both the “gold” and the “iron” are suffering today from the same “rust.” But it is precisely because of the unique role that Orthodoxy inevitably plays in the whole of Jewish religious life that the Orthodox problem that R. Cardozo has identified is by no means an exclusively Orthodox problem.

II

We like to hope that problems of this importance have solutions. I pray that this one does, and that such solutions can be speedily discovered and effected. However, I have no intention (nor authority or knowledge) to propose them. What I want to do in the remainder of this article is to touch upon a few of the relevant insights in rabbinic thought, as I understand them—chiefly those of Maimonides—which may help us toward understanding and solution.

 Maimonides and Halakha               

We have noted the broad rabbinical consensus that the Torah is as concerned with our religious experience (our understanding, feelings, perceptions, intentions) as with our behavior (our fulfillment of the mizvoth and halakhot). The discussions and citations above with respect to the perception of frustrated spirituality in contemporary Orthodoxy and in Judaism more generally have all implied that in contemporary Orthodoxy, there has come to be an imbalance (if indeed there was ever an authentic as distinct from a theoretical balance) between these two essential elements of our avodah—that the dominating focus upon behavior or halakha has tended to diminish the role of experience or spirituality (to oversimplify a complex subject).

By virtue of his range and penetration, Maimonides (better known in the Orthodox world as the Rambam) has long enjoyed a unique eminence as both rabbi and philosopher. This notwithstanding, he remains controversial as he was in his own day and after. I would like to recall some of his ideas here not to suggest that they should be regarded as sacrosanct, but rather to propose that they offer valuable points of departure for anyone who wishes to address the issue of spirituality vis-à-vis the contemporary halakhic dominance in Orthodoxy.

Maimonides, as befits an intellect of his stature, seems to embrace both “sides” of the issue—or, better, to acknowledge the danger of a simplistic commitment to either. His Mishneh Torah is, of course, our premier codification of biblical mitzvoth and rabbinical halakhot—and yet, as we shall point out presently, he has harsh words in his other masterpiece, the Guide of the Perplexed (Moreh Nevukhim), for halakhic devotion that is unleavened by spiritual (his term is “intellectual”) “apprehension.”

 Sacrifice, Prayer, and Meditation

            A substantial portion of the Written Torah addresses the system of korbanot, or sacrifices, which is the Torah’s most conspicuous prescription of service (avodah) to God. In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides organizes and elaborates the sacrificial laws in several extensive sections. In Jerusalem today, some rabbis and other devotees are even now preparing to resume the sacrifices when the Temple will be restored.

However, when Maimonides turns to this matter in the Guide (III.32), he implies unmistakably that the sacrificial system was not in fact God’s first “wish” for Israelite avodah, but rather a concession to human weakness, specifically the human reluctance to give up familiar ways. (Maimonides’ translator, Professor Shlomo Pines, renders the author’s Arabic for this divine accommodation with the arresting expression “wily graciousness.”) After citing examples of God’s accommodating the limitations of the human body, he addresses the subject of sacrifices:

Many things in our Law are due to something similar to this very governance. . . For a sudden transition from one opposite to another is impossible. And therefore man, according to his nature, is not capable of abandoning suddenly all to which he was accustomed. . . . and as at that time the way of life generally accepted and customary in the whole world and the universal service to which we were brought up consisted in offering various species of living beings in the temples in which images were set up. . . His wisdom did not require that he give us a Law prescribing the rejection, abandonment, and abolition of all these kinds of worship. For one could not then conceive the acceptance of [such a Law], considering the nature of man, which always likes that to which it is accustomed.

If this were not sufficiently jarring to conventional assumptions, Maimonides immediately follows it with an observation perhaps more startling:

At that time this would have been similar to the appearance of a prophet in these times [i.e., Maimonides’ own times] who, calling upon the people to worship God, would say, “God has given you a law forbidding you to pray to Him, to fast, to call upon Him for help in misfortune. Your worship should consist solely in meditation. . . .” Therefore He . . .  suffered the abovementioned kinds of worship to remain.

Professor Pines cites the eleventh-century Arab philosopher Avicenna as Maimonides’ probable source or influence with respect to meditation, and believes that Maimonides not only regarded prayer as superior to animal sacrifice, which seems likely enough, but that he indeed agreed with Avicenna that meditation was a superior form of worship to verbal prayer (p. cii). (Cf. Guide, III.51: “the worship peculiar to those who have apprehended the true realities” is “to set their thought to work on God alone, after they have achieved knowledge of Him.”) Maimonides’ text is subtle and is no doubt susceptible to multiple interpretations. What I suggest may be most relevant to us, if we address the matter cautiously, is this: in comparing kinds of avodah, of divine service or worship, Maimonides seems unmistakably to find least attractive—thus least “pleasing” to God— the kind of sacrifice that employs mainly human behavior, by contrast with those that invoke human understanding, intellect, mind, speech, and spirit, “that intellectual worship consisting in nearness to God and being in His presence.”

 Halakhic Observance and “Apprehending” God

We find the same principle, expanded to the scale of a human typology, at the beginning of that quartet of magisterial chapters which form the climax of the Guide. Maimonides calls this now-famous text a parable. It is a parable of man in search of God. In order to understand its relevance to our subject, we must recall all of it.

The ruler is in his palace, and all his subjects are partly within the city and partly outside the city. Of those who are within the city, some have turned their backs upon the ruler’s habitation, their faces being turned another way. Others seek to reach the ruler’s habitation, turn toward it, and desire to enter it and to stand before him, but up to now they have not yet seen the wall of the habitation. Some of those who seek to reach it have come up to the habitation and walk around it searching for its gate. Some of them have entered the gate and walk about in the antechambers. Some of them have entered the inner court of the habitation and have come to be with the king, in one and the same place with him, namely, in the ruler’s habitation. But their having come into the inner part of the habitation does not mean that they see the ruler or speak to him. For after their having come into the inner part of the habitation, it is indispensible that they should make another effort; then, they will be in the presence of the ruler, and see him from afar or nearby, or hear the ruler’s speech or speak to him. (III.51)

Part of this unforgettable parable is quite transparent. Those outside the city are barbarians “without the law,” who neither adhere to a religious tradition nor speculate for themselves. The city of God is not even a rumor to them. Lacking even a suspicion of the transcendent order, they lack authentic human identity—they are “lower than the rank of man but higher than the rank of the apes.” They are, we may suppose, akin in a way to the apikorsim of rabbinic typology. By contrast, all those within the city walls acknowledge and seek God, in one way or another, though some of these are fatally corrupted with error, and cannot even approach, let alone see, his habitation.

The final three classes of seekers are the ones who embody definitively Maimonides’ conceptions of avodah. First are those who are eager to encounter God but can’t even see the walls of his habitation. These are “the multitude of the adherents of the Law, I refer to the ignoramuses who observe the commandments.”

Next are those seekers who can indeed perceive the habitation but cannot find its gate, and so are condemned to walk around it. These are the masters of tradition who know what is considered to be correct but do not think for themselves. As Maimonides puts it: They “believe true opinions on the basis of traditional authority and study the law concerning the practices of divine service, but do not engage in speculation concerning the fundamental principles of religion and make no inquiry whatever regarding the rectification of belief.”

Those who succeed in gaining access to the ruler’s habitation, though they are lodged in rooms of varying nearness to the ruler himself, are Maimonides’ ideal of the autonomous seekers, who alone can approach the ruler though with an intimacy commensurate with the acuteness of their “apprehension.” Maimonides has encapsulated their search at the beginning of this chapter, where he promises that the chapter will explain

the worship as practiced by one who has apprehended the true realities peculiar only to Him after he has obtained an apprehension of what He is; and [this chapter] also guides him toward achieving this worship, which is the end of man, and makes known to him how providence watches over him in this habitation until he is brought over to the bundle of life.

If Maimonides had earlier been relatively circumspect in depreciating sacrifice by comparison with prayer and meditation as expressions of avodah (III.32), here he is startlingly forthright with respect to “observance” without intellectual-spiritual content, and declares categorically that these “ignoramuses who observe the commandments” but will never even glimpse God’s “habitation” constitute the mass of those who adhere to the Law. And the conformists who are content to think the approved thoughts get off only little better.

 “Intellectual Apprehension” of God, and “Knowledge” of His Existence

That which both classes of earnest but defective worshippers lack—the robotic observers of the Law and the merely conforming traditionalists—is what Maimonides often, in many places in the Guide, speaks of as our necessary, unending attempt at “intellectual apprehension” of God. We must not, I think, mistake what he means by “intellectual.” Maimonides is often called a “rationalist,” at times somewhat dismissively. But there is certainly nothing merely ratiocinative about his use of this word and the concept behind it. They appear throughout the Guide, from beginning to end. Thus in the first chapter, we learn that the human capacity for “intellectual apprehension” is nothing less than that “divine image” in which man was created. It is not a faculty simply for reasoning, in a narrow sense, but for perceiving, grasping, or apprehending, in a comprehensive sense. Maimonides’ own intellectual or spiritual “apprehensions” throughout the Guide—certainly not least in these final chapters—are dense, subtle, often mystical (however one understands that term), and they unfold at a very high level of intellectual and spiritual sophistication.

His peerless final chapter (III.54), in which the idea receives its apotheosis, gives us what are perhaps his ripest reflections on “spirituality” as autonomous seeking for apprehension of the Transcendent. The chapter is a kind of peroration, and at its climax is a celebrated text from Jeremiah (9:22–23):

Thus saith the Lord: Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me.

As Maimonides paraphrases this verse, even the wisdom of the moral virtues in which the wise man glories—along, of course, with lesser goods—stands below the highest and only unqualified hokhmah, which is “apprehension of Him.” But the same is true, he contends, of the mizvoth and halakhot themselves—thus ringing a significant variation on what we have found him affirming in his parable of the seekers, regarding the “multitude of the adherents of the Law”:

[A]ll the actions prescribed by the Law—I refer to the various species of worship and also the moral habits that are useful to all people in their mutual dealings—. . . all this is not to be compared with this ultimate end and does not equal it, being but preparations made for sake of this end.

 This Maimonidean bombshell is bound to dismay at least as many as it thrills. But coming from so authentic a “halakhic man” as Rambam, who was also Maimonides the philosopher, it may help to illuminate the link between spirituality and halakha. In the last sentence of his book, Maimonides (alluding to the text from Jeremiah that he has just quoted) points the direction:

It is clear that the perfection of man that may truly be gloried in is the one acquired by him who has achieved, in a measure corresponding to his capacity, apprehension of Him. . . . The way of life of such an individual, after he has achieved this apprehension [italics mine], will always have in view loving-kindness, righteousness, and judgment, through assimilation to His actions, may He be exalted. . . .

But according to Maimonides, I take it, we cannot “apprehend” that of whose existence we are not convinced. If the avodah of “apprehension” of God is the way to our own perfection, and in fact (as he implies elsewhere) to that intersection with the Eternal we call olam haBa, then a prior “knowledge” of the necessity of God’s existence or being is its cognitive sine qua non, the cornerstone of our understanding, the foundation of our hokhmah. (Maimonides, like Rav Abraham Isaac Kook centuries later, is reluctant even to ascribe so abstract but, in his view, mundane an attribute as existence to God.) In his articulation of the 613 mizvoth, Maimonides starts by affirming: “The first of the positive commandments is to know that there is a God.” We must know that there is a God before we can apprehend the God.

The first page of the Mishneh Torah addresses our relation to God with a philosophically austere expression of this same cognitive formula: “The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know (leida’) that there is a Primary Reality (Matsui Rishon) who brought into being all existence”(Yesodei haTorah I.1).

How to try to fulfill this primary Torah mitzvah to know of God’s being, and then the corollary obligation (in Maimonides’ terms) to apprehend God, is not self-evident. We look to the Torah as God’s revealed Truth; but like our ancestors of the twelfth century, when we do this we cannot be sure of either comprehension or agreement.

 I suggest that Maimonides’ insights into these vitally important matters have not lost their usefulness.

