National Scholar Updates

R. David Weiss Halivni [1927-2022] was not just a gadol ha-dor, a great sage of our generation, but he was a gadol ha-dorot, a Torah scholar whose impact will likely transcend his own time and culture horizon. Best known for his breathtakingly monumental Meqorot u-Mesorot [Sources and Traditions], his multi-volume, academic commentary on the Babylonian Talmud, R. Halivni has also written monographs on the Holocaust,^[i] the difference between the plain or originalist sense of the canonical Torah and how the Torah was subsequently understood by the Oral Torah library,^[ii] and the challenge that Bible Criticism poses for the Judaism of Tradition that is identified as “Orthodox.”^[iii]

R. Halivni most significant finding relates to the teaching that Ravina I and R.  Ashi were the last rabbis to be authorized to issue hora’ah,^[iv] or apodictic legislation. Contrary to traditional belief, R. Halivni argues that they were not the actual editors or compilers of the Babylonian Talmud.  Instead, R. Halivni maintains that the Babylonian Talmud was not formally edited,^[v]  but emerged out of the literary and exegetical work of the stamma’im, whose anonymous, Aramaic, casuistic, clarifying discourse expanded and reconstructed the historically earlier Hebrew, apodictic, Amoraic teachings they inherited.^[vi] 

My first connection with R. Halivni goes back to 1968. At R. Halivni’s son, Baruch’s, bar mitsvah at the Jewish Theological Seminary’s [henceforth, JTS] Synagogue, the 13 year old prodigy delivered a discourse on the propriety of wearing tefillin on the intermediate festival days.  As a first year student at the JTS’s Rabbinical School, I understood nothing of Baruch’s presentation, a most humbling experience.

Only JTS’s most talented, Talmudically proficient, entering rabbinical students were assigned to R. Halivni’s class, and I was not an appropriate candidate for that placement. In 1970, Hakham Prof. Jose Faur became my major Torah mentor [rav muvhaq] and at the time I was busy with Judaic studies at JTS and Ph.D. coursework in modern Hebrew literature at NYU. Although not his student, R. Halivni took a personal interest in me. At the senior Rabbinical School dinner of 1973, R. Halivni reminded the graduating students that their mission is to spread Torah observance and learning, not to preach about social action, civil rights, interfaith dialogue, or partisan party politics.  And when R. Halivni teasingly proclaimed that “rabbis ought not to waste their pulpit time and opportunities on book reviews,” his eyes were fixed on me, being trained at JTS to be a Rabbi and at NYU to be a reviewer of Hebrew books.^[vii]

When the JTS voted to accept women to its Rabbinical School by faculty vote, some Halakhically committed rabbis and laypeople then seceded from the Conservative Movement^[viii] and formed what eventually became the Union for Traditional Judaism, the American UTJ,^[ix] with R. Halivni at its helm as its spiritual guide.

The UTJ established a rabbinical ordination program under R. Halivni’s direction, named The Metivta le-Limmudei ha-Yahadut, which in English is  rendered “The  Institute   for Traditional Judaism,” or the  ITJ. The Hebrew/Aramaic name affirmed that the institution is a metivta, a traditional Yeshiva committed to advocating and advancing the Judaism encoded in the classical Halakhah, that applies academic tools to parse and decode Judaism’s sacred library.  In 1991, I was appointed to the ITJ faculty to teach Bible, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Shulhan  ‘Arukh Yoreh De’ah Issur ve-Heter, the  kashrut laws that are the subject of the Orthodox Rabbinical ordination examination.

At the time, I was planning aliyyah and was advised by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin to acquire the Yadin Yadin ordination.^[x] R. Halivni graciously agreed to supervise my Yadin Yadin studies, which was daunting, challenging, and thrilling. And as the Reish Metivta, the head of the school, R. Halivni also became my boss, who would examine and evaluate the Issur ve-Heter students whom I was assigned to prepare.

R.  Halivni’s JTS students were advanced academic Talmudists who learned how the Oral Torah literary canon came into being. And at JTS, R. Halivni was rightly honored as an academic professor; at the ITJ, he was cherished both for his immense learning and his profoundly religious character, example, and consistent moral excellence. At the UTJ/ITJ, R. Halivni provided religious as well as academic leadership.

My mission at the UTJ was also only partially academic.  Studying Halakhic compendia^[xi] like the Shulhan ‘Arukh in order to prescribe appropriate behavior is a normative enterprise with religious as well as academic significance.  In point of fact, there are actually no official, Bet Din ha-Gadol approved codices in Jewish Law.  Both Maimonides’  Yad and Maran Yosef Karo’s  Shulhan ‘Arukh  are  resource compendia and as such are neither the last nor only word in Jewish Law. R. Halivni’s logical mind forced me to appreciate the dynamic taxonomy of the Halakhah, and he expected those who earned his ordination to think logically as well. 

All but my first farher [traditional oral examination] took place at the Hebrew University Giv’at Ram campus Jewish studies reading rooms of the Israel National Library. R. Halivni’s unofficial but permanent library seat [maqom qavu’a] was at the right side end seat of the first reader’s row of tables, with a small reference library placed neatly before him. This scene recalled his JTS office, where R. Halivni formerly said his shi’ur to his small cadre of advanced students. The walls were lined with both sefarim and books, tomes of sacred as well as secular writings,^[xii] in elegant order, meticulously and logically arranged, all to aid in the search for the Torah’s meaning. R. Halivni’s JTS office was a miniature bet midrash, a statement of sacred subversion,^[xiii] an island of order and purpose in an ocean of chaotic disorder, a world where there is no apparent Judge or judgment.^[xiv] At  Hebrew University’s Giv’at Ram library, R. Halivni was not hidden behind an office door; he naturally assumed the role of informal shoeil u-meshiv, the reference resource person of the bet midrash. In the traditional bet midrash, the shoeil u-meshiv must be conversant with the Babylonian Talmud, the major early commentaries [Rishonim], Maimonides’ Yad compendium, and the Shulhan ‘Arukh with its commentaries. At the large Giv’at Ram Judaica reading room, R. Halivni not only exhibited total control of the entire Rabbinic corpus, occasionally playfully employing the “Brisk”/”analytic” approach, which he did not teach,  as  well as the academic/critical method that he adopted, because he believed that method leads to truth. R. Halivni was also well informed in all fields of academic Judaica. Simply put, undergraduate students, doctoral candidates, and tenured professors all sought out R. Halivni’s memory, expertise, guidance, wisdom, and generosity.

In addition to dispensing information to everyone who asked him for help, R. Halivni also communicated friendship, warmth and personal concern.^[xv]  Like his leadership role at the ITJ, at the National Library the professor was also a rebbe. R. Halivni loved  people  because he loved the Torah that requires that the Jew love one’s compatriot with intensity.^[xvi] R. Halivni’s ethical deportment and personal warmth generated an atmosphere where secular, academic monographs wafted the scent of sefarim, because they became volumes that make Torah more readable, understandable, and applicable.

R. Halivni also”presided” over the National Library minhah minyan at the campus library.  It would not possibly occur to R. Halivni to seek this unofficial position of honor; the Jewish Studies Library’s attendees saw in R. Halivni an individual who was at once a giant in Torah, a master of academic Judaica, and a model of ethical excellence.^[xvii] R. Halivni’s interactions with others provided both academic enlightenment as well as a spiritual thrill to everyone who sought his presence. After the daily minhah minyan and just before our scheduled farher, I asked R. Halivni “why at this minyan is the ‘amidah not repeated, as the repetition is required by an explicit Rabbinic norm?”^[xviii]  Pleased that the question was raised, R. Halivni responded, “while one should take the time to say the minhah prayers, the salaried librarians would be stealing time work from their employer, the National Library, were the ‘amidah to be repeated.”  

The quality attention that R. Halivni gave to all comers at the National Library was the same care that he provided to the American UTJ and its Metivta, and it was same care he gave to me, his Yadin Yadin student. R. Halivni provided me with a tutorial in his approach to normative, prescriptive Jewish law. At one session R. Halivni posed the question, “why do we study Torah?” I answered “because it is a mitsvah.” He responded,  
”the ‘Litvaks’ study Torah for the sake of Torah; I study Torah in order to know how to behave.   Torah study is equal to all the other commandments because Torah study shows us how to observe the other commandments.”^[xix] I understood him to be saying that proper Torah study is simultaneously a commandment in its own right and also an exercise in ‘avodah, or prayer.   R. Halivni could play at thinking like a Litvak, but his personal religious synthesis remained Hassidic.

Two-thirds of R. Halivni’s two hour farher sessions examined my control of the material assigned for that year’s test, and the last third was a  conversation in learning during which R. Halivni spoke to me as a peer, and not as a novice. He was challenging me to formulate my own Halakhic hermeneutic, and to apply an appropriate jurisprudential methodology.^[xx]

My very first farher covered the Laws of Judges and the Laws of Testimony.  Focusing on Hoshen Mishpat 34. R. Halivni opened with “what is at stake in  the Laws of Testimony?” I answered with guarded hesitation, “we  are dealing with a matter of  personal status, whether someone is a tsaddiq, a righteous Jew with  proper communal standing upon whose word in court the community may rely, or a rash’a, a wicked  person whose  behavior  does  not  conform  to Jewish Law.”^[xxi] Jewish Law here defines the parameters of Halakhic pluralism. If a person buries one’s dead on the first Festival day mistakenly believing that there is an obligation to bury one’s dead on the first Festival day,^[xxii] that person does not necessarily lose one’s bona fides.^[xxiii] Similarly, charging and collecting interest by lending capital from the orphans’ estate does not automatically disqualify the offender, who may mistakenly reason that taking interest in order to grow the orphans’ estate is a worthy act.^[xxiv]  Those who trespass rules that are not well known must be informed of their error before their bona fides are disqualified, because everyone is entitled to a generous benefit of the doubt assessment.^[xxv]  We should not jump to hasty, negative conclusions.^[xxvi] The “other” might be correct; we have the right to think for ourselves.^[xxvii]  R. Halivni was pleased, and again, I was extremely relieved.

Since part of my Metivta teaching responsibility was to prepare the   ITJ rabbinical students for R.  Halivni’s test on Issur ve-Heter, R. Halivni required that I be re-examined by him on that material as well, in order to  ascertain that I was preparing my Issur ve-Heter students adequately, that they mastered the assigned material to R. Halivni’s standards. R. Halivni was teaching me how as well as what to teach our students.  R. Halivni’s conversations in learning with me were, retrospectively, the programming of my Halakhic thinking with his particular perspective regarding the Halakhic Tradition. He was well aware of my talmid muvhaq relationship with his own close friend and professional colleague, Hakham Faur, and was also pleased that I was exposed to the Halakhic system of Rabbis Moshe Feinstein and Moshe Tendler. Rather than impose his template on me, R. Halivni encouraged me to develop my own system, and to be a Rebbe as well as a Rav, with a heart as well as a mind.

After studying and being tested on the laws of damages, R. Halivni inquired about my secular education.  I had majored as an undergraduate in Philosophy, in order to get a handle on the Western mind and thought. R. Halivni then went into personal mode, confessing that is exactly why he studied Philosophy for his B.A. at Brooklyn College and earned his M.A. at NYU, also in Philosophy, and especially to master Logic and Legal Theory, in order to learn Torah more effectively. Jurisprudence teaches how law is applied; logic reveals the Law’s coherency.  R. Halivni then asked me if I had done any reading in legal theory and, if so, who was my favorite legal theorist.  Hakham Faur also applied legal theory in his Halakhah classes at JTS and I had discovered Hans Kelsen’s “Pure Theory of Law,” whose Legal Positivism was anticipated by Maimonides’ Yad compendium.^[xxviii] According to this  approach, a legal order is a hierarchy of legislated norms, the validity of which  are conditioned by [1] being properly legislated and [2] their not contradicting  higher grade norms.^[xxix] R. Halivni then told me that had I not studied legal philosophy, he would have required me to do readings in the field.^[xxx]

The issue of legal theory arose again when R. Halivni and I were at a UTJ conference in Teaneck, N.J., and a buffet   luncheon was served.  At that moment I was speaking to a lawyer and UTJ leader, Mr. Doug Aronin.  I told him that we may not eat in the UTJ’s Orthodox synagogue sanctuary^[xxxi] because the Oral Torah regards that eating and/or drinking in a designated,   sanctified prayer room to be an act of levity, and is therefore forbidden by an explicit Halakhic norm.^[xxxii] Taking understandable offense for what he took to be a slight and insult to our teacher and spiritual guide, by being stricter than R. Halivni, Mr. Aronin went out of his way to bring our teacher to challenge me to explain why I should not eat in the UTJ’s synagogue sanctuary. After citing the source of the law, R. Halivni replied that Diaspora synagogues are built on condition, because they will be abandoned when the Messiah arrives. I countered that when Diaspora synagogues are in good repair, the qallut rosh restrictions remain in force.^[xxxiii] R. Halivni said, “nu nu, Hassidim are lenient on this issue.” While here R. Halivni revealed that he decided cases as a Legal Realist,^[xxxiv] which also explains Hassidic antinomianism,^[xxxv] he never ever hinted that I should abandon my more mechanical Legal Positivism.

