Author Archives: Alan Brill

What do the Vedas mean in Hinduism? They mean what the tradition interprets them to mean. Originally the meaning was via a philosophy called Mimamsa and in contemporary time it is through Advaita. However, leaders of the faith study both.

The original meaning of the vedas according to Mimamsa is a set of procedural ritual laws to follow and that is it. For a follower of Mimamsa, the introduction to your Western paperback edition is wrong. For Mimamsa, the bronze age gods of the Vedas of fire, of wind, of the Sun were already a memory to the first centuries of the CE. Schopenhauer may have found them ennobling and heroic, but the Brahmins did not.

The Vedas are an eternal revelation of eternal truths consisting only of rituals to follow. All the stories, gods, metaphysics we don’t understand and don’t bother with. Veda are unauthored, eternal, transcendent and they are called teaching “veda” because they show practical actions of how to live the dharma.

According to Mimamsa, we only see what we can perceive. We cannot perceive morality and we have no direct access to morality.The Vedas are our only instrument to know truth and morality. We also have no reason to believe that there ever were exceptional humans who could perceive morality. Meaning that the Rishees (Seers) who receive the vedas were not using human perception, rather they were conduits for the eternal truth.

The ceremonial details of the rituals absorb its interest, rather than the gods themselves who gradually recede and fade into mere grammatical datives. A Vedic deity comes to be described not by its moral or intellectual qualities, but as ‘that which is signified, in a sacrificial injunction, by the fourth case-ending’ (the sign of a dative, .to which something is given). In Short, a deity is necessary merely as that in whose name an oblation is to be offered at a sacrifice. But the primary object of performing a sacrifice is not worship : it is not to please any deity. *Nor is it purification of the soul or moral improvement. A ritual is to be performed just because the Vedas commands to perform them.

All other works in Hinduism only have the correct action or are giving the correct law if they are based on the vedas as understood by mimamsa. Vedas are only source of what is to be done therefore they cannot be falsified since there is no acceptable outside source. There is no “ethic outside of the vedas.” It is a rigid form of the Divine Command Theory” without the Divine command. In Euthyphro terms, is good because it is in the vedas not because the vedas are good. God is not subject to inquiry but we may subjectively serve God or gods as our own devotion or for our own needs

The origins of Mimamsa lie in the scholarly traditions of the final centuries BCE, when the priestly ritualism of Vedic sacrifice was being marginalized by Buddhism and Vedanta. To counteract this challenge, several groups emerged dedicated to demonstrating the validity of the Vedic texts by rigid formulation of rules for their interpretation. The foundational text for the Mīmāṃsā school is the Purva Mīmāṃsā Sutras of Jaimini (ca. 3rd to 1st century BCE).

The school gathers momentum in the Gupta period with Śābara, and reaches its apex in the 7th to 8th centuries with Kumārila Bhaṭṭa and Prabhākara. The school was a major force contributing to the decline of Buddhism in India. Vedānta Deśika’s Śeśvara Mīmāṁsā was an attempt to combine the views of the Mīmāṁsā and the Vedānta schools.

Human agency is only how one is made into an agent by Vedic injunctive. One trains oneself to desire the right things. Nyaya, similar to Western scholastics, holds that cognition leads to volition and from there to action. Mimamsa cuts out the intellect and volition and holds that desire to action, in which desire means recognition that one has an obligation. If you desire heaven then you sacrifice. Efficacy of ritual is more important than effect on person It also keeps discussions of atman (the self, soul, consciousness) out of the picture.

Mimamsa even removes God and Divine agency from the discussion. An agent needs a body, God has no body so God is not a legal agent. Mimamsa has no discussion or place for a personal God since no we have no access to God therefore no legal intention. People used to debate whether Mimamsa is atheist or theist because the law is followed solely because it is the revealed eternal truth without reference to God. From a halakhah point of view, it is similar to keeping all the commands with a knowledge (daat) that the action is a required commandment without a need for any specific intention (kavvanah).

According to one early 20th century commentator, the Vedic hymns are inspired by the living presence of the polytheistic deities in the place of worship, Mimamsa loses the living faith in deities. At best, the deities of the Mimamsa are like the immortal characters of classical Epics ; they do not belong to the space-time world; they are not existing parsons, but types. They are more thin characters because they are not the products of any imagination . In contrast, medieval and traditional commentaries actually assume they do not believe them at all.

For Mimamsa, according to the great commentary Kumarila, an embodied God is inherently contradictory because how could he be revered by different people in different places simultaneously if he were linked to a body. (Freschi p6 ftnt 10) So for this school and its interpretation of the Vedas, there are no embodied Divine, no incarnations, no physical attributes to God. Everything physical about God can only be from our perspective.

To compare halakhah with fiqh or shariah is so 2005, now there is a trend for composing law papers comparing Hindu law and Jewish law. For example, Prof. Donald Davis wrote an article “Before Virtue: Halakhah, Dharmasastra, and what the Law can Create” published in Duke Law Review (2008).

Dharmasastra is Hindu law, which Davis thinks is best understood in the categories of Mimamsa. According to Davis, Hindu Law creates the full ideal of what humans were meant to be. Davis finds that Soloveitchik’s Halakhic Man and dharmashatra share this goal of creating the ideal human through law, the ideal halakhic man and the ideal dharmashastra man.

Davis points out that for both law and practice of law gives virtue without any prior need for values or aspired to virtue. In both the most important thing is to value the tradition and law is the instrument and embodiment of that conviction of sustaining tradition.
Returning to basics, Davis shows how Torah and Veda are both mediated by rules; one should not read them unmediated like from a paperback or archeology records. For both Torah and Vedas- people are not virtuous only actions are. A zaddik or a sadhu are holy and do lots of virtuous acts but they do not define virtue. For example in Maimonides, it is more important to do righteous acts the think about them. Torah (and Veda) is the tree of life

For Soloveitchik, the very command carries with it an endorsement of man’s existence and an affirmation of human responsibility. Davis quotes Prof. Francis X. Clooney who described Mimamsa as transcending anthropocentrism since man realizes that he is part of something larger than himself. The transcendent meaning is not the work of the gods or part of the cosmos but the here and now keeping of the law. In the repeated performances he experiences the transcendent. Law as worldly and still fully religious

The “Theory of Karma” is guided by Mimamsa Philosophy. “Karma” means “deeds”, “act” or “work”. The ‘theory of Karma’ states that good actions produce good fruit, evil actions produce evil fruits. Originally, karma in mimamsa was only based on vedic sacrifice, a ritual that needs to be done – later the term karma was expanded to all of life Mimamsa explain how a human being can achieve the mysterious, transcendent power produced by a correctly performed sacrificial ritual, not through the action of gods. Rather, the merit is only shown after the death of the person performing the ritual.

How many of this basic list seem similar to Rabbinics exegetical rules?I think for the third -we do the opposite. Klal uPrat- we follow the prat;they follwo the klal.

(1) The Sarthakyata axiom, which means that every word and sentence must have some meaning.
(2) The Laghava axiom, which states that that construction which makes the meaning simpler and shorter is to be preferred.
(3) The Arthaikatva axiom, which states that a double meaning should not be attached to a word or sentence occurring at one and the same place.
(4) The Gunapradhan axiom, which states that if a word or sentence purporting to express a subordinate idea clashes with the principal idea the former must be adjusted to the latter, or must be disregarded altogether.
(5) The Samanjasya axiom which states that all attempts should be made at reconciliation of apparently conflicting texts.
(6) The Vikalpa axiom, which states that if there is a real and irreconcilable contradiction between two legal rules having equal force, the rule more in accordance with equity and usage should be adopted at one’s option.

If you ask almost every trained representative of Hinduism whether Santana Dharma (The Eternal Dharma, Hinduism) is theistic or even monotheistic, you will get a firm yes. They may not like the question as betraying Western concerns but the answer will still be: Yes. Why?

This is the second installment of an engagement with Hinduism. Please continue to help me think through these matters.

The classical approach to the study of the ancient texts of the Vedas is through the six schools of Indian philosophy, or literally six visions of reality. Almost every trained representative of Hinduism, whether Brahman, Swami or philosophy Professor, accepts the rubric of six Orthodox philosophies. However, it is only Western academics and some Indian social scientists who do not view Hinduism from the point of view of its Orthodox reading.

