Or ha-Hayyim: Creativity, Tradition and Mysticism in the Torah Commentary of R. Hayyim ibn Attar

By: Ariel Evan Mayse[i]

God’s Torah lay written before me; it awakened me and gave me expression. It illuminated my soul in the sweetest of lights, and my soul felt as if she had seen its secrets. She will eat and become sated of its savory delights, though many remain yet untasted; in the light of the countenance of the living King.

                                                           - R. Hayyim ibn Attar, Hakdamat ha-Rav ha-Mehaber

            A few years ago a friend of mine spent the weekend in a Hasidic enclave in upstate New York. When he entered the beit midrash early Shabbat morning, he noticed a young Hasid poring over the Or ha-Hayyim commentary on the Torah with obvious fervor and reverence. My friend walked over and asked why he had chosen to learn a Sephardic Torah commentary at this time, since many Hasidim have the custom of studying Hasidic books of mystical thought before the morning prayers. With surprise and horror, the lad looked up and immediately replied: Neyn! Vos zogstu?! Dos iz a khasidishe seyfer! [No! What do you mean?! This is a Hasidic book!]

This story is indicative of the great affection felt for R. Hayyim ben Moshe ibn Attar (1696-1743) even outside of the immediate Sephardic world.[ii] This scion of the Moroccan Jewish community penned important works in both halakha and aggada, but the commentary on the Torah entitled Or ha-Hayyim is undoubtedly his most influential book.[iii] It was originally published in 1742, alongside the traditional triad of biblical text, Rashi, and Onkelos’ translation, and within a few decades had captured a relatively large readership among among European Jewish communities. Or ha-Hayyim rose from popular to canonical status when it became the most recent commentary to be included in many standard printings of the Mikra’ot Gedolot, some of which have since replaced the works of classical Rishonim with additional supercommentaries to Or ha-Hayyim itself.

            R. Hayyim’s commentary is a demanding but extremely rewarding study. His explanations are conceptually complicated, stylistically perplexing, and often more verbose than any of the other commentaries on the page.  Yet there is a depth and profundity in his words that emerges from amidst their difficulty. As I hope to demonstrate, at the core of R. Hayyim’s commentary stands a beautiful double helix of two seamlessly integrated approaches to interpreting the Torah: the search for the verses’ plain-sense on one hand, and the quest for their deeper mystical significance on the other. R. Hayyim has outspoken affection for peshat and often explains verses according to their plain-sense, contextual and literal meaning. However, his commentary is also a tremendous repository of creative mystical thought, informed by the kabbalistic tradition but not bound to the teachings of any particular school. While for some exegetes these goals have proven mutually exclusive, R. Hayyim maintained that both a verse’s peshat and its mystical significance are equally important and true. The primary goal of this study is to bring into sharper focus several of the most important mystical themes of his commentary, and to offer a few remarks on their potential relevance to contemporary Jewish conversations.[iv]

R. Hayyim ibn Attar was born in 1696 in Salé, Morocco, into an illustrious family descended from Spanish exiles.[v] The young R. Hayyim was educated in the traditional manner by his grandfather, but his early years were peripatetic and he was often forced to move from city to city on family business or to escape persecution. After marrying into a wealthy family that was distantly related, R. Hayyim devoted himself entirely to his studies for a number of years. Yet difficult times returned with the death of his father-in-law in the early 1720s. Without patronage, the combined hardships of economic crises, plagues and famines forced R. Hayyim into a series of relocations that eventually led him to Jerusalem.

R. Hayyim moved first to Fes, followed by a brief stay in Algiers, and then settled in Leghorn, where he once again found monetary support and made his home for several years.  There R. Hayyim began to teach Torah publicly and served as a communal leader, but by 1740 he and a small number of his close friends and students had resolved to immigrate to Israel in order to establish a new yeshiva. They disembarked in Acre in 1741, where they spent a full year before the epidemics in central Eretz Yisrael abated. After moving to Jerusalem the group founded the yeshiva Kenesset Yisrael, whose  students included the renowned polymath R. Hayyim Yosef David Azulai (the Hida, 1724-1806). R. Hayyim ibn Attar died in 1743, and was subsequently interred on the Mount of Olives. The synagogue named for him in the Old City of Jerusalem is still an active place of worship, and to this day R. Hayyim’s literary legacy remains quite influential in many religious circles.

Creativity, Tradition, and the Nature of Torah

            Before embarking on our exploration of the mystical aspects of Or ha-Hayyim, briefly examining two related issues will help us clarify a more fundamental question: how R. Hayyim understood the role and limits of biblical interpretation. First, examining his attitude toward the classical commentators will demonstrate to what extent he felt himself at creative liberty to offer interpretations, both mystical and plain-sense, that contrast those adduced by earlier sages. Second, illustrating R. Hayyim’s conception of the nature of the Torah itself will reveal the underlying principles upon which his interpretive approach is based. These two questions were first analyzed in an enlightening book in Hebrew by the late Professor Elazar Touitou, yet since to my knowledge his important findings have never been made available in English, nor have they been subsequently challenged or developed, it will surely be of worth to present and expand upon them here.

R. Hayyim was a latecomer to the stage of Jewish biblical interpretation. By the early eighteenth century the “golden age” of exegesis by Western European Rishonim had long since ended. R. Hayyim is counted amongst the Sephardic Aharonim, whose literary works represent a vastly different stage of Jewish history. They wrote in a time after the major centers of learning in Spain had been destroyed and their leaders exiled to Christian Europe, North Africa, and Eretz Yisrael, forever transforming the intellectual centers of gravity of the Jewish world. Kabbalah, specifically the Zohar and later the works of R. Isaac Luria (d. 1572), had overtaken philosophy as the only other primary focus of Jewish study in the Sephardic Diaspora other than the Talmud itself, thus ending a centuries-long debate over the merits and demerits of rationalism and mysticism. The second half of the seventeenth century witnessed the dramatic rise and fall of the false messiah Shabbatai Tzevi, whose conversion to Islam left much world Jewry in shambles. Aharonim are generally thought of as far less daring than their early medieval counterparts, and this deferential shift in attitude is often attributed to the political and geographic turbulence. However, as we shall see, R. Hayyim’s commentary is bold and innovative in a manner largely uncharacteristic of this period. He was unafraid of disputing the interpretations of authorities that predated him, even those articulated by the revered Talmudic sages themselves.

            R. Hayyim notes that Hazal frequently offer homiletical (derash) interpretations of verses, which often come at the expense of the plain-sense meaning of the text. In some instances he agrees with their derashot and comments upon the verse in accord with their reading.[vi] However, in many cases R. Hayyim insists that the verse must be understood according to its peshat despite the Sages’ homiletical interpretation; though he does not deny the  legitimacy of their derashot, he presents an alternative reading that conforms to the plain-sense of the passage.[vii] R. Hayyim was fiercely committed to rabbinic legal norms, and in one case writes that he is unwilling to offer an otherwise valid interpretation that conflicted with halakha.[viii] Yet he reminds his reader that even Hazal agreed that the Torah would be interpreted in many different ways in the future,[ix] and as long as the law remains unchanged, students of biblical exegesis have nearly unlimited freedom.[x]

            R. Hayyim’s stance toward the classical medieval commentators is similarly complex. Despite having been deeply influenced by Rashi’s commentary, R. Hayyim gently disagrees with him on linguistic grounds, for misunderstanding statements of Hazal, and for giving original interpretations not in line with the peshat.[xi] In some cases R. Hayyim agrees with Abraham Ibn Ezra, while elsewhere challenging his reading of a verse; at times  R. Hayyim Ibn Ezra's opinion altogether.[xii] The same is true of his attitude toward Ramban, even though the latter's commentary includes a combination of peshat and Kabbalah not dissimilar to R. Hayyim's own style.[xiii] However, perhaps most striking of all is the relative infrequency of his engagement with the works of the Rishonim. Hoping to avoid plagiarism of any kind, he claims to have closed their books before sitting down to write his independent commentary, selectively citing earlier authorities from memory.[xiv] Only later did he compare his text to theirs, occasionally using their words to support his interpretation or contrasting earlier traditions with his own understanding of the verse.[xv]

We might thus characterize R. Hayyim ibn Attar’s attitude toward earlier interpreters as one of intermittent contradiction, or to be more precise, respectful contradistinction. While he repudiates their remarks when he deems them insufficient or not in keeping with the plain-sense of the verse, he does not deny the validity of their interpretations, nor does he attack them with any of the invectives wielded by the Rishonim against one another. R. Hayyim’s commentary itself offers a prepossessing blend of different homiletic styles, and it is immediately clear that he believes in no single correct explanation of a verse to which all readers must be obeisant. He often offers multiple interpretations of a single passage, occasionally deriving several dozen possible and correct meanings. This alone sets him apart from many of the earlier medieval commentators, with Ramban’s commentary the possible exception.

            R. Hayyim asserts that the Torah has myriad layers of meaning, and careful study of its polysemous words can yield any number of valid interpretations.[xvi] R. Hayyim  invokes the adage commonly found in mystical literature and explains that each of the four primary modes of interpreting the Torah (peshat, remez, derash, sod) corresponds to one of the kabbalistic worlds (asiya, beriya, yetzira, atzilut).[xvii] Elsewhere he writes that the Torah itself has an outer, plain-sense meaning, which surrounds and embodies its deeper mystical dimension (penimiyut).[xviii] This description does not simply proscribe how a reader should interpret the biblical text, but describes the very nature of the Torah itself. Furthermore, many intricacies of halakha were passed down as oral traditions, connected to the biblical text but found nowhere explicitly in its words, and the same is true of its kabbalistic significance. The Torah alludes to deeper mysteries that cannot be captured in writing and must be transmitted from student to teacher. Some of these are outside of the boundaries of language and are comprehensible through experience alone.[xix] In sum, while other exegetes have assumed that peshat and penimiyut are mutually exclusive ends of a spectrum, R. Hayyim’s belief that the Torah is multi-faceted and thus able to yield many coterminous explanations is the bedrock of his mystical approach to interpreting the biblical text.[xx]

Mysticism and Kabbalah

            R. Hayyim’s North African community retained much of the peshat sensibility beloved by the Andalusian Rishonim.[xxi] By the early eighteenth century this intellectual milieu was steeped in Kabbalah as well, and by R. Hayyim's time mystical approaches to interpreting the Torah coexisted alongside the quest for its plain-sense meaning. It is thus unsurprising that in addition to establishing peshat, Or ha-Hayyim's other raison d’être is to explain the mystical significance of the Torah’s words. As noted above, R. Hayyim does not see his mystical interpretations as necessarily contradicting the biblical text’s plain-sense meaning, but rather amplifying and often complementing it.[xxii] He often refers to this dimension of his exegesis as remez (allusion) or sod (secret), but from his commentary it is immediately apparent that R. Hayyim did not feel constrained to the symbols of one theosophical system alone. Instead, he synthesized different threads of earlier kabbalistic traditions and wove them together into a tapestry of mystical interpretation not beholden to any single tradition; this is a departure from the rather structured Kabbalah included in the commentaries of Ibn Ezra, Ramban, and Menahem Recanati (d. 1310). Indeed, though mystical ideas permeate nearly every page of his commentary, much of its depth is accessible to those with even an elementary background in Kabbalah.

R. Hayyim seems to have drawn the majority of his kabbalistic inspiration from the Zohar, which he assumes dates back to the early centuries CE. Sometimes he cites its passages as teachings of Hazal, others as words of the holy Tanna Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai,[xxiii] and quotes the Zohar by name in several dozens of passages.[xxiv] By contrast, R. Hayyim refers directly to the teachings of R. Isaac Luria a handful of times,[xxv] and only occasionally cites an oral or written tradition received in the great kabbalist’s name.[xxvi] While R. Hayyim refers to Lurianic ideas more subtly in other places, he never employs such specific keywords as tzimtzum or partzufim, and it is reasonably clear that his kabbalistic framework was  primarily non-Lurianic. This is rather surprising given that Luria’s was the dominant mystical voice in seventeenth and eighteenth century Jewish mystical discourse. Perhaps this trepidation reflects fears of association with the Sabbatian heresy based on a dangerous yet creative rereading of Lurianic Kabbalah. In a few allusive comments R. Hayyim expressed apprehension about revealing too much; he steadied his pen and refrained from writing down secrets that he felt could not be revealed to a popular audience.[xxvii] However, it is also possible R. Hayyim had limited primary-source exposure to the more theoretical complexities of Lurianic Kabbalah while writing the majority of his commentary.

            While the precise origins of his mystical thought require further clarification, it is indisputable that R. Hayyim's cosmology was deeply influenced by medieval Kabbalah.  In his description the spiritual plane and the physical world are not entirely distinct realms, and while there is a perceptible boundary between the human and divine spheres, a bifurcated division between “spiritual” and “corporeal” is anathema to his worldview. R. Hayyim understood the physical world as an intertwined composite of material and spiritual. All corporeal phenomena are animated by a core of divine energy; each aspect of existence is infused with an essential element of divinity, from the highest spiritual worlds to objects that which we perceive as fundamentally inanimate, .[xxviii] Mankind’s sins only have the capacity to lessen the flow of this divine energy, but they can never truly obstruct it. Without exception, all reality is sustained by God’s effluence.[xxix]

            This theme of divine immanence is developed throughout Or ha-Hayyim, but R. Hayyim treats it most fully in his comments on the creation narrative. To explain the seeming banality of the verse, “The heavens and the earth were completed in all their array” (Gen. 2:1), he writes:

We were at a loss as to what this verse is supposed to teach us, but its intention seems in accord with what the Sages taught, “God is the place of the world” (Bereshit Rabbah, 68:9). We find mentioned [in Scripture] that He also permeates the world, as it says, “the world is full of His glory” (Is. 6:3). Hence, the light of the blessed One both surrounds the world and is its inner essence.  

We must understand, why did God do things in this way? I received an oral tradition from the elder scholars of Torah that God created the world as a sphere so that it could continue to exist, since His powers are equally distributed. This should be explained as follows: Know that no yearning could be sweeter, dearer, more precious, beloved or desired amongst the created beings, especially their inner spiritual elements that recognize and know the light of God, than cleaving to the blessed One’s illumination. The vital core [of all creation] pines for Him, striving to apprehend the radiance of His light in some small way, craning to catch a glimpse of God’s pleasantness.

Know also that God imbued an element of illuminated wisdom and discernment in every aspect of creation, each according to its nature. Creatures that can speak and animals that cannot, as well as plants and minerals, all have the capacity to know their Maker in their own way….

… His sweet and yearned for light surrounds the spheres of the world uniformly, and each and every spot in the world’s rotation ignites the burning desire to draw close to the Tree of Longing equally…

… For this reason the world exists within the light of the Creator; His light fills the physical and surrounds it as well. The world continues to endure because of its great longing for God. [The word for “completion” used in] “The heavens and the earth were completed (va-yekhulu) in all their array” should be understood along the lines of “my soul longs and desires” (kaleta, Ps. 84:3). This is what truly completed and sustains creation.[xxx]

For R. Hayyim, this verse alludes to several important spiritual truths. First, God’s simultaneous immanence and transcendence may seem paradoxical, but it is precisely this tension that grants the physical world its perpetuation. The generative longing of creation for a transcendent God is made possible by their innate divine quality, the indwelling of a divine spark that sustains the world. Second, R. Hayyim believes in the capacity of all finite created beings to know God, albeit to varying degrees. The Divine remains beyond the absolute grasp of any of His creations, but the inner spiritual quality hidden within the physical means that everything has an unseverable capacity for connecting to the Divine.

            R. Hayyim demonstrates remarkable creativity and sensitivity in his ability to find mystical significance in the biblical text. In many cases these deeper messages actually represent his understanding of the plain-sense meaning of a verse, and do not come at the exclusion of the peshat he so values. For example, R. Hayyim connects the notion of a world infused with divine energy with the initial Shabbat of the creation story:

God created the soul (nefesh) of the world on the Sabbath day. This is the deeper meaning of the verse: “And on the seventh day He rested (shavat) and infused (va-yinafash)” (Ex. 31:17). From this the Sages’ taught that the additional soul mourns when the Sabbath departs (b. Beitza 16a), but theirs is only a homiletical interpretation… the plain-sense of the verse is that… “and infused” refers to God’s vital effluence pouring into all created beings, since before Shabbat everything lacked a soul.[xxxi]

R. Hayyim does not read va-yinafash as a reflexive description of God desisting from formative work, as it is often understood. Instead, his believes that its plain-sense meaning is an active verb demonstrating that God instilled a necessary current of metaphysical energy into the world through the creation of Shabbat.