After surviving R.  Halivni’s  farher on Issur  ve-Heter, R. Halivni then told me that logically, we really should first study the laws of mixtures [ta’arovot], and only after mastering the legal principles of mixtures would it be logical to apply the principles of mixtures in general to the rules of salting meat and the legal status of milk  and meat mixtures.  He then asked, “why am I assigning you to learn the Passover kosher laws for next year’s examination? Why do I make this assignment now?” My answer was “we apply the logic of the mixtures rules to the contaminating hamets.” R. Halivni’s logical mind was beginning to shape how I think.

R. Halivni’s assignment of Even ha-‘Ezer 17, the laws of the “’agunah,” the “chained woman”  who is legally married to a man who is either unable or unwilling to commission the writing of the writ of divorce, came with a research  question,  “how are we able to free the agunah?”  He then confided to me that he earned his own Yadin Yadin ordination when he was 15 years old in order to permit Holocaust agunot widows to remarry and resume their lives after World War II. We discussed the case of a woman for whom two witnesses testified that her husband had died, a bet din gave her permission to remarry, which she did,^[xxxvi] yet both Maimonides^[xxxvii] and R. Ovadiah of Bartenora^[xxxviii]  ruled according to the flow of the Bavli^[xxxix] determined that should her first husband reappear alive and well, they forbid the woman to both men, even if the bet din permitted the woman remarry on the basis of two properly vetted witnesses.^[xl]  In order to defend what my intuition deemed to be morally appropriate in the case, I suggested that we consider and apply R. Halivni’s suggested approach to Talmud to Jewish law.  Maimonides and R. Ovadiah rule, understandably, according to the conclusion of the stam, the post-Amoraic, post-hora’ah level of Talmudic text tradition.  On the other hand, R. Moses Isserles decided that if the woman acted according to the good faith direction of the bet din, even if the bet din made an honest error in permitting the woman to remarry, the horrible sanction that she be forbidden to both men ought not to apply to her.^[xli]  And the Amora Rav, whose legal opinions do carry canonical, Oral Torah valence, ruled that a woman who remarries on the basis of two witnesses has done nothing improper and should therefore not suffer any sanction or penalty. While the stam suggests that we cannot ignore the actual, factual reappearance of her first husband, mistakenly thought to be deceased, Rav implies that the Bet Din is indeed empowered to create legal facts that may contradict empirical facts, a legal strategy that might be applied in emergency situations [she’at ha-dohaq].^[xlii]

Some Orthodox voices are troubled by this approach because it calls the reliability of the Rabbis who formulated the Oral Torah documents into question.^[xliii] The Talmudic Rabbis possessed legal authority, not intellectual inerrancy. The tractate Horayyot deals with the possibility that people in authority may make mistakes. By identifying rulings which, on literary grounds may post-date Rav  Ashi, we may rely on authorities, like R. Isserles, who appears, at first glance, to be ruling against the Talmudic norm. The Talmud’s norms are “ought” statements called prescriptions and are on that basis mandatory; Talmudic descriptions are [a] acts of telling, narratives, in Hebrew, Agadah, which are as a matter of Law not legally binding because they are not commands by dint of their syntax, and [b] are subject to empirical review and revision because they are descriptions and not descriptions. I am unaware of any Orthodox rabbi who requires the application of Talmudic medicine as opposed to modern medical science in our time.

Curiously, R. Halivni's application to the JTS’s Rabbinical School was almost rejected by its Admissions Committee because R. Halivni did not project the “image” of the “successful” Conservative rabbi.  This Conservative rabbinic ideal must be sufficiently “traditional” to register as “authentic” to the minimally informed, non-observant laity who are that Movement’s target  client population, but not so obsessively observant that one’s Judaism appears to be more intense than one’s Americanism, rendering that rabbi too parochial, “too ‘Orthodox,’” and thus alienating to their communities.  R. Halivni was thought to be so hopelessly provincial that he would be neither appreciated nor appropriate in a mid 20^th Century Conservative synagogue setting.  R. Saul Lieberman intervened, insisting that R. Halivni was to be groomed for Talmud scholarship, the enterprise for which he proved to singularly appropriate and universally appreciated, and R. Halivni was then accepted into the JTS’s Rabbinical School.  In hindsight, the JTS’s Rabbinical School’s Admissions Committee’s initial reservations regarding R. Halivni’s ability to “fit in” to the Conservative Movement as it was developing were not entirely misplaced. American Conservative Jewry was led by Rabbis  who were appropriately and unambiguously American in dress and deportment. They are also invariably well-spoken, politically and theologically liberal, and are passionately committed to accommodating Judaism to the ethnic Jewish taste culture of its client community.  R. Halivni could not meet that benchmark, as he was from and lived in other worlds.

R. Halivni’s “problem” was that he was programmed to be a “Rov,”  not a “Rabbi.” His Judaism defined his core commitments, his Torah provided the benchmarks and guidelines for  the challenges that was his to confront. This  tension, between the Jewish religious  Tradition and the militantly secular Ivy League Columbia University campus was noted by R.  Channa Lockshin Bob, who  described R. Halivni as

“a person whose sensibilities and demeanor were that of a rosh yeshiva, yet who found himself in the Department of Religion of an Ivy League university, and the implications of that setting for himself and for his students.”^[xliv] 

During one of our  farher/conversation sessions, R. Halivni confided to me that many of early Reform Judaism’s changes could be Halakhically justified. And he always stressed that Torah has to be doable and that it is not more pious to be gratuitously strict.^[xlv]

R. Halivni was also an amazing religious model.  He never spoke with the implied apodictic certainty of prophetic voice, as do some rabbis in all of the ideological streams. While well aware of his own greatness, R. Halivni remained a model of refined, ethical excellence. He always made his interlocutor feel like she or he was the center of the world by listening so very attentively to whomever his interlocutor happened to be at the moment.  While always generous with his time, R. Halivni rarely if ever said mussar/words of moral reproof and betterment.   He was a master of teaching by example. R. Halivni loved God by showing love to people, God’s creatures.   When asked by one of my ITJ students, “how really great is R. Halivni,” I suggested that

“Most if not all of us will ever be able to make that assessment, but when you hear R. Halivni speak, you observe how he respects God’s image in the other person, and when he speaks to each of you, you also become the most important person in his world at that moment. While we are unable to measure the Torah that he went through, we are able to assess the effect of the immense amount Torah went through him.”^[xlvi] 

R. Halivni’s mussar message was not “how inadequate are you now,” but “how holy are you able to become? All of us are works in progress.  Let’s be better together.”

A Rabbinical Council of America colleague recalled a sermon delivered by R. Halivni that called attention to the difference between a tashmish mitsva, an object that generates holiness by its being used in a halakhically prescribed way, like a lulav, shofar, and matsa, and tashmishei qedushah, objects that are themselves inherently holy, like a mezuzah, a Talmudic tome, or a Torah scroll.  R. Halivni explained that in this life we are objects that generate holiness by observing the commandments.^[xlvii] For R. Halivni, our mission as mortals is to become persons who become inherently holy, who touch, and inherit, eternity. ^[xlviii]

^[i] Breaking the Tablets: Jewish Theology After the Shoah (Lanham, Md.:  Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).

^[ii] Peshat and Derash: Plain and Applied Meaning in Rabbinic Exegesis (New  York:  Oxford, 1991).

^[iii] Revelation Restored: Divine Writ and Critical Responses  (Boulder, Colorado: WestviewPress, 1997).

^[iv] bBava Metsi’a 86a.

^[v] David Halivni, Introduction to Sources and Traditions: Studies in the Formation of the Talmud (Jerusalem:  Magnes, 2009), pp. 63-64 and 75-76.

^[vi] Ibid., pp. 128-136.

^[vii] When R. Halivni teased a student, it was always an expression of playful affection. When attending his Hebrew University Talmud class after aliyyah, in my rush get settled, I inadvertently placed my copy of R. Halivni’s Meqorot u-Mesorot on top  of  my Talmud. He chided me, “while I’m proud  of my work, it must  be placed under, and not over,  the Talmud.”  R. Halivni was also  reminding me as well as all who were present, that we all should be more precise  in our halakhic observance.

^[viii] Mordecai M. Kaplan, Judaism as a Civilization (Philadelphia and New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1981), maintains that the “modern ideology,” which is essentially dogmatic secularism [pp. 36-46], can neither be resisted nor denied. For Kaplan, the Conservative Movement is a coalition of style consisting of the
“Right” wing of Reform [pp.126-132] and the “Left” wing of Neo-Orthodoxy [pp. 160-169.  Kaplan argued that maintaining Orthodox theological and/or ritual commitments is hopelessly arcane and morally deficient.

^[ix] Not to be confused with the Israeli Haredi political party, United Torah Judaism, in Hebrew, “Yahadut ha-Torah,” literally “The Judaism of the Torah,” implying it alone is  Torah faithful.  The party is currently on the  brink of schism because its Degel ha-Torah faction forbids any non-Torah studies, like mathematics and English, to be taught in its yeshivot. See https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/2108588/is-degel-hatorah-on-the-way-to-a-split-with-agudas-yisrael.html.  In contrast, the

American UTJ embraces  secular learning.    

^[x]  During these happenings, I had resigned from the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly, received Orthodox ordinations from R. Oscar Fasman of Chicago’s [actually, Skokie] Hebrew Theological College, R. Moshe D. Tendler of Yeshiva University’s Rabbinical program [RIETS] and R. Mordecai Eliahu, at the time the Sefardic  Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, and then joined the Rabbinical Council of America, served as the Rabbi of Congregation Israel of Springfield, N.J. and B’nai Israel Congregation, the recently revived Orthodox Synagogue of downtown Baltimore, Maryland. 

^[xi] Menachem Elon. Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles (Jerusalem:  Magnes, 1973), pp. 1210-1212, is impatient with the major Jewish codes because, to his view, codes radically and artificially freeze Jewish Law   in place and time.  For a similar  view  from a source critical rather than jurisprudential perspective,  see  David Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justified Law (Cambridge and London:  Harvard, 1986), where R. Halivni shows that the Mishnah’s apodictic diction, which is similar to the syntax of Codes, is the exception to the Rabbis’ preference for Midrash Halakhah and the Babylonian Talmud’s stammaitic, justificatory discourse [p.  115].

^[xii] This is the major  difference between the Israeli and American UTJ’s. The  Israeli  UTJ rejects non-sacred learning, while the American  UTJ embraces it. 

^[xiii] My thanks  go to R. Daniel Landes,  who  introduced me to this idiom.

^[xv] According to  mAvot  1:15 and 3:12, this deportment is mandatory.

^[xvi] Leviticus 19:18 very  subtly commands  intense love,  as the Hebrew  verb “to love” is a transitive verb.  Deuteronomy 6:5 employs the Hebrew particle “et,” which marks  direct objects, when commanding the loving of the Lord. The ”lamed” prefix, when preceding a noun and following a verb, also marks  the direct object of  a transitive verb. This ”lamed” accusative marker is standard in Aramaic, as in the Passover poem, Had Gadya.

^[xvii] As described at Maimonides, De’ot   5:1  and 5.

^[xviii] bRosh ha-Shanah   34b. See also comprehensive summary at https://www.etzion.org.il/he/halakha/orach-chaim/prayer-and-blessings/repetition-shemoneh-esrei-1 and https://www.yeshiva.org.il/midrash/2789.

^[xix] mPe’ah 1:1. It was reported a family member that  R. Halivni, who resided in Jerusalem’s high rise Wolfson Towers, would not avail himself of the building’s Shabbat elevator, even though rabbinic decrees do not apply to the infirmed [see bKetubbot 60a and Shulhan ‘Aruch 328:14]. This “stricture” testifies to the degree R. Halivni took Torah to heart.        