 Maimonides on Man, God, and Torah

Three of these insights in particular seem to me immensely relevant to the challenges, both moral and spiritual, that we have seen imputed to contemporary Orthodoxy. First, there are the individual, autonomous “intellectual” ways we should, according to Maimonides, try to relate to God. The unquestioned importance of observing the formal halakhic requirements of the Law notwithstanding, fulfillment of our lives as humans and Jews requires that we personally know the existence of (not only believe in), and then apprehend (not only obey), God. Without this our devotion to halakha is fatally incomplete. No idea in the Guide of the Perplexed is more central or more pervasive. It is, I think, at the core of what we now mean by spirituality. In this context, Maimonides’ evident preference for prayer and meditation as expressions of avodah is altogether comprehensible.   

            Then, too, there is Maimonides’ very conception (or conceptions) of God. Some of his most provocative and demanding chapters are about the divine nature. For his own reasons, he himself almost invariably uses the Torah’s imagery and language of super-monarchical personification, although he explains at length that God’s nature and attributes are altogether beyond human comprehension. He reminds us many times that the Torah’s personifications of God are instances of its “speaking in the language of men,” for the benefit of those whose thinking cannot rise above this language. He himself quite decisively (and possibly a little ironically) puts aside the conventional imagery in that extraordinarily interesting opening of the Mishneh Torah, which we have already quoted, where he invokes the “Primary Reality (Matsui Rishon) that brought into being all existence.” He thus seems to distance himself at a critical moment from the familiar encrustation of personifications, images, and metaphors, numinous and venerated and usually conceived literally, which in his day, for at least a few, had evidently already become encumbrances (and have certainly, in our own day, become so for many more, as Rav Kook acknowledges in some of his most luminous pages). Perhaps it is not too much to say that Maimonides thus assists—even authorizes—our individual cognitive capability, our “intellectual apprehension,” our meditative faculty, to lead our individual sensibilities toward those personal intimations of Transcendent Reality in which he believes our fullest humanity and our most authentic Torah devotion lies.

Finally, there is Torah itself, the ordained source—more precisely, the register—of God’s mizvoth and halakhot, and thus at the core of historic Judaism, most assuredly of Orthodox Judaism. Maimonides devotes over a third of the Guide to explaining that the Torah’s innumerable ascriptions to God of “corporeality,” of a formal constitution parallel to the human, are not to be understood literally, that they are concessions, in “the language of men,” to the needs of those who cannot otherwise conceive of “Primary Reality.” Although the traditional divine personification remains for many a stumbling block and a perplexity, Maimonides and like-minded thinkers did eventually win their battle against divine corporeality.

       For contemporary seekers of spirituality, however, Torah perplexities are at least as likely to be related to crime and punishment—to the range of approved human behavior and prescribed penalties for infraction. What are we to do when the Written Torah authorizes or forbids behavior in ways that our moral apprehension—our “inner voice”—rejects? Especially when the Written Torah prescribes the punishment of death in contexts which may seem to us morally unacceptable—when, in short, halakha seems at odds with morality?

      We have already encountered Maimonides’ original, if somewhat equivocal, attitude toward animal sacrifice: that its authorization may have been from the start a divine concession to our human weakness for the familiar, and thus in itself “less pleasing” to God than prayer and meditation. But never, I believe, in either the Guide or the Mishneh Torah, does Maimonides hint that he deplores its original institution, whether for reasons of spiritual or aesthetic fitness, cruelty, or any other, nor that he would deplore its eventual restoration. Though the sacrifices may be a concession, they are also a mitzvah, a law. (Nevertheless, most contemporary Jews, including I suspect large numbers of Modern Orthodox, would be unenthusiastic for their return.) But still, Maimonides’ unmistakable preference for prayer and meditation—a preference that he in effect also ascribes to God—seems to me evidence of a critical attitude toward the Written Law, founded, one may surmise, upon his own moral and aesthetic perceptions, his personal “intellectual apprehension.”    

      If there is no unequivocally moral component in Maimonides’ apparent misgivings about korbanot, this may not be the case with respect to his rejection of the Torah’s unqualified command that when they are able, the Israelites must exterminate without exception, and irrespective of age, all the Canaanites (Deut. 7:1-2, 7:16, 20:15–18) and all the Amalekites (Deut. 25:19). Though hedged with a multitude of qualifications, his contrary conclusion is clear enough: if these arch-enemies should accept “a peaceful settlement” (however ungentle), even the Amalekites and Canaanites may live. (Cf. Hilkhot Melakhim 6:4–6.)

In thus nullifying the Written Torah’s demand for total proscription of these peoples, on account of their exceptionally destructive offenses and presumed mortal dangers, Maimonides is following in part a certain few midrashic and talmudic texts. “Sifrei and other halakhic sources reason that since the express purpose of the law is to prevent the Canaanites from influencing the Israelites. . .if they abandoned their paganism and accepted the moral standards of the Noahide laws they were to be spared” (Jeffrey Tigay, JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy, 472). Like Maimonides’ apparent discomfort with animal sacrifice, the Oral Torah’s finding such a way to save Canaanite lives seems to suggest a critique (to which Maimonides adheres) of the Written text’s plain sense. “[I]t is clear. . . that Deuteronomy’s demand for proscription of the Canaanites is indeed unconditional.. The rabbis’ rejection of this view is a reflection of their own sensibilities” (Ibid., 472).

Tigay’s explanation appears to contradict the usual rabbinical principle that the Oral Torah’s role vis-à-vis the Written is to amplify and clarify. What of the Amalekites? I know of no text in the Oral Torah which extends to them the option to save their lives by accepting a “peaceful settlement,” with all that is thus entailed. Among the later rabbis, Maimonides seems unique in so extending it. I suggest that to have done so, to have once again revealed (and this time without a midrashic source) a critical attitude toward the Written Law, Maimonides has given us another reflection of his own moral sensibility.

  Dynamic Halakha and Ethical Insights

When, a number of years ago, I first encountered Rabbi Robert Gordis’ well-known article “A Dynamic Halakhah: Principles and Procedures of Jewish Law” (Judaism, Summer 1979), I was excited by what it suggested about the complex relation between Written Torah and Oral Torah. (“Dynamic” seems to me an excellent epithet.) Some years later, I found Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits equally suggestive, and for the same reason. (In particular, see his article, “The Nature and Function of Jewish Law,” reprinted in his Essential Essays on Judaism.). Other writers in these 30 years have developed the same theme, which is precisely relevant to the imputed confrontation of the Written Law with spirituality. The theme is this: Despite assertions that it is “unchanging,” rabbinical interpretation of Torah Law has always been dynamic and responsive to rabbinical moral sensibilities.

[There is] clear evidence of growth and development in the Halakha because of new ethical insights and attitudes that represent movement beyond earlier positions. In these instances the Halakha did not hesitate to establish new legal norms, not local or temporary in character, but universally and permanently binding. (Gordis, 270; italics in the original)

Rabbi Gordis writes of “the dynamic character of the ethical consciousness of the Sages and . . . their unremitting effort to interpret the Torah in the light of their ethical insights” (Idem.). Rabbis Gordis and Berkovits, as well as others, have presented evidence that the sages of the Oral Torah regularly interpreted the Written Law so as to diminish judicial execution. Everyone knows about their institution of the requirement for witnesses and warnings. The reluctance of Rabbi Akiva to countenance any executions at all is well known. Equally familiar are the halakhic stratagems that in effect nullified the biblical mizvoth to execute the “stubborn and rebellious son” and to exterminate the “city led astray to idol worship.” There was, says Rabbi Berkovits, among the rabbis of the halakha a prevailing “tension between the written law and the living conscience” (73). “Obviously,” notes Rabbi Gordis, “the Law of God could not be inferior to the conscience of men” (272).

      If we accept this reasoning, it would seem to follow, then, that when the rabbis of the Mishna find ways to void (in effect) the unqualified Scriptural proscription of the Canaanites, and when Maimonides does the same with regard to the Amalekites, they are invoking their own consciences, and implying thereby that these “inner voices” too are in their own way miSinai.

 The Semantic Model

       There may seem to be a contradiction between this concept of a progressively unfolding halakha and the axiomatic rabbinical principle, enshrined in the Torah itself, that the Torah is definitive and unchanging. We read in Maimonides’ own Principles of Faith:

The Ninth Fundamental Principle is the authenticity of the Torah, i.e., that this Torah was precisely transcribed from God and no one else. To the Torah, Oral and Written, nothing must be added nor anything taken from it, as it is said, “You must neither add nor detract” (Deut. 13:1).

What role in such a Torah is there for personal sensibilities, consciences, and inner voices? Extrapolating a little, what place is there for “spirituality” in a religion founded upon Law? Fortunately, the rabbinical concept of the Oral Law is wondrously flexible and sensitive to disagreement among qualified disputants. (Cf. Isadore Twersky, A Maimonides Reader, 13–14.) The functions of rabbinical amplification and clarification embrace a wider range of possibilities than we might expect from Maimonides’ categorical Ninth Principle—but for which his own practice, as we have seen, might well have prepared us. And we have observed that among Maimonides’ dominating themes is his insistence that our individual understanding and apprehension of Transcendent Truth takes precedence for us over halakhic observance per se, and indeed over halakha itself, though these remain altogether essential. In this way he may have provided us with tools for helping resolve the conflicts in Modern Orthodox life between Law and spirituality.

And in the same spirit, I suggest a conceptual analogy for helping clarify how we can reconcile our “unchanging” Law with the autonomy and spontaneity of our experiences and apprehensions.

One of the basic principles of semantics is semantic contamination. According to this principle, a “message” sent by A to B is almost always vulnerable to errors of one kind or another between leaving A and arriving at B. There might, for instance, be static in a radio transmission; a paper message might be damaged by the elements; an email message might be distorted by a computer glitch; and so forth. More germane would be a situation in which the recipient failed to understand the message correctly because of intellectual or cultural limitations, and was obliged therefore to guess at some of its content. (We may also imagine a situation, less likely perhaps, where the recipient, for reasons of intellect, culture, or even perceived self-interest, willfully distorted the message.) And if the transmission of the message occurs not only in space but in time, we can easily imagine another range of potential dangers to accuracy of reception and comprehension. These matters are well-known to the historian, and especially to the philologist; such sciences as textual criticism are founded upon them.  

Without being drawn too near the quicksand of divisive theological speculation, let us think of the truths of Torah as messages, in this semantic sense—in the language of Torah itself, messages from God, through Moses, to us. An essential corollary of any such conception is, of course, as Maimonides registers in his Ninth Principle, that “messages” coming from Transcendent Reality are true and definitive. Yet by the time, so to say, that they have reached us (for the reasons I’ve sketched out, and for others that will readily come to mind) many or most of them may have been “contaminated,” or may have reached us incomplete. It may even be that no one’s “hearing,” even that of the most eminent prophets, is ever quite up to comprehending the Transcendent message. Thus the Written Torah required, and requires, to be supplemented by the Oral, and the Oral by the most eminent sages of the generations. Emphasizing one aspect of this requirement, Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits addresses the matter with exceptional eloquence:

Thus, the Oral Torah as halakha redeems the Written Torah from the prison of its generality and “humanizes” it. The written law longs for this, its redemption, by the Oral Torah. That is why God rejoices when he is defeated by his children. Such defeat is his victory. (p. 97)                  

May we imagine, extending Rabbi Berkovits’ celebrated talmudic allusion, that God also rejoices whenever his children use their unique faculties of spirit and perception, of instinct and conviction, to reach beyond halakha, beyond even our only partially understood Torah, to that direct and personal “intellectual apprehension” of Matsui Rishon in which Maimonides finds our human fulfillment?

On the Sunday before Rosh Hashanah in 2009, an audience of 225 individuals attended a Jewish community-wide Healing Service in Baltimore, Maryland. The Healing Service was convened as a gathering for survivors of domestic, sexual, physical, verbal, and all forms of abuse; family members and friends of survivors; mental health and physical health professionals; clergy; educators; and all who wanted to learn how to “break the silence” that surrounds and permeates abuse and trauma in a community. The Healing Service was designed and sponsored by the Shofar Coalition, a program of CHANA and the ASSOCIATED Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore.