            R. Hayyim adds that the deep yearning and love felt for God by His creations is entirely mutual. Identifying an interesting parallel between the words va-yekhulu in Gen. 2:1 and va-yekhal (“and God finished”) in the following verse, he comments:

Just above I translated the word va-yekhulu as referring to longing and desire, and we should translate the present [phrase] va-yekhal Elokim along the same lines, in accord with the verse, “You will long for the works of Your hands” (Job 14:15)… The Lord yearned for and desired His world, and thus through the Seventh Day the world is sustained…[xxxii]

The love between God and the physical world is thus reciprocal, cementing the bond between the created world and the Divine. However, R. Hayyim often focuses on an expression of God’s love that is more particularistic: His exceptional affection for the Jewish people. It was this love for Israel and His burning desire to wed them to the Torah that led to their redemption from Egypt. The delay of three months before reaching Mt. Sinai gave the Jews time to prepare themselves, as a bridegroom must during the period of his engagement. From God’s perspective, the ideal would have been to deliver them to the wedding canopy immediately.[xxxiii]

            Another prominent mystical theme found in Or ha-Hayyim is the mandate to redeem the “sparks of holiness” trapped within the physical world. This idea is closely related to God’s sustaining of  physical existence by the reinfusion the world with divine energy. However, the relationship between the sparks and corporeal realm differs in one important respect: the sparks also reflect the inherent brokenness of the world and its partial disunity from God. This condition began with the edenic sin and has only been exacerbated by mankind’s subsequent iniquity. The “husks” of physical reality that surround the sparks are described in distinctly negative terms:

Because of our abundant sins, many sparks of holiness are now bound within the husks, and … evil and good are all mixed together. For this reason one must separate the good from the bad, and the light from the darkness in which it has become entangled. However, it is known that the husks derive their vitality from holiness itself, and without this they would have no life force. Therefore, when God separates the light, which is the holiness, the discarded evil is left it without any place from which receive sustenance and will be nullified all on its own… this is similar to chopping down a tree and removing it from the very roots which give it life; it will become dried out and wither.[xxxiv]

Only a few decades later Hasidism would employ the vocabulary of the sparks to articulate an optimistic view of engaging with physical world, and as we have seen, in many cases R. Hayyim displays a similarly positive outlook. However, in others R. Hayyim tends more toward the dualism commonly found in the medieval kabbalistic tradition, which opposes coarse physicality with sublime spirit. Even the most impure corporeal matter is sustained by the holy sparks, but it cannot endure once we achieve the goal of returning them to their Source.[xxxv]  

            The sparks of holiness were originally scattered because of mankind’s sin, and R. Hayyim maintains that it is the task of the Jewish people to gather the sparks and remove them from the husks that surround them. He writes:

Primordial Adam was the tree upon which all holy souls were affixed, including all that had entered the world from its inception and all that ever will. When Adam sinned, [the side of] evil became much stronger and took countless [souls] captive. Since becoming a nation God’s [chosen] people have constantly striven to separate and remove them from whence they were swallowed up. They do this by means of the font of holiness that God planted in our midst: the Torah and mitzvoth.[xxxvi]

Mankind’s sin plunged the physical world into a state of fracture. The holy aspects within it, referred to alternatively as sparks, souls, and even aspects of God Himself, are now concealed behind veils of impurity.[xxxvii] However, the picture is not so bleak and all is not lost. Israel is charged with redeeming the trapped sparks and “returning them to a state of complete unity” through immersion in Torah study and performing their religious obligations with fervor and intensity.[xxxviii] This capacity is what defines Jewish people as a “nation of priests.”[xxxix] Even their most mundane actions are also reframed as spiritual activities; that we could have been created without the need for physical sustenance proves that eating and drinking must serve the higher purpose of uplifting the sparks trapped within the food.[xl] It was in order to fulfill this very responsibility that the Jewish people were dispersed across the world. Israel was thrust into exile in part because of their sins, but more importantly, they were they enjoined with task of uplifting the scattered sparks and freeing them from their corporeal prisons.[xli]

            R. Hayyim devotes very little space to the complicated and often obscure symbolism that characterized earlier Jewish mystical thought. He rarely refers to the sefirot by name, and I was able to find only one instance in which the term “sefira” itself appears in Or ha-Hayyim.[xlii] However, leaving the technical vocabulary of Lurianic Kabbalah and the Zohar does not mean that R. Hayyim shies away from a mystical conception of God. He discusses the Divine indwelling in the physical world (shekhina) at great length. For R. Hayyim, the shekhina is not the hypostatic entity conceived of in medieval Kabbalah, nor is it simply an abstract attribute of the Godhead. Instead, he describes the shekhina as a finite (if incorporeal) instantiation of God, fully united with Him but within the ken of physical beings and their limited faculties.[xliii] Israel met the shekhina on Mt. Sinai,[xliv] and it is with this the aspect of God that the angels can interact.[xlv] He notes that there are an infinite number of gradations of the indwelling of the shekhina. One particularly intense manifestation the can only be revealed to the fullest assembly of 600,000 people,[xlvi] but to a lesser degree God’s immanent presence may be found in the synagogue, the study hall, and with all who learn Torah together.[xlvii] Indeed, each Jewish individual can be transformed into a dwelling for the shekhina through performing the mitzvoth and  cultivating a sense of awe of the Divine [xlviii]

It should come as no surprise, then, that R. Hayyim sees mankind as the pinnacle and purpose of creation.[xlix] The unique qualities of the human soul connect them to the Divine in a manner that far exceeds the fundamental ability of all creations to recognize God mentioned above. Before entering the world, the human soul is a part of God that is incorporated into the supernal and sublime divine Light.[l] The soul maintains its permanent connection with the Divine even after being fused with a physical body; this bond allows the soul its lasting vitality even after the body has died.[li] The human soul also serves as a channel for divine energy into the physical realm. R. Hayyim describes it as the nexus that links upper spiritual worlds to the four elements, thus allowing corporeal matter to be infused with God’s effluence.[lii] The human soul is the ladder of Jacob’s dream, bridging between heaven and earth and uniting the two realms. The angels “ascending and descending upon it” are the mitzvoth; they are actions with the capacity to uplift the “supernal lights” (an allusion to kabbalistic theurgy) and bring down a “cascade of brilliant illumination” into the physical.[liii] Indeed, in observing the commandments  the righteous throw open the heavenly conduits through which divine energy enters the world.[liv]

R. Hayyim’s understanding of the nature of the soul is not democratic, and he clearly believes that non-Jews have a different metaphysical structure.[lv] Spiritual facility remains a spectrum even amongst the Jewish people. The soul is an innately holy spark that is given as a divine gift, but it must be continuously refined and polished in order to increase its capacity for illumination.[lvi] A soul is able to apprehend holiness and becomes a prism for refracting divine effluence into the world only to the degree that it has been consciously prepared for this task.[lvii] Prophecy is similarly a function of spiritual refinement.[lviii] The mitzvoth are beacons along this journey, since performing a mitzvah cloaks one in the light of the shekhina and banishes negative desires and cravings.[lix] It is the quest for devekut that gives the spirit within a person the strength to rule over the matter of the body, thereby willfully turning a heart full of earthly passions into an extension of the soul. This transformation is always possible, even for individuals who have become totally sunken in corporeality, since their soul is an expression of the divine light of the shekhina.[lx]

Mankind has a singular pneumatic capacity, yet one is only able to perceive God’s light while still a part of the physical realm. True divine essence remains forever beyond the threshold of human perception.[lxi] This might seem to incline one toward longing for death at the expense of valuing this world, and in some passages R. Hayyim does express a yearning for God that borders on asceticism.[lxii] When the Divine spoke directly to Israel’s souls on Mt. Sinai, they were so overwhelmed with love that they fled from their bodies in order to reunite with their Source.[lxiii] This intense longing for communion with the Divine even at the expense of one’s own life is best illustrated by R. Hayyim’s explanation of the fate of Aaron’s sons in Lev. 10:1-7:

Their death was the result of having come too close to God. With great love they approached the supernal Light, and in doing so they expired; this is the “kiss” with which the righteous die. It is the same for all righteous individuals, though while the kiss comes to some of them, others go forth and pursue it… even the feeling of their death drawing near cannot hold them back from the dearest and most pleasant devekut, beloved intimacy and sweetest affection, until their very souls expire.

The nature of this [experience] cannot be grasped. It lies beyond intellectual comprehension and cannot be expressed in words either spoken or written. It cannot even be imagined. In order understand it even to some small degree, one must remove the Evil Inclination that is holding him back. [Growing spiritual awareness] will allow one to see the signs of the accursed Inclination, and he can then nullify it and prevent it from getting in his way… as this ability increases within him, his soul will despise his flesh and will depart back to the house of its Father.[lxiv]

R. Hayyim’s warning about the dangers of intimacy with the Divine is quite powerful, but the continuation of this passage one of the most remarkable and untranslatable descriptions of mystical experience that I have ever seen. He repeats words built from the same linguistic root of s.k.l. over twenty times in quick succession, forging an assonantal matrix of expressions that simultaneously connote intellectual, spiritual and experiential illumination. This literary panzer-thrust must be meant to shatter the reader’s assumptions about the boundaries of human consciousness; mystical communion with God is indeed possible without being entirely eclipsed within His infinitude, but it cannot be described with words as they are ordinarily used. Put differently, R. Hayyim employs language in a non-rational way to refer to an ineffable but experienceable degree of mystical attunement that lies outside the frontiers of expression.[lxv]

The rapture of devekut is too powerful a siren’s call for some to resist, and they surrender themselves to death’s divine kiss. However, R. Hayyim’s overall understanding of mortality is a bit more complicated. His remarkable interpretation of the plain-sense of Deuteronomy 14:1 will help clarify this point:

“You are children of the Lord your God; do not gash yourselves nor shave the front of your head on account of the dead.” It seems to teach us that it is no great tragedy when a person dies. This may be likened to a person who sends his son to another city on business. After a time the father sends for his son, and the son loses nothing when he leaves the place to which he was sent. On the contrary, it is a boon for him to return to his Father, who is the Source of all Life. Therefore, the verse teaches us not to rend our flesh [in a display of excessive mourning].[lxvi]

The second half of the verse reiterates that death is certainly no occasion for rejoicing, but remembering that the soul is simply returning to its natural unity with God should temper the grief we experience. Elsewhere, he likens the departure of the righteous to a precious jewel being lifted from its case and affixed to the crown of the King.[lxvii]

            Given this understanding of departure from the physical world as a blessing, is there anything positive to the soul’s brief sojourn on earth? In accord with a major current of the rabbinic tradition, R. Hayyim reminds us that death must always be bittersweet, for it is only this world that we are able to perform mitzvoth:

“If the servant declares, I have loved my Master and my wife and children and do not wish to go free… he will be his servant forever” (Ex. 21:5). This verse refers to a Jewish servant who burns with fiery passion to serve his Maker. Even after his physical powers have dwindled, he still longs and yearns to serve his Master. This is the meaning of “I have loved Master and my wife and children,” which are the soul and the mitzvoth that he performs in this world. He has no wish to leave the world, becoming free of obligation like the dead. This teaches us about his desire and longing for his Master. God promises such a person that he will be called a servant of the Lord and his deepest desire will be fulfilled, but not now. At the moment he has no further connection to the world. “And he will be a servant forever” means that God will chose him from amongst the angels to be His faithful servant in the world to come.[lxviii]

There is an element of sadness that accompanies the release of death. The soul is conflicted by its desire to remain in the physical world where it can serve God through observing the commandments, to the extent that God must promise it that it will be able to do so once more, presumably referring to the time of bodily resurrection. Furthermore, the brief marriage between body and spirit is mutually fructifying. On one hand, the soul is itself refined by the time spent in a physical body. On the other, the spiritual energies with which it imbues our performance of mitzvoth enable us to leave a positive impression upon the physical world around us that extends far beyond our own death.[lxix]

In keeping with his beliefs in the cosmic centrality of man and the eternal relevance the Torah’s narrative, R. Hayyim often interprets biblical passages as sustained metaphors that shed light on the dynamics of the spiritual life and the power of the mitzvoth.[lxx] Indeed, his understanding of the relationship between the physical world, biblical text, and human consciousness dovetails with the ideal of mankind as summum bonnum of creation:

Know that all physical existence is but an analogue (dugma) for the spiritual. Just as earth needs to be worked, requiring seeding and rainfall in order to bring forth food, so must a person guard himself from anything damaging and negative that prevents him from blossoming. Today the ground of the soul, rather than the corporeal body, has taken the place of the Garden of Eden. It requires work and protection of a type befitting its spiritual nature. The rainfall [it needs] is the study of Torah… and the seeds are the mitzvoth that one performs.[lxxi]

The physical world takes on an added layer of symbolic meaning when reframed as a source of inspiration for spiritual growth. The corporeal realm has limitations, but since it is the only plane on which the mitzvoth can be performed, humans can attain a level of divine awareness beyond the reach of even such purely spiritual beings as angels.[lxxii]

R. Hayyim frequently describes the general mystical significance of the commandments, but devotes little time to outlining their specific kabbalistic undergirding.[lxxiii] As we noted above, the shekhina literally dwells upon one who is performing a mitzvah. Paraphrasing of a teaching in the Tikkunei ha-Zohar, R. Hayyim adds that the very word “mitzvah” is a permutation of the ineffable name of God; observing a commandment is thus a way of tapping into the spiritual energy held within the holiest of divine names.[lxxiv] Physical actions like bringing sacrifices return the sparks of holiness, tiny fragments of the Divine splintered by Adam’s sin and trapped in physical world.[lxxv] Following God’s will by performing the mitzvoth can even bring one to the state of devekut, or intense communion with the Divine.[lxxvi] In one of his slightly veiled allusions to the sefirot, R. Hayyim notes that “performing the mitzvoth opens up the pathways of effluence and unites the supernal midot,” drawing on the popular kabbalistic tradition that the commandments affect the upper realms as well.[lxxvii]

Though total immersion in Torah study receives special accolades,[lxxviii] R. Hayyim writes that all mitzvoth have deep mystical significance.[lxxix] This includes those mandated by logic (such as refraining from murder), or given explicit justification in the Torah (keeping the Sabbath). Hence, once cannot be selective in their observance.[lxxx] These reasons were revealed to Moses and his generation, but since then have been discerned only by rarefied individuals.[lxxxi] Ordinary people must endeavor to comprehend the secrets according to their ability, yet R. Hayyim says explicitly that the mitzvoth are spiritually efficacious even when performed with the simple intention of doing what is commanded.[lxxxii]

Concluding Remarks

R. Hayyim ibn Attar calls to mind Whitman’s famous quip, “I contain multitudes.” As an interpreter of Torah he was simultaneously bold and conservative, innovative and traditional. He was unwilling to entertain any deviation from rabbinic norms of halakha, but believed in absolute freedom of interpretation in the realm of theology and parshanut. R. Hayyim was a self-proclaimed pashtan concerned with explaining the biblical text according to its plain-sense, yet at the same time he believed that the Torah contains infinite layers of mystical significance awaiting discovery. For R. Hayyim, the banks of the biblical text hold an endless river of possible of interpretations, or in metaphor employed by the author himself, the Torah is a veritable garden of divine words ready to be sown and harvested.[lxxxiii] He saw no contradiction between these two different exegetical modalities, and felt comfortable harnessing them alongside one another under the yoke of his pen. With these interesting points in mind, let us ask how R. Hayyim’s Torah commentary may be a significant contribution to modern Jewish intellectual life and a remedy for the rote ritual observance all to common in contemporary religious communities.

First and foremost, R. Hayyim’s approach teaches us a balanced posture navigating between tradition and innovation. He was legally conservative and humble in his reticence to declare earlier commentators on the Torah incorrect, but at the same time R. Hayyim knew that the text could and should be reinterpreted in new ways. R. Hayyim’s understanding of the nature of Torah and the flexibility of its interpretation will serve as a useful model when asking our students to read and comment upon the Torah. Creativity is an indispensable asset that we should be cultivating, one that is often occluded by offering classes on pre-digested “hashkafa” instead of teaching our students to think nimbly and critically about our tradition. R. Hayyim's model  will foster pluralism of interpretation, without for a moment forgetting that interpretations of the text running counter to our established legal norms ultimately cannot be maintained.

Second, educators must balance another set of important goals when teaching  students how to interpret the Torah and other Jewish texts: we ask our students how to plumb their words for spiritual significance while remaining ever cognizant of their plain-sense meaning. Establishing the peshat of a passage is necessary for determining its literal and contextual explanation, as well as understanding its halakhic reverberations. This is an essential prerequisite for seeking a verse's deeper meaning. However, lest one object that abstract Kabbalah lies beyond the intellectual palette of our students, the next stage of looking for spiritual significance need not involve recourse to opaque theosophy. As we have seen, R. Hayyim’s creative style of mystical interpretation employs the language of our kabbalistic heritage but goes beyond its complicated symbols, and his explanations are compelling precisely because they bring spiritual meaning into the realm of human experience. Concentrating exclusively on either the peshat or mystical at the expense of the other will be far less likely to hold the intellectual and spiritual commitments of our students than a judicious combination of the two.

Studying R. Hayyim’s commentary is a particularly useful way of sparking classroom discussions of important spiritual issues that are grounded in close textual readings. When teaching  parshanut it can be tempting to gloss over Ramban's terse kabbalistic references when we happen upon the words “al derekh ha-emet;” one will still learn much from Ramban's commentary even while ignoring over his Kabbalah, though a subtle and fundamental dimension of his perush will be lost. However, exploring the spiritual and mystical dimensions of the Torah are an integral part of Or ha-Hayyim and cannot be skipped. Some of these ideas will be a freeing corrective to the skeptical and sterile hyper-rationalism found in many Modern Orthodox communities. Grappling with other mystical themes will be difficult, but ultimately rewarding. For example, the essentialist understanding of the Jewish people, our inherent division from the nations of the world, and the negative picture of gentiles offends many of our modern ethical sensibilities.[lxxxiv] It contradicts the more universalistic elements in our tradition, but is a voice that has been a part of the Jewish conversation for nearly a millennium and must be confronted. The same is true of gender imbalance found in the kabbalistic symbolism.[lxxxv] Nothing will be gained by avoiding these issues, and we have everything to lose by either sweeping them under the rug or accepting them without refusing to acknowledge their difficulties. 

Students approaching the end of their high school education, whether about to go off to college or a year of learning in Israel, should first be confronted by fundamental questions such as the following: What does it mean, both practically and theoretically, to transform yourself into a dwelling for the shekhinah? What is the Torah, and what else does it contain besides the words of its text? Given the freedom we have in interpreting the Torah, how do you know when you cross the line? What is the nature and origin of evil? Where does reincarnation fit into our tradition? What does our tradition say about life after death and the World to Come? What is the status of miracles? What is the nature of our relationship to God, and what does it mean to cleave and connect ourselves to Him? How can performing mitzvoth be an intensely spiritual and meaningful experience? As they develop, our students will be confronted by questions of this type whether or not we have prepared them to think about such issues in an intelligent manner. Therefore, exploring them should be a primary goal of our educational system from the moment our students begin to think more abstractly and maturely about their religious praxis. They need a vocabulary with which to discuss matters of existential and spiritual import, and they deserve to know that it can very easily be found in the Jewish tradition.

There are several possible options for teaching R. Hayyim’s work. Or ha-Hayyim can be included as one important voice amongst the concert of biblical interpretation on the page of the Mikra’ot Gedolot. This integrated approach has the advantage of allowing students to see R. Hayyim as part of an intergenerational dialogue focusing on Torah commentary and spiritual exploration. However, many schools assign the Torat Hayyim edition of Mikra’ot Gedolot, whose publishers focused only on the works of the Rishonim and thus excluded R. Hayyim’s commentary. The inclusion of important neglected commentaries like that of R. Saadya Gaon and the careful deployment of manuscripts make Torat Hayyim a phenomenal tool for studying humash, but educators should be aware that using it precludes Or ha-Hayyim from having a place in their curriculum.