^[xx] My preparation for Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu’s ordination included  Bet Yosef and Kaf ha-Hayyim and my learning under R. Tendler’s supervision was a personal tutorial in R. Moshe Feinstein’s method, mind, and approach to religious leadership. R. Halivni pushed me to formulate my own approach to resolving Halakhic conflict, being both fair to my questioners and honest to God.

^[xxi] Shulhan ‘Aruch Hoshen Mishpat 34:1-3.

^[xxii] Deuteronomy 21:23.

^[xxiii] Shulhan ‘Aruch Hoshen Mishpat 34:4.

^[xxiv] Ibid. 34:11.

^[xxv] mAvot 1:5

^[xxvi]  mAvot 1:1.

^[xxvii]  mAvot   4:8.

^[xxviii] See my "Legal Positivism and Contemporary Legal Discourse," The Jewish Law Annual  6 (1987), republished in ed., Martin P. Golding,  Jewish Law and Legal Theory, (New York: l Press, 1993).

^[xxix] Hans Kelsen, Pure Theory of Law, trans. Max Knight (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, University of California, 1967), p. 5 and pp. 198-214, and https://plato.stanford.edu,/entries/lawphil-theory/. For Legal Positivists, the judge applies the legal norm, but does not create or legislate norms.

^[xxx] This was the teaching culture at JTS 50 years  ago.  In my JTS classes in Hebrew literature, the literary texts   were read along with relevant literary theory, providing the student with a logical, methodological toolbox.

^[xxxi] The synagogue of the UTJ had a partition between the  women’s and men’s section, which followed Ashkenazi Orthodox practice.

^[xxxii]bMegillah 28a.

^[xxxiii] Ibid., 28b.

^[xxxiv] Legal Realism maintains that judges apply their policy intuitions to generate Law. See https://intranet.mruni.ot 10”/upload/iblock/b15/008_tumonis.pdf. Orthodox  Legal Realists  often invoke Da’as Torah to justify their dismissing or ignoring problematic Oral Torah norms. My Legal Positivism moved me to don tefillin on the intermediate festival day, because the permission to write  tefillin the intermediate festival day indicates that tefillin are to be worn at that time occasion [bMo’ed Qatan 19a]. At Laws of Tefillin, Mezuza and Torah scroll, 4:10, the Sefardi  Maimonides observes that tefillin are not worn on Shabbat or Yamim Tovim, that is full holidays, clearly implying what bMo’ed Qatan 19a is requiring, that . The  Ashkenazi school of Rashi [Mahzor Vitry, n. 513], R. Asher, Laws of Tefillin n. 15, and R. Isserles’ gloss to Shulhan ‘Aruch Orah Hayyim 31:2 articulate the old Ashkenazi tradition, which conforms  and confirms the canonical record at bMo’ed Qatan 19a. At Bet Yosef Orah Hayyim 31 Maran concedes that the original Sefardi practice was that tefillin be worn on the intermediate festival day, but just like the Greek classics were being discovered during the Renaissance, Maran mistook Zohar Hadash 2:8, Canticles, which disallows tefillin donning on the intermediate festival day, to be composed by the Tanna R. Shim’on bar Yohai, and consequently assigned Oral Torah canonicity to the work.  Simply put, the forbidding of tefillin on the intermediate festival is based, or biased, not upon a “’holy’ Zohar” vetted and approved by the Bet Din ha-Gadol, but on a forgery. At stake in this debate is whether ”tradition” is an integrity driven spiritual ethos or an inertia driven nostalgic preference.

Hear Rabbi J. J. Schacter at  http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/728404#, who demonstrates  that the Zohar often overrode Halakhic principle, and see Israel M. Ta Shma, Haa-Nigleh she-ba-Nistar:  le-Heqer Sheqi’ei Halakhah be-Sefer ha-Zohar (Tel Aviv: Kibbutz ha-Meuchad, 2001). This very debate is an example of Orthodox religious pluralism. Each side believes that the other side errs, but as we discovered in the Laws of Testimony, a generally observant Jew who, perhaps in error, sincerely believing that she or he is behaving in accord with the Halakhah does not forfeit one’s bona fides. Therefore, while my understanding leads me to the position that tefillin are mandatory on intermediate festival days, I may not condemn another Jew who on principle will rule according to the Zohar or Maran. One has a right to be wrong in the eyes of the “other."

^[xxxvi]mYevamot 10:1.

^[xxxvii]  Commentary to the Mishnah, ad. loc.

^[xxxviii] Commentary to the Mishnah, ad. loc.

^[xxxix] bYevamot 88a.  Another stammaitic  voice here formulates the policy “because of the ‘chained’ woman[’s plight] the rabbis ruled   leniently.” loc. cit.

^[xl] Deuteronomy 19:15.

^[xli] Shulhan ‘Aruch ‘Even ha-‘Ezer 17:58.

^[xlii] In an oral communication, R. Moshe D. Tendler explained that   a whole non-kosher animal is called a beriyya [a “creation”], whose  very being constitutes a quantity the consumption of which is a Torah violation, even if its bulk is less than the “olive” standard benchmark [bMakkot 13a]. However, the animal must be visible to the naked human eye. One-celled animals do not meet this benchmark, and are therefore not legally present as a point of Jewish Law.  Similarly, a mixture that  possesses one unidentifiable, undetectable part non-kosher contaminant to fifty-nine parts of kosher edibles is both an empirical reality and a legal nullity.

^[xliii] See R. Ahron Soloveitchik, Logic of the Heart, Logic of the Mind: Wisdom and Reflections on Topics of our Times (Genesis Jerusalem Press, 5751/1991), 45-57, which to his view “undermine(s) k’dushas haTorah [the sanctity/authority of Torah].” p. 46.  R. Soloveitchik, who also graduated from NYU, either opposes the exposure of rabbinic fallibility in the transmission of the Oral Tradition or he  disputes the “humanizing” of the Oral Torah, which would deny the “great rabbi” the right, power, and privilege of intuiting rather than demonstrating his position,.

^[xliv] https://thelehrhaus.com/timely-thoughts/the-maculate-conception-introducing-a-symposium-on-rabbi-prof-david-weiss-halivni/. See also Dr. Elana Stein Hain, “a student of Prof. Halivni over the course of twenty years, addressing his pathbreaking theory about the formation of the Babylonian Talmud, the intuitions and methods that he developed around his historical theory, and the abiding love of Torah study that animated his entire project.” Ibid.  This perspective is not  compatible with John Dewey’s militant secularism that came into neighboring JTS via Mordecai Kaplan’s naturalistic “modern ideology.”

^[xlv] bBerachot 6oa and elsewhere.  See https://www.hamichlol.org.il/%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%97_%D7%93%D7%94%D7%99%D7%AA%D7%A8%D7%90_%D7%A2%D7%93%D7%99%D7%A3. 

^[xlvi] This recalled rendering is the gist but not my exact words at the time which I no longer remember because  I failed  to record the comment at that time.

^[xlvii] This doctrine, that holiness is generated by obeying God’s commandments, first appears  at Numbers 15:40, and occurs in the Rabbinic commandment blessing formula, “who has sanctified us by means of  the commandments.” 

^[xlviii] See Isaiah 60:21 and Maimonides, Teshuva 8:4.

Afterlife in Tanakh

There is a paucity of explicit references to afterlife—whether a bodily resurrection or a soul world—in Tanakh. The Torah promises this-worldly rewards and punishments for faithfulness or lack thereof to God and the Torah. It does not promise heaven for righteousness, nor does it threaten hell or the absence of heaven for sinfulness. Given the ancient world’s belief in, and even obsession with immortality and afterlife, the Torah’s silence is all the more remarkable.

Aside from the lack of explicit references to afterlife in the Torah, one might have expected an appeal to afterlife in the Book of Job. For all the arguments raised by Job’s so-called friends, they never invoke afterlife in their attempts to vindicate Job’s unfair suffering. Rather, Job and his friends agree with the biblical premise that ultimate justice must occur during one’s lifetime. Job insisted that his suffering was unjust, whereas his friends assumed that he must have deserved his punishment. [1]

Assessing the Near Absence of Explicit References to Afterlife in Tanakh

Daniel, a late biblical book, does explicitly mention a bodily resurrection:

Many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to eternal life, others to reproaches, to everlasting abhorrence. And the knowledgeable will be radiant like the bright expanse of sky, and those who lead the many to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever. (Dan. 12:2–3)

In his Treatise on the Resurrection, Rambam considers this passage to be the only explicit reference to resurrection in Tanakh. [2]

For some time, academic scholars generally concluded that since Tanakh does not explicitly mention resurrection until the Book of Daniel, resurrection must have been a later belief that crept into Israel toward the end of the biblical period from another religion, most likely Zoroastrianism.[3] Until that point, Israel’s prophets believed that when people die, they never return. This academic consensus ran against Jewish tradition, which insists that belief in resurrection goes back to the Torah, even if it is only alluded to and not mentioned explicitly:

The following have no portion [in the World to Come]: He who maintains that resurrection is not a biblical doctrine,[4] the Torah was not divinely revealed, and an epikoros…. (Sanhedrin 90a)

In 2006, however, Jon D. Levenson (Harvard University) published a book, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life. He demonstrates that Jewish belief in resurrection has an extensive range of biblical antecedents, and that it did not simply appear late in the biblical period. Rather, resurrection is an essential component in Israel’s redemption, which itself redeems history. Thus, the classical rabbinic position is fundamentally correct, that the concepts underlying the resurrection trace back to the beginning of the biblical period.

Levenson explains that contemporary scholarship, rooted in the modern world with its emphasis on individualism, has a difficult time understanding the biblical concept of identity. If one asks, “Will I have life after death?” one already misses the heart of the matter. The biblical conception of afterlife is grounded in an identity inextricably linked to the nation of Israel, and ancestors and descendants also are completely linked. Jewish belief in resurrection is rooted in God’s promises to Israel, His power over life and death, and His preference for life. Although Daniel was the first to mention resurrection explicitly, the ideas underlying this resurrection trace back to the earliest texts in Tanakh.

Tanakh Assumes Afterlife

In addition to Levenson’s thesis, James Kugel cites several biblical verses that clearly presume an existence beyond life in this world.[5] For example, Abraham “was gathered to his kin” after he died:

And Abraham breathed his last, dying at a good ripe age, old and contented; and he was gathered to his kin. (Gen. 25:8)

Abraham could be “gathered to his kin,” regardless of where his ancestors were buried, and regardless of their relative righteousness. After all, Abraham rose to religious heights infinitely above his pagan father Terah.

Numerous other biblical references similarly suggest that death is not absolutely final. There are two mysterious deaths in Tanakh: God took Enoch (Gen. 5:24), and Elijah was taken to heaven in a fiery chariot (II Kings 2:11). Malachi prophesies that Elijah will return in the future as the harbinger of the messianic era (Mal. 3:23–24). A witch evidently conjured up Samuel’s spirit (I Sam. 28:11–14), and Elijah and Elisha revived dead children (I Kings 17:19–23; II Kings 4:32–36).

From these and several other references, Kugel convincingly concludes that

Some decades ago, the cliché about the Hebrew Bible was that it really has no notion of an afterlife or the return of the soul to God or a last judgment or a world to come. But such a claim will not withstand careful scrutiny. [6]

Why Does Tanakh Give Afterlife So Little Attention?

We have seen that Tanakh regularly alludes to a belief in an afterlife despite its not discussing it explicitly until the late Book of Daniel. Additionally, the notion of resurrection is fundamentally connected to beliefs that span back to the very beginnings of the biblical period. We now must ask, however, why does Tanakh give afterlife so little attention, and why is the covenant of the Torah entirely predicted on this-worldly existence?
Moshe David (Umberto) Cassuto sheds light on this issue in his analysis of the Garden of Eden narrative. There were two trees at the center of Eden. The Tree of Life seems supernatural. Were Adam and Eve to eat from it, they would have become immortal (Gen. 3:23). An expert in the literature of the ancient Near East, Cassuto observed that nearly every ancient mythology had a tree, a plant, or something else of life. This mythology reflects the obsessive quest for immortality in the ancient world.

In stark contrast with Israel’s surrounding cultures, the Torah decisively downplays the Tree of Life. That tree becomes significant to the narrative only after Adam and Eve sinned by eating from the Tree of Knowledge and were expelled from the Garden of Eden. God then sends Cherubim to prevent Adam and Eve from eating of the Tree of Life (Gen. 3:22–24).