Three of the six schools are (1) Nyaya – a rational kalam type of argumentation and logic that defends the proofs for God, revelation, and reward & punishment; (2) Mimamsa – a study of the Vedas as legal codes and a determination of how to derive the law; (3) Vedanta- a study of how the Divine is immanent and also that there is nothing but the Divine of which there are many interpretations. (I will deal in a later post with the other two, as well as the three of Yoga, materialism, and science.)

Nyaya deals with logic, evidence, inference, and argumentation. The Nyaya school of philosophical speculation is based on texts known as the Nyaya Sutras, which were written by Aksapada Gautama in the 2nd century CE. Nyaya functions as the logical backbone of Hinduism the way Aristotelianism did for more than a millennium in the West. Today, university students write on topics like Nyaya and analytic philosophy, Nyaya and Aristotle, Nyaya and Habermas.

The Nyaya approach based on the Vedas argues for a theistic monotheistic position, revelation, and reward & punishment. In short, the theological parts of Nyaya are almost identical in goal and argumentation as the Kalam of Saadyah or the some of the Christian scholastics. This is where any start of an interfaith encounter would show that we have similar ideas of philosophy of religion. Our universal sides of natural theology have much in common.The Indian academic Gopikamohan Bhattacharyya wrote: “The belief in monotheism is rather common to all theistic schools of Indian philosophy.” (Xvi)

Nyaya insists on several versions of the cosmological argument to prove a theistic God, and why there needs to be based on both the Vedas and logic revelation and reward. The Nyaya school’s method proved the existence of God, based on the Vedas, and subsequently, has been adopted by the majority of the other Indian schools. Therefore, you will not find any representative of traditional Hinduism trained in the university, temple, or ashram that denies monotheism. (There are exceptions which we will deal with later, there are non-theist Hindu approaches, and there are those who find the entire question Western and patronizing). However, any Hindu leader who comes to an interfaith gathering as a representative of his tradition will already know and accept Nyaya theism. (What does this have to do with the idols in the street? Save that question for a future installment.)

Julius Guttmann in his grand work Philosophy of Judaism saw Saadyah’s 10th century interlocutors as including the Brahmins and their schools of philosophy. Indian Philosophy used to be taught as an elective at Columbia and CCNY, so it could be discussed in comparison, Now, if anyone takes Aristotle you are lucky. In addition, Indian philosophy has moved to the more ethnographic religion department, the same way much of the study of Judaism has migrated from philosophy and history to Jewish Studies.

According to the Nyaya school, there are exactly four sources of knowledge (pramāṇas): perception, inference, comparison, and testimony. Very similar to Saadyah’s four sources of knowledge. The major difference between Saadyah’s arguments and Nyaya is that the latter assume that God created the world from eternal matter.

However, Nyaya differs from Aristotelian logic in that it is more than logic in its own right. Its followers believed that obtaining valid knowledge was the only way to obtain release from suffering. This offers us an insight into how Saadyah and Maimonides thought philosophy was needed to obtain the world-to-come.

Early Naiyayikas wrote very little about Ishvara (God, the Supreme Soul). However, when later Buddhists in India became strictly atheistic, the later Naiyayikas entered into disputes with the Buddhists and tried to prove the existence of God on the basis of inference. They also increased the attributes of God from just knowledge and volition to a wider list of attributes including providence and beneficence.. Yogic texts, in contrast, have God as an object of contemplation and perfection but not for causality and providence.

Udayana’s Nyayakusumanjali gave the following nine arguments to prove the existence of creative God. Here are four familiar to a Jewish audience from Saadyah.
Cosmological argument – Kāryāt (lit. “from effect”): An effect is produced by a cause, and similarly, the universe must also have a cause. The active cause of the world must have an absolute knowledge of all the material of creation, and hence it must be God. Hence from the creation, the existence of the Creator is proved.
Composite nature of the world– Āyojanāt (lit., from combination): Atoms are inactive and properties are unphysical. So it must be God who creates the world with his will by causing the atoms to join. There is to be seen the hand of a wise organizer behind the systematic grouping of the ultimate atoms into dyads and molecules. That final organizer is God.
Faith in Scripture — Pratyayataḥ (lit, from faith): the Hindu holy scriptures, the Vedas, are regarded as the source of eternal knowledge. Their knowledge is free from fallacies and are widely believed as a source of proof. Their authors cannot be human beings because human knowledge is limited. Hence, only God can be the creator of the Vedas. Hence, his existence is proved from his being the author of the Vedas, which he revealed to various sages over a period of time.
Moral Argument – Vākyāt (lit., from precepts): World is governed by moral laws that are objective and universal. Hence there exists God, the promulgator of these laws.

On monotheism— the Naiyayikas have also provided arguments such a God can only be one monotheistic God . We cannot assume there were many gods (Devas) and sages (rishis) in the beginning, who wrote the Vedas and created the world. This is because the law of parsimony bids us assume only one such, namely Him, the adorable Lord. There can be no confidence in a non-eternal and non omniscient being, and hence it follows that according to the system which rejects God, the tradition of the Veda is simultaneously overthrown; there is no other way open.In other words, Udayana says that the polytheist would have to give elaborate proofs for the existence and origin of his several celestial spirits, none of which would be logical. So it is much more logical to assume only one, eternal and omniscient God.

So polytheism and a multiplicity of gods make no sense in Orthodox Indian philosophy, even if the American ethnographic studies differ.

Nyaya accepts the reality of yogic perception of a direct intuition from a concentration of the mind on the authority of the vedas. Here there is an opening for a discussion of direct intuition in Saadyah. If I remember correctly, Moise Ventura and Israel Efros denied such an intuition in Sadyah but Abraham Joshua Heschel in his article on Quest for Certainty in Saadyah thinks the medieval thinker allows direct intuitions.

Nyaya has some useful discussion of doubt that can help elucidate Norman Lamm’s concept of provisional or methodological doubt in Saadyah in his article “Faith and Doubt”. They acknowledge that sometimes there is conflicting evidence.

Samsaya or doubt is a state of uncertainty. It represents the mind’s wavering between different conflicting views with regard to the same object. Doubt arises when with regard to the same thing there is the suggestion of different alternative views but no definite cognition of any differentia to decide between them. Doubt is not certain knowledge, nor is it the mere absence of knowledge, nor is it an error. It is a positive state of cognition of mutually exclusive characters in the same thing at the same time.

Nyaya also characterizes arguments better than Monty Python and more useful for text study- here is a sample.

Vada is a discussion which is conducted according to logical rules and aims only at finding out the truth
Jalpa is mere wrangling in which the parties aim only at victory over each other, but do not make an honest attempt to come to truth.
Vitanda is a kind of debate in which the opponent doo8 not establish his own position but only tries to refute that of the exponent.
Chaia is a kind of quibble in which an attempt is made to contradict a statement by taking it in a sense other than the intended one in order to deflect an argument.

Karma is which one’s actions lead to future action gets a theistic reading in Nyaya, in that God as a wise and benevolent father directs his son to do certain things, according to his gifts, capacities and previous attainments, so God directs all living beings to do such actions and feel such natural consequences thereof as are consistent with their past conduct and character. Thus God is the moral governor of the world of living beings including ourselves, the impartial dispenser of the fruits of our actions, and the supreme arbiter of our joys and sorrows.

Nyaya is accepted by Vedanta especially Shankara’s Advita as a first step. Some schools of Vedanta such as TM consider that they has transcended the philosophical position of the Nyaya. On the other hand, the strongly theistic non-Advitan approach of Ramanuja has reservations on the rather scholastic first cause theism of Nyaya. Instead, Ramanuja, like Azriel of Gerona or Ramhal, has an image of the Divine as needing to shower the world with His own goodness and blessing. So whereas, Nyaya like many rational thinkers postulates that God creates to show his majesty and glory, Ramanuja has God create to shower blessings.

But those American ethnographers with their recording devices collect stories from common folk, without this scholastic training, and say that in Hinduism that God creates as a sport, as the creative activity of the Divine called lila. The world is seen as the stage of the divine play, in which Brahman is the great magician who transforms himself into the world and then performs this feat with his “magic creative power”.