R. Hayyim’s commentary may also be taught as a stand-alone work, perhaps as an optional habura to students interested in spending time getting to know his parshanut in greater depth. Dr. Aryeh Strikovsky assembled an excellent compendium of Hebrew language texts about and by R. Hayyim as a part of the Israeli Ministry of Education’s series on culture and Torah, but to my knowledge there is not yet a North American equivalent of this valuable resource.[lxxxvi] When focusing on Or ha-Hayyim exclusively, some recourse to the supercommentaries composed to elucidate his text will doubtless be quite helpful; R. Isaac Meir Hazenfratz’s Or Yakar has proven a particularly accessible and helpful guide in my own studies.[lxxxvii]

            Finally, as a parting word, we would do well to remember that our relationship with God is the very heart of our encounter with the Torah. This is true of the written text of the five books of Moses, and it should be equally true of our study of Torah She’Be-Al Pe. Dry sophistry and polemics should never be substituted for an honest and passionate engagement with the Torah and the search to know its Author, to the best of our ability. In R. Hayyim’s words:

I trained my heart and my mind’s eye on the Light of Life… and began with a prayer before the Source of all Wisdom… I titled this book “Light of the Life” because the Torah itself is called a light, as in the verse “the commandment is a lamp and the Torah is a light” (Prov. 6:23). Since light is associated with many things, such as a candle, the sun, the moon and the stars, I called it the “Light of the Life,” which can only refer to the Creator of the world…[lxxxviii]

Let us remind our students, and ourselves, that the goal of our conversations must be the quest to gaze upon the Or ha-Hayyim, the true Source of all Illumination and Life.

An Evolving Sephardic Identity:  Striking a Balance in an Age of Multicultural Diversity

by Rachel Sopher

I recently travelled to Spain, planning a relaxing vacation, my first trip to Europe.  In preparation for the trip I read up on Barcelona, the city where we would be based, and asked friends about where to find kosher food and how to manage in a country where the Jewish presence was all but invisible.  Once in Spain I happily took in the sites, the architecture of Gaudi, the Picasso museum, and the rich local culture.  On the last day of our stay, a fellow traveller organized a day trip to the ancient city of Girona, birthplace of the Ramban and home to The Jewish Heritage Museum of Catalonia.  We hired a tour guide to take us through the museum and the old Jewish quarter of the city, excited by the prospect of familiarizing ourselves with the history of the Jews of Northern Spain.  But my excitement quickly turned to disappointment as I realized that the museum and our tour guide were geared towards servicing the general Spanish populace, an overwhelming percentage of whom were completely unacquainted with Jewish culture.  As we walked from room to room, and our non-Jewish guide explained the basic rituals of the Sabbath and the Mikveh to our group, my heart sank; I found myself feeling the connection to and loss of the rich Sephardic culture of Spain, all traces of which have been destroyed in the years since the Spanish Inquisition.

I was surprised by the rush of feelings sparked by the return of awareness of my Sephardic heritage and shocked by the way I had come to Spain with a total lack of concern for any historical connection. I have always taken particular interest in Sephardic culture and tradition and had studied the history of the Jews in Spain in college, spending hours reading up on its famous figures, the Rambam, Yehuda Halevi, Ibn Gabirol.  Gone was my idealization of the Golden Age of Jewish Spain; gone was the pride in my connection to this romantic past.  As our group walked the narrow streets of the old city of Girona, I pondered the obliteration of the Jewish presence in Spain and its parallel, the disappearance of my Sephardic heritage from my mind.  The trip left me identifying with the Jews who were forced to leave Spain during the Inquisition in my own analogous experience of cultural expulsion and left me wondering about my fickle relationship to my Sephardic roots.

As I pondered the questions brought up by my experiences in Girona, my thoughts led me to a consideration of the role of Sephardic tradition within a larger Jewish identity.  Sephardic Jews comprise but a small and diverse subset of the greater worldwide Jewry, constituting what some might call a minority within a minority.  Sephardic Jews in integrated communities face challenging choices when it comes to consolidating coherent religious and cultural identities. Navigating differences within a richly multifaceted group can be an intricate and formidable undertaking. How can an individual hold on to his unique background while remaining in close contact with a broader and more prominent culture?      

It is a complicated venture to negotiate individual difference while retaining membership in a distinct overarching body.  Sephardic Jews make up a heterogeneous subset of the Jewish world.  The religious commonalities among different types of Jews are significant enough to provide an umbrella identity, a link through common history, religion and values, though this broad-ranging identity is largely defined by the more dominant Ashkenazic culture.  To make assumptions about what it means to be Jewish is to accept stereotypes represented by Ashkenazic traits and to be gently folded into many broad expectations about what it means to be Jewish.  Yet Sephardim are different enough culturally to warrant a discrete though overlapping classification. For many Sephardim, self-identifying as a Jew without cultural qualification can be a gratifying and connecting experience, one in which our commonality breeds deep affiliation; but this same prospect may also carry the risk of divergence and alienation, a gulf in experience that could lead to an emphasis on isolation or estrangement in the symbolic renunciation of difference.  This conflict speaks to a question of identity; how can we celebrate our similarities and embrace differences without slipping into extreme position?

In a very personal way, this theme and variations on it have informed my relationship with religion throughout my life.  Sephardic culture and tradition permeated my early experience to such extensive proportions that for some time their influence remained vague in the way that the most basic things about us remain indeterminate, a shadowy presence as an identity taken for granted in the naive assumption that this is just the way things are.  At that time, in an uncomplicated way, the insularity and homogeneity of my family and community life contributed to a strong sense of what it means to be Jewish, and more specifically what it means to be a member of a Sephardic family and community.  These circumscribed sensibilities pervaded my day to day existence, organizing my experiences, and as such were ingested with the ease and passive receptivity of a child being fed on mother’s milk.

Some of my earliest memories revolve around my paternal grandparents, my Nona and Papoo as we called them; their house was the heart of our family, the hub around which all of our lives revolved.  Sitting on the floor as Nona entertained family and community members at her endless afternoon cave`s, I was indoctrinated into a special society, one in which vivacious connection infused earnest and sincere relationships.  The women would sit around and echar lashon, chatting animatedly with each other for hours on end.  Language peppered with Ladino sayings and punctuated by uproarious laughter filled my ears while heavy, ethnic foods reminiscent of the old countries of Rhodes and Turkey filled my stomach.  This robust umbilical tie to the old country developed in a sensorial and visceral rather than explicit way that grounded our family, providing a sense of belongingness and safety that pervaded my early cultural identity.  For us, family was everything; and being in our family was inextricably connected to what it meant to be a part of a vibrant Sephardic tradition.

This aspect of my identity gradually became more complicated as the field of my experience inevitably widened to include the more dominant traditionally Ashkenazic conventions and practice.  What had once been an implicit and unacknowledged understanding of Sephardic identity slowly became explicit as frank comparisons and contradictions brought my experiential world into the more broad-ranging Jewish arena. Mine was a naive understanding of Jewish identity, lacking direct consideration and focal attention.   When a child is raised in a particular culture, she goes through an unconscious process called enculturation; this is the means through which a person passively takes in the values and behaviors that are suitable and necessary in that culture. Developing a more extensive and complex appreciation of one’s culture means reevaluating the basic values inscribed in childhood, assessing their relevance and then making conscious choices about their personal meanings.  This process, termed acculturation, is one in which a person of any age can adapt to another culture.  People raised in diverse environments can compare cultures and consciously adopt characteristics that suit them.  It can be based on personal preference, but it is more likely the social and environmental pressures that convince a person that the behavioral norms of one of the cultures work more smoothly or achieve goals more effectively in any given circumstances. Because of the human tendency to accommodate to one’s milieu, identity can change and gradually evolve, to become an authentic reflection of an individual sense of self within a shifting multicultural context.

Of course, this process requires cognitive capacities that develop over a lifetime.  As children, we are capable only of simple psychological operations, conflicts around identity generally give rise to black and white, all-or-nothing thinking.  In this uncompromising manner of reasoning, differentiation is experienced as a danger; this threat can generally be dealt with by denying difference through merger and denial of particularities, or alternatively, by flaunting the superiority of one’s own culture, in a chauvinistic denial of the validity of the other.  These stances comprise opposite sides of the same coin, in that they involve holding on to rigid, categorical assumptions about the need for strict coherence within groups.

In every society in which diverse cultures meet, minorities face strong pressures to give up aspects of their identities to conform to the more dominant standards. Those of us who live in the United States and other Western countries have all experienced the pull of assimilation and the ways we are passively induced to forgo difference in favor of blending in with the larger group.  Aside from other influences, our history as subjugated minorities has prompted us to integrate with more powerful cultures in acts of adaptive identification.  The permeable boundaries between Jews of different backgrounds frequently leads Sephardic Jews to conform to the more prominent Ashkenazic group, though in its extreme form, this adaptation can mean giving up meaningful aspects of self.  It is often easier to fit in than to assert divergence or cultural distinction.

On the other extreme is the culture that is intolerant of others. Sephardic Jews can at times experience anxiety about the loss of their tradition, especially as more time and more generations widen the gulf between current conventions and the customs of the old countries.  Though this is a valid concern, in its extreme it can lead to defensive rejection of otherness.  In this case, difference is experienced as a threat to cultural identity and thus can lead to a xenophobic posturing, shutting others out through attitudes of self-protective fanaticism.  

These strong reactions to alterity are more common than one might think and represent the Scylla and Charbidis of diverse, multidimensional societies.  It is human nature to think in extremes and we all fall into these traps of oversimplified lines of thought at various times in our lives.  These inflexible positions allow us the comfort of avoiding conflict, both internally and externally.  Denial of difference short circuits nuanced understandings of human relationships and diminishes experiences of self-identity.  Acknowledging contrasts means facing discord and possible friction within our environments.  However, this conflict is the source of much cognitive and emotional growth.  As our experiential spheres expand into wider and more diverse concentric circles, our inner worlds become more complicated.  Enriched by new perspectives, our understanding of ourselves and of others deepens, creating opportunities for a broader range of choices and more fertile interrelatedness.

            As a child I found myself confusedly oscillating between these two extremes.  At home I heard about the importance of Sephardic culture and the need to assert a strong Sephardic identity.  This position directly contrasted with the mentality I faced in my predominately Ashkenazic school in which the Eastern European traditions were assumed as a baseline of commonality among students and teachers. It was not uncommon during my elementary school years to bring some information learned at school home only to find that it did not correspond with my family’s traditions as Sephardic Jews.  Alternatively, highlighting the differences in my background from those of my Ashkenazic peers and mentors at school often brought uncomfortable feelings of difference; teachers with heavy workloads and packed curricula do not always welcome interruptions regarding individual differences in students’ customs.  Through dealing with the tensions between these environments, I began to establish a patterned response to the contexts in which I found myself.  I learned to accommodate differences in perspective and when to assert my cultural particularities and when to remain more unobtrusive.  

As this happened, I gradually established a relationship to my identity as a Jew that incorporated some Sephardic and some Ashkenazic traits, though because of my perception of Sephardim as a marginalized community, I tended to hold on more tightly to the unique experiences of my Sephardic upbringing, asserting their validity in the face of what felt like a threat to their legitimacy.  Mine was a somewhat militant outlook, particularly in my youth when I was unable to conceptualize the feelings of conflict surrounding my identity.

            As I grew older and was better able to formulate and communicate some ideas about my experience of difference within these cultures, my viewpoint softened.  I heard from others, both from inside and outside of my community and began to integrate a more balanced understanding of the nature of one’s relationship to her individual heritage.   Through this dialogue, I realized that having access to both Sephardic and Ashkenazic cultural identities could widen my frame of reference and enhance my religious life;  I developed a more balanced bicultural Jewish identity, feeling freer to express myself  and more open to input from others.  As I learned that we can acknowledge differences and survive, I slowly gained confidence in the legitimacy of my unique background and this confidence allowed me to better hear outside perspectives without feeling threatened. 

            However, this balance was context-dependent and evolved as my sensibilities and attitudes towards myself and my surroundings fluctuated.  In more recent years, the ties to my early upbringing slowly began to fade.  My Nona and Papoo passed away and with the loss of their presence in my life, it was more difficult to sustain my connection to the experiences of my youth, inextricably tied to my experiences of myself as a Sephardic Jew.  With their deaths I began to question the need to hold on to what felt like a dying tradition.  I no longer lived in the Sephardic community I grew up in, and without the connection to that community it became more difficult to hold on to a culture with less direct reinforcement in my life.  I began to think of the Sephardic community of my youth as a fading culture and Ladino as a dead language.  I began to question the strength of my allegiance to my Sephardic background and my motives for asserting this aspect of my Jewish identity.

These changes in my experiences and perceptions of Sephardic Jewish identity, in conjunction with my desire to protect my own children from facing similar conflicts in their senses of who they are as Jews, led me to gradually give up some of my commitment to the singularity and uniqueness of my early Jewish background.  It is my belief that my discordant experiences during my trip to Girona were the culmination of this protracted and somewhat unconscious disavowal of my Sephardic heritage, the return of which faced me with a shocking crisis in identity.  

But this does not have to be the end of the story.  The flood of feelings I experienced during my trip to Spain made me aware of a part of myself, a part that I truly value and that I had been denying for some time.  It is inevitable that we fall into one extreme or another at various phases of our lives.  This is part of what it means to live within two cultures. But we can use these opportunities to develop an integrated understanding that is personally meaningful.  My experiences in Spain helped me to better clarify exactly how I feel being a Sephardic Jew at this point in my life--a feeling that, until that time, had remained much out of my awareness. As a child, I took these things for granted, as essential parts of myself, not realizing the ways we are subject to change. Though there is some loss in giving up this childish purity of understanding, what we get in return is a far richer, multifaceted, and multidimensional connection to our Jewish heritage.

My Sephardic identity still plays an important role in my life. While I am concerned about its future in the face of assimilation to Ashkenazic standards, as well as the normative values of American culture, this concern need not lead to a regressive pull towards the creation of rigid boundaries.  I believe that the meaning lies in the process, the journey towards achieving a balanced perspective that is reflective of personal significance.  What we pass on to our children are not only concrete traditions and teachings, but also the ways we relate to our religious identities.  As our children see us grapple with creating balanced religious and cultural selves, they can identify not only with our specific heritage but also with our struggle to remain true to ourselves while respecting difference in others.  Though there is a risk that the minority within the minority which constitutes Sephardic cultural identity will become watered down with such an outlook, I have faith that our children will be able to forge their own relationships to religion, striking their own balanced relationships as Jews.  Having an open point of view does not mean forsaking your roots; we don’t need to give them up, but can continue to take pride in our traditions while respecting those of others in the true spirit of loving thy neighbor.  

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.

[INSERT IMAGE OF THIS PAINTING HERE—David, is there a particular format I should use to save images (to be printing in b/w)]

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.

[INSERT IMAGE OF THIS PAINTING HERE—Again, what format should I use to submit image?

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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)

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.

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.

Elman, Yaakov, “‘It Is No Empty Thing’: Nahmanides and the Search for Omnisignificance,” The Torah U-Madda Journal 4 (1993): 1–83.

Gottlieb, Yitzhak, Yesh Seder la-Mikra: Hazal u-Farshanei Yemei ha-Benayyim al Mukdam u-Me’uhar ba-Torah (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University; Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2009).

Kanarfogel, Ephraim, “On The Assessment of R. Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides) and His Literary Oeuvre,” Jewish Book Annual 51 (1993): 158–172.

Levine, Michelle J., Nahmanides on Genesis: The Art of Biblical Portraiture (Providence: Brown University Press, 2009).

Levine, Michelle J., “Character, Characterization, and Intertextuality in Nahmanides’s Commentary on Biblical Narrative,” Hebrew Studies 53 (2012): 161–182.

Melammed, Ezra Zion, Mefarshei ha-Mikra: Darkhehem ve-Shitotehem (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1975), 2:937–1021.

Notes

Prologue

From time immemorial, soldiers on the front lines have borne the burden of carrying out orders that are issued by senior officers from the relative safety of the rear echelon. When those orders are illegal, or of an ambiguous moral nature (think Nuremberg and My Lai), who bears the responsibility for their consequences?

This article is adapted, unabashedly, from a thoughtful article by the late Professor Moshe Greenberg of the Hebrew University, a renowned scholar of Tanakh, Parshanut, and the ancient Near East, entitled: “Rabbinic Reflections on Defying Illegal Orders,” in Menachem M. Kellner (ed.) Contemporary Jewish Ethics (NY, 1978), 211–220. I have added sources here and there and, of course, the pedagogical adaptation is entirely original. I alone bear the responsibility for the presentation of the sources and for the conclusions drawn from them.

A Word about Methodology

Our Sages describe the highly selective nature of biblical history as nevu’ah she-hutzrekha le-dorot: prophecy that is required for eternity (BT Megillah 14a). According to this principle, only those events that were to have everlasting meaning and application were recorded in Tanakh, whereas other, ostensibly more idiosyncratic, events were omitted. In other words, prophetic foresight enables us to draw not just inspiration, but practical advice from the deeds—and, yes, misdeeds!—of our ancestors.

            Just as the talmudic sages and medieval exegetes judged the evidence of the biblical text and applied it to their own circumstances, so too must we evaluate the evidence of their interpretations and attempt to extract from them the guidance we seek. Sometimes our situations are sufficiently similar that we can adopt their suggestions wholesale. At other times, however, and despite the overall sameness in our underlying human conditions, we can take their suggestions only as foundations upon which we must then construct our own edifices. I trust that I have built prudently.

Synopsis[1]

As King David lies dying (1 Kings 2), he instructs his son, Solomon, to settle old scores with Joab ben Zeruiah (vs. 5) and Shimei ben Gera (vs. 8). When Joab hears that Adonijah, whose candidacy for king he supported (1 Kings 1:7), has failed to secure the throne, he realizes that his life is forfeit and he seeks sanctuary in the "Tent."[2] He is brought before King Solomon and charged with the murders of Abner ben Ner (2 Samuel 3:27) and Amasa ben Yeter (op. cit., 20:10). According to the "peshat" of the Book of Kings, Joab is immediately and unceremoniously executed by Benayahu ben Yehoyada (vs. 34). Talmudic Aggadah, however, has Solomon bring Joab to trial where he successfully defends himself against both murder charges. Instead, he is eventually executed on a third charge—namely, his collaboration in the unsuccessful coup staged by Adonijah.

The core of this essay is an examination of Joab’s defense in which the element of obedience to the orders of a superior officer plays a pivotal role.