Representatives from Shofar, CHANA, the Baltimore Board of Rabbis, and the Baltimore Jewish Times joined with eight courageous survivors who agreed to share their experiences of trauma endured as children, adolescents, or adults. Together, they delivered a message—in words, in chants, in prayer. In doing so, they challenged the audience to cultivate a Healing Community, one that actively listens to the truths spoken by those among us who have been victimized; one that believes and accepts that these traumatic experiences affect not only the victims but all of us; and a community that responds with compassion and action rather than with silence and denial.

Why a Healing Service?

Allow me to quote from a statement publically issued several weeks before the event by Rabbi Amy Scheinerman, President of the Baltimore Board of Rabbis:

As Jews, we understand viscerally from our historical experience what it is to be victims of persecution. Time and again, we have demanded that the voices of victims be heard, that their pain be acknowledged, and that justice prevail. Yet in our own midst, many have suffered silently for far too long, as victims of abuse and trauma whose pain and suffering have gone unacknowledged, whose stories have not been believed, and whose perpetrators have been shielded from suffering the appropriate consequences their behavior warrants. Silence and inaction have re-victimized those traumatized by abuse by inflicting fear, shame, and guilt. As a community, we have participated in a conspiracy of silence: denial of the truth of abuse in our midst, the silencing of victims, and our own individual choice of silence when fear or disbelief take precedence over informed response. The silence must end.

The ethical issues and the moral imperatives raised in Rabbi Scheinerman’s statement apply to communities of all faiths, not just Jewish, and in societies across the country and the world. There is no place for denial, silence, or inaction in any community—certainly not in any Jewish community.  In a Healing Community, of any faith, all of its members share a responsibility to acknowledge the pain and to help ease the suffering of victims. Pursuing justice by holding those responsible for abuse accountable, and thus preventing other innocent individuals from being victimized, is also an integral obligation for a faith community. There is no place in a Healing Community for bystanders.

In any discussion of the ethical issues related to abuse, it is important to understand certain facts. The majority of perpetrators are not strangers to the victims. It is difficult to secure an accurate number of abuse victims in general due to the consequences of the shame, fear, and silence that typically paralyze victims and communities. If an individual feels guilt and shame over the abuse, as is often the case, he or she will not admit that the abuse occurred. If a community denies that abuse happens—and worse, blames the victim or anyone who speaks about abuse and accused abusers—then the resulting fear often gives rise to victims being forced into silence. Where there is fear and silence, suspected abuse of children or adults remains unreported to the authorities, thus allowing perpetrators to continue to victimize others, sometimes for many years. Failure to report suspected abuse means a failure to bring the perpetrators of abuse to justice.

I know of a woman in her mid-30s who was molested when she was a teenager by a well-known and greatly revered congregational rabbi in Baltimore. Shortly after the abuse occurred, her mother and two other rabbis whom she turned to for guidance told her to keep quiet so as not to destroy this much-loved rabbi’s reputation. Besides, she was told, no one would believe her anyway. All these years later, this woman continues receiving professional therapy to help her deal with intense guilt over the number of women who were molested by this same rabbi long after she was. She believed that her imposed silence had resulted in the suffering of other women. Similarly, hundreds of men who had been sexually abused when they were young boys by the same rabbi over a period of more than 20 years finally came forward to speak of their suffering only after several of this particular rabbi’s victims broke their silence, thus giving voice to so many who were re-traumatized by remaining silent for so long.

Knowing that the actual number of incidences of abuse is higher than reported, it is shocking to note that studies indicate that one in four women report that they have been victimized by domestic violence as an adult. Likewise, one in four women and one in six men report that they have been sexually abused in their lifetime. In the United States, 4 million children are reported to have been abused every year. There is no indication that these numbers are any different among Jewish individuals, nor is there any known difference in numbers among the various denominations within Judaism. A groundbreaking study published in November, 2007 entitled “History of Past Sexual Abuse in Married Observant Jewish Women” states that “Twenty-six percent of respondents in a study about the sexual lives and attitudes of married Orthodox Jewish women— 55% identifying as Modern Orthodox and about 45% as right-wing Orthodox—indicated that they had at some point suffered sexual abuse.” (American Journal of Psychiatry 164: 1700–06).

The Ethical Imperative in Judaism to Help Trauma Survivors

Rabbi Mark Dratch, Founder and President of JSafe: The Jewish Institute Supporting an Abuse-Free Environment, wrote in a 2007 article entitled “Few Are Guilty, but All Are Responsible: The Obligations to Help Survivors of Abuse”:

The Torah expresses the obligation to help those under assault or subject to abuse through both positive and negative precepts: ‘Thou shalt not stand by the blood of thy neighbor’ (Lev. 19:16) and ‘And you shall restore him to himself’ (Deut. 22:2). The Talmud (Sanhedrin 73a) teaches that while the latter verse teaches that one must intervene personally, the former expands that responsibility; a person may not just stand around idly while someone is being hurt.

All too often, the obligation to help victims of trauma and abuse is trumped by a fear of speaking out and getting involved—and a denial that the abuse even occurred. The resulting silence takes the place of bringing relief to the suffering of the victims and securing the safety of the community by bringing the perpetrators to justice. Both abuse victims and observers of the abuse are scared that no one will believe them if they speak up. They are afraid that exposing the abuse and the abuser will destroy their families or the families of the perpetrators.

By exploring the ways that victims are harmed by silence and inaction, whether self-imposed or imposed by others, we can best understand the importance of the Torah-based obligation stated above. The silence often sentences a victim to years upon years of isolation and feeling alone. Many of the people who come to the Shofar Coalition for help do so after years of telling no one what happened to them. Some come forward for the first time when they are in their 40s, 50s, or even 60s. An individual who attended our Healing Service last September submitted a note that stated: “I have been suffering from mental, emotional, and physical abuse for so many years. Can someone help me? I don’t feel safe.”

The prevailing silence contributes to feelings of intense shame, guilt, and low self-worth on the part of victims of trauma. People may wonder why the victim would feel guilty or ashamed about something that was done to them, not by them. As one survivor of incest explained to me, until the abuser is named, the victim carries and owns the shame and guilt. Once others know about the abuser, the shame is shifted from the victim to the abuser where it belongs. Excerpts from the testimonies of three of the eight survivors who spoke at the Shofar Healing Service gives us a window into the feelings of shame, fear, and isolation born out of silence.

A 45-year-old woman: I was a college graduate. I was a nice, Jewish girl from Pikesville [Baltimore] who married her best friend’s brother, also from Pikesville. So how in the world could I be lying in the hospital emergency room with a broken arm, caused by my own husband? This kind of thing wasn’t supposed to happen to people like me. I was scared and embarrassed, humiliated, and so ashamed. I felt so alone, I just wanted to disappear. The physical pain didn’t even hold a candle to the mental pain I was holding inside. It was easier to keep that secret.

A 32-year-old man: I was first molested at the mikva when I was 4 years old….I was afraid to tell my father, so he never knew about it. It was like I had a Scarlet Letter on my forehead that said “easy target, molest me!” As a child, I was also molested by a female neighbor, my bar-mitzvah teacher, and while I was in yeshiva. Most of the molestations took place in a religious environment. [I was brought up to believe] that you should always have respect for your elders, that the Rabbi/teacher/parent/adult is always right. This led me to believe that I was the problem—It was my fault; I was bad.

A 65- year-old man: I didn't think that I was affected at all by these encounters with the rabbi and his friend, however 52 years later I realize that shame, embarrassment, and fear kept me from revealing the revered rabbi's insidious behavior. In fact, I could not speak out loud the name of the rabbi who molested me until I was 60 years old.

So many trauma survivors have expressed to me that perhaps even more painful than the original abuse that they have endured is the feeling that they were betrayed by the reaction of trusted individuals (parents, friends, rabbis, teachers) who were sought out for comfort, compassion, validation, support and guidance. The denial, silence and inaction on the part of trusted individuals give rise to profound feelings of being “re-victimized.” The emotional scars left by such re-victimization are often long lasting and more difficult to heal. A woman who was molested by her uncle over the course of two years beginning when she was ten, and who came to Shofar for services when she was in her mid 40s says:

For many years, I only told my closest friends about what had happened to me. The first time I told someone in a position of authority in confidence was to my rabbi when I was in my late 20s and already a mother. I went to my rabbi, whom I very much respected as a man of terrific judgment and integrity, and asked for help. He did not ask about me or my mental health, he didn’t pursue a line of questioning that might have led to accountability for my uncle, he didn’t even want me to upset my father by telling him the truth if there were some way that it could be avoided. I went back into the closet of my shame and closed the door.

Rabbi Dratch, in a 2006 article entitled “The Shame of It All: The Real Shonda in Revealing Abuse,” points out yet another way that victims and the entire Jewish community are harmed by silence, inaction, and feelings of betrayal by family and respected members of the community. He states:

Many [Jewish] victims of abuse are exploited first by their Jewish perpetrators and then are betrayed by the reaction of the family and community they thought would help them, nurture them, and find them justice. In many cases, these victims lose faith in themselves, in the community, and in God. Those who do not reject their Judaism find strength in their faith, despite all that has been done to them. But in many cases victims are disillusioned by the institutions and leaders they thought they could trust. Too many of them abandon mitzvah observance and their connections to the Jewish community are weakened. This is a real hilul hashem!

Perceived Barriers, Unique to Jewish Communities, to Revealing Abuse and Acting to Help Abuse Survivors

Concerns of Hilul Hashem

Rabbi Dratch addresses these concerns in “The Shame of It All” when he states: “this concern about protecting the reputation of God and the Jewish people by repressing public discussion of behaviors and actions that may be deemed a ‘shonda,’ scandalous and disreputable, may in fact itself be a hilul hashem. It is the abuser and not the abused that has committed hilul hashem, and it is those who cover up and silence victims, not those who seek justice and the protection of innocent victims that desecrate God’s Name.”

The Shonda Factor

 Individuals are often afraid to discuss abuse or to expose an accused abuser because of the potential harm to the perpetrator’s reputation. They fear that they and their families will be shunned or ostracized by the community. Sadly, this is often the case. Victims, and their advocates who do speak out, have become the target of verbal, written, and physical attacks. They are viewed as having brought shame to the entire community. The shonda factor is further intensified in some Jewish communities by the fear that speaking out about abuse may damage the possibilities of young people in a given family finding suitable marriage partners. All in all, these fears not only give rise to the silencing of victims but to the organized cover-up of dangerous situations and enabling of potentially harmful abusers.

Lashon haRa (Libel or Slander) and Mesirah (Informing Civil Authorities)

Some Jewish people attribute their silence and inaction in the face of abuse to their adherence to and understanding of Jewish laws prohibiting lashon haRa and mesirah. In his “Few Are Guilty” article, Rabbi Mark Dratch states that: “These principles, and others, are valid, essential principles of Jewish life and law and should be carefully observed by committed Jews. But all too often misplaced priorities and misconceived interpretations of Jewish law have trumped equally valid halakhic concerns for the safety and security of Jewish bodies and souls.”

In the same article, Rabbi Dratch eloquently expresses the ethical responsibilities of the Jewish people when those among us are suffering from the horrors of abuse. In expounding on a quotation by Abraham Joshua Heschel having to do with a Jewish response to evil (“Few are guilty, but all are responsible”), Rabbi Dratch states: “So, while a small minority of the Jewish community is actually guilty of perpetrating abuse and violence, the entire community is responsible to come to the aid of victims, to pursue justice, to demand accountability, and to protect the innocents of our community and the integrity of our faith.”

Many years ago, on a visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., I saw the following line: “Thou shall not be a perpetrator; thou shall not be a victim; and thou shall never be a bystander.”  The Museum’s website attributes the quotation to Yehuda Bauer, professor of Holocaust studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I do not in any way mean to equate the evils and horrors of the Holocaust with the evils of child abuse and domestic violence.  I do, however, mean to say that we as Jews cannot and must not stand idly by while some of our fellow Jews are suffering due to no fault of their own, but rather due to the fault of abusive people and silent bystanders. Historically we as Jewish people know all too well the consequences of silence in the face of human suffering. And abuse thrives in silence.