To understand why the Torah would diminish the role of the Tree of Life, we must consider the tree that is central to the narrative, namely, the Tree of Knowledge. Whereas the Tree of Life appears supernatural, the Tree of Knowledge seems to have been a regular fruit tree. The Sages suggested that the Tree of Knowledge was a regular fruit, whether a fig, grapevine, wheat, or etrog (Gen. Rabbah 15:7). The effects of the fruit derived from God’s prohibition, rather than from any inherent supernatural property of the fruit.

Even though the Tree of Life was prevalent in other ancient literatures, the Tree of Knowledge is otherwise unattested. The Torah is a revolution in human history, shifting focus away from nonexistent mythical fruits that give immortality and replacing them with an emphasis on developing a genuine relationship with God. It teaches that we must live religious-moral lives and take personal responsibility for our actions. The ultimate vision of the prophets is a messianic world, which will achieve a perfected, religious-moral society.

Tellingly, the Book of Proverbs transforms the Tree of Life into Torah and wisdom:

She is a tree of life to those who grasp her, and whoever holds on to her is happy. (Prov. 3:18) [7]

The Jewish Tree of Life is Torah and wisdom, representing a lifelong religious quest, rather than a supernatural fruit that promises physical immortality. [8]

Despite the purposeful emphasis on this-worldly conduct and reward and punishment throughout Tanakh, rabbinic Judaism incorporated afterlife as an essential part of its system of understanding divine justice in this world. When did this change occur?

Malachi and Daniel: Using Afterlife to Vindicate Unfairness

The problem of the righteous suffering and the wicked prospering is a prominent difficulty that runs throughout Tanakh. The classical biblical wisdom approach to justify unfairness, particularly emphasized in Psalms and Proverbs, was to insist that the suffering of the righteous or the success of the wicked was a temporary state. Any injustices would be rectified during the lifetimes of the individuals. Job and Ecclesiastes challenge this approach, leaving unfairness as a matter that lies beyond human comprehension. [9]

Toward the end of the biblical period, the Books of Malachi and Daniel addressed a new situation. For the first time, the faithful suffered precisely because they were righteous, whereas the sinners were successful as a consequence of their wickedness. Divine justice was under siege, and many righteous Jews were sinking into despair and losing faith. No longer could one appeal to the classical prophetic responses rooted in the Torah, that national suffering occurs when Israel sins. It was specifically the most righteous people who were suffering, rather than the entire nation.

Rather than offering any short-term solutions, Malachi appealed to the messianic redemption to vindicate history:

You have wearied the Lord with your talk. But you ask, “By what have we wearied [Him]?” By saying, “All who do evil are good in the sight of the Lord, and in them He delights,” or else, “Where is the God of justice?” Behold, I am sending My messenger to clear the way before Me, and the Lord whom you seek shall come to His Temple suddenly. As for the angel of the covenant that you desire, he is already coming…He shall act like a smelter and purger of silver; and he shall purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they shall present offerings in righteousness. Then the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem shall be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of yore and in the years of old…And you shall come to see the difference between the righteous and the wicked, between him who has served the Lord and him who has not served Him. (Mal. 2:17; 3:1–4, 18)

Daniel invoked the resurrection that would occur during this period of redemption to vindicate injustices (Dan. 12:2–3). The innovation of Malachi and Daniel was not belief in the messiah or resurrection. Rather, their primary innovation was in linking the classical problem of unfairness with afterlife. Their appeal to the future to vindicate unfairness was a formal concession that ultimate justice will not occur during one’s lifetime.

The Sages followed in this spirit, conceding that one requires afterlife to vindicate injustices in this world:

It was taught: Rabbi Jacob says, there is no precept in the Torah, where reward is stated by its side, from which you cannot infer the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. Thus, in connection with honoring parents it is written: “That your days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with you” (Deut. 5:16). Again in connection with the law of letting [the dam] go from the nest it is written: “That it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days” (Deut. 22:7). Now, in the case where a man’s father said to him, “Go up to the top of the building and bring me down some young birds,” and he went up to the top of the building, let the dam go and took the young ones, and on his return he fell and was killed-where is this man’s length of days, and where is this man’s happiness? But “that your days may be prolonged” refers to the world that is wholly long, and “that it may go well with you” refers to the world that is wholly good. (Hullin 142a)

Heaven and Resurrection: A Medieval Debate

A second major development in the Jewish discussion of afterlife arose with Rambam’s efforts to bridge Torah and Greek philosophy.[10] Rambam was enamored by the Platonic notion of a soul-world afterlife, and discusses heaven with great passion. Simultaneously, Rambam espoused the classical Jewish belief in messiah and the resurrection. Therefore, he concluded that in the messianic era there will be a resurrection, but then everyone will die again and return to their ideal existence in heaven.

In order to conflate the prophetic ideal of messiah with the Platonic ideal of a heavenly afterlife, Rambam insisted that the prophets and sages longed for the messianic age so that they could live without distraction and thereby work on earning a share in the World to Come:

The prophets and sages longed for the messianic era, not so that they could rule the world, not that they could dominate pagans, not to receive honor from the nations, nor to eat and drink and be merry. Rather, [they longed for it] so that they would be free to learn Torah and wisdom, and there would be no oppressor or distraction. In this way they would earn a share in the World to Come, as we explained in the Laws of Repentance. (Laws of Kings 12:4) [11]

Rambam’s preference of a soul-world over the biblical ideas of a this-world messianic era and resurrection did not go unnoticed or unchallenged. Some of Rambam’s critics accused him of denying the resurrection altogether, leading to his scathing retort in his Treatise on Resurrection. Granting his resolute belief in the resurrection, however, there is little question that Rambam radically shifted emphasis away from the biblical conception of a this-world ideal society to a soul-world ideal for each individual. [12]

This debate runs throughout all of Tanakh. For example, the most prevalent metaphorical interpretation in Jewish tradition casts the Song of Songs as symbolizing the historical covenantal relationship between God and Israel as a community (e.g., Targum, R. Saadyah Gaon, Rashi, Rashbam, and Ibn Ezra).[13] In contrast, Rambam interprets the Song of Songs as a symbol of the love between the religious individual and God. [14]

Rambam also insisted that a prophet needed to reach the highest intellectual and religious levels as a prerequisite to receiving prophetic revelation (Guide for the Perplexed II:32–45). In contrast, Rabbi Judah Halevi maintained that prophecy is a divine gift. Were God to deem it necessary to send a prophet on a mission, anyone could receive a prophetic message (Kuzari, e.g., 1:4; 1:87). Abarbanel (on Amos 1:1; 7:14) supports Rabbi Halevi’s view, insisting that a prophet’s mission to his people, and not his personal perfection, is the defining characteristic of biblical prophecy. Abarbanel concluded that Rambam derived his conception of prophecy, which favors individual spirituality over one’s communal mission, from Greek philosophy, and this understanding is inconsistent with traditional Jewish thought.

To summarize, the Torah and prophets emphasize communal perfection. The ideal of Tanakh is the messianic age, a perfected society and world harmony. The plain sense of the biblical texts certainly favors the position of Rambam’s opponents over that of Rambam, who shifted attention to individual perfection and the soul-world.

Contemporary Applications

This debate is not simply an unverifiable, abstract philosophical disagreement. One’s belief in afterlife profoundly informs one’s ultimate goals, and directly affects how one lives life in this world. If one’s goal is a personal heaven, one could live in a cave completely removed from society, study Torah, pray, observe the Torah’s commandments, and reflect philosophically on God. In contrast, the prophets always lived among the people despite all the heartache that entailed, as their goal was to improve their society and bring it closer to the ideas of the Torah. They longed for Israel to become a model nation that would in turn inspire all humanity to serve God.

More broadly, the discussion of afterlife has direct implications on how our contemporary society functions. Much of secular society denies or downplays afterlife. This position leads to the conclusion that this life is all there is. Some idealists use this conclusion to do everything they can to make a positive impact during their lifetimes. Many others conclude that life has little ultimate purpose, and they overemphasize this-worldliness and self-indulgence.

At the other side of the spectrum, some religious communities teach that this world is only a way station to build up points to earn eternal heavenly reward. This system of belief dangerously gives all the power to the religious clerics, who can tell their followers what it takes to earn a place in heaven. When clerics have upright ethical values, they can achieve phenomenal results. However, when clerics preach murder in the name of their religion, it is beyond horrifying. It also is critical to stress that terrorists who murder in the name of their religion are not crazy. They are making a perfectly reasonable decision within their religious system by giving up a temporary and relatively meaningless life in this world in exchange for eternal bliss. The problem here is with the system itself, which, when dominated by clerics and other leaders preaching murder, is truly evil. [15]

In a completely different arena that should not in any way be likened to the above discussion, the Orthodox Jewish yeshiva system confronts a different challenge pertaining to belief in the afterlife. In many yeshivot, particularly those that teach boys, Tanakh receives woefully inadequate attention.[16] Concurrently, many learn the exceptional eighteenth century work by Rabbi Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, the Mesilat Yesharim (Path of the Just).

This remarkable book focuses on self-perfection, and is worthy of in-depth study. However, learning Mesilat Yesharim without Tanakh creates an imbalance in the yeshiva curriculum. Rabbi Luzzatto introduces his work by stating that the purpose of our existence is to gain afterlife:

Our Sages of blessed memory have taught us that man was created for the sole purpose of rejoicing in God and deriving pleasure from the splendor of His Presence; for this is true joy and the greatest pleasure that can be found. The place where this joy may truly be derived is the World to Come, which was expressly created to provide for it; but the path to the object of our desires is this world. (Mesilat Yesharim chapter 1) [17]

Students of the prophets never would stop there, since the prophets were concerned with the perfection of their society. Learning Mesilat Yesharim without learning the soaring visions of the prophets sends the message that personal religious growth lies at the heart of religious Jewish experience. Although of course we aspire to individual personal growth (and should learn Mesilat Yesharim!), this aspiration must be accompanied by the prophetic imperative to channel our religious energies to improve the broader community. It is the longing for the messianic era, and not personal afterlife, that should shape the heart of our religious experience and actions. Lacking this prophetic vision, many students may become connected to God and the Torah, but isolate themselves from the broader community.

If there is hope for understanding and resolution, it is through serious engagement with Tanakh, which forms the very heart and soul of the Jewish vision. Individual religious strengths must be developed and channeled toward the betterment of society. The messianic visions of the prophets are for all humanity, and not just Israel. These beliefs foster a love for humanity, rather than just those who share our particular beliefs.

Tragically, we live in a world where billions overemphasize afterlife, and billions underemphasize it. Most Jews no longer stand by or even understand the alternative of the Torah and the prophets. But the vision of Tanakh has the power to change the world if we will listen to its message and promote it.

[1] There are several passages where Job seems to accept the finality of death. For example, “As a cloud fades away, so whoever goes down to Sheol does not come up; he returns no more to his home; his place does not know him” (Job 7:9). Based on this verse, Rava insisted that “this shows that Job denied the resurrection of the dead” (Bava Batra 16a). Cf. Job 10:20–22; 14:1–10.

[2] Several other biblical verses employ resurrection terminology. Three prominent examples are, (1) “He will destroy death forever. My Lord God will wipe the tears away from all faces and will put an end to the reproach of His people over all the earth—for it is the Lord who has spoken” (Is. 25:8). (2) “Oh, let Your dead revive! Let corpses arise! Awake and shout for joy, you who dwell in the dust!—for Your dew is like the dew on fresh growth; You make the land of the shades come to life” (Is. 26:19). (3) Ezekiel’s celebrated vision of the Dry Bones (Ezek. 37:1–14). However, these prophecies refer to God’s miraculous restoration of Israel in the messianic era, rather than the bodily resurrection of individual people. In contrast, Daniel refers specifically to the bodily resurrection of individuals so that God can mete out ultimate justice onto them.

[3] See, e.g., Neil Gillman, The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 1997), p. 96. See also Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven, CT: Yale, 2006), p. x, where he cites the scholarly consensus that Zoroastrianism is the likely candidate for having influenced Jewish thought regarding resurrection. Levenson goes on to reject much of that scholarly consensus.