Exhibit One: Joab’s Trial

Sanhedrin 49a:

[Solomon] brought Joab to trial and said to him: Why did you kill Abner? He replied: I was avenging [my brother] Asael.[3] Wasn’t Asael in pursuit of Abner?[4] Abner could have saved himself by wounding Asael in one of his limbs [he needn’t have killed him]. Perhaps he was not able to do so? Since Abner was able to strike him at the fifth rib[5] ...he could have just wounded him.

[Solomon] said: Let us leave [the subject of] Abner. Why did you kill Amasa? [Joab] replied: Because Amasa committed treason against the king. “The king [David] ordered Amasa to summon all the men of Judah in three days’ time... Amasa went to summon them and tarried” (2 Samuel 20: 4 ff.). [Solomon] said: Amasa construed the “but’s and only’s.”[6] He found them engaged in [religious] study and reasoned: [The Israelites promised Joshua] “Whoever contradicts you or disobeys you, whatever you command, shall die” (Joshua 1: 18). Does that include [disagreement on account of] Torah study? The verse states: “Only [rak] be firm and resolute” (op. cit., vs. 7).

[So why was Joab executed?] He was a traitor, as it states: “The news reached Joab who had sided with Adonijah, although not with Absalom” (1 Kings 2:28).

Elaboration:

The right of a leader to expect obedience to his instructions is not granted expressly in the Torah;[7] it derives from a specific historical precedent. After the death of Moses, the Israelites swore their allegiance to Joshua and promised to punish any disobedience to his command. This pledge, however, was not a blank check. Through their reference to “Only be firm and resolute” (rak hazak ve-ematz; the “but’s and only’s” cited above), they reveal to us our first important insight into the halakhot of obedience: A leader is expressly prohibited from requiring obedience in violation of Torah law.

NOTE: The Talmud accepts Joab’s claim vis-à-vis Abner, but rejects his claim against Amasa by justifying Amasa’s delay. Nevertheless, it prosecutes Joab on the separate charge of treason. The conclusion appears to be that while he was morally guilty vis-à-vis Abner and Amasa, he was not legally culpable.

Exhibit Two: Abner, Amasa, and Disobedience

Abner and Amasa, ironically, play a critical role in the talmudic derivation of the halakhic principles of obedience to orders.

In 1 Samuel 22:17, Saul commands his servants to kill the kohanim of Nob because they had aided and abetted David in his escape. The soldiers refuse to shed the blood of “servants of the LORD,” so Saul turns the task over to Doeg the Edomite who has no such compunctions and kills them.

The Talmud Yerushalmi (Sanhedrin 29a) asks:

Who were those servants [who refused the order]? Rabbi Samuel ben Isaac said: They were Abner and Amasa. They said to Saul: If we owe you anything besides these belts and coats [their uniforms and insignia?], take them back!

The Talmud Bavli (Sanhedrin 20a), however, has certain reservations about their conduct:

Rabbi Judah said in Rav’s name: Why did Abner meet an untimely death? Because he failed to take a stand against Saul. Rabbi Isaac said: He took a stand, but he was overruled.

Elaboration:

Abner’s death at the hands of Joab is his just desserts for his failure to assume a more vigorous opposition to the murder of the kohanim of Nov. This provides us with our second important insight into the halakhot of obedience: It may not be sufficient to abstain from obeying an illegal order; you might have to offer more than your resignation.

Indeed, the Talmud (Shabbat 55a), in elaborating on Ezekiel 9:4 (“Go through the streets of Jerusalem and place a mark on the foreheads of all who sigh and groan over the abominations committed in her”), makes the point that it is not enough to refrain from committing evil when one can also take a determined stand against it.

Exhibit Three: Joab and Disobedience—A Contrast

Given the aggadic penchant for validating the aphorism, “According to the measure that one metes out so is it meted out to him,” we should not be surprised to discover that the disobedience that goes around comes around. The same talmudic passage with which we began (Sanhedrin 49a), continues:

God brought [Joab’s] guilt down upon his own head for having struck down two more righteous and better men than he [i.e., Abner and Amasa]. Better, in that they construed the “but’s and only’s,” while he did not. More righteous, in that they refused a command that came orally, while he obeyed a command that came in writing.

Elaboration:

Whereas Abner and Amasa defied a questionable command that, by virtue of its verbal nature, carried an inherent note of ambiguity (and, thereby, could have provided them with “cover” should they have chosen to obey it), Joab failed to defy a written order (which contains no such uncertainty and therefore offers no acceptable alternative to disobedience) —to place Uriah the Hittite in the line of fire.

Exhibit Four: Crime and Agency

The Talmud in Kiddushin (43a) stipulates:

If one commissions an agent to commit murder and he complies, the agent is guilty and the principal is exempt. Shammai the Elder said in the name of the prophet Haggai, the principal is guilty, as it states [of David, regarding Uriah]: “You slew Uriah… by the sword… and killed him by the sword of the Ammonites” (2 Samuel 12:9).

Elaboration:

Given their negative assessment of Joab’s morality (see Exhibit Three), why do the Sages not rebuke him openly for his complicity in Uriah’s death by applying Shammai’s principle[8] that every individual bears responsibility for his own deeds and cannot abrogate that responsibility by arguing that he was only “following orders”?  The contemplation of this question leads us to our third and final observation on the halakhot of obedience: The rule of delegated responsibility stops short of the throne.

Just above, we cited the verse: “You slew Uriah… by the sword… and killed him by the sword of the Ammonites” (2 Samuel 12:9).  R. David Kimhi (Radak; Provence, 1160–1235), commenting on the ostensible redundancy (“slew...killed”), notes that soldiers—even commanders—in the heat of battle, are entitled to take for granted that their commander-in-chief, the king, has done the necessary values clarification and they may therefore assume, implicitly, that any order he gives is legal:

   You slew him: As though you had slain him [personally] by instructing Joab to place him in harm's way. You killed him: [Why the repetition?] You have compounded the felony by having him slain by the Ammonites, the enemies of Israel.

   Our Sages have said: Although the universal rule is, "there is no agency for the commission of a crime" and in every case the agent—and not the principal—is culpable, here the situation differs since the verse calls [David] a killer. Why is this? Since he was the king and his word was law, it is as though he did the killing himself. Similarly, when Saul ordered the killing of the kohanim of Nov, it was as though he killed them himself.

   Generally, a person should refrain from following the king's orders in such a case. We have explained, apropos of "Anyone who defies your word shall die" (Joshua 1:18), that this does not include the commission of a crime, as the verse states: "Only" [be firm and resolute; i.e., excluding instructions that violate Torah law].

   Not everyone, however, is capable of construing "but's" and "only's." The onus [punishment], therefore, is on the king.

Exhibit Five: What Goes Around…

The principle of royal responsibility articulated by Radak takes on additional significance when viewed in the context of David and Joab’s later interaction in a comparable situation. According to 2 Samuel 24:1 ff. (and 1 Chronicles 21:1 ff.), David is induced to commission a census of Israel and instructs Joab to carry it out. The text of 2 Samuel 24: 1–4 reports:

And again the anger of God was kindled against Israel, and He moved David against them, saying: 'Go, number Israel and Judah'. And the king said to Joab the captain of the host that was with him: 'Go now to and fro through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan even to Beersheba, and number the people, that I may know the sum of the people.'

And Joab said unto the king: 'Now the Lord thy God add unto the people, how many they may be, a hundredfold, and may the eyes of my lord the king see it; but why doth my lord the king delight in this thing?' Notwithstanding, the king's word prevailed against Joab, and against the captains of the host. And Joab and the captains of the host went out from the presence of the king, to number the people of Israel.

Joab initially opposes the mission, saying, according to 2 Samuel: “What do you need it for?” (lamah hafetz ba-davar ha-zeh) and adding, according to 1 Chronicles: “Why cause Israel guilt? (lamah yihyeh le-ashmah le-Yisrael). This clearly implies that while Joab ultimately submitted to the order on account of the rule of royal responsibility (va-yehezak devar ha-melekh el Yoav), he, again, recognizes its essential illegality or, at least, impropriety.[9] While Abner and Amasa, in a similar situation (see Exhibit Two), tendered their resignations to Saul; Joab, as was his wont, abdicated his moral responsibility albeit remaining strictly within the limits of the letter of the law.

Epilogue

The sources we have presented indicate that the responsibility for ensuring that orders issued to frontline soldiers are legal and moral belongs, foremost, to the king in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief. Officers of lower grades—including the Chief of Staff!—may assume his orders to be proper, particularly if they are in the heat of battle and lack the necessary leisure to evaluate them on their own. However, if they definitively know a particular order to be illegal or immoral, they must refuse to carry it out and, if necessary, suffer the consequences of their disobedience to the point of surrendering their commissions. In some cases, given the patently egregious nature of the illegal order, they must also protest it publicly.

Operative/Normative Conclusions

In conclusion, we cite several "codifications" of the laws of military obedience.

1. Rambam Hilkhot Melakhim (3:9):

Whoever defies a royal order on account of preoccupation with mitzvot, even of a minor variety, is not culpable. When the master and the servant both speak, the master's words take precedence. It goes without saying [however] that if the king commanded that a mitzvah be annulled, he is not to be obeyed.

2. HaRav Shelomo Min-HaHar: Dinei Tzava U-Milhamah (Laws pertaining to the army and warfare, #28):

The regulations of the General Staff and the Military Rabbinate are available to assist soldiers in all cases. According to regulations, orders that contravene halakha are invalid.

3. U.S. Dept. Of the Army, Field Manual: The Law of Land Warfare 182:

[Military courts are admonished] to take into consideration the fact that obedience to lawful orders is the duty of every member of the armed forces; that the latter cannot be expected, in conditions of war discipline, to weigh scrupulously the legal merits of the orders received.

4. The American Law Institute: Model Penal Code, Military Orders (2.10):

It is an affirmative defense that the actor, in engaging in the conduct charged to constitute an offense, does no more than execute an order of his superior in the armed forces which he does not know to be unlawful.

Practical Pedagogy

Have students consider the following questions while preparing the sources:

Re: 1 Kings 2:28 ff.:

On what charge is Joab is condemned to death?

How did Joab think to evade his fate?

Why was he unsuccessful?

Re: Sanhedrin 49a:

How does Joab justify his killing of Abner?

Of Amasa?

What is Solomon’s challenge to that justification?

What is the final disposition of Joab’s case?

Re: 1 Samuel 22:17 + Yerushalmi Sanhedrin + Sanhedrin 20a + 49a:

What do Abner and Amasa have in common?

How does this reflect on Joab?

What do these sources teach us about protesting illegal orders?

Re: Shabbat 55a:

What does Ezekiel chapter 9 teach us about protest?

How does it apply to the case of Joab?

Re: Kiddushin 43a + Radak 1 Samuel 12:9:

What is the limitation placed here on the law of “agency” (shelihut)?

What bearing does it have on the case of David and Uriah? On Joab?

Whose is the ultimate responsibility for morality in warfare?

Re: Rambam Hilkhot Melakhim 3:9:

Which of our sources is Rambam’s, too?

Does he agree or disagree with Radak?

Would he have convicted Joab as charged?

Re: 2 Samuel 24:1 ff., and 1 Chronicles 21:1 ff.:

What does 1 Chronicles 21:3 add to 2 Samuel 24:3?

Why did David’s census invite “guilt”? (Cf. Exodus 30:12 and commentaries)

What conclusion(s) may we come to regarding obedience to doubtful orders?

Notes

The Educational Challenge in Torah Study[1]

The progress of my Torah study can be summed up as follows: From no-brain to left-brain to whole-brain.[2]

I learned a lot of useful information in my ultra-Orthodox high school, and my mind did develop there to some extent. However, when it came to Torah learning I was short-changed. We studied Torah with bits of Rashi and Ramban, accompanied by unsophisticated explanations that changed little from when I entered at age 12 to when I exited at age 18. Hence I feel somewhat justified in terming it, for my purposes, “no-brain.”

The next stage of my religious education, my post-high-school Torah study, brought a marked improvement. I was finally able to have the satisfying left-brain experience that my 18-year-old self craved. In my intellectually oriented women’s yeshiva, we studied Talmud and Rambam, commentary and philosophy; we absorbed information, grasped concepts, compared perspectives, and analyzed texts. Nonetheless, I always sensed that something was missing—but I could not quite put my finger on what. It is difficult to pinpoint the absence of something when you have never experienced it or even seen anything remotely like it. One event from that period stands out—the occasion when Ilan Nov, a resident of Bat Ayin, visited our yeshiva and read to us a section from a book he was writing.[3] Although I could not fully grasp his meaning, I was intrigued and delighted: how refreshing to meet someone creating art from within his personal Jewish experience.

Moving on to undertake advanced Jewish studies at university and other institutions, I found myself increasingly dehydrating in various classes, many of them frontal lectures. Even those that involved discussion and debate did not satisfy me. I yearned inchoately for something different, but I still knew not what. In 1999, I abandoned a high-level Jewish studies program for women halfway through the year, having comprehended that high-level Talmud learning in the yeshiva/academic style was not what I needed for my growth. The wish for something else had grown urgent by now, but I still did not have a precise notion of what that should be. I had noticed a tremendous level of excitement and yearning arising within me after I stumbled across an article concerning a fringe Jewish spirituality movement, but was not ready to relocate to the desert and live in a yeshiva-ashram with people lacking all normative boundaries.[4] I began to despair of lectures and shiurim, none of which were engaging me with the Torah to the level I desired: that is to say, fully and passionately, as a whole person. Entering a crisis of Torah, I found even my own teaching lackluster; and even the study of Hasidut and Kabbalah, which I love, did not suffice to fill the vacuum.

 With hindsight, I now understand that for all those years, an entire hemisphere of my brain was being overlooked. I now know that for me, creativity and emotional awareness line up firmly alongside my intellectual and analytical modes as the channels for my experience of the world. Small wonder my Torah learning felt half-baked. Although I was blessed to study with many brilliant teachers in Israel who introduced intellectual creativity, emotional insight, and depth to the study of Jewish sources, this still ultimately represented a concession to right-brain energy within left-brain territory. Moreover it always took place within the strongly left-brain format of lectures (and, on a good day, discussion). Creativity remained in the realm of the teacher, with very little on the part of the student. When the student did offer some creative idea, in the best case scenario this would be briefly acknowledged with a word of praise; at worst, it would be misunderstood or squashed.[5]

Bibliodrama: An Introduction

I was fortunate enough to have my prayers answered. In the early 2000s, I encountered the technique of Bibliodrama, and was finally able to integrate all that pent-up right-brain energy into my Torah study and teaching. Over a decade has passed and I have never looked back. I enjoy Bibliodrama tremendously and have, to date, run over 170 workshops on many different stories. Indeed, today I sometimes find it hard to sit through a regular Torah lesson, so powerfully do I feel the vitality and immediacy of the Bibliodramatic mode bubbling up in me.

The following is my own understanding of the method’s potential, based on extensive experience with it. It is something I believe extremely important to share. All of us possess right-brains. True, not all of us feel an existential need to use them; some people are happy with purely intellectual stimulation. But to force that preference wholesale onto the people whose spirituality and education are in our charge; to deny the use of one hemisphere to an entire class of students, at least some of whom would thrive with their imaginations set free, is simply wrong.

Bibliodrama was invented by Dr Peter Pitzele of the United States. Pitzele, a Jewish intellectual who has taught English literature at Harvard, is clinically trained in psychodrama, a type of group therapy utilizing dramatic tools for healing. Invited in 1984 to teach a class at the Jewish Theological Seminary, he decided to draw on his psychodramatic training by asking the students to take the part of Moses, answering his questions as if they were in Moses’ shoes. Thus the technique of Bibliodrama was born. It continued with a success that astonished Pitzele.  He has since run Bibliodrama sessions all over the world, trained others in the art of Bibliodrama, and written a book instructing toward its practice, Scripture Windows.

So what exactly is it? First let me explain what it is not. Despite its name, it is not theater. The group spends most of the time seated. There is no audience—the group serves as an audience for itself. The “script” is created spontaneously on an ongoing basis throughout the session and is not preserved for posterity. Another difference is that in theater, each part is played by one actor only, while in Bibliodrama, any given part is often played by the entire group, making for a much richer experience. Thus, Bibliodrama might best be described as a form of psychodynamic group role-play. It has been called by some “contemporary Midrash” or “spontaneous Midrash.” While Midrash is more complex and far-ranging, to anyone experiencing the technique the comparison becomes quite obvious. Pitzele was not intentionally aiming at the midrashic form, but he explains that through his work he discovered

…an immensely long tradition of commentary, storytelling, and imaginative interpretation of the Bible…that sought to fill in the gaps in the narrative… Without knowing it I had stumbled into a conversation with the Bible that had been going on for thousands of years….^[6]

The texts are most often stories from Tanakh, but the technique is applicable to any story, and also to historical events and even non-narratives (I once did a Bibliodrama on the Hanukkah candles with adults).

The Practice of Bibliodrama

What occurs in practice? A series of questions are put to the participants as characters in the biblical story, questions that often lack any obvious or unequivocal answer and that arise from gaps in the text. For example, “Eve, why did you immediately give the fruit to Adam?” or “Adam, we understand that Eve was enticed by the serpent—but what brought you to eat from the forbidden fruit?”

Participants must respond in first-person language, speaking as major characters, minor characters (named, implied or invisible), or even as objects (for example, the Tree of Knowledge). The simple transition from third- to first-person language makes all the difference; it removes the distance we naturally place between ourselves and a story that is not about us, and compels us to get straight into the heart of the story. In the absence of clear answers, the students must draw upon their emotions, experiences and textual intuitions, often astonishing themselves with the powerful insights arising from their reading of the narrative. Indeed, I have frequently presented Bibliodrama as the encounter, unique to this very moment, between the divine in the text and the divine in ourselves. As the Hasidic rebbe Menachem Nachum Twerski of Chernobyl writes in his book Me’or Enayim (weekly portion of Vayeshev):

It is known that the Torah is eternal and preceded time, but has been encased (lit: clothed itself) in time-bound narratives… the Torah must be (relevant) for every person and at every time.

By opening up the text to a myriad possible directions, Bibliodrama achieves the goal of propelling us beyond the obscure “clothing”/barrier of ancient language and context directly into the profound core of the story’s mystery.