For those who want more, John Vattanky, Is Theism Central to Nyaya?
Gopikamohan Bhattacharyya, Studies in Nyaya-Vaisesika Theism Sanskirt College, Calcutta, 1961

Judaism as a religion does not fit into the Indian worldview. Jews are just thought of as another separate dharma like Parsees or in this case dharma yahud. We are not usually in their thinking about religion but when we are it is usually as a mis- characterization or a discussion of something else. So here are four Hindu leader to help us understand how they see us.

When you read these texts my question is: which of these statements are just like the opinions of Christians who did not know Jews used to have eighty years ago and will be self-correcting, which are linked to a modernist moment, which are self-defense from Christians in which Jews are safe target to defend themselves, and which need correcting. I am starting with this post before any post on Indian religions because I want my Jewish readers to get a sense that their knowledge of Hinduism is as well informed as the Hindu knowledge of Judaism. This is what non-academic Jews who discuss Hinduism sound like. So read these and help me process them. This post is not to criticize Hinduism but to gauge the initial gap between faiths.Bear in mind that Jews in India have never experience any iota of persecution or prejudice.

(1) Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan thought Judaism had been superseded by Christianity, (2) Surendranath Dasgupta- Judaism is primitive compared to Hinduism (3) Swami Vivekanda -Judaism does not see its own idolatry (4) Sai Baba- went from ignoring to synthesizing random thoughts.

The first author we will look at Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888 –1975) was an Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President of India (1952–1962) and the second President of India from 1962 to 1967.He was one of India’s most influential scholars of comparative religion and philosophy, Radhakrishnan built a bridge between the East and the West by showing how the philosophical systems of each tradition are comprehensible within the terms of the other. He wrote authoritative exegeses of India’s religious and philosophical literature for the English-speaking world. His academic appointments included University of Oxford (1936–1952).

Radhakrishnan was influenced by the Protestant thought of his time, painting Judaism as legalistic and primitive compared to Christainity.

The Hindu religion is marked by an eminently rational character…The Bramanical civilization is so called since it is directed by the Brahmin thinkers trained to judge issues without emotion and base their conclusions on the fundamentals of experience.

Jesus tolerated the inferior Mosaic law which was far less than the highest ideals.

Yahweh of the Old Testament was essentially a national deity. Israel remained God’s chosen race and the heathen nations who would submit to his authority and come to worship at Zion would occupy a position of subjection.

Jesus was much hampered by his Jewish heritage. Jesus already understood God’s immanence. Jesus’s message was to overcome the false [Jewish] antithesis between man and God. Man and God are akin “That art Thou”

Why did Hinduism not eradicate the idols? Answer: Because India is a immense country unlike the small area of Dan to Beer Sheva

The Hindu thinkers, while they themselves practiced a very high ideal, understood the un-readiness of the people for it and so took to careful tending instead of wild forcing. They admitted the lower gods, whom the masses ignorantly worshipped and urged that they were all subordinate to the One Supreme”
The extent of the country 2000 miles long and 1500 miles broad is not similar to that from Dan to Beersheva.

The second author Surendranath Dasgupta (1887 –1952) was a scholar of Sanskrit and philosophy who produced the basic first reference works on Indian philosophy still used in 2013. Like Joseph Klausner in Israel, people know Dasguta’s opinions even if many times indirectly. Dasguta is also know as the author who turned Eliade onto Indian religion. Eliade studied in India under Dasgupta at the University of Calcutta, but his relationship with Dasgupta became strained when he fell in love with Dasgupta’s daughter Maitreya.

Dasgupta’s approach is to show the primitive nature of Judaism and that it does not have any alleged superiority over Hinduism.

The Jewish God is always anxious that the sons of Israel do not worship other gods than himself and like a king who wishes to keep their subjects loyal to himself imposes the cruelest punishment on the disloyal and the rebel, and is ready to bestow His favor on those who are loyal to him and observe His laws and commands. He…demonstrates His miracles to stun them with awe and fear. But this only shows that the people at this stage were not capable of realizing the force of anything but fear. The God here is almost a materialistic god, the wind, the fire, the volcano and the sea, which would not for a moment forgive our transgression.

Thus among the Jews we find Abraham and Moses entering into a covenant with God, who acted as their ally, showed them the majesty of his power by His miracles, punished men with fire and brim stone for their misdeeds….
In the Jewish religion we find God entering into a covenant with Moses that He and His people should not worship stones, trees, and images but should worship only God and obey his commands. Most of these commands seen to have evolved from a due regard for man’s place among the members of a society… [meaning that it was social and not based a theology of the Divine.]

Judaism’s revelation was of prohibition and not revelations of God’s nature or any kind of spiritual experience

Dasguta continues the passage below demonstrating that the Upanishads were already superior to this primitive Jewish position. He also shows how Jewish ritual is as primitive as Hindu ritual.

Often in the scripture of older people such as that of the Hindus, the Parsees, and the Jews regulations regarding food and drink and defilement appear to have the same moral force as those regarding social offences of a moral nature. It seems that from an original sense of mischief accruing in consequence… gradually the idea of sin grew… The primitive idea was that it was some sort of material that corrupts a person, produces sickness, makes one amenable to bad fortunes, and may also stick to the person and produce misery even after death in the ghostly conditions of the soul or in Hell.

Durkheim explained that on the feast of Tabernacles the Jews do ritual in which the motion in the air causes the rain to fall based on correct performance.

And to show that Biblical culture is anti-science compared to the rational Indian culture.

The theory of evolution thus strongly repudiates the idea that the old testament is the word of God who is an omniscient being, for, the doctrine of creation as found in the old testament, is definitely false by modern scientific investigations. Now if the Bible is not regarded as a Holy Book revealed by God, the validity of most of the teachings of the bible and the promises contained therein as reward and punishment to the obedience and transgressions of the commands of God, would fail. Modern man of science is not shaken before Jehovah the god
Galileo was put in a cage and Bruno was burnt alive” “people believed in all kinds of superstitions and regarded them as parts of the Christian faith. Many today don’t believe in evolution.

The third thinker is Swami Vivekanda (1863 – 1902), the Indian Hindu monk and chief disciple of the 19th-century saint Ramakrishna, and is responsible for bringing Hinduism to the West. He was a key figure in the introduction of the Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world and is credited with raising interfaith awareness, bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion during the late 19th century. He was a major force in the revival of Hinduism in India. He is perhaps best known for his inspiring speech in which he introduced Hinduism at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1893.

If one pursues history of the religion of the Jew, it becomes quite clear that actually the Jews were idolatries in the beginning.
By degrees, circumcision took place of human sacrifice; and prostitution and image worship etc gradually disappeared.

Among the Jews, Idol worship is condemned but they had a temple in which was kept a chest which they called an ark, in which the Tables of the Law were preserved and above the chest were two figures of angels with wings outstretched between which the Divine presence was supposed to manifest itself as a cloud.

The religion of all the Semitic races, with slight minor variations was almost always the same…Almost every God was called Moloch… [ He relates the concept of kingship and ruler with child sacrifice]

Vivekanda’s main message was that mystics in every religion speak the same tongue and teach the same truth. He asks in several places the question that Indian may have not solved its primitive religion but the Biblical faiths have not produced advanced religion. We may have idols but you don’t produce great spiritual swamis. It is worth tolerating idols if we produce such great mystics

The fourth position we will look at is Śri Sai Baba (1926 –2011) an Indian guru who was also considered by his followers to be an avatar, spiritual saint and miracle worker. Sathya Sai Baba claimed he could materialize small objects such as rings, necklaces, and watches, along with reports of miraculous healings, resurrections, and clairvoyance, which sceptics viewed them as simple conjuring tricks.

Sai Baba attached many Jewish followers including Rabbi Dovid Zeller, and Sai Baba brought Rabbis Shlomo Carlebach and Zalman Schachter for an guru conference. Sai Baba sought to help the individual be aware of the Divinity that is inherent in him and to conduct himself accordingly; To translate this awareness into practice in daily life, divine love and perfection; and to fill one’s life with joy, harmony, beauty, grace, human excellence and lasting happiness.