I challenge all Jewish communities to rebuild themselves as Healing Communities. Healing Communities say to those who are hurting among us that they need not suffer in silence alone any longer. We need to replace fear, denial, and silence with compassion and truth, and inaction will be replaced with action. We as Jewish communities will attend to the healing of all those who wish to recover from the long-term effects of abuse. We will commit to bringing the perpetrators of abuse to justice and to preventing them from hurting others. We can do this! We must do this!

For information about Healing Services and other Shofar or CHANA sponsored activities, contact Elaine Witman at [email protected] or 410-843-7582.

I

The aim of Jewish Tanakh study is to encounter the word of God. There are, of course, other motives for studying Tanakh: It provides information about ancient Hebrew and Aramaic of use to linguists, and information about ancient history for specialists in that field; familiarity with the Bible is essential background for the study of Western culture and modern Hebrew literature and thus pertinent to a good liberal arts education; it serves those secularists who are curious about religious belief; not least, the Bible provides a subject of conversation and an opportunity to display one’s cleverness. From a religious perspective, however, such motives are ancillary, helping one to get at the meaning, or trivial distractions from the meaning. If you received a passionate message and contented yourself with analyzing the style, commenting on the grammar and typography and social mores, while keeping your distance from the person addressing you, you would be mocking the author. To do the same in the study of Torah is a mockery of religious commitment.

“The days of our lives are seventy years and with strength eighty years,” says the Psalmist. Our current life expectancy, though finite, is a bit longer than the biblical life span, yet our days are still frightfully brief and fugitive. How we allocate the few hours we devote to Torah, which includes Talmud, halakhah, Jewish thought inter alia, and within that harsh budget, what to do with the portion for Tanakh, must be governed by our goal in that study. One consideration is how best to pursue the primary goal of encountering God. A secondary question is how to benefit from the ancillary disciplines such as Semitics, archaeology, and the like when our time and attention are so severely limited.

Unfortunately, what is viable for the full-time talmid hakham (Torah scholar), in this regard, is not what is good for the layperson. Those of us who can devote the bulk of our time to Torah study have an advantage. Not only do we know more, we are also preoccupied with Torah, day and night, to a degree that others have difficulty achieving. At home with a significant range of text, context, and tradition, much of which is kept constantly in use, we can aspire to carry our learning lightly, and thus we may hope, with relative ease, to integrate different kinds of knowledge, traditional and secular, and to harness different kinds of insight from within Torah and from our life experience. There are days when the sun stands still, and despite everything, we seem to have time for everything.

Naturally I am speaking now for the scholar who holds paramount the religious dimension of Torah study. In an age of specialization and secularization, academics engaged in Jewish studies, even those who are nominally practicing Jews, are liable to misplace their sense of priority. Sometimes the result is heresy or indifference to normative belief, and/or a flippant, even cynical attitude toward religious conviction and religious reverence. Otherwise the compartmentalization of religion and scholarship declares itself in a bizarre alienation between one’s professed religious orientation and one’s actual full-time intellectual life. This troubling phenomenon of disconnect between the human being who aspires to edify himself or herself through the study of Torah in the service of God and the bleached soul of the neutral or cynical practitioner of academic studies, is a warning to us all not to take for granted the proper integration of intellectual activity and life.

The layperson, however sincere, generally cannot acquire the mastery required to control substantial areas of learning and to keep them in permanent repair.  (I am not even mentioning the many intelligent men and women whose language skills are deficient.) There are exceptions, non-professionals who are able, through commitment of will and nurturing circumstance, to “hold in” learning, as they say in the yeshivot. It is a sign of vigor in our community, when such an individual makes a contribution to the community, even to the point of producing material worthy of publication. It is an even more wonderful mark of wholesomeness when such productivity grows out of yirat Shamayim, the genuine fear of Heaven, and not merely as a highly skilled avocation. Our concern here is with those who are not so proficient or fortunate, at least not yet.

Should the Torah education of the layperson, be it via lecture or solitary reading, stress accumulating information, or should it prize creative engagement? Information is necessary for knowledge, but if the goal is religious reading, surely active study is far superior to passive reception. The problem is how to respond actively without sufficient knowledge and, even more important, without the continuous preoccupation that brings with it the ability to distinguish important questions from trivial ones, the ready command that makes it possible to apply what one knows to the question at hand and to avoid being overwhelmed by unfamiliar data.

If our goal as educators is to encourage active, thoughtful religious reading, our teaching must exemplify active, thoughtful religious reading. The primary orientation of our teaching should not be conveying information alone, nor should it be reporting our original contributions, however important. We are not fulfilling our main task unless we communicate information and ideas and modes of reasoning in a manner that enables our audience to think along with us.  If we succeed in doing so, our listeners are likely to engage in religious reading with us, and they are likely to develop the habits of thought and feeling, the analytic aptitude and the sensitive reverence that will enable them to encounter the text on their own, if they have the minimal literacy.

What is involved in communicating our engagement in religious reading? As we are preoccupied with the disciplined study of Tanakh in the light of traditional Jewish approaches, from Hazal down to the present, so must the non-professional student. That is one facet of our task. As we utilize information, insight, and sometimes theoretical constructions from other sources, we should make available the same for the non-professional as well. That is another facet of our task. Regarding the former, the major gap to overcome is one of knowledge and training within the traditional literature of Torah. Regarding the latter, there is another difficulty: Given the pressure of time, how does one make room for such sources without undermining the balance between ancillary informational instruments and the encounter with God to which they are subservient?

II

The primary texts of Jewish Bible study are available in almost every synagogue and school; many are found in the average home: the standard rabbinic sources; the commentators in the various Mikra’ot Gedolot editions; the major figures of modern times. In her volumes of studies on the Torah (and even more so in her Gilyonot) the twentieth century’s master teacher, Professor Nehama Leibowitz (who preferred to be known simply as Nehama), showed how these texts can be deployed educationally: what it means to read a commentator carefully, to notice what motivates his remarks, how and why he differs from other commentators, and so forth. If you are searching on your own for a viable derekh ha-limmud, a way to study Tanakh, one that will link you to the chain of Jewish understanding, then prolonged exposure to her work remains the royal road to religious reading.  Assuming the validity of her position, let me append some pedagogical notes, and address one question of intellectual substance.

The approach I advocate here, one that Nehama illustrates, privileges analysis over interpretation or thesis-mongering. By that I mean that the goal of teaching is not to communicate conclusions alone, but to make transparent the way conclusions are reached. This can be justified on academic grounds: What is more honest than making one’s considerations transparent, showing the alternatives not chosen, and enabling the listener to assess your choice? Here I am making the educational point. If you want your audience to be engaged in your study and to encourage them to do likewise, the only way to do it is to convene the commentators you have studied and allow your students to participate in your dialogue with them.

This sounds obvious to me. There is, however, a tendency among some teachers to present interpretations in which the give and take with the traditional literature is either absent or very well concealed. Often practitioners of this approach have done their homework but are wary of inflicting it on their audience; they fear that burdening their listeners with a blow-by-blow account of their transactions with their predecessors, trailing clouds of footnotes, is liable to prove a distraction rather than a boon. Sometimes they are so taken by the freshness and the compelling power of their insight that they can do without such dialogue.  Long experience makes me sympathetic to the concern about over-documentation and the “weariness of making citations without end”; writers and lecturers should take the trouble to be selective. Long experience also tells me that enthusiastically pushed interpretations produced in a vacuum are usually not as brilliant or as plausible or even as original as their champions presume. However that may be, the danger I perceive on the educational front is that those who hear these interpretations are liable to go and do likewise, with predictably arbitrary or whimsical results that do not honor the best among those who inspire them.

The corpus of Jewish biblical exegesis includes many topics and arguments that do not promise moral-religious edification: for example, lengthy discussions of grammar and vocabulary, geography, as the exegetes grasped it, even some of the sections dealing with halakhah. If the goal of Tanakh study is to bring us into closer relationship with God, such matters would seem to be of less relevance to the non-specialist student. Indeed, it is evident that Nehama chose her topics and her selections from the commentators with an eye to moral and religious edification. On one occasion, when a young teacher told her she had been assigned the opening chapters of Leviticus, dealing with the order of the sacrifices, Nehama expressed strong disagreement. In her opinion, the portion of Kedoshim (chapters 19–20) should be highlighted in Leviticus, not the details of the sacrifices, because the former has greater moral value. Of course, Torah is Torah; moreover, in the right context, the passages describing the manner in which God enables human beings to come close to Him through the various offerings is surely not religiously indifferent.  Nonetheless, it seems odd and unbalanced to struggle with esoteric halakhic subjects, to discuss, for example, the subtle interaction between peshat and derash (the “plain” meaning of a verse and the interpretation handed down or elaborated through the oral tradition) when students do not yet control sufficient information to appreciate the debate, or to invest disproportionate time in clearing philological underbrush at the expense of more directly relevant religious factors.

III

The major criticism of Nehama’s program is that it substitutes the study of the commentators for the study of Tanakh. Her method achieves insight into Rashi or Ramban’s understanding of the biblical text but does not ask what the biblical text means on its own. This criticism has two aspects: one is that an approach devoted entirely to classical Jewish works, from Hazal through the medieval literature through the parshanut (interpretation) of the last 200 years omits consideration of new discoveries, be they linguistic or archaeological; the other is that her approach ignores questions that may be important for us today but are not addressed systematically by the classical mefarshim (commentators).

            Nehama vigorously opposed R. Yoel Bin-Nun’s attempt to revise the Bible curriculum in Israeli high schools to make room for non-exegetical data such as geography.  On grounds of intellectual integrity he was surely right. Ramban rejoiced when he reached the land of Israel, where he gained a better grasp of her geography and saw with his own eyes the Paleo-Hebrew script he had only read about. If we are indeed Ramban’s disciples, it ill behooves us to ignore such realia as become available to us. As we have seen, the educational question is not so clear. How much time, and how much emphasis, should such information merit?

To keep our discussion simple, let’s limit ourselves to cases where the pertinence of the new information is undeniable:

1. I Samuel 13:21 mentions ha-petzirah pim. Traditional commentators say this refers to an implement with two edges (pim as plural of peh=mouth).  We now know that pim is the name of an ancient unit of weight. The verse is saying that the Israelites were charged a pim to fix their petzirah (sharpening). The new explanation is uncontroversial. Assuming that communicating it does not take an inordinate amount of attention away from religiously significant matters, there is no reason not to adopt it.
2. Ezekiel 14 refers to three righteous men—“Noah, Danel, and Job.”  Traditional commentators had no choice but to identify Danel with the biblical Daniel, despite the slight difference in spelling. We now believe that Danel, king of Keret, who is known from Ugaritic literature, fits the context better. If this view is accepted none of the three righteous men are Jewish. This affects the theological message of the chapter, which deals with righteous individuals in a corrupt society. While the traditional identification is still of value for our study of the history of exegesis, there is no reason not to adopt the new one, and adjust our reading of the prophecy accordingly.
3. II Kings 18:13–16 reports a confrontation between Hezekiah and Sennacherib that ends with Hezekiah’s submission. This is followed by further demands by the Assyrian king’s representative culminating in the almost capture of Jerusalem that is aborted by a plague among the Assyrians. Ralbag (on Kings) held that the text records two separate episodes: the second confrontation occurred when Hezekiah rebelled years later. Abarbanel believed there was only one confrontation: Hezekiah’s capitulation was deemed insufficient. Which view we adopt affects our assessment of Hezekiah’s strategy, his courage and his trust in God. Sennacherib’s Annals have been recovered: scholars have debated the One Campaign vs. Two Campaign theories based on these records which depict the king’s successes but carefully avoid ascribing victory to him in the siege of Jerusalem. Here the Annals can make a real difference in determining which medieval parshan came closer to the historical truth. Again the only question is how much attention and emphasis this discussion deserves given the limits on time and the primacy of the religious motive for study.
4. Rambam (Guide III:48) proposed that the prohibition of “cooking the kid in its mother’s milk” is to be understood against the background of idolatrous practices of the time. When the Ugaritic archives were unearthed early in the past century, a line of poetry was deciphered to imply that cooking meat and dairy together was indeed part of Northwest Semitic rite, thus confirming Maimonides. For the past four decades this reading has been dismissed, so we are back where we started, though the word has not yet reached some popular Orthodox and non-Orthodox authors and lecturers, who continue to parade this example.