Even those with very weak backgrounds in Tanakh are found to contribute many excellent ideas, for all that is necessary is a basic understanding of the text and a heart and mind willing to lend themselves to a new context and new thoughts. In fact, the people least skilled at Bibliodrama, aside from those with an academic personality, are those who arrive already full to the brim with commentaries and the “correct” way to read the Tanakh, and without the flexibility to put that aside in order to read the text with a fresh pair of eyes. Clinging to what is already known obstructs the possibility of the Bibliodramatic flow, which is what makes the experience truly enjoyable—the sudden insight, the startling hiddush, the ability to listen to the others in the room and build from what they say. I emphasize that it is not the prior education that is the obstruction so much as the inflexibility. I have run Bibliodramas with Jewish educators extremely familiar with the story under the lens, having taught it numerous times themselves. This population nonetheless, through approaching the text playfully and with curiosity while bringing their personal and emotional lives to the text, have managed to arrive at tremendous new insights for themselves and others.

Per the Chernobler rebbe’s call for the Torah to be relevant not only for every person but also at every time, no two Bibliodramas are the same, for no two groups are the same. A participant repeating a Bibliodrama will inevitably play it slightly differently, for people do not stand still and new thoughts arise. This ever-changing nature of Bibliodrama also makes it highly enjoyable for the facilitator, who will hear new interpretations each time and learn from them.The group experience is also vital to the Bibliodramatic process and to its dynamic character. It is the group that reflects upon and plays the story as a collective, and it is very susceptible to patterns that emerge. One individual comment (for example, Esther noting that she is an adopted child and never knew her parents) can cause the group to strongly move in a particular direction for the rest of the session. Bibliodrama could be done, theoretically, with just one or two people; but it is marvellous to hear the variety of responses to one question. A group Bibliodrama is truly an experience of shivim panim, the 70 facets of the Torah. It can also serve to make a group more cohesive, especially when done over time.[7]

I have seen Bibliodrama transform ignorant students into sensitive Bible commentators, assiduously searching the text for clues to solve puzzles and difficulties, after their curiosity has been aroused by questions such as “Joseph, why do you insist on telling your dreams even after you see that it enrages your brothers?” or “Esther, what was it like growing up in Mordecai’s house?” As the participants get comfortable with the technique and each other, they speak out powerful emotions that bring the text vividly to life and fill in the gaps. For many the previously impenetrable text becomes something to identify with: truly a tree of life. The experience changes the participants’ relationship to the text. One 18 year old, a product of the religious Jewish education system, announced, “Before today I never thought of Abraham as someone I could actually identify with!” Another told me: “When we started, I could not even remember what was in chapter 1 of Ruth, even though I studied it just last week. Now there is no chance I would forget.”

Students who do not shine in the regular left-brain classroom atmosphere, deprived of the opportunity to display their creative imaginations, suddenly come into their own in Bibliodrama. Teachers witnessing a classroom Bibliodrama have been astonished by the sudden vocal participation of a pupil who ordinarily remains silent. The method works well with both children and adults, both populations bringing different strengths and weaknesses to the technique. While teenagers sometimes do not connect as well, due to their increased self-consciousness, most children and adults enjoy the group experience of building up the inner life of a story. They relish the opportunity to be playful and also to express deep personal feelings through the safe mask of the biblical characters. Bibliodrama verges on the therapeutic, and participants may be encouraged to share any personal revelations, depending on how comfortable the facilitator is with such activity. Pitzele, a trained psychotherapist, is competent to take the session in very personal directions, whereas I feel less comfortable doing so—though I do place a high value on the sharing at the end and the personal take-away.

Lying between improvisational theater, psychodrama, and text-study, Bibliodrama may perhaps most accurately be entitled an improvisational performance of a studied text. It is highly flexible and quite unique. It is a “performance” that is never repeated, that requires no rehearsals, is based upon text study, and can take place anywhere a circle of people may sit—from synagogue to salon to classroom. It does not conform to our usual picture of “religious activity,” and yet participants often emerge profoundly moved and uplifted. It is unusual in that it deals with sacred text, yet contains playful elements not usually associated with the sacred. As a form of “serious play,” it bears all the characteristics and paradoxes of play, whereby on one level what occurs feels very real, on another it is clear that we are all conspiring to pretend. Indeed, some adults take a short while to get into the method for fear of sounding ridiculous, but luckily there are generally a few brave souls willing to take the leap and create the suspension of disbelief necessary to start; after which the others follow. Even people who do not speak throughout the entire workshop have reported having a meaningful experience. They are grateful for the permission I give at the start that “if you are feeling shy, you do not need to speak at all.” Most intriguing though is the common phenomenon of individuals who enter the room convinced they are not going to say a word, and then find themselves talking non-stop. This, if nothing else, is a great testimony to the power of Bibliodrama.

Example

The following is an example of a Bibliodramatic “thread” (question by facilitator followed by various answers.)

The facilitator asks the group: So Cain, why did you decide to bring an offering to God? As far as we know neither your mother nor your father ever brought offerings. Where did this idea come from?

After a moment of thought, one participant answers: I had heard my parents talking about God. I wanted to speak to God too. This was my way of communicating.

Another participant says: I wanted to give a gift to someone to say thank you for all the abundance I’ve received.

A third person suggests: I want to see if I can get us back into the Garden of Eden—it sounds like it was such an amazing place and I am really sad that I missed being there. Maybe I can change God’s mind with a bribe.

A fourth adds: My parents wrongfully took fruit, so I am repenting by giving back the fruit!         

Pitzele suggests that the facilitator echo (or “double”) what participants say, repeating it in other words—thus both validating and also amplifying its content. He also recommends echoing in first person language. Thus, for example, after the second participant’s comment, the facilitator might echo: “In my work as a farmer, I’ve received so much good, and the need to give thanks arises from deep within me. Who can I thank if not this God that my parents have spoken about, who seems to run the world?” The facilitator glances at the participant to make sure that this was what was meant. On rare occasions, the participant will reply: “No, what I mean is…”

            The facilitator can also encourage deepening of ideas; for example, after a remark such as that by the fourth participant above there is room to prompt:

“And in doing so I feel…”

 “I see—do you think it’s going to be accepted?”

“Very interesting—so you’ve not only invented the notion of offerings but also of repentance! You’re very creative, Cain.”

The key in Bibliodrama is the questions—asking questions that stem from a curiosity about the text, and that will lead participants quickly to the most compelling textual puzzles and emotional textures.

            It is also important to choose a story containing some interesting tension, conflict, dilemma and personal growth. Fortunately the Tanakh is full of these. Do not begin the Bibliodrama at the height of the drama (for example, the murder of Abel); it is crucial to build up to the climactic moment so that the characters and their motivations are sufficiently fleshed out beforehand.

Embodied Knowledge

In Bibliodrama, a transition is effected from studying the texts from the outside (analytical/academic activity) to studying them from the inside and getting under their skin (creative/imaginative activity). The expression of emotions in character affects one’s actual emotional state; that is to say, they reach beyond a purely intellectual knowledge into the realm of the viscera. Participants bring to bear, for dramatic support to their words, inflections and volume of voice, the use of hands when speaking, and emphatic movements of the entire body which are not just “acting” but real manifestations of emotion. These physical motions in turn further deepen and embody their experience.

Other activities borrowing from forms of family therapy inspired by the plastic arts can be used at times, to “sculpt” the biblical scene. Here, the facilitator transforms into a director, and participants are asked to pose in ways that indicate the dynamics between the characters in the story—who stands next to whom? How do their bodies indicate their relationships? Pitzele notes:

Once group members are on their feet, as opposed to voicing their roles from their seats, your task as director begins in earnest, for when people stand and move they begin to create a space for play, and you have in effect a stage… The whole body becomes an expressive element; any movement may take on meaning… All such sculptings are interpretative because in fact every arrangement of bodies in space… becomes a way of seeing the story.”^[8]

In the Classroom and Alongside Commentaries

Two more points are pertinent to educators. Firstly, Bibliodrama may be conveniently and easily integrated into a regular class. Although a full Bibliodrama is ideally carried out in a circle, and can last for an hour or even two, a teacher may also, in the course of a class, suddenly switch into Bibliodrama mode for a brief moment, casually saying, “Now, everyone, I want to imagine that you are Moses standing in front of the burning bush. What are you thinking?” Five or 15 or 50 minutes later, after gathering first person reflections, the teacher returns to usual classroom mode, the story having been enriched and enlivened by having the students import it into their own experience.

The challenge for classroom educators—and to an extent for all who wish to run a Bibliodrama—is that as a technique it opens up boundaries in a manner that might feel threatening or frightening compared with regular teaching. The invitation to answer freely might lead to irreverence or subversive interpretations. This will be particularly challenging to Orthodox educators, though not solely to them.

My answer to this issue is that firstly, it is an issue, and each teacher will have to decide where he or she is comfortable setting the boundaries.[9] In my introduction to Bibliodrama I ask the participants to stay with the peshat, with what is written in the text itself, and not to offer interpretations that overturn the text’s meaning. I invite them to avoid answering flippantly and randomly but rather to answer intuitively and with respect, in a manner aligned with the text and aimed at “what might have been going on.”

If an interpretation is nonetheless offered that contradicts the text or wider context, I would simply point that out to the group. For example, when a participant speaks as Abel, defending his profession as a shepherd with the words “We need the sheep for their meat,” I note that humans were not yet eating meat at that point. Then there are the answers which are needlessly irreverent or silly. While occasional jokes are great for making Bibliodrama fun, in such a case I would apply Pavlovian conditioning, paying less attention to this answer while continuing to maintain my serious tone in asking questions and giving attention to the answers that are more interesting and profound. I do not like to “squash” answers or make a face. I believe—I hope, not naively—that children and adult participants alike value the permission to speak freely and even push boundaries without the facilitator becoming unduly upset; it gives them space to truly explore and own the text. If the main thrust of the group activity is a serious and respectful unpacking of the multiple layers of the text, maverick participants will often step into line, or at least not serve to ruin the experience for others while playing the text in their own unique way. For this to work, it is important for the teacher-facilitator to feel confident, open and relaxed; in short, to trust the process.

The second point pertinent to educators refers to one of the great benefits of Bibliodrama for Tanakh teachers, namely that after playing out textual and narrative difficulties Bibliodramatically, students possess far greater clarity regarding the matters with which the commentators deal. Thus for example, a Bibliodrama on Genesis chapter 4 involves the difficult question of why God rejects Cain’s sacrifice and prefers Abel’s. The question is posed to God, as a “character” in the story, which provides a platform also for students to air their theology and thoughts as to how God works within the world, itself a potentially significant discussion. After struggling with this question and hearing several answers, the student understands better why the Midrash decides to read “from the fruit of the ground” as referring to the inferior fruit, while other commentators do not choose to read it this way. In fact, God’s “motivation” is unclear from the peshat. True, this point might emerge from an ordinary reading of the story, but might well remain in the realm of a theoretical theological-moral discussion. But when students are forced to answer as God, or experience how Cain feels after the rejection, it becomes existential and immediate, plugging them into their own questions regarding theodicy, and so forth.

A famous textual difficulty that arises from the same chapter lies in verse 8, where Cain speaks to his brother in the field, but what he actually said is missing. A gap like this one is a classic for Bibliodrama, as the question can be easily posed to Cain: “What did you say to Abel?” and to Abel “How did you feel when Cain said that?” Or, in another example from the same story, Rashi’s comment on Genesis 4:1 suggesting Cain had already been born back in the Garden of Eden, and not, as the simple sequence of the text seems to imply, after the exile from there, will take on extra significance after playing out the story. Participants will be asked “How does this change the story, compared to how we played it?”  For example, the third participant quoted above might respond: “Well now I really want to get back—this was my birthplace and it’s my birthright to be there!”

In brief, any study of commentaries after a Bibliodrama will certainly be more easily grasped than before it. As all teachers of commentary know, sometimes it is not at all clear where the commentator is coming from or what is troubling him. Indeed, teachers skilled in understanding commentators and the textual difficulties to which they are responding can in fact build their Bibliodramas from the outset based on the commentators.

Thus for example, in Genesis 24, where Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for his son, verse 2 says: And Abraham said to the oldest servant of his household, who ruled over all that he had. On the words the oldest servant of his household, Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (HaAmek Davar) writes: “This is a sign of wisdom,” and on the words “who ruled over all that he had” adds “He oversaw everything that Abraham owned, and was given a free hand to command… He controlled his evil inclination…” Another commentator, Hezekiah ben Manoah (Hizkuni), writes “Abraham would not have cause to suspect him of sexual impropriety.”

When training teachers, I challenge them to locate the difficulty, and the consequent Bibliodramatic question, nestling in these commentators’ remarks. I am searching for a Bibliodramatic question addressed to a specific character. The teachers do not always guess immediately, sometimes suggesting that the question should be posed to the servant, but eventually someone realizes that the most obvious question is to Abraham: “Abraham—you need someone to go on a long arduous trip across the desert. Why then do you send your oldest servant, who will probably die on the way of a heart attack, rather than some robust young man?”

Asked such a question, any group speaking as Abraham will in all likelihood come up with responses relating to issues of wisdom and trust, and perhaps also of decreased libido. The attentive teacher studying the commentators before building the Bibliodrama will notice this point, introduce it in the course of the session as a question, and then at the end cite HaAmek Davar and Hizkuni. The students will see that they thought of the same answers, and will feel close to the HaAmek Davar and Hizkuni, as if they too were sitting in the room during the Bibliodrama.[10]  

In introducing analysis, debate and study of secondary sources following a Bibliodrama, we are re-introducing left-brain activity, thus achieving the “whole-brain” experience to which I referred in my opening line. Other right-brain techniques can also be appended to Bibliodrama, for example putting on a play from within what was said during the session, or doing creative writing, art, or dance following the Bibliodrama.

Conclusion

I would love for Bibliodrama to become part of Jewish school curricula, both in Israel and in the Diaspora, alongside regular types of learning. It could do much to increase students’ love for Tanakh. Teachers in several continents have responded enthusiastically to being trained in Bibliodrama, and have sometimes gone on to implement it immediately. I am aware that this method is unusual and might take many of us out of our comfort zone at first; but I believe that it meets some important needs of the twenty-first-century student. Hence I have no doubt that progress will be made, slowly but surely, like drops of water eroding a rock.

NOTES

The nature of a diasporic culture—such as the Jewish Italian one—should be understood as an ongoing process of merging and sharing various intellectual materials derived from both the Jewish and the non-Jewish past and present. Throughout the areas where they settled in the Italian peninsula, Jews have both elaborated their own traditional authorities and borrowed non-native elements from the surrounding cultures, influencing the latter in their turn.

In Italy, where Jews had established thriving communities since Roman times, the intellectual cooperation with the non-Jewish society was always especially strong throughout the centuries, in part due to the fact that the Jewish population never became numerically significant, therefore being largely exposed to the cultural influence of the majority.

The small Italian communities kept in constant contact with one another and with major centers of Jewish knowledge outside of Italy—especially when they had to solve juridical or religious questions, which often derived from the merging of non-indigenous Jewish groups into the local ones. Italian Jews moved around, for commercial and educational purposes: often in the double identity of traders and scholars, sometimes as talented physicians or renowned philosophers. By wandering about the whole peninsula—and sometimes reaching to farther destinations—they circulated the products of their variegated formation, becoming cultural mediators among Jews and between Jews and non-Jews. They could influence their interlocutors orally or address them with letters or treatises, written in Hebrew, Latin, or the local vernacular languages.

Such a circulation of knowledge was partly responsible for the intellectual cohesion of the Jewish population in the Italian Diaspora: By making themselves stronger, thanks to the cultures of others, they could awaken a deeper awareness of the risks caused by a too-close contact with the majority. However, being in a position of thoroughly understanding the major intellectual trends of the time, they could show their coreligionists how to adapt them to their canonized heritage without losing their religious identity. Although sometimes provoking disputes, the acceptance of cultural elements derived from “foreign” traditions never triggered in Italy the harsh polemics that characterized the intellectual life of Near-Eastern, Spanish, or German communities. In any case, Jewish scholars could ultimately demonstrate that what they were borrowing had originally been stolen from their own heritage.[1] Such an attempt to trace all traditions back to one cultural identity is very common among minorities. In the case of Jews, since everything could be referred to the Hebrew Scriptures, shared also by the Christians, their interpretation went beyond the communitarian borders and became appealing to their non-Jewish interlocutors. In such a framework, even pagan thought, reread according to the Medieval Islamic philosophers, could be referred to remote Jewish sources. As a matter of fact, what Muslim and Christian theologians had done in the previous centuries in order to allow contemporary scholars to merge religious authorities and rational thinkers into a theological system, had already been experienced by the Jewish scholars working in the Near East in the first centuries of the Common Era, as well as by the Church Fathers. Medieval Jewish mediators were following in the footsteps of their predecessors, who aimed to foster a common intellectual wisdom rooted in a uniquely inspired religious tradition.[2]

Thus, during the Middle Ages, Jewish communities in Italy, mostly in the South and in Rome, while continuing to view the Land of Israel and Babylon as the main spiritual centers of their religious tradition, developed their own rituals, their own distinctive culture, and their own academies, where they offered new interpretations of biblical and rabbinic literature—and also grounding them in non-Jewish speculation.[3] Although they followed trends that were common in the Jewish communities in the East and the Byzantine empire, at least from the ninth century, Jews in Apulia (at the heel of the Italian peninsula), commented upon the Scripture and the Talmud by making use of Hellenistic exegetical methods, which, although rooted in the rabbinic tradition, could leave room to allegorical interpretations based also on Islamic and Byzantine thought.[4]

The age of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (1194–1250), Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, best known by the title of King of Sicily, should be viewed as the first period when closer intellectual contacts between Jews and Christians were made possible in Italy. This celebrated monarch, who was both admired for his political skill and feared by the Pope for suspicions of heresy, showed a sharp interest in science and philosophy and a multiform cultural curiosity (he could express himself in Latin, Greek, and Arabic, as well as in other vernacular languages spoken in his kingdom). He eagerly invited Jewish scholars to his court, some from distant regions, requesting their services in translating philosophical and scientific manuscripts from Arabic and Hebrew into the Romance languages. Jews were sought both for their competence in biblical interpretation, which obviously represented one of their most important skills, and for their ability to introduce Christians to the most recent achievements of Eastern thought and science, thanks to their knowledge of Arabic. Moreover, since Jews frequently practiced medicine, they were often hired to translate Arabic medical works unknown in Western Europe.