Sai Baba includes the oneness of all religions as part of his teachings and several of his Temples have a museum display teaching about the world faiths. Originally , Sai Baba could not understand no matter how many times it was explained to him that Judaism and Christianity are not the same religion, and they do not share the worship of Jesus and the symbol of the Cross. Eventually, he understood and wrote a 33 page booklet about Judaism. (feel free to read the whole thing)

He used the following sources
1. Religions of the World – Judaism by Kenneth Atkinson.
2. Judaism, Third Edition, World Religions by Martha A. Morrison, Stephen F. Brown.
3. The Everything Judaism Book – by Richard D. Bank
4. Judaism for Dummies Rabbi Ted Falcon, Ph.D., David Blatner
5. History of the Jews by Paul Johnson
6. The Oxford dictionary of the Jewish religion, Oxford University Press, 1997
But what went wrong in his summary? What needs to be corrected in this thought pattern that can produce these paragraphs that would not be written by Jews? What is he missing that creates these summaries? where is his tonal quality off?

Orthodox Judaism: As a response to the growth of Reform Judaism in Europe, Moses Sofer (1762-1839), a rabbi from Bratislava, in the area now known as Slovakia, called on all traditional Jews to make no compromise with modernity. He summoned them to keep themselves separate from reform-dominated communities if they did not want to lose their Jewish identity. Orthodox Judaism is the traditional form of Judaism. Although Orthodox Judaism has changed over time to adapt to historical events and new circumstances, it has always remained firmly rooted in tradition. It attempts to follow many of the ancient laws that were preserved in written form in the Jewish Scriptures, as well as other laws that were passed down orally through successive generations of Jewish religious leaders called rabbis. Orthodox Jews rest on the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, as commanded in the Jewish Scriptures. Hebrew, the language of the Jews, is still used in worship. Women in Orthodox Judaism must cover their heads and sit apart from men during worship. Men are required to keep their heads covered at all times to remind them that God is above everything. Orthodox Jewish men traditionally leave their beards and the hair in front of their ears uncut, in accordance with the Jewish Scriptures (Leviticus 19:27).
Many Orthodox Jewish communities use Yiddish in daily life, and speak Hebrew during worship services. Because Orthodox Jews follow strict dietary laws (Kashrut), they have traditionally lived apart from other people.

One Jewish mystical tradition teaches that Elohim is the One, manifesting as the many. In this sense, YHVH refers to the Totality (the transcendent, which contains everything), and Elohim refers to the Immanent, that Spark of Divinity which awakens within each and every expression of the One Being. It’s another way of reminding people that what they see as lots of individual forms (people, animals, plants, rocks and so on) is, behind the scenes, all part of the One.

In addition to the Ten Commandments, God gave Moses many other rules and regulations. For example the Hebrews were forbidden to eat certain kinds of foods, such as pork, which God declared unclean. The biblical books of Exodus and Leviticus contain extensive commentaries Unity of Faiths – Judaism on each of the Ten Commandments and how to fulfill them in daily life. The extensive code of laws was designated to remind Jews of God and to help them behave properly. Because all religions have beliefs, rules and regulations that set them apart from other religions, many scholars say that the religion of Judaism begins with Moses and the Torah. This is because Moses is the traditional source of Judaism’s unique lifestyle.

In its time, the Cleveland Jewish Center case in 1927-1929 was considered the Scopes Monkey trial for the Orthodox community, fully covered by JTA and the Jewish newspapers, generating a public reaction of creating lasting denominational sides.

Rabbi Solomon Goldman a graduate of RIETS and JTSA and a follower of Mordecai Kaplan was challenged by a fraction of his congregation that did not like the direction that he was taking his 1500 family synagogue. They started a court case to force the rabbi to abide by old-time Orthodoxy.

Before proceeding it is important to not confuse denominations and deviant practices. A denomination is a fixed self defining group with a common name, structure, and doctrine. They have separated themselves from competing groups and are know as their own group. A deviance is a practice done within a single denomination. An Orthodox rabbi who advocates the abolition of Yom Kippur is a deviant not a denomination. Or the 1960’s case of the Conservative rabbi who substituted a frolic in the ocean for immersion in his conversions was a deviant who received censure; he was not now a Reform rabbi.

In addition, it is important to note as a premise that the United States does not interfere in the creation and definition of religious groups; hence the US is unique in its multiplying and contractions of denominations. In the real world, property is one of the biggest criteria for the stability of denominational structure. Who owns the land? Episcopalians despite declining numbers survive because they own vast amounts of property. Most other groups like Methodists who only own paltry converted homes, sell them and decline.

Court cases about denominations determine who owns the property based on the court assumption that founders wanted a certain denomination. Between the 1930’s and the 1950’s the number of topics of contention between the Conservative and Orthodox denominations got whittled down to mehitzah as the division between denominations since a judge could visually rule on the topic. A study of these extremely important court cases and the testimony on both sides is a disideratum and would make a great dissertation. Because of these cases the Young Israel movement had a clause that they can claim your synagogue property if they disagree with them. The recent repeal of the clause is one of the most important under-reported changes in Orthodoxy in the last few years. Legally, it allows the congregations to go their separate ways.

Back to our story:

In 1924, some of the old-timers in Cleveland took Goldman to court to say he is deviating from Orthodoxy. There were blow by blow dispatches from court.

Testimony to Establish What is Orthodoxy’ Will Be Presented in Courts November 4, 1927
Celebrated Cleveland Case to Force Decision on Orthodox vs. Conservative Issue
The friction on theological grounds obtaining throughout the country between strictly Orthodox congregations and those termed Conservative, affiliated with the United Synagogue of America, is being aired, preparatory to a trial which will begin in the Cleveland courts on Nov. 15.

The taking of depositions by rabbis and laymen, leaders of the Orthodox and Conservative wings in New York, began yesterday at the Manhattan Square Hotel for the forthcoming trial in the suit of a group of Orthodox members of the Cleveland Jewish Center against Rabbi Solomon Goldman, spiritual leader of the congregation.

The conflict between the Orthodox group and the Rabbi dates back two and a half years. The congregation, which has been in existence fifty years, has built the Jewish Center in which it was stated a million dollars was invested. A committee of the Orthodox members… filed a suit against Rabbi Goldman, alleging that he has diverted from the constitution of the congregation which provides that as long as ten members will insist on the Orthodox ritual, the congregation is to remain Orthodox. The committee insists that the Center continue to adhere to the Orthodox ritual.

The present board of the Center and Rabbi Goldman contend that the mode of worship, ritual and practice introduced by Rabbi Goldman is in accordance with traditional Judaism.

The trial, the first of its kind in the United States, will thus have to be decided on the question of what constitutes Orthodoxy. So far the testimony of Dr. B. Drachman, Rabbi Leo Jung, Rabbi M. S. Margolies, Rabbi Eliezar Silver of Springfield, Rabbi J. L. Selzer of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein of the Union of Orthodox Congregations and Mr. Gedaliah Bublick, editor of the Orthodox “Jewish Daily News” has been taken.

The witnesses are asked to answer to 33 questions which pertain to the charges brought by the Orthodox committee against Rabbi Goldman. Among the charges are that Rabbi Goldman had denied the Sinaitic origin of the Torah and the Decalogue, that he had permitted men and women to sit together in the synagogue, that he abolished the saying of grace at public dinners, that he had abolished the priestly benediction at the synagogue services and that he kisses the brides after performing the marriage ceremony.

According to Jacob Joseph Weinstein author of the biography Solomon Goldman: A Rabbi’s Rabbi other complaints included he eats with an uncovered head and does not say grace, that the Rabbi carries his books on the Sabbath, that he removed pitom haketoret and other parts of korbanot, that he read from progressive authors from the pulpit, that he invited left-wing radical speakers.

In his theological writings, Goldman declares he is not a deviant from Orthodoxy but that he is an entirely different denomination willing to make sweeping changes nationally and locally. In later years, he distributed newsletters of comprehensive changes needed in the Shulkhan Arukh. The changes are based on viewing the tradition as understood in American Protestant Congregational terms, the low-church ability to say that each and every church is independent and can make its own application of the tradition as found in Congregationalists and Methodists. Later in life he moves closer to Reconstructionist positions based on peoplehood. Goldman views Orthodoxy as the deviant:

A new Judaism dubbed Orthodoxy was unconsciously but dangerously approaching Catholicism. Whereas the reward of a mizvah was considered to be the performance of another mizvah now it guaranteed salvation-personal salvation in the world to come…Many a maggid emulated revivalist and evangelist and he cracking fires of hell lent force to many a sterile derasha.(81)

Goldman himself took the stand and gave a lecture on the history of Judaism and denominations.