These examples demonstrate the potential relevance of “outside” information; the last demonstrates what happens when pathways once welcomed become dead ends. How are laypeople (or scholars who are not always up to the minute on every question) to keep abreast of these developments? How many journals can even scholars plow through?  For some purposes the twentieth-century Da’at Mikra commentary on Tanakh (Mossad HaRav Kook) is a reliable source of information. But these works are not infallible and they age. I have no solution to this problem, which has its parallel in all other liberal arts. The point is that contending with it cannot take priority over our fundamental commitment to religious reading. If we take Ramban’s multifarious interests as a model, we must be sure to look to his sense of religious priorities as well.

IV

The second criticism of the exegesis-centered approach was made by R. Mordekhai Breuer. Take the Documentary Hypothesis, which maintains, among other things, that apparent redundancy in the Torah is evidence of multiple authors.  Thus the creation story of Genesis 1, in which God is called Elokim, was written by a different author than the creation story of Genesis 2, where He is called by the Tetragrammaton. In Lonely Man of Faith R. Joseph Soloveitchik listed many thematic differences between the two chapters, regarding humanity’s place in nature, the relations between the sexes, and God’s mission for humanity. R. Soloveitchik concluded that the juxtaposition of the two stories does not reflect multiple authors, but rather a complex view of the human condition. On his own, R. Breuer had arrived at a similar methodology—that God speaks in multiple voices, so that grasping the Torah’s message requires us to examine each section alone, but also in the context of other sections. Along these lines he studied the Torah systematically against the backdrop of one version of the Documentary Hypothesis. He believed that the questions raised by the critics helped to incubate his awareness of this complexity in the Torah’s narrative and legal portions. Thus thinking about these questions is valuable for Orthodox Bible study in our time.

According to Breuer, Nehama rejected his program.  When R. Soloveitchik did it, it was legitimate in her eyes. But the Rav’s rabbinic license did not extend to others. Again, from a purely intellectual perspective R. Breuer is right. If some of the questions raised by the critics are valid, and if, as I hold, R. Breuer’s approach is on the right track (regardless of criticisms I have made elsewhere), then we understand Tanakh better by considering them; Breuer would also insist that by doing so we gain much for our analysis of the classical commentators and again I agree with him.

By the same token: If Rambam was right in thinking that knowledge of the cultural background of Tanakh could add something of worth, then, in principle, we are justified in examining that cultural background in whatever depth and breadth we are capable of. At the same time, the explosion of knowledge in the field of ancient history makes it impossible for all but the few to engage it actively. It is one thing, for example, to read Sennacherib’s Annals in translation; it is a another to consider whether there was something distinctive about the cult of Assur that affected the confrontation between Assyrian religion and Israelite faith in God. It is one thing to contrast Hammurabi’s Code with Mishpatim, as was commonly done a hundred years ago during the “Bible-Babel” affair. It is another to weigh several Near Eastern law codes and to consider which is more pertinent to the background of biblical law and why.

Once again: if our goal in studying Tanakh is to encounter the word of God, then it is not only what  we learn that is important but how. R. Breuer carries on his massive project of appropriating what he finds valuable in the questions of the Bible critics. It is instructive that he does so while hardly ever mentioning their solutions. The questions are important; debating against heretical positions is a distraction from that task. It profits us less than nothing if we gain a whole world of scholarly tools and lose our souls.  This is true of the scholar of whom the Mishnah states that “he whose knowledge precedes his fear of Heaven, his knowledge is not sustained.” Even more is it true of the person whose time is husbanded and who must therefore be more anxious to employ it in a balanced and well-integrated way. We who teach must both communicate the truth and exemplify it.

V

What kind of background information is to be presupposed in our study of Tanakh is not set in stone. Nehama herself did not shy away from calling upon European literature or literary criticism to further her analysis, occasionally she used non-Jewish or non-traditional Bible translations to illustrate various options, and she took from Martin Buber or Benno Jacob what she needed and could not learn elsewhere. The goal of her study, however, could not be mistaken, and neither can ours. I have already warned of the danger posed by the putatively sophisticated disconnection between academic activity and the encompassing intellectual-religious response demanded by Judaism. This is due not only to increased flirtation with orthopraxy, in the narrow sense of the word, with its rejection of normative belief and indifference to the cognitive dimension in the Jew’s personal relationship with God, but also, perhaps even more so, it is associated with a studied irreverence toward God and Torah that borders, if it does not pass over into vulgarization, and undermines that personal relationship. It is also the error of those within Orthodoxy who define intellectual deviance only in terms of propositional heresy, regarding Torah mi-Sinai or the integrity of Torah she-be’al Peh, without taking into account debunking attitudes that stop short of propositional heresy.

Many are lured by these siren songs, not only through the desire to assimilate the  indifference and mild contempt for the intellectual content of religious belief that is prevalent in influential circles and is attached to the prestige enjoyed in some circles by academics, but also due to the absence of a visible alternative. We have outlined a derekh ha-limmud along the lines practiced by Nehama, supplemented perhaps by talmidei hakhamim such as R. Mordekhai Breuer or R. Yoel Bin-Nun, who bring the tradition into interaction with new questions, or guided by masters such as R. Joseph Soloveitchik, who took what he wanted from modern scholarship only to concentrate relentlessly on the human condition, as Judaism illuminates it, and the personal experience of God and Torah. All too often, these models are ignored by rabbis and teachers.

One factor is no doubt the fact that many of our communal functionaries have not been exposed to serious study of Jewish exegesis at all, or sufficiently to internalize a genuine derekh ha-limmud. Perhaps for that reason, they may deem their own homiletic concoctions and sermonic strains, where the text of Tanakh and the work of the classical commentators serve as pretext without context, more worthy of the ear of their classes and congregations than a careful, patient and submissive thinking along with Ramban or Netziv. Perhaps they regard studying the classical texts less important than whatever “message” or exhortation they wish to communicate to their attentive flock.

Much can be attributed to the moist gabbiness and intellectual shallowness characteristic of the talking professions. Once rabbis and teachers were expected to teach; now they are called upon to preach. As Ann Douglas has shown, Christian preaching in the United States once had hard intellectual content, and only in the nineteenth century did the Protestant sermon lose its cognitive substance. Perhaps this is another aspect of liberal American culture that has infiltrated our Jewish life. Or perhaps we have been brought to believe that only Talmud is intellectually for real, while the study of Tanakh is a game of tennis without a net, and the main goal is to have a good time.

Perhaps what I perceive as intellectual indolence and self-indulgence on the part of our professionals is no more than their adapting to what the congregations and the parents prefer. As someone told me after I delivered an earlier version of this talk at several Orthodox synagogues: Orthodox audiences enjoy hearing about the Holocaust, about acrimonious incidents in Jewish history, or about controversial halakhic rulings; they are not interested in talking about God and their relationship to Him. Yet amid the silence and conviviality, there are listeners who learn that the discussion of Tanakh in our community is an occasion for whimsy or an excuse for political or communal exhortation, and that if one is to study Tanakh seriously, the outlook of academic sterility is the only game in town.

Whether the approach adumbrated here is likely to prove popular should be a matter of indifference.  If, as I hope, there is an appreciative audience for an approach to Tanakh that is intellectually serious and fosters active engagement in the encounter with God and with His revelation, then it is a privilege to minister to that thirst. If, as we are sometimes assured, it is an uphill battle, then it is an even more urgent obligation to subvert that indifference and convert it to connection.

Further Reading:

S. Carmy, “To Get the Better of Words: An Apology for Yir’at Shamayim in Academic Jewish Studies,” Torah u-Madda Journal 2 (1990), pp. 7–24.

S. Carmy, “A Room with a View, But a Room of Our Own,” Tradition 28:3 (1994), pp. 39–69. Also in Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah: Contributions and Limitations, ed. Shalom Carmy (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996), pp. 1–38.

S. Carmy, “Homer and the Bible,” Tradition 41:4 (2008), pp. 1–7.

S. Carmy, “A Peshat in the Dark: Reflections on the Age of Cary Grant,” Tradition 43:1 (2010), pp. 1–6.

S. Carmy “Cold Fury, Hidden Face, the Jealousy of Israel: Two Kinds of Religious Estrangement in the Torah,” Tradition 43:4 (2010), pp. 21–36.

S. Carmy, “Concepts of Scripture in Mordechai Breuer,” in Jewish Concepts of Scripture: A Comparative Introduction, ed. Benjamin D. Sommer (New York and London: New York University Press, 2012), pp. 267–279.

In 1914 Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who would later become the first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, visited the National Gallery in London. His aesthetic sensibilities were aroused by the artistic grandeur he encountered. He was particularly transfixed by Rembrandt's paintings:

When I lived in London I used to visit the National Gallery and my favorite pictures were those of Rembrandt. I really think that Rembrandt was a Tzadik (a righteous person) Do you know that when I first saw Rembrandt's works, they reminded me of the legend about the creation of light? We are told that when God created light it was so strong and pellucid, that one could see from one end of the world to the other, but God was afraid that the wicked might abuse it. What did He do? He reserved that light for the righteous when the Messiah should come. But now and then there are great men who are blessed and privileged to see it. I think that Rembrandt was one of them, and the light in his pictures is the very light that was originally created by God Almighty. (Jewish Chronicle of London, September 13, 1935)

Rembrandt van Rijn, a master of chiaroscuro (light and shadow), infused his portraits with a transcendental vitality. While this is true of all of his portraits it is certainly the case with his paintings of biblical scenes. Rembrandt's penchant for the Bible is reflected in the number of biblical portraits, etchings, and drawings he created.  In the field of portraiture in general Rembrandt left 400 paintings, 75 etchings, and only a few drawings. This may be contrasted with the 160 paintings, 80 etchings, and more than 600 drawings of biblical subjects that have come down to us.

            Rembrandt's prodigious activity in this field reflects his love of and intimate knowledge of the Bible. Rembrandt's biblical scenes are not merely an exercise in historical painting; they contain his own passion and intensity as well as a remarkable degree of his innovative biblical interpretation.

            A picture is worth a thousand words. And in the case of Rembrandt this adage can be multiplied exponentially. I would like to survey two of Rembrandt's biblical paintings in order to gain insight into the biblical text through his artistic and interpretative grandeur. It is often the case that something in his painting will stir our souls to consider aspects of the story we hadn’t considered before. Other times we will note something glaringly absent from the canvas, which focuses our attention on a dimension of the biblical narrative that is of great importance. In either case these pictures serve as a catalyst for profound analysis and speculation on the Book of Books—the Bible.  

“Scripture Envisioned: The Bible Through the Eyes of Rembrandt” (http://www.judaicaru.org/rembrandt_eng/) is a website that contains an impressive exhibit of Rembrandt’s etchings and portraits of biblical stories. It also contains classical rabbinic, medieval, and modern exegesis, which complement, supplement, and enhance the illustrations on view.

Allow me to share with you the etiology of the site, which began with a class about the prophet Jeremiah, which I taught in the Kehilath Jeshurun Synagogue in Manhattan. In the audience sat George S. Blumenthal, the founder of COJS: The Center for On-Line Jewish Studies. At the end of the class he approached me and said, “Bryna, you brought the Bible to life. I want you to do that through Rembrandt’s pictures of biblical scenes.”  Given that my first love is Bible, and that Rembrandt is my favorite artist, I was delighted.  George procured permission from museums throughout the world to use the pictures and commissioned Ardon Bar Hama to digitize and design the website. He had the vision and magnanimity to have the site translated into Hebrew (http://www.judaicaru.org/rembrandt_heb/)  translated by Sara Fuchs, and designed by Natan Bar; and into Russian (http://www.judaicaru.org/rembrandt_rus/) translated by Dr. Yona Shnaider, designed by Natan Bar.

            All of this was done over ten years ago. George Blumenthal was the trailblazer, digitizing this site, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Aleppo Codex, and other great treasures as a gift to the world (www.cojs.org).

            Let us begin with the painting in the London National Gallery, Belshazzar’s Feast, which may have inspired Rabbi Kook to make his grandiloquent statement about the numinous light of creation that Rembrandt brought into the world.