[4] Not all versions of the Mishnah contain the text that one must believe that resurrection is “from the Torah,” min ha-Torah. Rambam stated that one must believe in the resurrection, but does not insist that one must believe that it is from the Torah. See sources in Marc Shapiro, The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles Reappraised (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civiliation, 2004), p. 152, n. 62.

[5] James L. Kugel, The Great Poems of the Bible: A Reader’s Companion with new Translations (New York: Free Press, 1999), pp. 192–210.

[6] Kugel, pp. 209–210.

[7] See also Prov. 11:30; 13:12; 15:4.

[8] It also is significant that the Ark, which contains the tablets of the Ten Commandments, is guarded by Cherubim. The Tabernacle represents the only other appearance of Cherubim in the Torah aside from the Garden of Eden, where they guard the Tree of Life (Gen. 3:24).

[9] For discussion and sources pertaining to this issue in Psalms, Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes, see Hayyim Angel, Vision from the Prophet and Counsel from the Elders: A Survey of Nevi’im and Ketuvim (New York: OU Press, 2013), pp. 227–234, 241–248, 249–257, 288–300.

[10] See sources and discussion in Neil Gillman, The Death of Death, pp. 143–172.

[11] See Rambam, Laws of Repentance, chapter 8.

[12] Louis Jacobs maintains that Rambam was the only medieval Jewish philosopher who committed to the idea that the future existence is in an incorporeal state in a soul world rather than in this world (Principles of the Jewish Faith [New York: Basic Books, 1964], p. 407).

[13] This was not the only midrashic understanding, however. In the summary words of David M. Carr (with minor transliteration changes): “While we see the male fairly consistently linked to God, we find the female of the Song of Songs related to the house of study (b. Eruvin 21b; b. Bava Batra 7b), an individual sage (t. Hagiga 2:3), Moses (Mekhilta Beshallah Shirah 9), Joshua the son of Nun (Sifrei Nitzavim [305] and parallels), local court (b. Sanhedrin 36b; b. Yevamot 101a; b. Kiddushin 49b and b. Sanhedrin 24a; cf. also b. Pesahim 87a), or the community of Israel as a whole (m. Ta’anit 4:8; t. Sotah 9:8; b. Shabbat 88; b. Yoma 75a; b. Sukkot 49b; b. Eruvin 21b; b. Ta’anit 4:a; Mekhilta Beshallah Shira 3)” (“The Song of Songs as a Microcosm of the Canonization and Decanonization Process,” in Canonization and Decanonization, ed. A. van der Kooij and K. van der Toorn [Leiden: Brill, 1998], pp. 175–176).

[14] See Laws of Repentance 10:3; Guide for the Perplexed III:51. See Yosef Murciano, “Rambam and the Interpretation of the Song of Songs” (Hebrew), in Teshurah le-Amos: A Collection of Studies in Biblical Interpretation Presented in Honor of Amos Hakham, ed. Moshe Bar Asher et al. (Alon Shevut: Tevunot, 2007), pp. 85–108. For an exploration of the religious value of adopting the views of Rashi and Rambam in one’s religious experience, see R. Shalom Carmy, “Perfect Harmony,” First Things (December, 2010); “On Cleaving as Identification: Rabbi Soloveitchik’s Account of Devekut in U-Vikkashtem Mi-Sham,” Tradition 41:2 (Summer 2008), pp. 100–112.

[15] For an illuminating study of the eradication of the idea of sin from Western literature, reflecting the frightening conclusion that many in the contemporary Western World have essentially stricken the concept of evil from their vocabularies and mindsets, see Andrew Delbanco, The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995).

[16] For analysis of why this has been so, see, for example, Mordechai Breuer, “Bible in the Curriculum of the Yeshiva” (Hebrew), in Mehkarim ba-Mikra u-ba-Hinnukh: Presented to Prof. Moshe Ahrend, ed. Dov Rappel (Jerusalem: Touro College, 1996), pp. 223–235; Frederick E. Greenspahn, “Jewish Ambivalence towards the Bible,” Hebrew Studies 48 (2007), pp. 7–21; Moshe Sokolow, “U-Va Le-Tzion Go’el, Kedushah De-Sidra, and the Yeshiva Curriculum,” in Mi-Tokh Ha-Ohel: The Weekday Prayers, ed. Daniel Z. Feldman and Stuart W. Halpern (New Milford, CT: Maggid, 2014), pp. 293–301.

[17] Translation in Shraga Silverstein, The Path of the Just (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1980), p. 17.

Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn (1856-1935), who lived and worked in Jerusalem and in the United States at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, was born in Tzfat. His thought has intrigued many Jews who strive to combine Judaism and modernity, religion and life, thereby seeking to resolve the conflict between their firm commitment to Halakha and their growing openness to the modern world.

R. Hayyim Hirschensohn was one of the few among the Religious- Zionist thinkers who confronted the challenges of modernity and grappled with the intricate halakhic problems inherent in the establishment of a modern Jewish state. For the first time, a systematic attempt was made to answer the question whether it is possible to establish a modern and democratic Jewish state on the very foundations of the Halakha; whether a state that empowers the people with legislative authority, embraces modern values and develops modern social, cultural, and economic order is compatible with the Halakha. This question is not restricted to the political realm. R. Hirschensohn would argue that the Torah goes hand in hand with the realities of life. In his view, within the Torah there are inherent mechanisms that make it possible, in principle, to accommodate the Torah to the ever-changing needs of life. His teaching entertains the possibility that the Torah is not opposed to most of the values that modernity offers to the believer. On the contrary, it is possible to re-establish full Jewish life by responding and opening up to the surrounding modern world.

His parents, among the founders of the Hibat Zion movement, emigrated to Israel from Pinsk in Belarus in 1847. When he was 8, the family moved to Jerusalem and became one of the dominant families in their contribution to the Jewish Yishuv there. When he grew older, Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn was extremely active with Ben Yehuda in introducing the Hebrew language as the living language of the Jewish people. He established a magazine which researched Judaism, and was dedicated to current issues. Rabbi Hirschensohn also taught Judaism in the Lemel School. Due to his unconventional views and progressive educational methods, he was boycotted by the ultra-Orthodox stream in Israel. He emigrated to the United States and in 1903, settled in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he wrote most of his books. Almost all of his books deal with the question of how the Torah can be relevant and integrated into the modern life of a modern Jewish state.

Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn was much admired by Jews of all streams in Hudson County. Upon his arrival in the United States, he became involved in public life. He invested a great deal of effort in Jewish education, and as Head of the Education Committee of the Union of Rabbis, he established the first Hebrew Kindergarten. He was among the first members of Mizrachi, and established deep friendships with Rabbi Reines, and Rabbi Dov Abramowitz of Saint Louis, and Rabbi Shafer of Baltimore among others. Rabbi Hirschensohn was very involved in the American Zionist movements, was aware of prevalent thought at the time, and he was influenced by American thought and culture on the issue of a Jewish State.

R. Hirschensohn stands out as a halakhist par excellence. Most of the thinkers of his generation dealt with the questions of their time in journalistic, contemplative, philosophical, and prosaic ways. A case in point is the thought of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook, R. Hirschensohn's contemporary. Rav Kook, too, saw himself as a member of the Jewish Renaissance Generation, the generation that witnessed the national revival of the Jewish people. As is well known, he was active in the renewed Jewish Yishuv in the land of Israel, and his initiatives often stirred a heated debate. He addressed contemporary issues by writing poetical philosophy unique in its kind, but his thoughts do not provide concrete answers to the question whether a modern, halakhically oriented Jewish state is possible; whether the religious-Zionist linkage between the Torah and modernity is viable.

R. Hirschensohn undertook the challenge to demonstrate that Halakha is potentially capable of coming to grips with contemporary questions. As a rule, he perceived the essence of the "trouble of Judaism" in modern times in the apprehensive reluctance of the Rabbis to deal with these urgent questions. In his opinion, this conservatism had a detrimental effect. It distanced the young generation from the Torah, while at the same time reinforced the feeling of the Orthodox and the secular public alike that the Torah was incapable of meeting the challenges of the new era. In writing his books, R. Hirschensohn was not motivated by the desire to cater to the wider public. Rather, he aimed at the halakhic scholars of his generation. By introducing a halakhic debate on modern problems that was conveyed in conventional rabbinical language, he was striving to convince them of the ability of the Halakha to resolve such intricate problems.

In 1918 Rabbi Hirschensohn participated in 21st Zionist Conference in Pittsburgh chaired by Judge Louis Brandeis, where all communities were represented, and outlined a plan for the establishment of the State of Israel on the basis of justice and equality. This American Zionist thought was based on the similarity they saw between the writings of the Jewish prophets and the basis of American freedoms and equalities, which attracted Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn.

The delegates to the Conference adopted the resolution with respect to the establishment of a democratic government in Israel. Some of the delegates to the Conference felt embarrassed due to the difference between modern democratic political thought and the Historic Jewish ideal of a Kingdom.

In order to resolve this issue, Rabbi Hirschensohn volunteered to research "A discussion of questions regarding the conduct of a Jewish government in Palestine from the standpoint of the Halakha". In the introduction of Malki Bakodesh he writes:

There is nothing in biblical law and Halakha which contradicts in any way progress or common sense. The objective of my research is to show that Halakha does not pose any obstacle to the development of private life or the life of an entire nation.

His experience at the Zionist Conference motivated him to write his six volumes of Responsa, Malki Bakodesh, and in addition he wrote approximately 40 books in total.

R. Hirschensohn devotes his voluminous Responsa book Malki Bakodesh to a halakhic discussion on contemporary questions. In writing this work, he envisages the urgent problems that the Jewish public confronted at the beginning of the 20th century (and which are still engaging our attention, as if an entire century had not elapsed since).

Following are three examples:

1) What regime is suitable in the Jewish state - democracy or monarchy?

In R. Hirschensohn's words: "In these days of democracy when kings are toppling from their thrones and monarchy rightly seems to be doomed, when war is being waged against autocratic powers to make the world safe for democracy, how is it possible for us to consider the setting up of a hereditary king to reign over us in Palestine as Jewish tradition demands?" His answer was that:

There is a definite relation between the commandments of appointing a King and the eradication of Amalek, and the Building of the Temple for sacrificial offerings. The King was needed to accomplish the destruction of Amalek. After completing this task, his next duty was to build the Temple for sacrifices. Moreover, the King had to be appointed only through a Prophet. (Malki Bakodesh, Part I, p. 16 - Foreword).

As there is no longer Amalek, nor prophets, there is no longer the Mitzva of appointing a King. As such, Rabbi Hirschensohn argues that the Mitzva which would be appropriate in modern times would be to appoint a democratic government which would be elected by the people in their entirety, men and women equally. According to him, the desired from of government according to the Torah is a democracy.

2) How should the phenomenon of secularism and the secular Jews be treated?

Upon his arrival in the United States, Rabbi Hirschensohn understood that secularism was a fact of life. He understood that secularism could not be solved by thinking that it was merely a temporary state. He proposed a more tolerant approach towards secular Jews and sought Halakhic solutions which would justify the modern state of affairs where Jews who were not Torah observant would still be part of the Jewish nation.

The solution he proposed was that Jewish identity would be based on Jewish nationalism rather than religion. There is no doubt that religion in a major component of the Jewish identity, but not the only one. As long as a Jew retains a bond to his people, he will continue to be thought of as a Jew for all intents and purposes, even though he is not Torah observant. As a result, Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn established a common basis for both religious and secular Jews.

3) What should be the status of women in the modern Jewish state?

One of the burning questions posed by Orthodox Jewry in the modern era was that of the Status of Women.

At its inception, Orthodoxy imagined it could ignore the immense change that was to be felt on the issue of the Status of Women. However Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn understood that the change had already happened whether or not it was happily accepted. The major point of disagreement between Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn, and other Orthodox Rabbis was how the status of women was perceived. Does their inferior social status reflect an ontological stand which sees the woman as an inferior to man, or is it merely a result of historical, cultural and social norms? Whereas Rabbi Kook and the Ultra-Orthodox see the inferior status as stemming from her ontological state, Rabbi Hirschensohn viewed the inferior status as an outcome of the cultural and social-economic realities prevalent in the world until the modern era:

All the power of men over women in historic times was due to the economic situation and the underdeveloped moral state, where it was thought that it was possible to be religious without morality... Religion together with morality is our sacred Torah.....and we should infer Halakha from these historic situations.....just like we need not live in tents simply because our forefathers did...... (Malki Bakodesh Part II, p. 192)

This is a modern theory per se in keeping with the theory of equality between men and women. There is no difference - ontological or social-- between men and women and the differences are in the area of religious ritual only.