Defendant denies that the term “traditional” is synonymous with “Orthodox,” as applies to Judaism. Defendant avers that there has been no governing body of Jewish churches for the past eighteen hundred years but that each congregation makes up a separate entity, responsible alone to itself and without control by any other organization. Among the Jews, the word traditional is used in connection with Jewish law, and in Judaism from time immemorial there has been recognized the existence of both a written law and a traditional law.

The word “Orthodox” in the Christian Church has been used to designate rigidity and inflexibility in creed and was never applied to ritual or practice. In the Jewish religion on the other hand there has never been a rigid definition of creed and the term “Orthodox” has not had a meaning in the Jewish religion until the last century and then it has been and is used in connection with ritual or practice.”

The Orthodox Jews insist upon the rigid observance of Jewish customs and practices outside the synagogue as well as within. They insist upon eating with covered heads, in the ceremony of washing their hands before a meal and in the ceremony of grace before and after meals. The ritual forbids shaving. The Rabbis of the defendant congregation are shaven, as are the members and even the plaintiffs in this action. The synagogue has never had a central platform which is usual in Orthodox churches. The members, including some of the plaintiffs, eat with uncovered heads, and many of the members, including some of the plaintiffs, do not observe the ceremony of washing hands or grace before or after meals.

The customs, rituals, and practices of the defendant congregation have been largely in conformity with those of Conservative synagogues. During the reign of its first rabbi and since the present one, it has had a late Friday evening service, in conformity with other Conservative churches, as distinguished from Orthodox churches.(15-16)

In response, Reform Rabbi Stephan Wise wrote to Goldman:

So you are the Yiddisher Bishop Brown. I am sorry that I cannot get in the fight with you. It ought to be lots of fun, and I will pay you the compliment of telling you that I am rather sorry for your opponents. I think they are going to be very sorry that they tackled the thing at all before you get through with them.” (17)

The congregation replied in court to its challengers

Cleveland Center Leaders Reply to Orthodox Charges November 20, 1927
“We, the undersigned, members of Congregation Anshe Emeth Beth Tefilo, known as the Jewish Center, beg to declare: “On November first and second members of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis and the Union of Orthodox Congregations made reply to a series of questions contained in the petition submitted to the Cleveland Court of Common Pleas by a number of dissatisfied members of our Congregation against the congregation and Rabbi Goldman. These questions and answers received wide publicity in the Yiddish press, conveying the impression that the Congregation and Rabbi Goldman are admitting the truth of these charges.
In the meantime, may we be permitted to state the following:
1. “The impression has been giver that the Jewish Center has been an Orthodox congregation for fifty years and that Rabbi Goldman, with the assistance of a few newcomers in the congregation, have sought to reform it,
“It is true that our congregation was founded sixty years ago, but for more than a quarter of a century it has been moving in the direction of what is generally known as Conservative Judaism. As a matter of history, the Orthodox members deserted the congregation when our building on Thirty-Seventh Street and Woodland Avenue was erected more than thirty years ago, Some twenty years ago we engaged as our spiritual leader the late Rabbi Samuel Margolis, who was known to shave, to eat without a hat, and seldom if ever attended daily services.
Our congregation never pretended to be Orthodox. We have had late Friday evening service for more than a decade. We have had religious school and confirmation of boys and girls together for about fifteen years. We were never, for example, identified with the Mizrachi. Rabbi Margolis was known as a general Zionist and the congregation always followed him. Ours was also one of the first congregations to join the United Synagogue of America. In 1921 prior to Rabbi Goldman’s coming to our congregation we considered a merger with a well-known Conservative congregation in Cleveland.

“Rabbi Goldman was well-known in the city of Cleveland, where he had occupied the pulpit of the Ben Jeshurun for three years prior to his coming to the Center. He never pretended to be an Orthodox rabbi any more than our Congregation pretended to be an Orthodox congregation.

2. “It has been stated that a large clement of the Congregation has brought suit against the Center and Rabbi Goldman.
“This, of course, is equally untrue. The Congregation, which is the largest Conservative congregation in America, consisting of eleven hundred members, is supporting Rabbi Goldman and the Board of Trustees heart and soul. The official list which the opposition has thus far submitted to us consists of thirty-one names. Seven of these are non-members. Of the twenty-four others twelve have returned to the congregation and have ever since attended our services regularly.

3. “All the other charges brought either against Rabbi Goldman or against the Congregation are equally untrue.
“Rabbi Goldman has never ridiculed either Orthodoxy or Orthodox leaders. We have never refrained from inviting lecturers and speakers because of their Orthodoxy. We have not eliminated the saying of grace, the washing of hands at our Congregational dinners. Rabbi Goldman has made no practice of kissing the brides, he does not partake of non-kosher food, he never denied the divine inspiration of the Torah.

4. “It has also been stated that we refused to appear before a Beth Din of the Agudath Harabonim.
“This is true, but our Congregation felt perfectly justified in its action. The summons from the Agudath Harabonim was not sent directly to our Congregation, but to the few opposing members. The summons was photographed and printed as a paid advertisement in the ‘Jewish World’ of Cleveland. It was only after it appeared in the newspaper that it was delivered to us. We considered this act of the Agudath Harabonim un-Jewish and their Beth-Din prejudicial. Then again, we felt that the opposition should have brought the case either to the Rabbinical Assembly of which body Rabbi Goldman is a member or to the United Synagogue of America of which organization our congregation has been a member for the past nine years.”

The case was dismissed by the court because “charging deviation from the Orthodox ritual, will not end the fight between the Orthodox and Conservatives in that congregation.” The Orthodox plaintiffs said they would press the case further. January 20, 1928

In July 23, 1929, the Orthodox plaintiffs claimed before the appetite court

That the congregation was incorporated for the purpose of promoting traditional or orthodox Judaism in the worship of God, and to build a synagogue for a like purpose;
That this congregation was formed in 1917 by a consolidation of two orthodox congregations which at all times before accepted and promulgated the doctrine of orthodox or traditional Judaism, and in the church services adopted the rites, ceremonies and practices appertaining thereto…That by reason of the facts set forth herein above, a trust was imposed upon this church property, and that it should be used for orthodox Judaism only;
That the defendant Rabbi and the trustees are opposed and hostile to orthodox Judaism and the ceremonial observations pertaining thereto;
That, in 1924, a meeting of the congregation was had for the purpose of adopting a new constitution, where and when a new constitution was adopted, ignoring orthodox Judaism, but its adoption was contrary to the terms of the old constitution.

On October 1, 1929, the Court of Appeals, dismissing the suit as a strictly ecclesiastical question.
The case was not accepted by the Supreme Court. Rabbi Solomon Goldman, moved to head a synagogue in Chicago. He was succeeded in Cleveland by a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary. The opinion written by Appellate Judge John J. Sullivan, unanimously affirmed by his two associates, read:

The prayer for this court to adopt a rule by which the congregation in question shall abandon its present administration and conform to the doctrine of traditional orthodoxy and Judaism, even if this legal tribunal had the right to interfere in religious matters for which provision has been made as to the control within the church itself, is incapable of being granted for the reason that every member of the congregation of the church might have a different view as to what this doctrine is in all its various phases and it would be impossible to lay down a rule, with these conflicting opinions, which a board of trustees could follow, because in order to do so, the religion would have to be as definite as a science and even with respect to science it would be impossible to do so because of the diverging opinions that exist among scientific men upon scientific principles.

The judgement was reaffirmation of American freedom of conscience and freedom of thought before the encroachment of ecclesiastical bodies.

Two months prior in May 1929, there was a convention of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada [Agudas Harabbonim] and they submitted their own Communication to the Editor of the JTA. The president, Rabbi Israel Rosenberg attacked Conservative Judaism, as the greater enemy of Orthodoxy since it is “going about masked, making a false pretense at being traditional Judaism.”