Under the protection of Frederick II Jewish scholars were entitled to share their knowledge with their non-Jewish colleagues.[5] The best-documented episode of such an intellectual exchange is represented by the encounter of the Provencal scholar Jacob Anatoli (first half of the thirteenth century) with the Christian philosopher Michael Scot (d. 1235).[6] Anatoli, who had been invited to Naples by the king, and at whose request translated several Averroistic works, related in his collection of sermons entitled Malmad haTalmidim (Goad to Scholars) that king Frederick possessed a thorough knowledge of Moreh Nevukhim (Guide of the Perplexed), the controversial masterwork of the Andalusian Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides (ca. 1138–1204),[7] whose work and thought were a common subject of debate among the scholars of the court only a few decades after the philosopher’s death. Moreover, Anatoli’s sermons inform us of the various subjects, ranging from the allegorical interpretation of the Bible to the discussion of complex philosophical issues, pertaining to deep theological problems, which were dealt with in meetings of philosophers of different faiths in Frederick’s court. It was not uncommon at that time for a Jewish scholar to support the philosophical interests of a clergyman who was deeply interested in the study of the Scripture—but the opposite case was also frequent. For instance, Moses ben Solomon of Salerno (d. 1279), who had studied in Rome, collaborated with the Dominican Apulian friar Niccolò of Giovinazzo. Moses wrote a commentary on the two first books of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, relying on both the Latin and the Hebrew translations of the text (originally composed in Arabic), and often compared Hebrew technical terms with their Latin equivalents. In his Hebrew-Latin philosophical lexicon, Moses resorted to Niccolò of Giovinazzo, and quoted the latter’s explanations on some chapters of the first book of the Guide in his own commentary.[8] The death of Frederick II (1250) and of his son Manfredi (1266), and the events which led Southern Italy to fall into the hands of the Angevins, were probably among the major factors that induced some Jews to leave the Kingdom of Naples, in search of better conditions in the communal freer cities in Northern and Central Italy. Still, the court of Robert of Anjou (d. 1343) in Naples continued to attract Jewish scholars during the first half of the fourteenth century.[9] Among the most outstanding intellectuals of the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century, was Judah ben Moses Romano, a former disciple of Zerahyah Hen from Barcelona. Judah spent many years in Rome, his birthplace, and translated several Hebrew works from Hebrew into Latin for the King of Naples, such as the Liber de Causis (Book on Causes), which had been attributed to Aristotle, but was effectively a Neoplatonic[10] text, as well as Averroes’s De Substantia Orbis (On World’s Substance). At the same time Judah translated into Hebrew Latin works composed by Aegidius Romanus, Albertus Magnus and Alexander of Hales, in addition to writings by Thomas Aquinas. In so doing, Judah was following the tradition of Jewish scholars of previous generations, such as Hillel ben Shmuel of Verona (ca. 1220–1295), who, beside translating Thomas Aquinas’s De Unitate Intellectus (On the Unity of the Intellect), had propagated Maimonidean and Scholastic teachings both in Hebrew and in Latin all around Italy, especially in a school he founded in Capua (near Naples), which was attended, among others, by the famous Spanish kabbalist Avraham ben Shmuel Abulafia (1240–ca. 1291). Even in his biblical interpretation, Judah Romano, like his predecessor Hillel, never hesitated to resort to rationalistic thought. Judah, as well as his cousin Immanuel ben Solomon Romano (ca. 1261–ca. 1328), exerted a substantial influence on Italian Jewish philosophers of later centuries.[11]

Jewish scholars who flourished in late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth-century Rome and Southern Italy took an active part in the contemporary literary trends that were discussed among Italian non-Jewish literati. If Plato and Aristotle, the highest intellectual authorities of the past, denounced the use of poetry as a vehicle for conveying untruthful information to a naïve audience, how could Jewish scholars explain the use of poetry in the Bible, a corpus of writings that had been revealed by God? By founding themselves on the Hebrew Scripture, they could demonstrate that there were different kinds of poetic discourse and that the biblical one was the highest and the truest of all. Following in the steps of the Aristotelian logical tradition, they maintained that, like any other poetic genre, biblical poetry contained metaphors, although these conceived hidden mysteries, whose perfect knowledge would allow scholars to understand the secrets of the Godhead. After all, the ancient prophets were nothing but poets, who had received by God the gift to foresee the events and to express the future in poetic terms.[12] The revival of poetry as prophecy was very significant in the Middle Ages. The later rediscovery, through Byzantium, of ancient Greek prophetic texts, thought to be more ancient than what they really were, made Western scholars more eager to hold discussions with Jews about biblical poetry and prophecy. Therefore, throughout the Middle Ages, the poetic interpretation of the Bible became common and Jews helped their Christian colleagues to reveal the mysteries of the Jewish interpretation of biblical poetry in order to better understand its profound meanings. What Christians did not know (nor possibly Jews) was that the poetic texts by which Jews meant to reveal religious mysteries were not very old but were the result of late-antique pagan speculative sources, which sounded familiar to non-Jewish intellectuals. By holding that the Hebrew texts were more ancient than their Greek sources, both Jews and Christians could prove that pagan authors had been influenced by Jewish traditions in the antiquity. Moreover, the Platonic attack against mythology as related to poetry could be explained against the background of the allegorical reading of biblical poetry. In the case of a prophetic poetry, myth was no longer a danger. That is why Byzantine Christian authors on the Eastern side of the Mediterranean and Spanish Jewish kabbalists on its Western side reintroduced a poetic discourse in their religious traditions that could take myth into account.

It was not by mere chance that in the same generation of Dante Alighieri, the author of the prophetic poem known by later generations as The Divine Comedy, Jewish Italian scholars turned biblical poetry into a prophetic discourse which reread Jewish themes in a philosophic and sometimes mythical perspective. The first known Jewish poet to be involved in this project was Immanuel ben Solomon of Rome, whom some scholars believe to have been on friendly terms with Dante. Immanuel may be seen as the best representative of late Medieval Jewish Italian culture. Born in Rome in the same generation that witnessed the contemporary presence in the city of Jewish scholars coming from the most important centers of the Diaspora, he belonged to a wealthy family of traders and, being a banker himself, wandered around several cities for his commercial activities. At the same time he was a very skilled philosopher, well versed in the Scholastic interpretation of the Scripture, especially knowledgeable in the Maimonidean tradition. Among his exegetic works, his Commentary on the Song of Songs is of special renown. In it he draws upon the homonymous work by the Provencal author Moses ibn Tibbon (flourished in the second half of the thirteenth century), in order to demonstrate the higher status of biblical poetry. His poems, written in elegant Tuscan Italian or biblical Hebrew, followed both the contemporary Italian and Spanish traditions. It is assumed that it was in Immanuel’s generation, and especially in the Roman intellectual environment, that the newly produced or reorganized kabbalistic material was brought from Spain to Italy. Although it is very hard to demonstrate that Dante’s Comedy was influenced by Kabbala, it is likely that this author might have come across some Hebrew mystical interpretations that widely circulated around Italy in the early decades of the fourteenth century. For instance, the role of the Shekhinah, the female aspect of God, who could be identified with the Shulamite of the Song of Songs according to Jewish Medieval interpreters, corresponds to the angelic lady on which the poetry of Dante and his Tuscan contemporaries mainly focused.[13] Like the latter, Immanuel praises women as manifestations of the higher divine world.

Let us examine, for instance, Immanuel’s sixteenth Mahberet (Composition), a chapter from his major literary work entitled Mahbarot (Compositions), which focuses on the nature of the angel-like woman. When Immanuel and his fictitious friend, the “Prince,” meet her first, the mysterious lady looks so beautiful that “everyone who sees her, praises her for her beauty, wisdom and skills”; “her eyes throw arrows that are dipped in the blood of those who passionately long for her” and she is “perfectly aware that by her light she rules over any other light.” She is very modest, though, because she knows fairly well that “were she prouder, when walking in the city streets the angels would not dare meet her….”[14]

All these features attributed by Immanuel to his “Madonna” are clearly reminiscent of the virtues attributed to Beatrix by Dante. [15] Moreover, Immanuel’s Mahbarot, which stylistically originate from the Arabic maqama genre in its mixture of poetry and prose, look similar to Dante’s Vita nova, a prosimetrum, which is a literary work made up of both verse and prose, dealing with the beatific influence of Beatrix’s love.

If the topic of Platonic love known in a Islamicate Aristotelian garb was influential in late-thirteenth and fourteenth-century Italy, it became one of the major issues that were discussed between the first half of the fifteenth century and mid-sixteenth century, when Italian intellectual circles were heavily influenced by Byzantine Neoplatonic theologies introduced into the peninsula—especially during and after the 1439 Council of Florence. This was a political and religious endeavor, aiming to reunite the Western and the Eastern Churches, and was made possible due to the diplomatic and financial activities of the powerful Medici family. The trend to read Christianity in the light of pagan myth thanks to the rediscovery of Greek texts brought to Italy by the Byzantines opened the path to a thorough search of all the mysteries conceived in different religious thoughts. Among those mysteries, hidden in sacred poetry, Jewish Kabbala could become a major tool for a reappraisal of ancient prophetic sources.

Beside Judah and Immanuel Romano, who also made use of kabbalistic motifs associated with Neoplatonic and Aristotelian concepts, the Roman scholar Menahem ben Benjamin of Recanati (active in the first half of the fourteenth century) was among the most important and influential Italian Rabbis of his time, whose work became the most commonly studied among the Italian-Jewish students of the esoteric tradition. In his Commentary on the Pentateuch, composed at the beginning of the fourteenth century, Menahem selected and quoted passages from the most outstanding authorities of Medieval Spanish and Provencal Kabbala, mainly from Sefer haZohar (Book of Splendor)[16] and Sefer haBahir (Bright Book), while concomitantly relying on Maimonides’ rationalistic thought, which—as stated—was widely known and appreciated by both Christian and Jewish scholars in Italy. Menahem was but the first of a long tradition of Italian scholars who demonstrated the possible connections of Jewish Aristotelian thought with the kabbalistic tradition.[17] Another outstanding kabbalistic figure was Abraham Abulafia (1240– ca. 1291), who, though born in Spain, spent a long time in Rome and Southern Italy, where he decided to merge the most deeply mystical traditions of Judaism with Maimonidean thought, thus creating a trend of Kabbala, which has been called ecstatic or prophetic, that was to develop in Sicily, where Abulafia founded a school in the final years of his life.[18]

Unlike philosophical texts, Jewish kabbalistic works were known only within the Jewish communities until the fifteenth century, when this esoteric doctrine became an important object of interest for Christian secular humanists, as well as for Christian clergymen, in the context of the reappraisal of ancient sources coming from the East and allegedly related to prophetic revelations from High.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) was a Christian scholar who spent the last years of his brief life in Florence. Inspired by the Greek revival that had taken place in the environment of the Medici family, he studied Platonic and Neoplatonic sources and elaborated on the ancient view according to which an allegorical reading of pagan myths could explain the most hidden mysteries of Christian theology. However, besides merging Plato, Pythagoras, Hermes Trismegistus, and Orpheus according to the Florentine tradition (which had been fostered by the Latin translations of the Greek texts reintroduced in Italy by the Byzantines), Pico decided to include kabbalistic texts in his all-comprehensive analysis of pagan myth. By the end of 1486 he wrote his Latin oration De hominis dignitate (On Man’s Dignity), in which he affirmed that, in order to ascend to God, man needs a medium, which Pico identified as a cherub: his assumption was based on a kabbalistic rereading of Pseudo-Dyonisian angelology.[19] One of Pico’s Jewish assistants, Yohanan ben Yizhaq Alemanno (ca. 1435–ca. 1506), affirmed in his Commentary on the Song of Songs, dedicated to Pico, that angels are the only medium that allow man’s soul to ascend to God.[20] As a matter of fact, a few years before composing his oration, Pico, who was deeply fascinated with Tuscan poetry of the previous centuries, wrote a commentary on one of his friend Girolamo Benivieni’s love poems.[21] The latter had been composed in the Tuscan thirteenth/fourteenth-century style, though they more clearly expressed Platonic and Neoplatonic themes cherished by the scholars of the humanist Florentine environment. Let us take the following of Benivieni’s verses into account:[22]

From supernal love derives

the fire by whose virtue

all living creatures exist.

When such fire burns in ourselves,

our heart grows, while dying.

Pico wrote that in these words “astonishing and secret mysteries of love”[23] are concealed. The profound sense of Benivieni’s verses ought to be sought in the ability of man’s soul to turn totally to the object of her desire and die by virtue of such passionate love. Those who completely annihilate themselves into intellectual contemplation at exactly the same time when they miss their rational activities, lose their rationality, by acquiring the intellectual level of angels, and, he continues,

[the mystic] dies in the world of the senses, being restored to a better life in the world of the intelligibles [...] this is what the wise kabbalists affirm, when they say that Enoch or Metatron, the angel of the Godhead, or any other man can be turned into angels. [24]

In the system of thought elaborated by the princeps concordiae, that is, the “prince of the agreement” between the various religious and philosophic doctrines, as Pico della Mirandola was named by his contemporaneous, we can clearly observe his resorting to the most common motifs of Jewish “rational mysticism”: the man who wishes to attain the union with the Active Intellect will encounter the man Enoch, who was turned into the angel Metatron; he will then annihilate his soul in God, by purifying her through the consuming fire of divine love, as affirmed by Benivieni by the words “When such fire burns in ourselves, our heart grows, while dying.” Pico commented on the latter words:

That is why, if we assume, following the author’s [Benivieni] words, that divine heavenly love is an intellectual desire [...] which cannot be attained by man before the corporeal part of his soul has not been removed, the poet is totally right when he argues that while the human heart, that is man’s soul who dwells in man’s heart, burns in the fire of love, dies by that fire, and its death is not a diminution, but a growth, since when the soul has been completely burnt off by that flaming ardour, as if offered in the holiest holocaust, as if offered in sacrifice to the first Father, the source of all beauty, she is led, by ineffable [divine] grace to the Temple of Solomon, which is adorned with all spiritual good, the true dwelling of God. This priceless gift of love which makes men equal to angels, is an admirable virtue which gives us life, by bringing us to death.[25]

Pico’s conception of divine love considered as an intellectual love, which can be attained solely by freeing one’s soul from corporeal ties and by leading her through the fire of a consuming sacrifice to the Temple of Solomon, “the true dwelling of God,” is strongly reminiscent of analogous views explained, on biblical and kabbalistic bases, in the already mentioned Alemanno’s Commentary on Solomon’s Song of Songs.[26]

This Platonic-mythical-poetic reading of Kabbala, shared by both Jews and Christians, aroused problems in the small Jewish Italian communities. Judah Messer Leon, a fifteenth-century Ashkenazi scholar well versed in Aristotelian philosophy, sent a letter to the members of the Florentine community in which he warned them against any use of Kabbala according to Platonic speculation. He probably feared the possible misunderstandings of Jewish dogmas, when read according to a mythical interpretation. Among Italian Jewish intellectuals, the dogmatic reading of Judaism suggested by Spanish authorities such as Maimonides or the early fifteenth-century Joseph Albo was held in high esteem. This approach to faith allowed Italian Jews to read their faith in parallel terms as Christianity, as a religious system based on dogmas which could be interpreted rationally.

A trace of the polemics against the Florentine community aroused by Messer Leon can be seen in Elijah Hayyim of Genazzano’s treatise Iggeret hamudot (Epistle of Delight), a work on philosophy and Kabbala written in the last decade of the fifteenth century in the form of both a letter and a formal speculative treatise.

Elijah Hayyim of Genazzano (1440 ca.–1510 ca.) was a member of the Jewish banking elite that from the end of the fourteenth century had been allowed to settle in Tuscan cities. Like the other Jewish banking families, the Genazzanos had originally come from Rome and they boasted to descend from the priestly families, which had been deported by Titus to Italy after the destruction of the Second Temple. Roman Jews stressed their distinctive character that made them unique in the Diaspora, thus highlighting the differences from Ashkenazi or Sephardic communities.

Elijah Hayyim wrote his Iggeret hamudot exactly in the period when refugees from the Iberian peninsula were arriving in large numbers to Italy. For many Italian (i.e. Roman) Jews, the presence of the Sephardim was a threat to the good but instable social conditions they had managed to create in the two previous centuries. This is the reason why in his Epistle Genazzano attacks contemporary Sephardic intellectuals, accusing them for their radical ideas whose only aim, according to him, was that of destroying the true Jewish tradition. With this goal in mind, Genazzano responded some intellectual questions addressed to him by his former yeshiva-fellow David, the son of Benjamin ben Joav of Montalcino. Benjamin of Montalcino, the head of a renowned Tuscan yeshiva, had been the target of Judah Messer Leon’s criticisms some forty years earlier.[27]

Genazzano is also known for a poetic debate on woman’s nature, composed in Dante’s and Immanuel’s garb.[28] He was very sensitive to the Neoplatonic atmosphere of Florence and in several passages of his treatise he reveals a thorough knowledge of some of the major trends of the Platonic interpretations of Kabbala, which were common among his Jewish contemporaries and which had been borrowed by Pico della Mirandola.

When dealing with a passage from the Sefer haIqqarim (The Book of Principles), a philosophical and apologetic treatise written by the Spanish Joseph Albo, a work that—as previously stated—had become very influential on fifteenth-century Italian Jewish speculation, Genazzano refutes the dogmatic interpretation of the Jewish faith presented by Albo.

Genazzano objects to the rational dogmatic understanding of Judaism, stressing that such a presentation of his faith has nothing to do with the traditional rabbinic and kabbalistic tradition, the only true tradition that allows Jews to deeply understand Judaism. In other words, Genazzano holds that the traditional kabbalistic reading of rabbinic and liturgical aspects of Judaism is the only way to adhere to the values of his faith, rooted in the Scripture and not in its rational interpretation. What is significant for our analysis is the relief the author gives to contemporary non-Jewish trends of thought in order to support his views rooted in Jewish tradition.