In his books, R. Hirschensohn attempts to give a Halakhic response to the new historic situation which was created as the result of the Balfour Declaration. He states that it is imperative that we deal with national issues and not with problems of individual Jews as had been prevalent until now. It is now important to deal with the issues of national leadership of the nation which will soon earn its independence. The Balfour Declaration is the basis for the establishment of a Jewish State. R. Hirschensohn wished to prepare the Halakhic tools in order to create a constitutional base for a modern democratic Jewish state. These new problems include economic, societal, cultural, scientific and philosophical questions.

He argued that the Torah strides side by side with the necessities of life and the Torah never conflicts with life and progress. Torah includes inherent mechanisms which enable it to suit changing needs:

There is nothing in Biblical Law and in the Halakha opposed in any way to the progress of civilization or to the rule of common sense. This is a fundamental principle by which we must be guided (Malki Bakodesh, Vol. I, p. 15 - Foreword).

One of the consequences of Rabbi Hirschensohn's school of thought is the argument that Judaism can be a full partner in the multicultural discourse in an open society in which a modern Jew finds himself. In addition to traditional religion, the modern Jew relates to a number of other contexts which may include cultural, societal, historic, moral and political components which build his world. In essence "Man" is a multicultural creature whose identity is created by the many worlds surrounding him. As such Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn nullifies the Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) view which seeks to isolate the Jew from the modern world and live only within the four walls of the Halakha. In essence Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn is continuing the Rambam's approach which sees Judaism in a broader context - as a Judaism that is influenced by both external and internal sources.

Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn's thoughts present clear and positive positions towards modern values such as: democracy, status of women, the autonomy of the individual, rationalism and moral considerations. He argues that "a priori" it cannot be that Halakha would contradict the achievements of civilization. He states that God himself wants his people to choose Torah voluntarily and of free will. The type of approach enables one to adopt the modern humanistic consciousness, one in which "Man" determines and molds his fate.

The question of "church and state" in Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn's thoughts reflects his efforts to combine the commitment to Halakha and adoption of modern values with respect to a free, egalitarian, democratic country, governed and ruled by the people. Under the assumption that the Jewish nation has a national and ethnic infrastructure, rather than only a religious one, Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn grants a common identity to religious and secular Jews.

Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn found sources of inspiration in the model of freedom and democracy he saw in America. He felt that the model of a Democratic Republic would most suit the Jewish state. In this type of democracy, the common history of the people, nation, religion, and culture would mold the identity of the Jewish people in a Jewish State in Israel.

1.           His major writings
2.          The contours of his thought
   1.          Revelation
   2.          liberal motifs in Rackman’s thought
   3.          Women
3.        Philosophy of Law
4.        Conclusion

                  __________________________________________-

1.           Rabbi Rackman’s Major Writings

Rabbi Emanuel Rackman’s [henceforth, ER] first book was a published version of his doctoral dissertation entitled Israel’s Emerging Constitution  [IEC] (1955)  This  monograph is the most cogently argued and least theological product of  Rackman writing.  Every sentence flows into the next, the line of argument is flawless, and it is written with a literary discipline that would not be replicated in future writing.  While a lover and advocate for Israel, Rackman’s political study of the emerging Israeli Constitution reflects a partisanship that draws upon a uniquely American sense of right.  For Rackman,   Israel’s elite controlled political power and did not take the concept of individual Rights, enshrined in the first ten amendments to the American Constitution, seriously.   According to Rackman, a written constitution that enshrined individual rights would have enhanced the moral quality of the Israeli political system.

Israel’s Labor Party’s marginalization of the Communist Left and the Right Wing Herut is, for ER, a denial of human dignity that the Law is morally obliged ought to protect.  In this volume, ER emerges as a probing, intellectual who happens to be an idiosyncratic Orthodox Jew with a fiercely liberal and philosophically urbane sensibility.  Natural Law theory provides Rackman with a perspective and rhetoric with which the Orthodox Jewish tradition and secular modernity might be synthesized.    While ER’s Judaic thinking evolved throughout his career, his view of political theory, developed in the early 50’s, remained constant  throughout his writing and this sensibility informed his treatment of halakhic issues that  re-emerge in his theological and halakhic writings.

ER’s second volume, One Man’s Judaism,  [OMJ]  presents a collection of writings which as a book was published  in 1970 and works out the system that first appeared in an earlier work first published in 1966 in the Commentary Symposium:  The Condition of Jewish Belief.  In this brief theological response , ER provides the contours of his unique “One Man’s Judaism.”  He believes in revelation, but is not a fundamentalist or like any other of the Orthodox respondents to the Symposium,  he accepts the Laws of the Covenant, but as a copartner with God and not a blindly obedient and mindlessly dutiful slave.  

ER asserts that Torah overlaps with Orthodoxy, but is not limited to Orthodoxy. In other words, Orthodoxy is the way the Torah that is usually applied in community, but the Torah is wider in scope than what is expected and accepted within Orthodoxy.  In other words, the religious forms of Orthodoxy do not exhaust the range of Halakhically legitimate religious expressions.   But ER is no secularist, either.  Responding to the hyper-rationalist Naturalism of Mordecai Kaplan, Rackman insists that a real, personal God did choose the Jews to be the “chosen people.”   His audience in this volume, which includes his essay on  Jewish belief,  is the Jew who wants to remain Orthodox in observance while living in and inhabiting the modern world,  professionally intellectually, and theologically.   For ER,  “Reconstructionists and Reform denigrate God’s role in applying God’s covenant;  some Orthodox denigrate the role of man.” [OMJ   173]  His middle position claims to be honest to God as well as to humanity that life’s actual realities.

Rackman’s final volume to date, Modern Halakhah for our Time [MHT] (1995), applies his vision of an expanding, flexible Jewish law, to issues currently convulsing within in the contemporary Orthodox community.   The moral reading of the Law takes into account the actual statute recorded in the Oral Torah canon, which must be read with integrity, and the life situation to which the legal norm must be applied.  Whereas in One Man’s Judaism ER implicitly argues that Torah is larger than the Orthodox orbit,  in Modern Halakhah for our Time, he explicitly includes those within the Conservative Movement who were, at the time of his writing,  committed to Halakhic Judaism.  Unlike most Orthodox thinkers, who apply the method of the analytic school, often referred to as “Brisk,”  and which often treats the inherited culture, called “Tradition” and considered to be  normative, ER borrows an idiom from Conservative Judaism when applying the definitions of Prof. Menachem Elon of the Hebrew University, locates himself  “Historical School.”    [1]   However, ER  refers not to the Historical School, which has become associated with Conservative Judaism, but with the Historical “approach.”   [OMJ 43-44] Well aware that history as an academic discipline  describes what is and rabbis, who function as judges, deal with normative issues of ought,  ER  applies his sense of morality and decency that he finds in the fabric of the laws to be the mpre engine that translates descriptions of fact into prescriptive, value laden norms.

II.  The Contours of ER’s Thought

1. Revelation

ER’s synthesis of a traditional Orthodox identity and liberal social politics translate into a religious sensibility that stresses a modern religious mindset according to which humanity participates in Revelation. [2]   He concedes that like Socrates, he is seen as a corruptor of the youth because he preaches that Judaism encourages doubt. [OMJ 17]   [[3]]   This sensibility is grounded in this one man’s application of the Higher Biblical Criticism to his understanding and applications of Judaism’s normative claims.

 ER is also willing to consider a doctrine of continuous revelation, but only when “the modern age recaptures basic religious experience.”  [OMJ 353]   He claims that God continues to reveal the divine will, but only to those for whom revelation is not an empty idiom.  Thus, ER finds in Abraham Joshua Heschel’s scholarship the claim that some rabbis believed that there were revelations that occurred in the Middle Ages. [OMJ 177]  [[4]]  But unlike Jewish liberals, who reject the doctrine that there is a real, commanding God Who  akes demands, [[5]]  ER sees God as the Author of Jewish law’s basic norm, [MHT 15] [[6]]  And, citing the late President Belkin of Yeshiva University, ER endorsed  Josephus’s view  held that Israel’s God is Israel’s ultimate sovereign. [[7]]  Judaism is a legal order [OMJ 4] with a personal God Who is the Commander. [OMJ 11] [[8]]  For ER, the continuous revelation that empowers humanity to participate with God in defining the content of Revelation, has two sources. First, Abraham’s covenant [OMJ  5-6was augmented at Sinai.  [[9]] Second, a close reading of isolated ER statements indicates that he is that he has accepted the Documentary Hythothesis regarding the composition of the Pentateuch:

The most definitive record of God’s encounters with man is contained in the Pentateuch, Much of it may have written by people in different times, but at one point in history God not only made the people aware of his immediacy but caused Moses to write the eternal evidence between Him and His people. Even the rabbis in the Talmud  did not agree on the how. But all agreed that the record was divine.”  OMJ  180  [my emphasis]

While not affirming that the Higher Critical position is theologically or factually correct, ER here  entertains it as a possibility, taking the Talmudic discussion regarding the authorship of the last lines of Deuteronomy to be precedent for reconsideration of the Mosaic authorship of other passages as well.  Furthermore,

                        “Many theologians, even among those who are committed to the belief    in           

                        a historical Revelation at Sinai, maintain that it happened once and will        

                        never happen again”   OMJ  177  [emphasis mine]

From his word choice, ER does not necessarily accept a historical revelation at Sinai, but actually posits that God’s covenantal Revelation is in fact revealed in subsequent prophecies as well . [[10]]  ER’s later formulation is ultimately his redefinition of what it means to be authentically Jewish, or Orthodox:

                        What then, unites all who are committed to the Halakhah, those presently          

                        called “Orthodox?” It is simply the belief that from the Covenant between                     

                        God and Israel there emerged the obligation to obey His law, which is

                        subject to change and development only as the Law—Written and Oral—     

                        made change and development possible. The dissenter, or the champion of                    a new rule, must base his dissent or his effort at legislation on these

                        fundamental norms and methodology they describe.   [MHT 112]

                        [my emphasis]

In his comments regarding the application of science to Torah,  “by  any criterion the Pentateuch was written before the Common Era.”  MHT  136   In other words, none of the Higher Critics take the Pentateuch’s basic text to have been completed or augmented before the rabbinic period.  And ER here again treats the Documentary Hypothesis regarding the Pentateuch’s historical origins minimally as a theory that is plausibly

true.  [[11]]

ER’s Judaism affirms [a] a commitment to Halakhah, [b] a commitment to a  binding covenant between God and Israel [c] which admits to change only as authorized by the halakhic system. [[12]]  The Mosaic authorship of the Torah is, for most Orthodox thinkers,  [[13]] as necessary a dogma for Judaism as is the belief in the Resurrection of Jesus for the the Roman Church.    By adding his comment regarding dissent, ER  affirms his own “one man’s Judaism.”  

ER’s three dogmas  are the existence of a personal, omnipotent God, Revelation, and the chosen people. [[14]]   It is precisely because ER takes God seriously that he is constrained to take humankind, created in God’s image, seriously.   Consequently, suicide is an affront to God.  [MHT 25]   Citing Maine, the Hebrew laws were “progressive.” [OMJ 230] [15]  The command to conquer the earth [Genesis 1:28] is evidence that humanity is invested with dignity by God. ER also rejects Augustine’s claim that humankind is in desperate need of grace [OMJ 122-3] Unlike Augustine, who justifies slavery, ER proudly distinguishes between the Christian claim that Judaism is bound by Pharisaic legalism on one hand, [OMJ 129] but limits slavery much more than Augustine. [OMJ 141]   ER argues that the aim, end, or telos of Jewish law is to outlaw slavery.  [OMJ 207]  There is no tolerance for debt slavery. [OMJ 129]   Judaism’s “God centered humanism” [OMJ 149] conditions society to affirm freedom as the condition of human dignity. [OMJ 95]  This sensibility, that human beings should be free because their dignity is God given, is enshrined in the right to privacy and [MHT 28] the outlawing of self-incrimination [bSan 17a]  [OMJ 173] [[16]] 

ER’s modernity is manifest not only in his willingness to respectfully reconsider the format of the covenant revelation and affirm the human/divine partnership. He happily applies and synthesizes social science findings with what he takes to be the telos or goal of the law.  He laments what he takes to be the myopic view of Israeli political parties that stymied the composition of a right granting constitution.