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Belshazzar’s Feast and the Writing on the Wall

Chapter five of the Book of Daniel describes the royal banquet of King Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar was the Babylonian emperor who had conquered Jerusalem, exiled its people, destroyed the Temple, and carried off its sacred vessels in triumph. Interestingly, the Bible portrays him as eventually acknowledging his hubris and humbling himself, as he says, before the “Ever-Living One, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion and whose kingdom endures throughout the generations. All the inhabitants of the earth are of no account…” (Daniel 4:31–32).

Belshazzar, his son, was nowhere near as humble. In the midst of a gala banquet he ordered the sacred vessels to be brought to his palace. In addition to profaning them by using them as common drinking cups, he added sacrilege by toasting and praising his pagan gods. As punishment for glorifying lifeless gods, the live hand of God writes a cryptic message on the palace wall:

But you Belshazzar his son, did not humble yourself although you knew all this. You exalted yourself against the Lord of Heaven and had the vessels of His temple brought to you. You and your nobles, your consorts and your concubines drank wine from them and praised the gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood and stone, which do not see, hear, or understand; but the God who controls your life breath and every move you make—Him you did not glorify! He therefore made the hand appear and caused the writing that is inscribed: Mene Mene Tekel U-pharsin… (Daniel 5:22–25).

Mene Mene Tekel U-pharsin

Overcome by terror, Belshazzar called for his soothsayers. No one could interpret the inscription. The Queen suggested that they check with Daniel, one of the exiles from Jerusalem, who was summoned to solve the riddle. Daniel asserts that whereas his father Nebuchadnezzar humbled himself before the Lord, Belshazzar’s impious desecration of the sacred vessels had called forth immediate punishment. The cryptograms, reduced to three, are to be deciphered as follows:

• Mene—numbered; God numbered your reign and ended it.
• Tekel—weighed; you have been weighed in the balance and have been found wanting.
• Pharsin—divided; your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

The story ends with Daniel being given the insignia of nobility and Belshazzar being killed that very night.

Rembrandt has captured the startled expression of the king and his guests. The artist has remained true to the biblical text insofar as only the king beholds the inscription, while the others drop their vessels and gaze at the king. It is noteworthy that he has painted the words of the cryptic message in Hebrew letters, but has written them up and down rather than from right to left, offering an inventive explanation for why they could not be deciphered. This explanation is found in the Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 22a in the name of R. Samuel, and was probably known to Rembrandt by way of his Jewish friend R. Menashe b. Israel (see explanation of David Defeats Goliath on the website cited above). 

Holy Vessels

          The story itself and Rembrandt’s dramatic depiction raise and highlight the basic question, what is the purpose of kelei kodesh, the holy vessels?

The notion of royal vessels belonging to the King of Kings seems somewhat primitive and anthropomorphic. Does the Master of the Universe need a set of tableware? The Rabbis grappled with this question:

What was the purpose of...all of the holy vessels? The Jewish people said to the Holy One Blessed Be He: Master of the Universe, the kings of the nations have a palace, a table, a candelabrum, incense burners...these are appurtenances of kingship. Every king needs them, and You are our king, our savior, our redeemer; shouldn't You have these royal paraphernalia so that the entire world will know that You are king? He said to them, My sons, you are flesh and blood, and so you have need of all this, but I have not need since I do not eat or drink, I need no light as my servants attest, since the sun and the moon illuminate the world and I shine my light upon them. I shall watch over you well in the merit of your fathers. (Midrash Aggadah, Exodus 27, Buber ed.)

The conclusion is clear: the vessels serve human needs, not divine ones. But precisely because humans depend on material forms as symbols, their misuse of such symbols—as in the case of Belshazzar—brings on catastrophe.

Man’s Creative Offerings

We still are left to ponder why in the context of the biblical story of Belshazzar’s feast we find such a stern and inexorable condemnation? What was it about the use of the holy vessels that signaled the fall of the curtain on the Babylonian empire?

            In the description of Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest of Jerusalem, the Bible makes mention of the following bit of information:

King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon marched against him [Jehoiachin]; he bound him in fetters to convey him to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar also brought some vessels of the House of the Lord to Babylon, and set them in his palace. (2 Chronicles 36:7)

In reaction to this, Hananiah son of Azzur, a contemporary of the prophet Jeremiah, proclaims:

Thus said the Lord of Hosts the God of Israel: I hereby break the yoke of the king of Babylon. In two years I will restore to this place all the vessels of the House of the Lord which King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took from this place and brought to Babylon. And I will bring back to this place King Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim of Judah, and all the Judean exiles who went to Babylon—declares the Lord. Yes, I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon. (Jeremiah 28:1–4)

The order in his description is telling; first vessels, then the king, then the people. The captured vessels signify a perceived defeat of the God of Judah. The symbolic value of these vessels was immense. That would explain why Belshazzar’s misuse of them was so provocative, and induced the wrath of God.

Biblical exegesis adds an additional observation about sacred vessels to explain why they played such a critical role in the story of Belshazzar. The Bible tells us that humans were created in the image of God. God’s role as a creator is reflected in the creativity of humanity. In Genesis, six days of creation were followed by the creation of the day of rest, the Sabbath. In the Book of Exodus we learn of six other days that were followed by a special seventh day:

The Presence of the Lord abode on Mount Sinai, and the cloud hid it for six days. On the seventh day, He called to Moses from the midst of the cloud… “Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him. And these are the gifts that you shall accept from them: gold, silver, and copper; blue, purple…And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” (Exodus 24:15–16, 25:1–9)

On the seventh day, Moses was instructed regarding the construction of the Sanctuary and its vessels. The parallel is so striking that the Rabbis determined that the kinds of labor prohibited on the Sabbath were all those acts necessary for the construction and furnishing of the Sanctuary in the desert. The royal privilege to create, to pursue aesthetic perfection and technical virtuosity, found expression in the crafting of the sacred vessels for use in God’s sanctuaries. The vessels themselves were a form of offering. They were not merely receptacles for libations and sacrificial offering; they were inherently holy, having been consecrated to God by humans, as an expression of their divine spark—their tzelem Elokim—and as a form of thanksgiving.

Therefore, when Belshazzar defiled the sacred temple vessels through pagan use, he violated the relationship of the people of Israel with their ancestral God. It was this act that signaled an important turning point in Jewish history. When Belshazzar dislodged the spirit from the vessels where it was hiding, it openly revealed itself on the whitewashed wall from where it could never be erased, portending the end of the Babylonian Empire and the return of the vessels and the people to where they belonged.

Using Rembrandt’s portrait as springboard for teaching the story serves as a keli, an educational tool, for learning about kelim. The power of the visual and this interpretative approach move us from the Book of Daniel to the Books of Chronicles and Jeremiah and provide the teacher the opportunity to introduce and integrate rabbinic exegesis.

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Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem

Let’s now take a look at Rembrandt’s magnificent biblical portrait, Jeremiah lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem, which inspired the birth of the website.

As noted above, in the year 586 b.c.e., the Babylonian tyrant Nebuchadnezzar conquered the city of Jerusalem, destroyed its Temple, and carried off its people into exile. Among the handful of those who remained was the prophet Jeremiah of Anatoth. In this portrait, Jeremiah is mourning the destruction of Jerusalem, alone with a few remaining holy vessels from the Temple, as the people of the city have been taken into exile by their Babylonian conquerors. Behind him, the ruined Temple smolders. The prophet sits desolate and lost in thought, leaving the viewer wondering what he is contemplating.

Is he focused upon the catastrophe of a people bereft of their sacred Temple and banished from their land? Or is he crushed not by the effect of the destruction but rather by its cause—the fatal breach of trust and loyalty toward the Lord God of Israel? Jeremiah’s sadness might be a result of the fact that as a prophet, he strove with all his might to prevent that breach—and tragically failed in his attempt.

Rembrandt depicts Jeremiah leaning on the Bible, on his immortal words of prophecy. Does this symbolize the obsolescence of his words, which have fallen on deaf ears? Does it perhaps suggest that the book is closed to others, and now serves to support the prophet alone? Note that the prophet is leaning on his left hand. His right hand is not visible, reminiscent of the biblical verse:

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither, let my tongue stick to my palate if I cease to think of you, if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory even at my happiest hour. (Psalms 137:5–6)

Lingering Agony

It is difficult to conceive of any situation more painful than that of a great man, condemned to watch the lingering agony of an exhausted country, to tend it during the alternate fits of stupefaction and raving which preceded its dissolution and to see the symptoms of vitality disappear one by one, till nothing is left but coldness, darkness and corruption. (Critical and Historical Essays: The Complete Writings of Lord Macaulay: “Machiavelli” (1827), pp. 117–118)

These words of Lord Macaulay could be used aptly to sum up the life of the prophet Jeremiah. For 40 years the prophet Jeremiah labored long and hard to prevent the destruction of Jerusalem and the holy Temple. He railed incessantly against the evil deeds of the people of Judah. What was it about their conduct that warranted such a terrible fate?

Crime and Punishment

Jeremiah, the prophet of the destruction of the first Temple, preached against the sins of idolatry, sexual misconduct, and bloodshed, but in his reproach he went beyond mere diatribes. He exposed the essence of these sins, exhibiting his keen grasp of the psychological motivation behind them. One classic example of Jeremiah’s searing insight into the psyche of the sinner is his famous Temple Sermon:

Thus said the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Mend your ways and your actions, and I will let you dwell in this place. Don't put your trust in illusions and say, “The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord are these buildings.” No! If you really mend your ways and your actions; if you execute justice between one man and another; if you do not oppress the stranger, the orphan and the widow; if you do not shed the blood of the innocent in this place; if you do not follow other gods, to your own hurt then only will I let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers for all time. See, you are relying on illusions that are of no avail. Will you steal and murder and commit adultery and swear falsely, and sacrifice to Baal, and follow other gods whom you have not experienced, and then come and stand before Me in this House which bears My name and say, “We are safe?” to do all these abhorrent things! Do you consider this House, which bears My name, to be a den of thieves? (Jeremiah 7:1–15)

The Temple Fallacy

It was not unusual for a biblical prophet to preach against sins of inhumanity toward strangers, orphans, and widows; idolatry; theft; adultery; and murder. What is special about Jeremiah is his deep understanding of the psychology of sin, and how he exposed the fallacy into which the people had fallen. They had deluded themselves into thinking that perfunctory rituals would atone for their sins. They assured themselves that the Temple of the Lord would provide them with asylum and expiation. It is from this malady that they suffer. Professor Nehama Leibowitz explains:

What is the psychological incentive for idol worship? What causes people in all periods of history to place their trust in something external which is not contingent upon their actions but is confined to a particular space or time rather than to depend upon the moral imperative which is required of them?...In every generation people ignore God's will and His everyday requirements, preferring to seek a cheap form of atonement which lies outside of their quotidian lives. This atonement absolves them of performing radical changes in their life style.

Jeremiah accuses his constituency of abusing the Temple and relying upon its cultic efficacy rather than their own religious rehabilitation. Holiness, he insists, is not even in the holiest of buildings; it too shall be razed. Divine presence will only dwell in the midst of the people if they are able to find the spark of the holiness within themselves, and use it to ignite warmth and concern for others.

These paintings, two shining examples of the hidden light in Rembrandt's inspired work, provide a glimpse of the site, “Scripture Envisioned: The Bible through the Eyes of Rembrandt.” Rembrandt's masterpieces help unravel the mysteries of the Bible and the Bible, in turn, illuminates his magnificent art, the one in soul-stirring conversation (sihat nefesh) with the other.

Let us conclude with an intriguing insight of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, regarding the designer of the vessels of the Mishkan, Bezalel (literally, be’zal –El—"in the shadow of God”), which sheds new light on Rembrandt's technique of chiaroscuro.

. . . The light of God, The Omnipresent, Blessed be He, is heavenly wisdom and absolute justice. However, the aesthetic sensibility of the pure soul [that is] blessed with divine knowledge, creativity, skill and design, (Exodus 35:32–35) is in effect what shadow is to light, when they are together, they complete vision and the perception of reality in its entirety.