The president of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis launched a bitter attack on some of the Conservative rabbis who, he asserted, are violating Jewish religious tradition by permitting mixed pews in the synagogue, by disregarding the laws concerning the purity of family life and the ritual bath, by taking upon themselves the authority to issue religious divorces in English, instead of the prescribed Hebrew “gett,” and by officiating at weddings contrary to the Jewish religious law, without the required presence of qualified witnesses.

He suggested the organization of a federation of Orthodox synagogues and rabbis and the formation of a young people’s league to be headed by the younger Orthodox rabbis. He put forward a proposal for the convening of a world conference of Orthodox rabbis to be held in Europe this summer to consider the part of Orthodox Jewry in the Jewish Agency, and pleaded for generous support on the part of American Jews for the maintenance of yeshivas in the United States and in Europe.

The RCA came to be as a self-proclaimed Orthodox organization six years later in 1935. Their constituency and demographic was the same as the less influential Conservative congregations. Some of the RCA members took down mehizot in their congregations or conducted late Friday night services. They were almost all affiliated with Mizrachi and Poalei Mizrachi, both quite liberal and anathema to the Agudas Harabbonim. If they were lucky, they took Jewish Centers as pulpits with their implicit Mordecai Kaplan ideology of peoplehood, civilization and cultural centers. And in that very year, Rabbi Jacob Agus graduates RIETS and goes on to formulate the ideology of the liberal wing of the Conservative movement. In addition, he formulated the most liberal view on divine revelation considered to this day the liberal boundary of Conservative Judaism. However, he did not leave Orthodoxy until 1945. Rabbi Agus, the RIETS graduate and former RCA member, was to become the author of the famous responsa that allowed driving on Shabbat. The RCA was ceaselessly attached by the Agudas Harabbonim and spent more than 28 years trying to establish their positions.

In the 1930’s Conservative congregations were still called “modern Orthodox” but the rapid rise of recognition of the Conservative denomination in the 1940’s they predominately become called Conservative. President Belkin and his circle preferred the term traditional and to label Conservative and Ultra-Orthodox as non-traditional.The RCA called itself Orthodox and a small group of intellectuals revived the term modern Orthodox in late 1950s. But those are other tales to tell.

Last week the Faculty of Social Science of Banares Hindu University hosted a dramatic evening of performance. What made the performance interesting from my point of view is that men and women students cannot touch, so it was very much like a yeshiva day school play, one could profitability compare how to do shomer negiah dramatics in both faiths. The lead male role in the play was given to a girl so that she can touch and hug the heroine. A minor male role was performed by an actual male student, but the rest of the individual roles were women. The men acted as a dance troupe acting out selected events in the narrative as a group like night on the town, the allure of the world, or greed of the business world. All vocals were from a recording.

If the school was traditional old-time Brahman there would have been no mixing allowed and if it was modern then there would not be a question. But they are Orthodox without the old-ways. And like a day school, there was the awkward ending when the female students only received flowers and a shawl from the female Dean and the male students from the male Dean, which noticeably neither side found convenient.

As a school founded in the nineteenth century, the entire academic faculty until recently was Brahman. Certainly departments such as philosophy and religion, Sanskrit, or dramatics (Hindus have an aesthetic tradition ) are still overwhelmingly so, as are the students who take degrees in philosophy because their Brahman fathers and grandfathers did so. I have learned how to recognize Brahman instructors by their last names. The English word pundit is from the Sanskrit meaning learned priest, hence a Professor with the name Pandey is certainly a Brahman. The town of Banares is about 25% Brahman a much higher percentage than most cities.

Traditional students touch the hem or cuff of the professor’s pants and then kisses their hand as they bow to their Professor Guru Ji. They will even do this in subjects where the professors do not want such old-time reverence like women’s studies. As a traditional campus everyone certainly stands or half-stands when a professor walks in or leaves. Women in senior academic positions wear traditional garb. There is a new trend in this post-feminist age for young Hindu women to wear chadors over their faces like their Muslim classmates when they go into the street on their motorbikes. My informants say that it is both to be protected from men’s eyes in unsafe India and at the same time not letting friends and family see you hanging out too close with your boyfriend.

The women in the BA in philosophy & religion choose the text courses and kiss their sacred library books when they are done as is pious Orthodox custom. They also touch the bottom lintel as they go in and out of a room and kiss their hand.

I find frequently find myself creating historically anachronistic parallelism, like the Ibn Ezra who explains Biblical details with similar practices in medieval India. Oh look, they only use the earthenware (heres) cups once and then smash them and consider them non-cleanable. Or look the storm is starting, see the men borrow their wives overcoats to bring in the goods before get destroyed.

However, it is strange to be a world where everyone knows the molad of Rosh Hodesh. Both Hindus and Muslims use a lunar calendar. But Diwali was Sunday in the North-East of India and Saturday elsewhere. And Muslim Eid was one day in Arabia and a day later here. It is exactly the discussion by Rabbi Zerachiah HaLevi (Baal Hameor) in Rosh Hashanah explaining the arrival of the molad in india vs Jerusalem.

I am surprised by how much disdain there is for capitalism, work or globalization. The combination of Gandhism and Marxism leaves itself open to avoid dealing with social problems. For those in US who want a place without regulations, this is it. Uttar Pradesh, the state that I am in, has no nasty restrictions by health, education or welfare. No commerce or trade regulations. No one is providing education or work, or helping the afflicted. I have been told that it is completely different in the state of Kerala that has a 95% literacy rate but up here in Uttar Pradesh with a 40% literacy rate life looks different.

They are convinced they have no interfaith problem in the country because everyone is free to observe their own religion. Yet recently, a Muslim man harassed a Hindu girl and the girls two brother avenged her by killing the harasser. But the Muslim community then killed the two Hindu brothers. By the end of the cycle 17 people were killed.

The philosophy department library goes back to the founding of the school and contains a rare assemblage of personal libraries donated to the collection. Somewhat like the collection of retired rabbi libraries at the old Yeshurun Synagogue library in Jerusalem or the old Hebrew College library before they were dissembled. The library does contain Rev Michael Freidlander book on Judaism and even the more recent work Faith by Louis Jacobs. (They will soon have a donation of Scholem, Soloveitchik, Heschel, and Kook among others; we are encouraged to leave our teaching books).

The local academic bookstore that has everything you could want on India, Hinduism, and Buddhism, has two works of Judaica- Martin Gilbert, History of Israel and Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People.

Back in the 1970’s Americans noted how India still treats Whitehead as if it was contemporary, Well nothing has changed. Bradley, Bertram Russell, and Royce, are still studied as contemporary thought.

I was here for the Diwali, the feast of lights which every community and religious group interprets in its own way- even Indian Jews take part. But for the Brahmans at the University, it is only a business class/ caste holiday of external activity and public show. What kind of holiday is it where you eat sweets, have family gatherings and light fire crackers to make noise?

During my holiday boat ride to see the city lit up as the city of lights, I finally watched the cremation of the dead on the river bank. There were two ways of doing it, the old way with wood and the new way with a modern crematorium that takes only an hour. The wood for the old way is provided as pre-cut cords of wood, so it looked like illustrations of the offering of Isaac/the ram in kids books, a perfect box fire- flame ascending with pious supplicants attending. The new method of a crematorium facing the river – besides the Holocaust image of it- is of a professional maintaining the machine while fighting off the pariah dogs desperately driven by the smell- leaving one only with the after-image impressed by the dogs of their desire to acquire cooked meat.

On the tourist things I have little to say. There are many blogs with travelogues and pictures on the attractions- see here, here, and here for some good critical comments at the end.

Benares was a hub of American graduate students seeking degrees in South Asian studies in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Now they are senior professors with a love of this town. For the best and most comprehensive romantic account of every ghat, temple, street, and cow, see Diana Eck, Banares: City Of Light (Princeton University Press).