            Perhaps in the future Israel’s political literature will be written  by

            persons who are not professional party politicians and then it will command

            more universal interest. [EIC 36]

For ER, authentic Judaism, unlike Israel’s political system, is not Statist. The State, being sovereign, is the embodiment of the Law in pagan legal orders but not for Torah law.  [17] According to ER, a law that is no more than the formal hierarchy of authority, like Kelsen’s, Austin’s, and the Soviet system are inconsistent with Judaism.  [OMJ 115]  [18]   Since freedom and dignity reflect the telos of the law, the individual, on the basis of law, has the right, and in Judaism, the obligation  to defy the state, the king, and even the rabbis if that person is convinced that the people in power acted wrongly. [OMJ  97-98]

It is because humanity and God are copartners in revelation, humans may, for ER, suspend what they believe to be God’s law.   The Torah commands that Israel “live” by the law [Lev 17:5] which was taken to mean that the dignity of life supersedes other Torah obligations. [bYoma 85b, MHT 32]   The rabbis took Psalms  119:126 to authorize the suspension—but not nullification—of the Torah law itself. [[19]]    ER asks rhetorically “how did the rabbis justify their arrogance?” [MHT 32]  This formula reflects the Haredi retort with which ER struggles in his sparring with  his  ideological adversaries on his Right.   Consequently, he is the first modern Orthodox rabbi that I found to refer to the Right Wing Orthodox approach as heresy: 

It is the reactionaries in Orthodoxy who bear much of the guilt for this tragic phenomenon [the intimidation of dissent] Their heresy [!]  ] is that they regard their own Biblical and Talmudic interpretation as canonized in the same measure as the texts themselves–which was never true. They are repeating this heresy again, in Israel, and the Diaspora, so that already Jewish sociologists detect the possibility of further schisms within Orthodoxy. [OMJ 232]

For ER, a Jewishly authentic opinion

requires acknowledgment of the divine origin of the commandments and [the] firm resolve to keep them. OMJ 262-3

The extremist Orthodox claim is parried, ironically,  by an appeal to reason and Judaism’s basic norm.  [[20]]  But note well that ER requires a belief in the Torah’s divine origin, and not necessarily to Mosaic authorship because for ER, the rabbis engage in Revelation by dint of their authorized evolving the Law!  

The dialectic of Jewish law insists upon  antinomies, which the rabbis, as “partners in the development of the law,” [OMJ 204] are authorized to resolve. ER here calls attention to  the application of justice in human life, moving toward the abolition of slavery. [OMJ 207]  It is precisely because God is both immanent  and transcendent that the rabbis were entrusted to preserve Judaism’s abiding morality in the application of Halakhah .   

ER views Jewish Tradition historically and not conceptually. He adopted the descriptive approach of Professor Menahem Elon

.  By reviewing the norms recorded in the past in context, one may better understand how those norms ought to be applied in the present. This perspective has enabled and empowered ER to advocate his opinion and not submit to the intimidating pressure of those who are uncomfortable with his modernistic and confessed liberal tendencies.  He observes  that in the present rabbis are afraid to rule liberally because of social and political pressure [OMJ 262]

2. Liberal Motifs in Rackman’s Thought

ER wants a liberalized law to emerge.  While reading the tradition expansively, ER

insists upon treating the tradition with integrity.   While Jewish law outlaws sterilization

[OMJ 116] ER suggests that the serilzation of criminals, in violation of one statute, may

save lives  and therefore be permitted.  [21]  The case for liberal rulings occur when statues

and norms are in conflict.  Similarly, ER writes that regarding artificial

insemination,“Jewish Law is exceedingly liberal.” [OMJ 112]  Leniency is associated

with liberalism.  ER is trying to show how the rules of Judaism direct and purify the soul

and are not gratuitously or arbitrarily imposed to give people grief.   While adopting the

lenient ruling regarding Artificial Insemination by a donor, ER suggests that the offspring

is permitted to anyone but the other offspring of the anonymous donor. [[22]]

If Jewish law may be  be suspended in emergency cases, then there

would be no purpose in being gratuitously stringent in the applications of Jewish law.  The rabbinic virtual abolition of the Sota ordeal  [OMJ 112] is taken by ER to be a ritual of reconciliation, the telos  of which to allay the husband’s suspicions regarding what he takes or mistakes to be his wife’s waywardness.   [23] He observes that some Orthodox rabbis permit the use of a dishwasher for milk and meat if the utensils are cleaned on separate runs. [[24]]   Note that leniency is defined by a permitted deviation from communal expectations, and not the letter of Talmudic law.

Regarding the use of the microphone use on Shabbat, ER avoids taking a stand regarding its permissibility on the legal merits of the matter, preferring instead to suggest that some regard the prohibition to be Biblical, rabbinic, or not forbidden at all [OMJ 271] He then invokes the principle of emergency to justify its use.  While R. Moshe Feinstein is adamant that the microphone prohibition might be Biblical, and that there is no room for either leniency or respect for alternative opinions, ER argues that Jewish law may be otherwise understood.  [[25]]  While true to his own position regarding pluralism within Jewish law, treating his opposition with the highest of respect, [[26]] ER applies the principles of strict construction, that the letter of the law may well allow for microphone use, and failing that leniency, the emergency principle discussed above would allow local rabbis discretion.  Ironically, it is the local rabbi and not charismatic gadol who is authorized to make these decisions. [[27]]  The shift from reason to charisma, articulated by R. Herschel Schachter, [[28]] is not without precedent in the  Jewish tradition.  [29]

Ever concerned about his identity within the Orthodox consensus, ER claims that “Halakhah dictates that men be separated from women in the synagogue.” [OMJ  272]      He does not cite  the source of this norm in the canonical Judaism of the Dual Torah. It is likely that this assertion follows from his Orthodox culture. [[30]] Like  his comment on the microphone, he concedes the existence of rabbinic restriction, alluding to R. Soloveitchik’s position, that the Bible requires separation of the genders and rabbinic law demands segregation with a partition,  [31]while others, referring to the more restrictive R. Feinstein, believe that the Torah actually demands the partition segregation. Without demonstrating his view regarding the status of the synagogue partition, he again invokes the emergency principle to allow for leniency.  

ER  also suggests the electricity may be permissible according to Jewish law. [OMJ 41, MHT 2]  He does not cite the lenient readings, but his leniency regarding the use of microphones, now contextualized, is consistent.  Elsewhere, [OMJ  53]  ER apologetically claims that its use is based on the prohibition to use the power of creation. This assertion is proclaimed apologetically, but not anthropologically and no sources justifying his contention are cited.  ER’s contention   that men initiate divorce but women’s consent is required [OMJ 217] is also apologetic, as the woman’s consent was a subsequent development in the history of Jewish law and not a norm in the Dual Torah canon.

While unhappy with Rabbi Moshe Feinstein’s invalidating non-Orthodox marriages to overcome the aguna situation, he concedes that the liberalizing result should not be dismissed. [MHT 70]                                                                                                        

ER is unable to solve the problem of bastardy, in spite of the fact that the offspring suffers for the wrongs of the parents. [OMJ 212-213] While he cites limiting precedents, ER does not raise the possibility of applying DNA testing to determine who the biological parents really are.

3. Women in the Thought of R. Emanuel Rackman

ER recognizes the conflict between the rules recorded in the past regarding women  [32] and the sensibilities of the modern age.  [MHT 120-121] [33] Applying the principle of freedom, which for ER is the operational ethic underlying Jewish law [OMJ 267] and the historical precedent for diversity, ER applies a mindset similar to Ronald Dworkin’s moral reading of the law which fills in the gaps in the law with the judge’s ethical bias.  Specifically, the Scripture’s view, revealed by God, regarding inheritance, has been changed in order to give women what a  human  sense of fairness takes to understands to be their due. [OMJ 268]

ER notes that while R. Feinstein outlawed the bat mitzvah ritual because the practice was initiated by the Reform, [MHT 1-2] [34] R. Isaac Nissim did find a precedent for this rite. [35]  ^{He further claims that unlike R. Nissim, “very few rabbis have been equally liberal [in accepting innovation] as far as women are concerned.” [MHT 7]}

^{ER has no difficulties allowing women to have their own Haqafot on Simhat Torah or women’s prayer groups.  He alludes to the restrictive ruling the REITS Five [36]} which claimed that the women’s prayer groups violated several principles, precedents, policies, and conventions. But ER astutely calls attention to the practice of Ashkenazi women to recite a blessing before performing the lulav bouquet waving on Sukkot.   According to ER, a women reciting this blessing” is really lying.” [MHT 65]  [37]  ^{ER claims that women observed the rite and with time adopted the practice of reciting the blessing “And then came rabbis who rationalized approval.}

^{ER concedes that halakhic development is often political and not logical.  Rabbis differ on any given issue, with one view prevailing over the other.  ER’s approach to law is  instrumental  and result oriented–he will apply any method or reasoning, given his canon of reasonable limits–to insure that the law’s moral minimum  [[38]] and freedom aspiring telos be achieved.  He envisages women’s prayer services which include Qaddish and Qedusha, “without anyone objecting.” [MHT 66]   Consistent with his doctrine  of continuous revelation,  ER implies that an Orthodox consensus is sufficient to validate a practice.  While ER prefers families not pray in different settings based upon gender, he realizes that he cannot prohibit, on policy grounds, what he [a] knows, the REITS Five notwithstanding, is not forbidden by explicit statute, and [b] which some women with sincere passion want.  ER here takes the position that anything that is not forbidden is indeed permitted, or authorized. [[39]]  His realization that “women are not counted in a ‘Minyan’ may be unalterable”–because the canonical data and the historical Orthodox rabbinic consensus are in concert–indicates the limits of his own sense of Revelation regarding how far the liberal envelope might be pushed. [40]}

^{When there is no rabbinic consenus,  ER believes that one may follow whom one wishes.   He cites Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, who permits the abortion of a deformed fetus, with his colleague, Rabbi}

^{J.D. Bleich, strongly demurring. [MHT 110]    And as long as there are legitimate lenient opinions, it is for Rackman legitimate to adopt them. [41]   ER does not discuss the merits of the case or the status of the fetus in Jewish law in coming to his conclusion [42] and he does not address what makes an opinion legitimate. [43]}

^{ER anxiously searches for  validating precedents in order to  reject  what has been taken to be canonical Jewish law when the situation requires such liberalism.  When Yeshiva University allowed women to learn Torah , it “ignored the tradition that women are not to be taught the ‘Torah Sheba’al Peh. Bar Ilan University also ignores the prohibition.” [emphasis mine]   [MHT 66-67] ER takes past usage, called ambiguously “tradition,” and then argues that Bar Ilan University ignored the negative orm that he labels  prohibition, in Hebrew, issur,  suggesting that Jewish law does change and is merely providing an instance that many within the Orthodox  consensus has declared to be valid. That women not studying oral Torah is a “Tradition” in the canonical sense,  [44]or that the canonical documents actually issued an unambiguously a negative norm, has been discussed extensively in modern Orthodox literature.  Since Traditional ordination no longer obtains in modernity, ER hints that he would not object strongly to Orthodox women earning the rabbinic diploma. [MHT 66], a position strongly opposed by main stream Orthodoxy [45] and some Traditional Conservative Jews as well. [[46]]}

^{The most controversial position taken by ER regarding women is his attitude toward annulling marriages when Jewish divorces [gittin] cannot be obtained.  While in recent times ER has been vocal and public regarding  nullifying marriages,   [[47]]  his recent position has roots}  in earlier writing.   Recalling that humankind is, for ER, a copartner in a Revelation that is simultaneously Divine and human,  ER is consistent to his system when he declares that “in family law and civil law the demands of life are as the logical implications of the  [canonoical] texts.  [OMJ 174]   He therefore adopts the lose construction of Rabbi Abraham ben David [Raavad] and rejects the strict constructionist [or positivist, ay] position Maimonides as being less flexible in the face of the recorded, positive statute.  The implications of this choice, that a ruling may be reversed only when it violates positive canon, go undiscussed. For Maimonides and Bet Yosef, the Amoraic Talmud ends the canon, whereas for Raavad, the decisions of the past generation is canon. [48]  [OMJ 175] 

ER calls the reader’s attention to the Tosafist requirement that a woman’s consent is needed for divorce.  [OMJ  124-125] He takes this enactment to be a liberal reflex and precedent for subsequent policy changes, but does not consider the possibility that the Tosafist stringency has cultural parallels in a Christian Europe that is growing more restrictive regarding the ending of marriages. [49]

Because equality and freedom are goals of the law for ER, ER argues that the ancient precedents be activated and extended to address contemporary needs  [OMJ 241-243]  He argues that Rabbi Professor Menahem Elon, well known as an Associate Justice on the Israeli Supreme court, allows human input “in the application of biblical legislation”  to allow humans to apply their own source of right, and invoking the idioms of “natural law” and “categorical imperative.”  [MHT 133]  This doctrine is strikingly similar ER’s and Conservative Judaism, as noted above.   Like ER, Elon advocates the nullifying of marriages when Jewish divorces are unobtainable. [50]   Since the rabbis have the right to confiscate property, the rabbis have the right to confiscate  the  marital ring, which is property,  by which the marriage came into being. [MHT 37]

III.       Constitutionality in the Thought of Emanuel Rackman

R. Emanuel Rackman’s understanding of the Halakhah, with a natural law, human reason -driven reading, is similar to, if not influenced by, the legal philosophy of Ronald Dworkin who, as a matter of principle, takes rights seriously in an empire of law whereby the law is an instrument of the ethical.   Applying the mindset of Brisk, albeit with an alternative trajectory, ER reads the Halakhic literature for what he takes to be its ethical substrate, which to his mind is the ultimate ground of normative right.