For instance, Genazzano follows the traditional kabbalistic interpretation of the levirate rules which could be read in the Book of the Zohar or in Recanati’s Commentary on the Pentateuch, which was much more popular than the Zohar in fifteenth-century Italy. Genazzano praises the rabbinical-kabbalistic tradition for being of higher value than the rational understanding of Judaism, fostered by Maimonides, Albo and other Spanish authors. He then continues:

As a matter of fact, behold, I have found the following statement in an ancient book attributed to a wise man called Zoroaster: “The doctrine of the transmigration of the soul was received by the Indians from the Persians, and by the Persians from the Egyptians; by the Egyptians from the Chaldeans, and by the Chaldeans from Abraham. The Chaldeans expelled him from their land, since they hated him because he held that the soul is the source of movement and that she is the cause of the change in matter and that there are many souls and so on.” [29]

In order to support rabbinic authority, Genazzano quotes the Persian Zoroaster, a major authority for the Florentine humanists who read Latin translations of the Greek treatises attributed to this semi-mythical ancient sage in order to find evidence for Christian traditions. The conception of the transmission of divine knowledge through a chain of initiates that had been common among late antique Neoplatonists and had been revived in the fifteenth century by Florentine intellectuals was influential on a Jewish Florentine scholar.[30] Now, in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Platonic Conclusions according to the Arab Adelandus, written a few years before Genazzano’s text, we read that: “All the Indian, Persian, Egyptian and Chaldean sages believed in the doctrine of the transmigration of the souls”:[31] Pico’s words parallel exactly Genazzano’s statement, though the reference to Abraham should be sought in the views of the Byzantine scholar Georgios Gemistus Pletho, a philosopher who had taken part in the 1439 Council of Florence. In his Treatise on the laws Gemistus Pletho maintained in fact that Abraham believed in metempsychosis and attributed this view to Indians, Persians and Egyptians.[32]

Genazzano, who thus demonstrates that he is fully aware of contemporary non-Jewish speculation, resorts to the achievements of Florentine humanists both to demonstrate the higher antiquity of Jewish revelation and to argue against rational dogmatic views held by his coreligionists.

The impact of the local cultures, as well as the changes in the process of transmission of different materials within Jewish Italian communities, shaped the nature of the reception and of the subsequent interpretations of traditional lore, at least until the very end of the fifteenth century. As the revolutionary trends in Renaissance science and thought started to keep separated faith from reason, the modes of intellectual relations between Jews and non-Jews changed accordingly, as well as the official acknowledgement of the role of the Jews in Christian societies.[33]

Prayer is a very personal and individual activity; each person’s experience is unique. Nevertheless, prayer, especially synagogue prayer, is also a communal experience. It occurs in a group and includes prayers that can only be recited in a quorum (minyan). It is this communal aspect of prayer as it is performed in an Orthodox setting that I wish to address here.

Being cognizant of the problem of men attempting to channel women’s experience, I begin with an apology: This will be yet another example of a man writing an article about women’s place in the synagogue. I sincerely hope that with the many opportunities for advanced Torah study that have become available to women over the last decade or so, the conversations and debate surrounding women in the synagogue will soon be dominated by women’s voices. I will return to this point at the end of my piece.

            Although I have been familiar with the challenges women face in feeling part of the service in Orthodox synagogues for some time, over the past year the issue has intruded into my consciousness in such a way as to become an unavoidable part of my own prayer experience. Once the glaring nature of the problem moved from my subconscious awareness to my conscious mind, it entrenched itself there and shows no signs of fading. I can no longer help but notice that the Orthodox prayer service is strongly reminiscent of a men’s club, with some women watching or participating from the sidelines.

Never having been a woman, I cannot really identify with the experience of praying as a spectator’s sport, but this is the way the Orthodox prayer service is experienced by many women. Although there are women who do not seem troubled by the situation, believing that this arrangement is God’s will and meaningful in its own way, a growing number of women—and men—have begun to see the situation as intolerable. Why should modern-day women be first- class citizens everywhere but in their own synagogues?

In order to express some of these feelings and begin a public conversation, I wrote a post called Davening among the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes, comparing the Orthodox shul experience to the lodge of this name in the Flintstones. Not surprisingly, my imagery in this piece—which was admittedly over the top—struck a chord for many readers, both positively and negatively. Some thought it was a “fantastic analogy,” while others felt I was caricaturing the synagogue. A few months later I followed up with a post called, Women’s Participation in Ritual: Time for a Paradigm Shift. In that post, I made the following argument:

To break out of this vicious cycle, we need to shift the paradigm 180 degrees. Instead of saying that since women have never historically participated in public ritual, so each shul and each rabbi will—upon request—think about creative ways to allow women to participate ritually in things that are permitted, we should be saying that all Jews, men and women, can do or participate in any meaningful ritual unless it is clear that halakha expressly forbids this.      

The post generated a lot of debate, and Rabbi Angel kindly suggested to me that this issue of Conversations would be an ideal venue to continue my discussion of the topic, focusing not on the theoretical paradigm shift but on practical suggestions for synagogues. I thank Rabbi Angel for this opportunity and will focus this article on practical suggestions.

For the record, I am not a pulpit rabbi myself, and not subject to the political pressures that come with that position. My colleagues who find themselves in positions of synagogue leadership will each have to determine what is feasible or desirable in their own communities. This article should be seen as a reimagining of the Orthodox synagogue experience and an attempt to begin a conversation. I will divide my suggestions into a number of categories where I see need for adjustment; I invite those of my colleagues who agree with me in principle to stretch, at least a little, in each category.

1. Space

Orthodox synagogues have separate seating for men and women divided by a meḥitza, a barrier. The purpose of the meḥitza has been debated. Some, R. Joseph Soloveitchik for instance, say that it functions to establish the borderline between men’s space and women’s space; others, like R. Moshe Feinstein, suggest that it is meant to make conversation or interaction between men and women difficult. In very right-wing communities, some have argued that it is to make the women invisible to the men. These positions come with practical implications. If the meḥitza is meant to delineate space, then all that is necessary according to halakha is the “minimal” halakhic wall, 10 ṭefaḥim (cubits). If the meḥitza is meant to discourage interaction, it should be as tall as the shoulder of the average man (this is what R. Feinstein argues). If women should be “invisible” to the men (the position adopted by Chabad) the meḥitza should be as high as possible.

            Putting aside the question of which position a given synagogue follows—and for what it’s worth I would urge Open Orthodox shuls not to follow the third position—the larger problem for women in Orthodox shuls is not the meḥitza or separate seating per se, but the conflation of the concept of “men’s space” with the concept of “prayer space” (maqom haTefillah). In some shuls the men’s section is larger than the women’s section. Other shuls keep books or siddurim in the women’s section, making it a place that can be entered by both genders. During weekday prayers in many shuls men spread themselves out into the women’s section and pray there, either making it uncomfortable for women to come to shul or forcing them to awkwardly take their place and wait for the men to leave. In either case, this behavior underlines the unstated claim that all prayer space is really men’s space, and women are graciously granted a tentative foothold.

            Perhaps the clearest evidence that the area of prayer equals men’s space is the placement of the bima and/or amud /teibah (podiums in the front and/or middle of the sanctuary.) In most Orthodox synagogues, these are in the men’s section. The message seems clear, the leader of the prayers is praying for/with the men and the speaker is speaking to the men.

If Orthodox synagogues wish their women to feel like they are part of the room and not just spectators, at the very least the meḥitza should be down the middle and should not obstruct their view of the reader’s desk. For Ashkenazic synagogues, it would be even better to have a bima facing both the men’s and women’s sections and an amud that would stand in the middle of the two sections. Since both the bima and the amud are considered separate areas, distinct from the other sections of the shul, there should be no problem having them centrally placed. Finally, I would suggest that there be stairs from the women’s side onto the bima and the amud. This is both for practical reasons, because I believe that women should have a role in leading at least some prayers, as well as for its symbolic importance, reminding the congregation that the leader of the prayers does this on behalf of all people in the room, not just the men.   

2. Voice

In much of the Orthodox world, there is an attempt to remove women’s voices (qol isha) from the realm of men. In the Talmud, qol isha has to do with women’s speaking voices (i.e., it was meant as an injunction to men not to interact socially with women, see b. Qiddushin 70a.) Nevertheless, the halakha has been understood or recast as having to do with women’s singing voices. My own view is that the rule of qol isha, as part of the laws of tseniut (modesty), only applies to matters that are irregular, and since women’s singing voices are a staple of modern society, the halakha does not apply nowadays. Nevertheless, even if one disagrees with my reading of this halakha, qol isha would not apply for the recitation of holy texts. The truth of this assertion is easily demonstrable by the fact that during the Talmud’s discussion of women reading Megillah and the Torah, there is no mention of qol isha.

            I bring up qol isha because women’s voices are conspicuously absent in the Orthodox prayer service. Part of this is absence is halakhic. According to the traditional—and dominant—view in halakha, only men are obligated in communal prayer and minyan; therefore, the parts of the service that require a quorum (devarim she-beQedusha) can only be led by a man. Nevertheless, part of this absence is purely sociological. Despite recent attempts to make an alternative argument, I believe it is self-evident that the reason women do not lead parts of the service that are not davar she-beQedusha is sociological in nature. (I outlined this in two blog posts on Morethodoxy, Partnership Minyanim: A Defense and Encomium and Partnership Minyanim: A Follow Up.)

            In order for the prayer service to feel like it is the product of both the men and the women, the voice of women needs to be heard during the service. Although it is sometimes possible to hear women singing along with the tunes or saying amen to the prayers, I am suggesting something more. I believe that Orthodox synagogues need to ensure that some part of the service—especially the Shabbat service, which is both central to the religious experience of most Orthodox Jews and relatively long and complex—is led by a woman.

For synagogues uncomfortable with any large steps in this direction, perhaps having women lead the mi-sheBeirakh prayers, the prayer for the State of Israel, or the prayer for the U.S. government, would be a start. For those looking for more, there is the possibility of women leading Pesuqei deZimra in the morning or Qabbalat Shabbat on Friday nights. In neither of these prayer services does the leader function in such a way as to fulfill an obligation of the congregant such that gender would matter.

Another possibility is women’s participation in the Torah reading. The Talmud states that women are an integral part of the Torah reading service, but they do not read for the public due to the honor of the congregation. The idea that it would be insulting to the congregation to have women leading is almost certainly a sociological claim, as has been argued by Mendel Shapiro and Daniel Sperber, among others, and no longer has relevance in the modern world. If men are not embarrassed to have female doctors, female lawyers, female professors, and even female political representatives, they can probably handle female Torah readers without too much embarrassment.

3. Honors

A related issue to the previous one is honors (kibbudim). The synagogue experience heaps honors onto its participants. Leading any part of the prayer service is an honor. Receiving an aliya to the Torah is an honor. Opening the ark, removing the Torah, lifting and tying the Torah, carrying the Torah—all of these are honors. Men who receive these honors get hearty handshakes from their fellows, and the blessing of yasharkoḥekha or hazak uVarukh. Women receive no honors during the prayer service, mostly because, as discussed in the previous section, they don’t do anything during the service. This must change.

            For those synagogues willing to consider some of the suggestions for women’s participation, these will also be opportunities for women to receive honors. For those which are not, I strongly suggest that some sort of parallel track of synagogue ritual behavior be designed. For example, the holiday with the most significant honors is Simḥat Torah. On this holiday, there are three special aliyot called Kol haNe’arim (the aliyah for the children), Ḥatan Torah (groom of the Torah), and Ḥatan Bereishit (groom of Genesis). In many synagogues, like my own, these aliyot come with a lot of fanfare. For those synagogues willing to allow women to read Torah this problem will solve itself. However, some synagogues have already designed creative solutions and created a parallel female track of Kallat haTorah (bride of the Torah). This is a good example of creative thinking within the confines of a strict traditionalism. Although some detractors have argued that “one should not judge spiritual practice by honors,” I can only reply by saying that this is a relatively easy position to take when one is of the group that receives the honors.

4. Torah

The Torah is the lifeblood of Judaism; it represents the very core of our religious identities. For this reason, emphasizing the relationship between the worshipers and the Torah is critical. Before reading the Torah, it is carried all around the synagogue for worshipers to look at, follow after, or kiss. In some synagogues, the rabbi follows behind the Torah and shakes everyone’s hand while various prayers from the Psalms are sung. Unfortunately, as pointed out in the section on space, “the synagogue” is usually defined as the men’s section. In most synagogues the Torah is not paraded through the women’s section, although in many it is carried alongside the meḥitza for the few women close enough (and tall enough) to put their hands over the barrier and touch the holy scroll. Most don’t even try.

            In my opinion, it is critical that the Torah be carried around the entire synagogue, including the women’s section. Whether this should be done by having the man carrying the Torah pass it to a woman, who would then carry it on her side, or whether the man should carry it through the women’s section (I prefer the former) should be decided in line with what is most comfortable to any given rabbi in any given synagogue, but it should (must?) be done.

If synagogue design follows my previous suggestion (I hope it will someday), with the reader’s desk and ark in the middle, and access on both sides, there could be an elegant solution to the carrying of the Torah problem. The opening of the ark (petiḥa) could be given to both a man and a woman. The woman would open the ark and carry the Torah across the women’s section and then pass it to the man to carry through the men’s section and then onto the reader’s desk. After the Torah reading, the woman could take the Torah, carry it through the women’s section and pass it to the man who would put it back into the ark. The order can be switched but the point is that this would demonstrate a real parity, with men and women sharing in the caretaking and respect of the holiest Jewish object.

In addition to carrying the Torah and removing it from and replacing it in the ark, the other major ritual (aside from the actual reading which was already discussed) surrounding the Torah is the dancing on Simḥat Torah. I believe it is essential for women to have Torah scrolls to dance with during the festivities. Many Orthodox shuls already do this, and I encourage all to do so. Physical access to the Torah is an electrifying experience and should not be withheld from anyone. 

5. Garb and Accoutrements

During weekday services, a man wears his ṭallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries); on Shabbat only the ṭallit. Many Orthodox men wear their kippot (yarmulkes/skullcaps) all the time, but if not, they certainly do during prayer. Women have no such garb that distinguishes their prayer attire from any other attire. Although some women cover their hair in synagogue even if they do not do so in other places, this has more to do with men and modesty than it does prayer and God.

            My own preference would be to see women beginning to wear ṭallitot and tefillin. The latter is a mitzvah of such centrality in rabbinic thought that many men (like me) take pride in having never missed a day. There is an insult in the Talmud about a boorish person being a qarqafta de-lo manaḥ tefillin (a skull that doesn’t have tefillin placed upon it). Many of my friends place smiling pictures of themselves and their sons on the day they (the sons) first put on tefillin. Our women and our daughters should be a part of this ritual. Although there is some debate about whether women “should” wear tefillin, the Talmud is explicit that doing so is permitted, and the reasoning Tosafot suggest for why other rabbinic sources are against is based on hygienic concerns no longer relevant. Insofar as concerns about a ṭallit being a “man’s garment,” this can easily be solved by having women’s style ṭallitot—the mitzvah is not the shawl but the tzitzith hanging from the shawl, after all.

            Finally, on the subject of accoutrements, it is also worth noting that on the holiday of Sukkot, there is the special mitzvah of shaking the lulav (palm frond) and etrog (citron) during the Hallel service. Additionally, the lulav and etrog play a part in the hoshaanot ritual, where the congregants walk in a circle around the Torah, held on the reader’s desk, reciting special lines. It is critical, I believe, for women to be a part of all of the lulav and etrog rituals, as much as the men. Nothing makes one feel more like an outsider than watching everyone with their lulav and etrog, but not having one or participating oneself. (Just think of how uncomfortable men who have forgotten theirs, or didn’t order a set, seem, and how accommodating others are to give them an opportunity to use theirs.) Whether this means that the women walk with the men for Hoshaanot or that they set up their own area for walking should be decided in accordance with the comfort level of the rabbi and synagogue.

6. Religious Leadership

One of the real “hot topics” in the current climate of Open Orthodoxy is the question of women’s ordination. (Disclosure: I am on the rabbinic advisory board of Yeshivat Maharat and am fully supportive of women’s ordination.) However, one falls out in the technical discussion of women’s ordination, I believe it is very important for women to hold positions of religious leadership in Orthodox synagogues. There are a handful (maybe less) of Orthodox synagogues that have hired a woman to be their “rabbi” or chief spiritual leader; KOE’s Dina Najman, for instance, goes by Rosh Kehilla (head of congregation). Many more have begun to hire women as assistant rabbis/rabbas, ritual directors, and so forth.

            If hiring a female spiritual leader to be part of the rabbinic team is not an option for a given congregation, whether because of politics or simply funding reality, I would urge that congregation to look for opportunities to have women as scholars-in-residence or guest lecturers. Additionally, the synagogue might want to think of being in touch with a yoetzet halakha (a woman trained in answering halakhic questions about family purity laws.) I believe it is vital for women (and men) to see women in positions of spiritual and religious leadership—I would venture to say that there is no greater way of internalizing one’s own potential for excelling in religious practice and/or scholarship than by seeing role-models who have done so. Men have plenty of these models; it is time for women to have some as well.

7. Women-Only Spaces

One important way women have counteracted the feeling that prayer services are all about men has been to create the women’s prayer group. There are many versions of this practice and it is widespread in the Modern Orthodox shuls across the United States and Israel. Although there are many debates regarding the details of how certain rituals should be performed in these prayer groups (which, technically speaking, do not have a minyan according to Orthodox standards), nevertheless, the basic practice of women’s prayer groups has inspired a generation of women. Many girls are bat-mizvahed in this venue and read from the Torah. Women’s Megillah readings and women’s Rosh Ḥodesh groups are particularly prominent.

            One problem with this venue is that it abandons the synagogue service to the men; this is why I do not see the women’s prayer group as a solution in itself. Nevertheless, I do believe that women’s prayer groups have an important role to play in the Jewish world for two reasons. First, it is a venue that many women find inspiring, and inspiration is certainly a significant factor in crafting a prayer experience. Second, it is more than likely that men have a need for man-centered experiences as well, at times. At this point, all prayer services in the Orthodox world (other than the women-only variety) are male centered, so there seems no need to address this. However, if women begin to take a more active role—and I hope that they do—this male space will begin to shrink. Looking at the realities of synagogue attendance in the Conservative movement, it seems that men begin to drop off in large numbers when male-centered rituals or spaces begin to disappear. For this reason I hope that as Orthodox prayer ritual evolves, women and men will figure out ways to craft meaningful experiences that are integrated as well as ones that are gender-specific.

Will It Be Enough?