I wrote this post last week and did not have connectivity. Tonight, the phone company replaced my non-working portable hotspot for a new one and asked me to wait in a busy traffic circle for a messenger on motorbike for a one minute trade-off. While waiting, I notice on the left side of the side a billboard with a missing poster leaving only the uncovered re-bar looking like a monkey bars, the other side had a Samsung ad. Among comes a troop of monkeys who actually start to use it as a monkey bars swinging around bars. My phone trade-off occurs without problem, but then the neighborhood loses power- a daily occurrence. Since it was after nightfall and I was sweating from the wait, I figure I will sit out the darkness in a nearby American style coffee bar with emergency power. I drink my ice tea, light comes back on, I leave coffee shop situated on a second floor landing, but the same troop of monkeys has taken over the staircase looking for victims for robbery or at least the extortion of trading your laptop or eyeglasses back for some fruit. I am pointed to a back door to escape. Time for a bit of Shabbos shopping. Why is there in an OU on a product that says for local India use only? Most likely it is sold under a different label at many times the cost in the US. The shopkeeper offers me the raisins from Afghanistan to buy as better than those of India. Bananas are 12 for 50 cents, papayas are seedless and about $1.10, and little lemons are 8 for 30 cents.

After, I take an auto-rickshaw home. The driver noticing when I step out of the vehicle that I wear a kippah, asks with a point to my head covering: “You Parsee?” I say “No, I am Jewish.” He smiles and explains that he is Muslim. He desperately hunts his mind for some English words to ask a follow-up question. You can tell by his face and his long pause that he had many things he wanted to ask. There is a moment of frustration, I wished him a Salaam-Alaikum, he answers “Alaikum Salaam” and he speeds off.

In the 1990’s the University of Chicago published a multi-volume set on the rise of Fundamentalist religion in the contemporary world. For those who remember the series, Gush Emunim, Merkaz Harav, and Centrist Orthodoxy were included in its survey. Most historians and sociologist reacted by distinguishing between the Fundamentalists, the true believers who lived with a complete sectarian zeal and the Evangelicals who were willing go out and engage the contemporary world through outreach, professional achievement, and social integration.

Motti Inbari has a Ph.D., from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is an assistant professor of religion at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. His first book, Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount (SUNY, 2009) won the AICE best publication award in Israel Studies. His second book is Messianic Religious Zionism Confronts Israeli Territorial Compromises (Cambridge, 2012).is making a career of studying the Fundamentalists starting with Gush Emunim and moving his research now to Munkatch, Neturei Karta and Satmar.

Here is his work in interview form. He still uses the Fundamentalist category and analyzes the events using the famous 1956 book by Festinger, When Prophecy Fails to explain their behaviors. I found most interesting his discussion of how the Munkatcher traveled in 1930 to Jerusalem in order to crown Rabbi Eliezer Alfandri as king messiah, but the latter died in front of him.

Inbari’s virtue is writing in English and writing classroom ready overviews. In 1987, Gideon Aran wrote a Ph.D dissertation on the origins of Gush Emunim which he recently released as Kookism – The Roots of Gush Emunim, Jewish Settlers’ Sub-Culture, Zionist Theology, Contemporary Messianism, Jerusalem: Carmel, 2013. Journalist Gershom Gornberg published a study on the political aspect of the emergence of the settlement project: The Accidental Empire – Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 (Times Books, 2006). His book focuses only on the first years post ‘67. Another book considered by many to be biased against the settlers is: Lords of the Land: the War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007(New York: Nation Books, 2007), by Idith Zertal, and journalist Akiva Eldar. This book attempts to psychoanalyze and explain the aberrations of the settlers.

Michael Feige published an anthropological study in English on the Gush Emunim movement, Settling in the Hearts: Jewish Fundamentalism in the Occupied Territories, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2009.

Inbari thinks that Feige limited his analysis on field research limiting the role of texts and the theology of the rabbis. Inbari wants to correct this and deal with their messianic theology. He places the responses to the actions of the secular state at the center of discussion contributed to changing religious ideology.

Comments should be on the analysis of religion in the contemporary world, not politics. As stated before, the blog takes as a given that you read academic works.

1) What is your thesis in your book?

The Six Day War in 1967 profoundly influenced how an increasing number of religious Zionists saw Israeli victory as the manifestation of God’s desire to redeem God’s people. Thousands of religious Israelis joined the Gush Emunim movement in 1974 to create settlements in territories occupied in the war. They also sanctified the State of Israel as part of the redemption process. Over time, however, the Israeli government decided to return territory to Palestinian or Arab control. This was perceived among religious Zionist circles as a violation of God’s order. The peak of this process came with the Disengagement Plan in 2005, in which Israel demolished all the settlements in the Gaza Strip and four settlements in the West Bank. This process raised difficult theological questions among religious Zionists: What supreme religious significance could be attributed to these events? Was the State of Israel no longer to be considered a divine tool for the redemption of the Jewish people? This book explores the internal mechanism applied by a group of religious Zionist rabbis in response to their profound disillusionment with the behavior of the state, reflected in an increase in religious radicalization because of the need to cope with the feelings of religious and messianic failure.

The book starts with a discussion over Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook’s theology and the creation of Gush Emunim. It then continues with an examination of Rabbi Kook’s followers’ responses to territorial compromises at crucial points: the withdrawal from Sinai as part of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty (1982), the Oslo Accords (1993-5) and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza, and eventually with the Disengagement Plan (2005).

Since the book is studying the correlation between the growing strength of the settlers’ movement and the paradox that the actual situation on the ground has grown worse from their perspective, I decided to examine the relevance of the psychological model of cognitive dissonance in the context of the behavior of the movement.

2) Why do you use the categories of Festinger’s cognitive dissonance?

When Prophecy Fails (Festinger, Reiken & Schachter 1956) studied Mrs. Keech’s small UFO cult that believed in an imminent apocalypse and later developed cognitive mechanism to explain why the event did not occur. Festinger’s team came out with two conclusions: 1. beliefs that are clearly falsified will be held even more intensely after falsification; 2. and the group will increase active proselytization. The team used the term “Cognitive dissonance” to refer to the distress caused when two contradictory ideas, or cognitions, are held simultaneously. In the case of a messianic or millennial individual or group, cognitive dissonance is said to occur when a fervently held belief appears to be contradicted by empirical evidence. Since then, the cognitive dissonance theory became very dominant. However, the study of prophetic movements had much developed since Festinger et al. published their book, and today there is a much more comprehensive and multi-dimensional analysis of the topic.

Lorne Dawson showed three survival methods to cognitive dissonance: intensified proselytization, various rationalizations and acts of reaffirmation. Whereas Festinger and his team argued that proselytization is a key component for the movement’s survival, many newer case studies proved that proselytization seldom happens. However, in the messianic religious Zionist case I had noticed proselytization as an important mechanism for easing dissonance (“Settling in the Hearts” campaigns).

Rationalizing is the key tool for dealing with failure, and there are a few ways where it can develop. The use of mysticism to spiritualize prophecy is a major one: mystical interpretations can deny the failure and argue that prophecy has been maintained on divine or ethereal levels. Thus, mystical interpretation enables the rejection of reality as it appears externally, and acceptance instead as covert spiritual fulfillment. Another method of rationalization can claim that the prophecy was a test of faith, and that God is putting the believers in miseries in order to examine their strength. These reasoning were used by prominent settler rabbis, as Shlomo Aviner and Zvi Tau that argued that redemption continues in heaven, or that God is testing his followers. A third way or rationalization can be with blaming failure on human errors like miss interpretation, or blaming others for misunderstanding or interfering with the fulfillment of prophecy. Blaming the State of Israel or blaming “the left” is a common excuse by the more radical rabbis.

I argue that the messianic Religious Zionist’s response to failure of faith due to territorial compromises in certain circumstances may go in one of these ways: There may be a logical explanation to an acknowledged failure of prophecy, in which they admit that a religious mistake had been made, and thus they retreat from their expectant messianic perspective (like the case with Rabbis Yehuda Amital and Shmuel Tal); Alternately, they may have the opposite reaction in which followers reject the idea that the prophecy failed, instead arguing that messianic realization is indeed taking place, but in the unseen sphere. Therefore, they may argue that since messianic failure is definitely not certain, nothing should be changed in their theology and practice (Zvi Tau and Shlomo Aviner); Finally, they may acknowledge the failure of their original messianic prophecy, and yet still be strengthened in their religious zeal in order to prevent complete collapse. Since the end vision is political, with the establishment of a theocratic regime, they may be involved in political action, in order to fulfill prophecy (The Jewish Leadership Movement).