(En Ayah on Berakhot 55a, my translation)

Introduction

            The commentary of Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (Ramban), a foremost thirteenth-century Spanish exegete, is a rich, incisive medieval resource for the study of the stories of the Torah. The student of Ramban’s interpretation is drawn into the world of these stories—their plots, characters, themes, and didactic messages. How does Ramban succeed in vivifying the narratives and their personae, engrossing his readers and motivating them to want to study more about the biblical stories and their meanings? What is the unique appeal of Ramban’s commentary, such that nowadays his analyses are increasingly studied? I believe that one of the answers lies in discerning his distinctive mode of reading biblical narrative.

            A hallmark feature of Ramban’s exegetical method is his integrative approach to the study of the biblical text and context. Ramban reads globally, associating the different components of a biblical story into a holistic narrative. Building on his predecessors’ insightful analyses, Ramban develops a more extensive interpretative program that reveals the cohesiveness of biblical narrative, which provides the reader with a comprehensive, broad view of the stories. When Ramban reads a biblical story, he reads progressively, but also with an eye to linking what came before with what comes after. Through this amalgamated manner of reading, Ramban delineates the linear sequence of the story line. To facilitate his analysis, Ramban searches for linguistic clues such as key words that are pivotal for interpreting the narrative’s dynamic or repeated words that summon the reader to follow their path in order to decode the wider sense of the narrative. Ramban takes note of changes in time and place as the story unfolds, markers that signal transformations in character experiences. Through his expansive reading, Ramban reconstructs broad portraitures of the biblical personalities by scrutinizing how the narrative describes their thoughts, emotions, speeches, and actions. Extending his integrative approach, Ramban interrelates diverse stories, within the same biblical book or between different biblical books, seeking the linking threads between them that elicit the catalyst for ensuing events, create related character portraitures, and establish the thematic continuum imparted by these narratives.

            The ensuing discussion will illustrate selectively Ramban’s analytical method, which will hopefully  inspire further study of his engaging biblical commentary.

Plot Sequence and Timing

            The following examples will demonstrate how Ramban’s integrative approach discerns the sequence, structure, and progression of plot events in biblical narrative.

            In his analysis of Exodus 2:10–25, Ramban applies this method of reading in order to clarify the plot sequence from a transitional situation to a complicating event to the final situation that prevails at the conclusion of the narrative. Ramban observes that this text marks a new situation when it references the event of Moshe, the youth, “growing up” in verse 10 (va-yigdal ha-yeled). Ramban interprets this to refer to Moshe’s physical maturation, prompting his mother to bring him to the palace to be raised by Pharaoh’s daughter as a son “who would stand before kings.” This reading intimates how Moshe’s early experiences prepare him for his role as redeemer who will plead Israel’s case before Pharaoh. The second reference to Moshe “growing up” (2:11) specifies the instigating event that initiates the narrative’s turning point. Labeling Moshe as “a man of understanding (ish daՙat),” Ramban (on 2:11, 23) clarifies that Moshe reaches intellectual maturation, and he now becomes aware of his Hebrew origins, causing him to seek out his brethren and assess their oppressive condition. These observations impel him to act immediately and kill the Egyptian taskmaster (2:12), a transformative act that marks the climax of the narrative, as is evident from his confrontation with two wrestling Hebrews on the second day (2:13–14). As Ramban (on 2:14, 23) paraphrases the Hebrew’s retort to Moshe, “Who appointed you as an officer and judge over us? Is it because you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian that you are chastising me?”

            Their slander forces Moshe to escape to exile, settling in Midian (2:15), which precipitates God’s charge that he return to Egypt to redeem his people (Exodus 3–4). Noting, however, the significance of the temporal marker in verse 23, “It happened during those many days (va-yehi ba-yamim ha-rabbim ha-hem) that the king of Egypt died and Israel groaned from the work and cried out and their cries went up to God . . .,” Ramban (on 2:23) observes how the narrative provides the reader with a sense of the passage of time between these main action sequences. Assuming that the marked time frame refers to the length of Moshe’s exile,[1] Ramban proposes that Moshe escapes from Egypt when he is less than twenty years old,[2] and, as noted in Exodus 7:7, Moshe appears before Pharaoh at the age of 80. Since he receives the communication from God with only his eldest son, Gershom, having been born, Ramban posits that Moshe wanders for many years, settling in Midian and marrying Tzipporah toward the end of his years in exile (7:21–22).[3] Nevertheless, the narrative condenses its discussion of the wandering sequence as it is a transitional experience. At the end of this time period, while Moshe is in Midian, the Egyptian king dies, prompting God to charge him with his mission.

            Ramban’s linear insight into the narrative’s progression enables the reader to discern a clear sequence and structure that leads to a better understanding of the story’s underlying themes: exile, survival, and salvation.          

            Ramban (on Exod. 4:19–23) also outlines plot progression by tracing the paths of recurrent words within a narrative scene. Through this integrative mode of reading, Ramban makes sense of the episode in Exodus 4:18–21, which is marked by the repeated words, “go (lekh)” and “return (shuv),” that follow the biblical figures’ movements. After Moshe’s experience at the burning bush, the text relates,

18. Moshe went and returned to Jether his father-in-law and said to him, “Let me go now and I will return to my brethren who are in Egypt so that I may see if they are still alive.” Jethro said to Moshe, “Go in peace.” 19. God said to Moshe in Midian, “Go, return to Egypt for all the men who were seeking your life have died.” 20. Moshe took his wife and his sons and mounted them on the donkey, and he returned to the land of Egypt, and Moshe took God’s staff in his hand. 21. God said to Moshe, “When you go to return to Egypt, see all the wonders I have put into your hand and perform them before Pharaoh. But I will harden his heart and he will not release the people. . . ”.

            Ramban maintains that the primary focus of this scene involves the transformation of the family relationship, which is precipitated by Moshe’s mission as Israel’s savior. Moshe returns from Mt. Horeb to ask permission from his father-in-law to return to Egypt. The focus on Moshe’s movements, however, intimates that he planned to return “alone, in stealth,” intending only to remain in Egypt temporarily. Apparently, Moshe still feared for his life, seeing a need to conceal his identity. God therefore reassures him, commanding Moshe, according to Ramban’s reading, to return to Egypt and reside there until he liberates his brethren. Accordingly, Moshe takes his family and sets out to return to Egypt. God subsequently reiterates to Moshe that he must diligently perform the wonders with which he has been charged, even though Pharaoh will not listen.[4]

            However, since the text anomalously records that only “he returned” to Egypt (4:20), Ramban integrates the later scene in which Zipporah circumcises her son (4:24­–26) in order to resolve the question of Moshe’s family’s whereabouts while he confronts Pharaoh in Egypt. Presuming that only Gershom, the firstborn, is alive at the time (despite the plural, “sons,” in verse 20, which is attributed to the norm of scriptural style), Ramban suggests that Moshe returns to Egypt with his family, “for this was a sensible idea,” as it would prove “that his heart was firm, trusting” that redemption was imminent. Therefore, Ramban surmises that the second son, Eliezer, was conceived on the way to Egypt or in Egypt, and Gershom is circumcised by Zipporah. Although only Moshe’s return is specified, Ramban assumes that his family accompanies him.

            Alternatively, Ramban examines the family movements from a different perspective. In this reading, Zipporah had already been pregnant with her second child before Moshe receives the divine revelation at Mt. Horeb. When he returns to seek Jethro’s permission to go to Egypt, she gives birth. In his alacrity to fulfill God’s will, Moshe does not circumcise him; when Moshe is confronted by the angel, the newborn is circumcised by Zipporah on the way to Egypt. As Exodus 18:2 suggests that Zipporah was sent away (ahar shiluheha), Ramban speculates that Zipporah and her children turn back to Midian at Moshe’s insistence; not wanting to delay his mission, Moshe leaves his family at the inn where they had stopped (4:24), instructing them to return to Jethro’s home when the newly circumcised child is sufficiently strong.[5] Ramban also suggests that perhaps they all went to Egypt, but, longing for her father, Zipporah is sent home with her children.

            Sensitive to the gaps and ambiguities in this narrative, Ramban integrates its different facets by focusing on the repeated, guiding words that punctuate its context. His interpretations motivate the reader to ponder the relationship between husband and wife and parents and children in association with the broader frame of this narrative, the divine mission to redeem Israel from Egypt.

            Ramban is adept at integrating related narratives within a biblical book, divulging how one pivotal incident serves as the catalyst for subsequent events, influencing their outcome. An illustrative example is how Ramban centralizes Joseph’s dreams (Gen. 37:5–11) as the crux of later episodes in Genesis. From Ramban’s perspective, Joseph does not view his dreams as youthful imaginings, but he sees in them divinely providential import and feels it is his obligation to ensure that they are brought to fruition. Relating Joseph’s reaction to his brothers’ arrival in Egypt to trade for food, Scripture reports, “Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him, and Joseph remembered the dreams he had dreamed about them, and he said to them, ‘You are spies. To see the nakedness of the land you have come’” (Gen. 42:8–9). According to Ramban (on Gen. 42:9), when Joseph sees his brothers, he realizes the time has arrived to implement his dreams, and he orchestrates subsequent events to ensure their fulfillment in the order he had dreamed them. “He carried out everything well at its appropriate time in order to realize the dreams, for he knew that they would certainly be realized.”

            In his first dream, Joseph had envisioned eleven sheaves bowing down to his sheaf, signifying his brothers’ obeisance to his sovereignty (Ramban on Gen. 37:7). Since only 10 brothers first arrive in Egypt, Joseph conceals his identity and devises a scenario that will compel the brothers to bring Benjamin down to Egypt so that the first dream will be fulfilled in its entirety and proper sequence (Ramban on Gen. 42:9).

            Ramban (on Gen. 37:10) uniquely interprets that Joseph decodes the symbolic meaning of the second dream (Gen. 37:9) as an indication that Jacob (represented by the sun), Jacob’s entire lineage who were born to his four wives (signified by the moon), including the eleven brothers (that is, the stars), would bow down to Joseph. In order to fulfill this dream, therefore, Joseph must ensure that his entire family is uprooted to Egypt, where they will bow down to him when they “see his great success there.”[6]

            Ramban’s focus on the dreams also explains why Joseph never communicates with his father while in Egypt, even though Egypt is close to Canaan. Joseph deliberately keeps his father ignorant of his whereabouts because revealing himself would jeopardize the realization of his dreams in succession (Ramban on Gen. 42:9). For Ramban, Joseph’s dreams are the proverbial glue that binds the narrative scenes involving Joseph and his family.

Characterization

            Ramban’s clear sense of the overall portraiture of the biblical figures emerges from his integrative reading of the narratives in which they appear. This analytical method may be illustrated through his polar characterizations of Noah and Lot. Based on his holistic analysis of the Flood story (Gen. 6–8), Ramban develops a one-sided portrait of Noah, but his global analysis of the episodes in which Lot plays a role leads him to reconstruct a complex portrait of his persona.

            Ramban frames his perception of Noah around a key biblical phrase that, in his view, defines this biblical figure’s character. Genesis 6:9 relates, “Noah ish tzaddik tamim hayah be-dorotav.” According to Ramban, the moral epithet, ish tzaddik, specifies Noah’s righteousness in the particular sense of having been judged innocent of any wrongdoing. Whereas the people of Noah’s time are convicted of a host of crimes, which warrant their destruction, God deems Noah to be completely guiltless. Noah therefore merits, without reservation, to be saved from the Flood catastrophe. The adjective, tamim (complete), accentuates his absolute vindication in judgment. The time frame, “in his generations (be-dorotav),” specifies that although Noah lived a long life, spanning multiple generations, he was never corrupted by his contemporaries’ wicked ways, and, exceptionally, only he was worthy of being saved from the Flood. A midrashic view infers that this temporal qualifier delimits Noah’s sterling character as being only relative to the wicked men of his generations and certainly not measuring up to extraordinarily righteous individuals like the patriarch Abraham. However, Ramban presumes that this proviso aggrandizes Noah’s meritoriousness. As Ramban emphasizes further, only Noah “walked with God” (6:9), exhibiting a spiritual closeness to God that was sorely lacking among his contemporaries.[7]

            Ramban supports his monolithic characterization of Noah by analyzing additional textual indicators. Prior to revealing Noah’s defining quality, Scripture asserts how God is “saddened” that He must eradicate the very humans He created because of their evil ways (6:5–7). However, the text contrastingly observes, “But Noah found favor (matza hen) in God’s eyes” (6:8). While noted predecessors maintain that Noah’s “favorable” effect on God was an activation of His mercy, implying that Noah did not fully merit salvation,[8] Ramban (on Gen. 6:8) claims that this divine “favor” was bestowed upon Noah because “all of his deeds were befitting and pleasing before God.”