Inevitably, after each of my posts about making the Orthodox prayer experience more inclusive, somebody asked me if I really believe what I offer will be enough. I have stuck with the traditional definition of minyan being made up of men and the long-established idea that even though women are obligated in prayer according to most, they are not obligated in communal prayer and, therefore, may not lead devarim she-beQedusha. Therefore, some argue, I am suggesting halfway measures that may be exciting for a while but will quickly highlight the reality that the core of the synagogue prayer experience, the minyan and its special prayers, is, in fact, a male-centered ritual. Will it be enough or am I just prolonging the inevitable frustration of women who want equal participation but cannot have it? Are the halfway measures I suggest doomed to fail?

            I admit I do not know the answer to that question, but I do have some initial reactions. First, the question has an uncanny ability to freeze women out of any participation by arguing that if we cannot give them everything, we should give them nothing. In my opinion, a service where women sit as equals, receive honors, participate publicly, and have a role in the leadership is entirely different than one where they sit on the sidelines and watch the men run the service. I worry that the question is a ruse to argue for maintaining the status quo by painting any change as futile.

Second, we really do not know where a stable solution would lie. Perhaps a division of labor between men and women would arise (women lead x, men lead y) that would be religiously meaningful. Perhaps the exact opposite would happen and leadership opportunities (when halakhically feasible) and kibbudim would jump from men to women and back again without regard to gender. At this point no one can say because women do not have these opportunities. The bottom line is that many women want to participate more fully in synagogue ritual and there is very little, if any, halakhic basis to stop them. I understand that this thinking requires a serious sociological shift, but it seems absurd to me that we should live in a world where men and women have equal opportunities, and the shul is the last bastion of women’s second-class citizenship.

Finally, some have asked the slippery slope question. If one were to turn the Orthodox shul into a partnership minyan, would that not place the shul on a short ride toward full egalitarianism? Instead of answering the question, let me first sharpen it. Rabbi Benzion Uziel (Mishpeṭei Uziel 3, milluim 2) believes that, according to Ramban, women can lead anything. His logic is simple: Since women are obligated in prayer they are automatically part of the communal prayer. Other Aḥaronim (not R. Uziel) extend this argument to apply to counting women in a minyan. In fact, R. Micha’el Rosenberg and R. Ethan Tucker have written a very long responsum titled Egalitarianism, Tefillah and Halakhah suggesting just this. Admittedly, I do not personally believe this to be the correct reading of the sources, but it is certainly a possible one. Is this where the partnership minyan is headed?

What about the meḥitza itself—could that be challenged too? Rabbi Dr. Alan Yuter pointed out years ago in his article, “Mehizah, Midrash and Modernity; a Study in Religious Rhetoric,” (Judaism 28.1 (1979): 147–159), how precariously balanced the argument for meḥitza—and even separate seating—as a halakhic requirement seems to be. Despite the weakness of the arguments for meḥitza and separate seating in the literature, I strongly believe that this set-up is one of the cornerstones of the Orthodox prayer experience and should be maintained. Nevertheless, I understand the fear that once we introduce radical change, with only plausible reading of halakhic sources as our guide, who knows where will end up?

A friend of mine—a rabbi of a large synagogue—responded to an early draft of this article with a question:

How should shuls with a strong open minded contingency push forward with some of these changes and still satisfy the needs of the more traditional elements within the shul? …Many people (including shul rabbis) will agree with your halakhic conclusions. However, they cannot be considered ‘practical suggestions’ until thought is put into how to implement them without alienating core committed members of our shuls.

I think this is an excellent point, and brings me back to my opening. Pulpit rabbis interested in this kind of change are in a complicated position. Change is never easy. My only suggestion is to try to start the conversation in the shul, educate laypeople about what is or is not halakhically possible, involve women in the conversation, and start slowly. Perhaps pick one change from each (or at least most) of the categories I isolated that would improve the experience of women in your shuls.

I would love to end this piece by showing where the red lines are, but every generation has its challenges, and every generation has its halakhic authorities, and it is impossible to predict where change will lead or where status quo will lead. Instead I will end with two thoughts. First, it is my personal belief that our tradition will survive whatever comes. Traditional Judaism has adjusted itself to challenges over millennia and has always come out the stronger for it. I believe that women’s integration into the prayer service and power structure will be another example of this, and will only serve to make Open Orthodoxy that much stronger. Second, I will return to my original apology and state that, as long as women are not part of the service and not part of the power structure, this remains a conversation between men about women. It would be more than a little patronizing for me—as a man—to dictate terms, as it were, as to where I will accept the possibility of change and where I will not, where I will “allow” women to participate and where I will not. Instead, what I say is this.

Since, at this point, men dominate the power structure and the prayer experience (and I am one of those men), I will make it my priority to bring women into the prayer experience and synagogue power structure to the extent that seems possible to me. Once men and women begin their partnership in crafting the synagogue experience, we can then have real conversations on the type of experience we wish to craft, the possible and probable meanings of our sources, and how we envision satisfying the needs of men and women to have group experiences and individual experiences, gender-specific experiences and gender-neutral experiences. The road is a long one. It may be bumpy and even frightening at times, but the goal of crafting a synagogue service that removes the sociological barriers to women’s participation while remaining true to halakha is a worthy one.

May God grant us the wisdom to navigate this tortuous path so that we can reimagine the Orthodox shul in a way that will allow us to feel pride in our synagogues and uplifted in our prayers.

The way most of us pray today is very different from the way prayer was originally intended. I share the opinion that what goes on in most Jewish “houses of prayer” of whatever community, denomination, sect, or form, is usually far from an exciting, uplifting spiritual experience. And if one compares what our prayer books require of us nowadays, especially over the Holy Days, to the bare bones of  Amram Gaon’s Siddur, the Mahzor Vitry, Rambam’s Seder Tefillot or the Abudraham, one wonders what happened and why.

Here is what Maimonides says in his “Laws of Prayer” Chapter 1.1:

1. It is a positive command to pray every day, as it says, “You will serve the Lord your God.” By tradition they learnt that this service is prayer, as it says, “to serve Him with all your hearts.” The rabbis said “What kind of service involves the heart? It is prayer.” There are no rules about this in the Torah nor is anything fixed about it in the Torah…

2. This obligation is that everyone should appeal to God every day and pray and praise the Holy One. Then one might ask God to address his personal needs.

It remains a Torah obligation to relate to the Almighty through personal, private prayer every day, regardless of what may or may not happen in a synagogue. This, I suggest, rarely happens.

It was with exile, Maimonides goes on to say, that the Jews lost the language, the means and the habits of personal prayer. During the Babylonian and Persian exiles, Ezra the Scribe introduced texts to the community to facilitate Jews’ obligation to pray as a sort of optional menu. Psalms (55:18) mentions the idea of praying three times a day, and in the book of Daniel (6:11), Daniel himself describes praying three times a day toward Jerusalem. In his case, he prayed privately in his loft. The Bet haKnesset, the community center and the Bet haMidrash, the house of study, may have developed in exile too. Without doubt, these institutions were developed during the Pharisaic era. But it was not until after the destruction of the temple that formal, communal prayer was officially instituted to replace the two daily “permanent” communal sacrifices, the Temidim of Shaharit and Minha. Controversially, as the Talmud records, (TB Berakhot 4b et al) Maariv was added first as an option, and only under Rabban Gamliel did it become an obligation. The text of what we now call the Amidah was fixed by the rabbis of Yavneh (with some later modifications) as the Talmud says: “Shimon Hapikuli laid out the order of prayer before Rabban Gamliel in Yavneh” (TB Berakhot 28b). The Talmud suggests that the prophets had initially done this but their innovations had been forgotten (TB Megillah 18a). With the destruction of the Temple, the study house became the central institution in Jewish life and continuity, and it tended to be conflated or merged with the House of Prayer.

I rehearse this well-known narrative because it is clear that there has always been in Judaism a dichotomy between personal, private prayer on the one hand and public, communal prayer on the other. Their functions are entirely different. Not everyone agrees with Maimonides, but if I understand his position correctly, the Torah ideal remains in force that individuals have an obligation to find very subjective and personal ways of connecting with, communicating with, or at the very least appreciating the magnitude of the divine presence in this world. Such an activity should include contemplation, meditation, and exercises in what is called “deveykut,” actually engaging with God. This can rarely be done in a crowded synagogue surrounded by other humans who often have no interest in such activity. It cannot be done while a Cantor performs, and most of all, it cannot be done “on demand.” I will concede that sometimes for moment, such as Kol Nidrei, such an effect can be achieved. But it rarely survives the initial phase except in very few situations such as those yeshivot with a strong tradition of prayer or a rebbe’s court. For the average Jew living in no such rarified situation, synagogues in general simply do not offer this experience of the divine.

I wonder if they were designed to. The Great Synagogue in Alexandria, where flags were waved to let distant parts of the building know when to say “Amen” (TB Sukkah 21b) cannot possibly been a place of personal engagement with Heaven. The services we have nowadays perform very different functions. They primarily function give us a sense of community and to actually get people together in ways that most religious obligations do not. Judaism makes demands on us both as individuals and as members of the community of Israel. Personal prayer remained personal. Yet over time, personal prayers and petitions were incorporated into the “prayer” format, as a matter of convenience. To reinforce the sense of community, it was insisted that prayer with a quorum would be more effective than without.

Jewish prayer was dramatically affected by the Medieval experience. Herded into claustrophobic, foul ghettos under Christianity and Islam, most Jews wanted to escape the overcrowded hovels they often shared with animals. The synagogue was the only large and airy building in the community. They also needed to come and go and to stay together for safety. That was where they wanted to be and spend as much time as possible. No wonder the services got longer and longer.

The prevailing culture was also one in which any and every educated person expressed him or herself in poetry. Hence the great payyatanim who spread under Islam from Israel to Spain to Northern Europe and churned out religious poetry in formal structures and conventions that were incorporated into services. But it was not without a heated debate between those who wanted more within the services and those who wanted less. And in parts of northern Italy, music was added to the services. Before Shabbat, quartets often helped create the peaceful reflective mood.

Then came the explosion of mystical Judaism. The great mystic R. Yitzhak Luria was responsible for introducing songs, for walking out into the fields, for praying on the hills of Safed. The attempt to experience God moved from human-made structures to nature and back. The existential aspect of prayer, its singing and ecstasy as much as its communal aspect, influenced the great Hassidic reformation. But then, like all revolutions, began to lose its iconoclasm and creativity and sank back into formality. Still to this day in many Hassidic courts you will hear singing and ecstatic prayer that would be unimaginable in most synagogues in the West.

And there is another dichotomy in the evolution of prayer we often overlook. Is it prayer or study that brings us closer to God? You can see this issue emerging in the debates in the Talmud, too (TB Berakhot 8a and 30b). The Study House was the essential communal building. Was it the influence of both Christianity and Islam, with their emphasis on the Church and the Mosque that affected the way Judaism evolved?

I recall most vividly the seminal experience of my youth, Be’er Yaakov yeshiva in 1958. The brilliant Rosh Yeshiva Rav Shapiro z”l, a contemporary of my father’s at Mir and from the Brisk family, was the archetypal Lithuanian. Nothing brought him closer to Heaven than the mental concentration on Talmud Torah. He, like my later influence Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz z”l of Mir, manifestly tore himself away with great reluctance from his study when the academy broke for prayers. You could sense the desire to finish the obligation as quickly as possible. Rav Volbe, the Mashgiach, also from Mir, was altogether of different nature. Prayer for him was to stand in the presence of the Almighty and to lose oneself in another world. It was compelling to see his concentration and physical transformation when he prayed. It was yeshiva prayer in Be’er Yaakov that had a greater impact on my spiritual life than any other single event or encounter. It was so different to anything I had ever experienced in any other kind of prayer building or room, not even the great atmosphere of Mir in Jerusalem on the Yamim Noraim. In Be’er Yaakov, in one Beis haMidrash, in one small institution, a person could witness two contrasting models of Jewish prayer. It is true to say that the students divided pretty evenly in the examples on which they modeled themselves.

For many years I was a pulpit rabbi in large Orthodox synagogues, where most of those present came for social reasons and for whom the synagogue service was a form of entertainment; the rabbi preaching, the hazzan singing. Prayer was burdensome. Most did not understand the words or the meaning. Personal devotion was an afterthought. Talking throughout the service in both men and women’s sections meant that even if one wanted to pray it was almost impossible to concentrate. I was reminded of this problem recently in the impressive Spanish and Portuguese synagogue in Manhattan on a Friday night when I wanted to absorb the atmosphere and enjoy the liturgy. But two gentlemen sitting in the back row talked continuously and loudly right through what was a very short service that I just ended up feeling angry and frustrated. No one, it seemed, dared to approach them or try to shut them up.

Often big synagogues are packed on occasions such a bar mitzvah or Shabbat hattan, when the social side completely takes over. Many visitors have no idea what is going on or how to behave. The boredom is exaggerated by dragging out the honors and extending the service for hours. No wonder taking an unofficial break for a shot of whisky is the only way many people can get through it all. But even in a synagogue packed with apparently religious people, there is total disregard for the black-and-white laws of the Shulhan Arukh and its commentators on the need for silence, space, and consideration during prayer. No wonder it is so hard to encounter the Almighty in a synagogue. That is why the yeshiva world looks down with scorn on what it calls “ba’al haBayyit davening.”

An alternative and increasingly popular model that goes back to Eastern Europe is the shtiebel, literally “little room.” The first ones I encountered were off the marketplace in Mea Shearim. At almost every hour of the day or night, you could walk in to any one of a honeycomb of little rooms. As soon as there was a minyan, someone would start and you simply said everything that had to be said without ceremony, in a businesslike atmosphere. You would be in and out in a quarter of the time that you would in similar service in a big synagogue. I found it much more satisfying because it was informal. And if I wanted to meditate or have a chat with the Almighty, I made sure I found some private time and space during the course of the day. This model is essentially one of simply fulfilling an obligation. Of course, it an important aspect of halakhic behavior. But for more and more people, the routine performance is not enough. It meets one kind of need but not another more passionate kind of religious experience.

Then there is the educational challenge of prayer. When I was the Headmaster of a Jewish residential school for students mainly of non-Orthodox backgrounds, we used to have modified traditional services that cut out the “optional extras.” So a structure developed that was based on the essential elements of the biblical obligation to recite Kri’at Shema and its attendant blessings, the rabbinical prayer, the Amidah and Kri’at haTorah on Mondays Thursdays and festive days. It was short, conducted mainly by the pupils with familiar popular tunes and active participation. I cannot claim it won over many pupils. But I do know that most looked back with nostalgia at is beauty and simplicity when they left and encountered more conventional services.

I recall, again in my Headmaster days, being faced by the usual complaints that the obligatory morning services were boring. I urged pupils to be creative. I asked them come up with a different way of spending the first half hour of each day in some spiritual activity of a specifically Jewish character if they found the traditional services boring. But that took effort and hard work. Invariably they started enthusiastically, but soon gave up and asked to return to the old, well-established ways. Tradition has its uses but feeling comfortable with it requires serious effort, as indeed does mastering any different process or language.

Over the years I have gone through all sorts of different experiences. I have had my Shlomo Carlebach-Happy Clappy phase. But I grew out of it. I spent years praying in various Hassidic courts. Some prayed slow and some very fast so as, it was claimed, not lose concentration. I certainly never entered a large synagogue if I could possibly avoid it. I enjoy hazzanut, but not during prayer time and certainly not when it drags out the service. And most sermons bore me.

I currently pray mainly in a small Persian community. I am often asked how different it is. The variations in the text are minor. The main superstructure is the same and easily recognizable. The sounds are different but that is a matter of upbringing and cultural preference. The problems, however, are the same. Does one go to synagogue to pray and study or to chat? Do I as a rabbi have to spend my time like a Headmaster calling for order? Or do I have the right to switch off and pray regardless of what is going on around me?

Whatever my preferences, I have always encountered other Jews who disagreed with me. Some preferred the big performance, the big event, the sense of being together, to the modest utilitarian alternatives I tried to recommend. Yet it is right that it should be so. We are not all alike. We have different intellects and tastes and needs. There should be alternatives.

In my professional role I always recall the famous talmudic story of Rabbi Akivah. When he was conducting services he was the first to finish so as not to inconvenience the congregation. But when he prayed alone he was left long after everyone had departed still standing amongst the pillars of the hall in deep prayer (TB Berakhot 31a). At the same time I wonder why, if the weight of talmudic opinion was in favor of abbreviated prayers such as “Havinneynu” (TB Berakhot 29a), nowadays is it almost anathema? It seems we are too concerned with conformity and not enough with living a truly spiritual life.

For all my criticism I believe we are living in exciting times. More and more people are willing to experiment. Whereas once this inevitably meant casting off the requirements of tradition, now the trend is to find resolutions within tradition without throwing the baby out with bathwater. One of the joys of many Jewish communities where there is a critical mass is that one can on shul-crawl a Shabbat and experience a wide range of alternatives—and possibly find one that accords with one’s temperament and background. Of course this may lead to a kind of parasitism in which we neglect our obligations to support communal institutions. But if we discharge our obligations to community, there is no reason why we should not choose to pray where we feel comfortable.

I would argue that so long as the essential halakhic elements remain in place, it is an obligation to try to find new ways of making the service stimulating, inspiring, and attractive. I also believe that more energy should go into trying to find completely new styles of worship rather than tinker with existing ones. That would mean giving people more choices. I would suggest that there must be creative ways in which female spirituality could create totally new atmospheres and experiences without being constricted by established male modes and norms. Many big synagogues have already begun to act as holding companies offering different styles of services under one roof. 

            Regardless of the style of service, or the regularity of one’s attendance, one must, I believe, reestablish the practice of personal prayer outside of synagogual structures. Meditation and contemplation in a totally secular style, or one borrowed from another religion, have brought relief and inspiration to many in the West. But we, too, have our exercises and meditations. One need look no further than Avraham Abulafia to realize they have been part, albeit a neglected part, of our heritage for a thousand years. We must revive them.

Leo Baeckin a volume of essays entitled Judaism and Christianity, contrasts Christianity as a romantic religion with Judaism as a classical religion. The romantic relies on the experience, the stimulation of beautiful buildings, music, canonicals, and ceremonial to induce a sense of devotion, worship, and spirituality. The classicist works on himself to make it happen. Many of us have become too much influenced by an alien culture that we seek to emulate, one in which we expect to be stimulated religiously from outside of ourselves. In fact the Jewish way is to make things happen rather than expect others to do it for us. This applies regardless of where one goes to pray in public or alone. C.S. Lewis says in his Screwtape Letters that the quickest way to divert someone away from religious experience is to get then to focus on what is going on around them.