In the Brisker Halakhic tradition, , the unchanging divine concept, divined by the Masoretic sage,  [51]  is defined, applied, and ultimately limits how the positive Talmudic statute might be defined.  By appealing to Nahmanides’ reading of “You must do what is right and good,” [Deuteronomy 6:18] it is the good that must be obeyed and the individual norms are not as binding, but as is the obligation to do  good.  [52]  Endorsing the position of R. Walter Wurzberger, who claims that the Halakhah is not an end [Greek teloV]  but a guide, [53]

ER is defines his Orthodoxy idiosyncratically. He views the law as method and guide, the letter of which is not ultimately binding in all situations. He believes that Jewish law is binding, it reflects but does not exhaust either Divine intent or normative will.   God’s holding Cain accountable for his brother’s murder is, for ER, grounded in a morally based natural law.  [MHT 106] [54]   Advocating halakhic activism, ER views humanity’s free will as the moral source for activist decisors reckoning “with social needs.” [MHT 107]

ER’s avant garde legal system, while in no way fundamentalist, remains fundamentally Orthodox. Assuming a maximalist reading of Hebrew Scripture, ER dismisses what he takes to be the extreme or minimalist position of most contemporary critics. However, the current state of Biblical scholarship no longer views the Albright maximalist understanding of Scripture favorably. But ER is emotionally attached to the very traditionalism that his mind and method are prepared to reconsider and on occasion reject.  Like R. Joseph D. Soloveitchik, ER is not prepared to engage in interfaith dialogue, [55]   even though no scholar of note has cited a statutory norm that would prohibit the practice.   And like R. Soloveitchik in “Confrontation,” ER argues his case on policy, which while legitimate, is not binding, and as noted ER does not cite specific halakhot that would be violated in such dialogue. [56]  Nevertheless, ER freely contrasts Judaism to Christianity, but not in a forum where his position is subject to peer review or intellectual interchange. [57]

ER often applies “reason” or apologetics to demonstrate that Judaism can function in the moment of modernity.  His apologetic treatment of the slave is negated by Jewish law’s outlawing the freeing of the Canaanite slave. [OMJ 130] [58]  He wishes and claims, but does not demonstrate that women and men are equal in Judaism. [OMJ 134]

ER’s reliance on rabbinic consensus against the plain meaning of the canonical text finds precedent in post-Talmudic rabbinic culture.   Raavad’s concept of canon includes the great sages of the previous generation.  [59]  While most seriously affiliating Orthodox Jews take care to immerse utensils in the miqveh,  there has been no call, to my recollection, for re-introducing the giving of the priestly gifts of meat to an Aaronide after slaughter, in spite of the clear sense of the canon.   [60]   While issues like microphone and mechitsa are culture defining issues which determine who is considered insider or outsider to the community, even though the canonical information is, at best ambiguous—and for which ER appeals to emergency flexibility [61]  rather than exegesis or consensus for leniency—other matters, like Hadash grain or community eruvim, where the current consensus is not always congruent with the plain sense of the canon, are not raised by communal Orthodox rabbis or by ER. [62]  Thus, ER is advancing a halakhic policy, but a consistent theory of law.

ER’s Ashkenazi Orthodox background bleeds through in his transliterations.. He refers to the Council of Mandates as the Waad ha-Mandatim, [IEC 65]  or Wa’adat ha-Huqa [IEC 38] with the vav being pronounces as the Arabic wow.  But the qof is not augmented or doubled.  Bayot haHinuch reflects popular usage but not phonetic precision, which would be be’ayot. When writing tachnit as  tochnit or rosho instead of rasha, ER’s Ashkenazi Orthodox rabbinic culture, which was not precise in its phonological articulation, becomes apparent.  Thus, if there is no principle of significance at stake, ER will not challenge the Orthodox consensus.

 ER is painfully  aware that his philosophy of Jewish law is “one man’ Judaism:

“Most  halakhic authorities  regard the  halakhah as a body of rules handed  down

 by the Divine Sovereign to enable the Jew to live according to the His will.” {MHT 1]

ER concedes that there is a majority, with which he, as a modern, disagrees, and which his idiosyncratic reading of the validating tradition legitimates.  He portrays the Brisk or Analytic school as one which sees the rabbi as a jurist and not an activist legislator.  He argues that there is a “legitimacy of diversity” [MHT 3]  in Judaism that legitimates a range of opinion which includes his own.  According to ER’s understanding of the Analytic School, it is claimed that the Talmud maintains that it is the women’s desire to be in a bad marriage than to be single. [MHT 8] [63] This observation is taken to be a rule of the Halakhic system. [64]  For ER, it reflects a social reality that informs the decisor.  Different social realities move decisors to read the realities and the statutes differently.

ER’s reading of the Talmud for its ethical substrate, like Brisk’s reading of the Talmud for its conceptual substrate, are different in content but similar in form.  ER takes the analystic Briskers to be too positivist when they refuse to become activist decisors, but he calls the more extreme Orthodox, also often Briskers, heretics because they identify their spin on the documents to be the moral equivalent of the document itself. In other words, activist decisors exist  on the Right as well as the Left within Orthodoxy.

ER’s secular education focused on politics, not Wissenschaft des Judentums, which he read [given the readings cited in footnotes!] but did not master.  For example, ER disagrees with those who claim that the folk saying, “a woman would rather be married than to sit as a widow/spinster,”  [ OMH 125]  [65] In point of fact, a  description of the rabbis, here a saying of Resh Laqish,  is simply not binding rabbinic legislation.  At stake in this matter and the agenda of ER’s life’s work  is that ER is what Jeffrey Gurock calls an “accommodator,”  and the consensus of most of Orthodoxy’s rabbis reflects the mindset of modernity’s “resistors.” [66]  For ER, earlier authorities accepted the “modernity” of their time, like R. Jacob Tam defining of Christianity as a non-idolatrous religion with whom business may be undertaken three days before and three days after their holy days. [MHT 9] It is the utility of R.Tam’s  conclusion and not the cogency of his claim that made the opinion into de facto law, and a rabbinic consensus is, for ER, sufficient to alter normative practice.  By adopting this position, ER appears to ignore the Scripture, grounded in what he otherwise accepts to be revelation, that there is an element of Law that is absolute. [67]

There are two scholars, uncited in ER’s work, that when referenced, explain ER’s system.

Rabbi Professor M. S. Feldblum, who taught at Yeshiva University and subsequently, at

Bar Ilan University, accepted and applied critical study to the Talmud, he specialized in the tractate Gittin, and actually advocated, like Menahem Elon, nullification of the marriage when a Jewish divorce was unobtainable. [68]  Those who advocate what is popularly understood as “Tradition” strongly opposed this reading. [69]

Recalling ER’s ethical reading of the law, his concern for integrity in the reading of the Law that is honest to God, because it is revelation and honest to human realities because the Law must be applied by humans to human reality, we find a model in the writings of Ronald Dworkin.  For Dworkin, Law is an instrument of liberalism which treats all of its citizens equally, paying attention to their particular needs. [70]   Individual dignity [71] is enshrined by a Law that is neutral on the issue of what the “good” really is, allowing that choice to be made by the dignity endowed individual.[72]  ER, like  Dworkin, realizes that liberty, the right to act freely, often yields unequal realities.

Because ER is so concerned with individuality and the right to dissent he, like Dworkin, takes rights seriously.   For Dworkin, a right is a claim  of the individual  [73] over homogenization of the democratic and sometimes tyrannical  consensus.  Rights insure the dignity of the citizen, who is politically and psychologically empowered to acdt as a  citizen whose character and prerogatives are enshrined in  statute .  In Freedom’s Law, [74]

Dworkin, like ER, argues that the law must be read ethically by judges who find principles, or a moral substrate—as defined by Wurzberger and ER above—that become the formula whereby   the statutes of the legal order are to be applied.  Unlike the Jewish Left, which for ER denigrates God’s role in the creation of law, ER’s Orthodoxy insists upon textual and and intellectual integrity.   For Dworkin as well as ER, laws occasionally confront the jurist with conflicting legal claims and values, [75] so that formal equality must be rejected in favor of real equality in life.  By advocating proactive autonomy, [76] Dworkin echoes ER’s One Man’s Judaism.

5.         Conclusion

Emanual Rackman is a self-defined Orthodox Jew whose traditional Judaism is informed by and is synthesized with  his chosen secular discipline, Political Science.

A political liberal who is a religious moderate conservative and, in the context of the current Orthodox continuum, inhabits the extreme Left of Jewry’s Right,  Rackman takes God’s will and human dignity seriously, even when the  two seem to conflict. 

Rackman is one of the few Orthodox thinkers to apply, albeit furtively, the findings of moderate  Bible Criticism to his normative approach to Law.    Since the Torah’s composition and interpretation is a Divine/human partnership, a Dworkinian balance between competing claims is sought.  The so –called unchanging Divine law is subject to change on ethical, social, and pragmatic grounds.   ER’s isolated statements ado imply that there is merit in the Bible criticism, but he never actually affirms the theory in a way that the simple reader might notice.  While I suspect that this Straussian strategy was adopted to avoid a repetition of the Louis Jacobs Affair in England, where Rabbi Jacobs bona fides as an Orthodox rabbi was withdrawn by Rabbi Brodie because the former accepted the Higher Biblical Criticism,   ER’s strategy is consistent with Maimonides’ ruling that the doctrinal rules are violated not be state of belief, but by articulation. [77]

Rackman interprets Jewish law liberally and ethically, and is willing to innovate,

as in the case of  his advocacy and implementation of the nullification of marriages when religious divorces are not available. 

Rackman’s traditional background regularly reveals itself, in his diction, his reverence for and study of the Law, and his insistence that a real commanding God is the Torah’s ultimate if not literary Author.  And his Orthodox socialization is evidenced by his Ashkenazi background bleeding through the academic Sefardic Israeli phonology that has become the convention of the secular academy.  The rejection of his liberal reading of Jewish Law on the part of  what he takes to be Orthodoxy’s parochials, or modernity resisters,  moved Rackman to regard that Orthodoxy as his adversary.  When, as noted above, ER maintains that Orthodox Right attaches canonicity  to its spin of the canon’s plain meaning, ER views its position as heresy, an idiom singularly appropriate in medieval rather than modern discourse.

A passionate Zionist, ER calls attention to Israel’s constitutional inability to recognize the individual dignity with sufficient seriousness.

For ER, the Law of Torah carries the telos of human dignity, with legal statutes that are not be understood and applied  literally or philologically, as suggested by legal positivists like Maimonides, but according the ethical substrate implied by the individual laws, which in turn provide the template and benchmark for their implementation.

While ER’s unique synthesis expresses the sensibilities of many modern Orthodox affiliates who try to live with moral, religious, and Jewish integrity in two very different-- American and Orthodox Jewish--constructions of reality,  the road he has taken is lonely and will trouble most Orthodox readers. Even those who might endorse his legal activism may recoil at the theological radicalism that underlies and justifies this activism. Hence, ER’s  synthesis is unique to one man, and hence ER’s religion and life project is well defined by his the title of  his first major Jewish work, One Man’s Judaism.]