            Additionally, Ramban observes that Noah’s praiseworthy character is endorsed by God Himself. In 7:1, God asserts, “Go into the ark, with all your household, for you alone (otekha) have I seen to be innocent (tzaddik) before Me in this generation.” While this confirmation raises the question why Noah’s family was saved, Ramban concludes that Noah’s merit was sufficient to rescue his household as well. This is why his children are mentioned in conjunction with Scripture’s assertion of Noah’s defining feature as a “tzaddik.” Genesis 6:9–10 relates, “This is Noah’s lineage (toledot Noah)—Noah was a completely innocent man in his generations; Noah walked with God—Noah begat three sons . . .”. In Ramban’s view, these opening statements direct the reader to focus on the pivotal figure of Noah, whose merit saves his three sons from whom the world will be rebuilt (9:18–19).[9]

            Ramban’s consistent evaluation of Noah’s persona is highlighted by his striking perspective on the inebriation scene in Genesis 9. While one might think this scene is cause for re-assessing Noah’s positive characterization, Ramban (on Gen. 9:26) asserts that this episode is a commentary on the potency of wine and its ability to fell even the greatest of men; it does not detract from his worthiness to be saved from the Flood. “For the wholly innocent individual (tzaddik tamim), whose merit saved the entire world, even he was brought to sin by wine.”

            One might posit that Ramban’s integrated study of the Flood story leads him to derive a constant portrait of Noah because this characterization answers a central question of this story: Why did Noah merit to be, in essence, the “Second Adam,” whose lineage would be the ancestors of future humanity? By eliciting the narrative’s clear conception of Noah’s portraiture, Ramban leaves no doubt about this figure’s role in the renewal of the world.

            Conversely, Ramban (on Gen. 19:8) perceives that the Torah presents Lot as a multidimensional personality. Considering Lot’s despicable offer of his two daughters to the vicious Sodomites (Gen. 19:7–8), an act that Ramban surmises could only arise from “a wicked heart,” one might question how he deduces that Lot is a complex character. However, Ramban unearths subtle clues that direct him to contemplate Lot’s persona more broadly. Ramban (on Gen. 19:3) credits Lot with a display of good will in his desire to host the (angelic) guests (Gen. 19:1–3). The angels cultivate this merit, which plays a part in helping to save him from destruction, by initially refusing to accept his invitation, which prompts Lot to beseech the angels further. Furthermore, Ramban (on Gen. 18:26) maintains that when Abraham begs God to save the cities of the plain for the sake of the righteous, innocent men who dwelled in them (tzaddikim be-tokh ha-‘ir) (18:24, 26), he effectively seeks salvation for Lot, whom he deems to be sufficiently innocent of the Sodomites’ crimes. Ramban (on Gen. 19:12) observes that Lot’s merit suffices to save his family, and his request averts destruction of the nearby city, Zoar, where he will find refuge (19:18–22).

            At the same time, Ramban (on Gen. 13:13) finds other textual indications that cast a shadow on Lot’s persona. Scripture follows its description of Lot’s choice to live in Sodom with an evaluation of its inhabitants as being exceedingly wicked men (13:12–13) in order to castigate Lot’s new residence. Ramban (on Gen. 19:16) also suggests that the text implies Lot was ultimately saved out of mercy, not merit; as Genesis 19:16 indicates, Lot was hastened out of Sodom by the angels, “while God’s mercy was upon him.”

            Nevertheless, Ramban reveals Lot’s positive qualities in his analysis of Genesis 19:29: “When God demolished the cities of the plain, God remembered Abraham and He sent Lot out from the upheaval . . . ”. In Ramban’s view, this text underscores Lot’s loyalty to Abraham, which earns him the merit to be rescued:

. . . Lot had displayed kindness toward the righteous one [Abraham] by going with him, wandering throughout the land wherever he went . . . And therefore he had the merit to save him because of Abraham’s merit. For it was because of him [Abraham] that he [Lot] resided in Sodom. Were it not for Abraham, he would have still been in Haran with his family. And it is implausible that harm should occur to him [Lot] because of Abraham, who had departed by the command of His Creator.

By integrating the various narrative scenes in which Lot appears, Ramban directs the reader to appreciate how close reading can reveal the many sides of a biblical personality.

      Furthermore, Ramban’s integrative method develops comparative portraits between related biblical figures who have active roles in different biblical books.

            Representative of this approach is Ramban’s perception of the parallel experiences between Joshua and Moshe, revealing continuity between teacher and student in their leadership roles. Explaining what laws were established after the incident at Marah, where the bitter waters were sweetened (sham sam lo hok u-mishpat, Exod. 15:25), Ramban posits that Moshe institutes daily guidelines for Israel’s interpersonal relationships and between humans and God to ensure stability within the community during their sojourn in the wilderness. Comparatively, Ramban (on Exod. 15:25) observes that the verse in Joshua 24:25, va-yasem lo hok u-mishpat bi-Shekhem, indicates through the same language how Moshe’s successor establishes similar societal standards and practices before his death, after much of the conquest has been accomplished, in order to guarantee success for the newly settled Israelites.

Correlating these biblical figures’ actions, Ramban applies the later episode of the capture of Ai (Josh. 7–8) in order to explain Moshe’s conduct in the war against the Amalekites (Exod. 17). Although Moshe indicates that he will stand on top of the hill with his staff in his hand during the battle (17:9), the ensuing narrative relates only that Moshe raises his hands to ensure the Israelites’ victory (17:11–12). To clarify the staff’s function, Ramban observes that prior to the assault of Ai, God commands Joshua to perform a symbolic gesture signifying the enemy’s defeat: “Stretch out the javelin in your hand toward Ai, for I will give it into your hand” (Josh. 8:18). With his hand and spear outstretched, the ambush rushes out, captures the city, and sets it on fire (8:19, 26). Correspondingly, Ramban (on Exod. 17:9) suggests that when Moshe reaches the top of the hill, he first extends his staff over the Amalekites below to preordain their defeat. However, to reinforce this signification, he prays to God with raised hands, having put the staff away beforehand.

            In an analogous example, Ramban associates the two leaders’ spy expeditions. Noting the disparate accounts in Numbers 13 and Deuteronomy 1 concerning who initiated the spy venture, Ramban posits, in one approach, that although the people introduce the idea of sending spies (Deut. 1:22), Moshe approves their initiative (Deut. 1:23), and God grants His permission (Num. 13:1–2), since the mission’s intent is to plan a military strategy to invade Canaan. To bolster his reading, Ramban notes similar reconnaissance missions, expedited by Moshe (prior to attacking the Amorite lands; Num. 21:32), and by Joshua before attacking Jericho (Josh. 2:1). Referencing the attack on Ai (Josh. 8), Ramban reiterates that it was customary to arm the attackers with knowledge of their enemy to assure victory against them. Ramban (on Num. 13:2) observes further that while the Israelites intended to send only two spies, as was the case before the battle of Jericho, God commands that each tribe send its chieftain as spies to maximize the chances of success.

Thematic and Didactic Features

            Ramban’s integrative approach divulges the interrelated subjects of the biblical books, illustrating their progressive thematic relationship. A notable example is his introduction to the Book of Exodus, in which he encapsulates the contents of the first two books of the Torah, disclosing their thematic continuum. According to Ramban, in the Book of Genesis, the creation of the world and its creatures narrows to focus on the creation of Israel through “the experiences of the patriarchs, which are a type of creation for their descendants,” as their biographies symbolically preordain Israel’s historical destiny. Ramban’s associative reading suggests how the world cannot exist without a divinely chosen nation that fulfills the purpose for which the world was created. Furthermore, Ramban notes that the promises and decrees foretold in the Book of Genesis come to fruition in the Book of Exodus. The Covenant between the Pieces in Genesis 15 preordains the exile in Egypt and Israel’s redemption, the main events of the Book of Exodus.[10]

            Noting, however, that the Book of Exodus concludes with Tabernacle’s construction, Ramban also applies an integrative reading that circles back to the beginning in order to connect the narratives of both biblical books.

For the exile did not end until the day that [Israel] returned to their place, and returned to the high stature of their Patriarchs . . . When they came to Mt. Sinai and built the Mishkan, and God returned and rested His presence among them, then they returned to the heights of their Patriarchs, where the counsel of God dwelled on their tents. . . Then they were considered redeemed.[11]

 For Ramban, the crowning distinction of the creation of Israel is its return to the elevated spirituality of its patriarchal ancestors, who felt God’s open presence among them continually. Through the medium of the Tabernacle, Israel will realize the purpose for which God created the world and selected the patriarchs to establish the foundation of the nation of Israel.

            Ramban also elicits the integral didactic features present within a particular narrative. In his introduction to the Jacob-Esau confrontation (Genesis 32–33), Ramban underscores its three primary messages: 1) “God saved His servant and redeemed him from the hand of one more powerful than he. He sent an angel and saved him”; 2) “Jacob did not rely on his righteousness, but he exerted all of his effort for his salvation”; and 3) “All that transpired between our patriarch [Jacob] with his brother Esau will continually happen to us with Esau’s descendants.”

            Ramban (on Gen. 32:22, 23, 25) delineates how each of these edifying elements is present in the scene of Jacob’s struggle with the angel. Illustrating the second message, Ramban observes that Jacob acts as “a man of war,” sleeping outside “in the camp” (32:22), among his servants and shepherds, to guard against his brother’s possible attack. During the night, he checks the water level, transfers his wife and children, and the possessions by means of servants, ultimately being left behind on the wrong side of the river, where the struggle occurs (32:25–26).

            Ramban (on Gen. 18:1; 35:10) analyzes this struggle in the broader context of the confrontation between Jacob and Esau, identifying the “man” as the angelic “prince of Esau.” Accordingly, he intimates that the first didactic feature is expressed in this very event of the struggle, for salvation by an angel does not appear elsewhere in this biblical story. Ramban (on Gen. 32:26) presumes that Jacob needs to endure a struggle with the angel of Esau in order to attain a victory by divine mediation that prevents the angel from mortally harming him, so that Jacob’s triumph over his enemy will be assured.[12]

            Applying midrashic analysis, Ramban exposes the narrative’s third instructive component, its futuristic implications. Jacob’s victory over the angel signifies that while his righteous descendants will suffer an injurious blow at the hands of the Romans—Esau’s descendants, Israel will ultimately prevail. In conjunction with this thematic underpinning, Ramban presumes that this narrative concludes with Jacob’s return to the place of Shalem (33:18), alluding to his arrival whole and unscathed.[13]

             Additionally, Ramban elicits this didactic perspective in his interpolation of the angel’s reaction to Jacob’s demand to know his name (32:30). “Why do you ask for my name: There is no benefit for you to know my name, for the power and capability belongs to God alone. If you call me, I will not answer you; and I will not be able to redeem you from your travails.” Ramban (on Gen. 32:30) suggests that the angel teaches Jacob a lesson for generations: Israel needs to face its enemy by prayer that is directed to God Himself.

Conclusion

            Ramban’s biblical commentary provides an important interpretative method for the serious study of the stories of the Torah. His integrative approach discerns interlocking connections between the scenes of a biblical narrative or between different narratives, expanding the reader’s scope of analysis. By assimilating the components of biblical narrative into a cohesive whole, Ramban delineates plot sequence and structure, primary themes and messages, and a broad perception of the biblical personalities. Ramban’s interpretations reveal the essence of the biblical stories, which are the backbone of our national history.

For Further Study

Ben-Meir, Ruth, “Le-Darkhei Parshanuto shel Ramban.” In: Pirkei Nehama: Sefer Zikaron le-Nehama Leibowitz, ed. M. Ahrend, R. Ben-Meir, G. H. Cohen (Jerusalem: Israel Jewish Agency, 2001), pp. 125–141.