My book discusses the messianic stream of religious Zionism. I do not argue that all religious Zionists are messianic. Actually, for those who follow Israeli affairs, it is becoming very evident that the rift between the modernists and the conservatives is growing bigger, up to a point that it is doubtful if we can call them all “religious Zionists.”

3) Why do you still use the category of fundamentalism when even Martin Marty has abandoned it?

Fundamentalism is a useful term that comes to describe a trend of religious militancy that emerges as a response to the rise and dominance of secularity in society and politics. The term was used first in an American Christian context, but it was borrowed also to describe other movements in other faiths. This is a common term in research, but there are many critics against the use of it. I don’t think there is a better term for us to use. However, I can tell you that in my new research on radical ultra-Orthodoxy I am making a much more in-depth research into patterns of Jewish zealotry, and “zeal” is replacing “fundamentalism” in my analysis of religious radicals.

4) What is the topic of your next book?

The book I am currently working on is: Neturei Karta and Satmar: Radical Ultra-Orthodoxy Confronts Modernity, Zionism and Women’s Equality. This book reviews the history, ideology and gender relations of two leaders: Amram Blau, founder of the Jerusalem based anti-Zionist Neturei Karta, and Yoel Teitelbaum, leader of the Satmar Hasidic sect in New York.

I started this research in 2009 when I got tipped that Amram Blau’s personal archive was delivered to the US, and it located at the Boston University Archives. I discovered a very rich archive with fascinating and even amazing information about Neturei Karta: its formation, its modesty patrols, the campaigns against the State of Israel, and some information on Amram Blau’s personal life. After I wrote two articles based on the materials, I had found very interesting information regarding his biography, his dynamic relationship with Zionist activist, and more.

5) Can you say a few words about the Munkatcher’s attempt to appoint a messiah?

One of the chapters of this new research discusses messianic tension that developed in the Munkacz court in Hungary, under the leadership of Rabbi Chaim Elazar Shapira. The First World War caused considerable psychological shock to the rabbi. For Shapira, the war proved that the era was indeed one of the “pangs of messiah.” In 1930, Shapira traveled to Jerusalem in order to crown Rabbi Eliezer Alfandri as king messiah. Alfandri, known also by the title of “The holy grandfather,” was perceived by some of the mystics of the Old Yeshuv in Jerusalem as the “founding Tzadik of the world,” therefore a candidate for the title. The visit ended in a fiasco: Alfandri died in front of Shapira’s eyes. After his death, Shapira continued with additional activities to force the end.

6) How does Gush Emunim compare to contemporary movements?

In my book I did make a comparison of messianic religious Zionism with other religious movements in the spectrum, namely the American evangelical movement, and I studied the Christian response to Israeli territorial compromises, as a comparative case study.

Whereas Judaism and Islam share many similarities, Gush Emunim and the Muslim Brotherhood do not share much in common. Most of the radical Islamist movements are anti-secular and antigovernment. They propose a religious alternative to the secular state. Indeed, Gush Emunim has a religious ideal for a Jewish government, which is theocratic, like the Islamists; however, Gush Emunim is not an anti-statist movement, and this is a big difference. Islamic movements are revolutionary and violent, even if sometimes they will tactically moderate themselves. Gush Emunim, by contrast, sanctified the state, which is viewed as a holy institution. It is important to mention that the growing tension between the state and the movement over territorial compromises does push some activists into a radical response which is post-statist or even anti-statist, which is more inline with the Islamist response.

Both American fundamentalism and Gush Emunim share an admiration to the state (the US and Israel simultaneously), and they both see themselves as patriotic movements. They both try to forward their political agenda through the political institutions, while accepting the legitimacy of these institutions (unlike the Islamists). However, their messianic perspectives are different: Religious Zionism developed a natural messianic ideology, in which God is bringing the redemption through human effort in a mundane process. Therefore the State of Israel is viewed as a step toward redemption, but many more steps are required in order to achieve the final goal. Evangelical Christianity, in contrast, believes in the Dispensational theory, by which mankind is moving toward the last dispensation, but we still did not get to that point, and the events of the End of Days would be miraculous and supernatural.

This position also influences views on the question of land for peace. For messianic religious Zionism, messianic time has already begun, and accordingly no territorial compromises are possible. Christian Zionism believes that Jerusalem must be held by the State of Israel as a precondition for the eruption of the End of Days events. For Christian Zionism, Jerusalem constitutes a red line; on other issues, it is more flexible.

7) You treat Rav Amital as just a political reaction, what about his theology?

Rabbi Amital’s case is very interesting, because he had gone a long way from his original opinions. When Yoel Bib-Nun and Hanan Porat were looking for a leader for the newly established Gush Emunim, they approached Amital, because he was well know for his messianic beliefs. However, Amital’s views were different than those articulated in Merkaz Harav Yeshiva, headed by Zvi Yehuda Kook. For Amital, the sanctity of human life was more important than the sanctity of the Land of Israel. Therefore, when it came to the prospects of peace, he supported peace over territory. At a later stage he also rejected the linkage between the State and redemption. In the book, I explain the transformation of his views, which led him to publicly support the Oslo Accords.

8) What is the role of theology or piety in their thought? You seem to make everything cognitive dissonance without any internal theological development.

My book is focused on two questions: how did the settlers’ rabbis respond to territorial compromises, and to what extent it changed their theology. These are major questions that are being debated even today. The rabbis had to respond to a pressing issue that threatened to destroy not just their homes in case of the eviction of settlements but also their entire theological infrastructure. Territorial retreats were viewed as messianic retreats. Therefore I disagree with your statement that my research seems to make everything about cognitive dissonance without any internal theological development. I think that the urgent situation from their part forced them to respond, and you cannot ignore effects of the surrounding conditions on their decisions.

(AB- For a more Mahshevet Yisrael perspective read the articles of Dov Schwartz, Moshe Hellinger, Yoshke Achitov, or even my article on Rav Amital but only selects elements that fit into the political theology. Personally, I would like to see a good study of the settler journal Nekudah with its diverse elements of realism, apocalypticism, piety, and political theory.)

9) Are Jews on the Temple Mount a good thing?

Jews throughout the generations yearned for the rebuilding of the Temple. Actually, it is an essential component of our daily Amidah prayer. The rebuilding the Temple became an option after Israel conquered the site in 1967. However, until recently the rabbinical authorities, across all Orthodox lines, banned Jews to go up the Mount, due to complications relating to ritual purity. The Israeli government actually made the Temple Mount a de facto Muslin worship site, where Jews can only visit as tourists. Over the last 20 years, the attitude of the messianic religious Zionist authorities has changed over the question of Jews going up the Temple Mount. They came to believe that if Jews do not go up, they might lose their ownership of the site.

So yes, they should be allowed because I believe that if they are not allowed it will lead to greater tension. If there would be a third Intifada, the Temple Mount be a clashing point. Therefore, the radicalization of the Jewish approach to the Mount, blended with the mirror like radicalization of Muslims, is not a good sign.

The fact that Jews go up the Mount can be a pressure relief for those Jews who feel that their ownership rights are being taken away from them. It is better for the State of Israel to allow them to visit the site than to let them explode and who knows what would be the results. We must remember that in the past there were attempts by radical Jews to damage the site, as in case of the Jewish Underground (1984) and the Lifta Gang (1983).

[AB- for an alternative perspective of political science that thinks Jews and Muslim cannot share any sacred space, see Ron E. Hassner War on Sacred Grounds. Here is the website.]

Readers download Inbari’s articles and published chapters at his personal website:

Back in Elul someone emailed to me a schedule of classes given by the new Mashgiah of RIETS, Rabbi Moshe Weinberger and the one that struck him was the class for smicha students on the writings of Rabbi Haim Cohen, nicknamed the “The Milkman (Helban).”

Back in 2005, he was described in a Haaretz article listing “The 10 leading kabbalists today are young, charismatic people who feel comfortable on the capitalist playing field. ‘Opium for the masses,’ the 21st-century version.”

Rabbi Haim CohenThe search for new attractions gives rise to a need for new names, more concealed tzaddikim, for those in the know. Rabbi Haim Cohen of Givatayim is such a new name, and he is gathering influence. He is an older man, a simple worker in a factory, without a beard, and he is known as “The Milk Man.” His believers speak of a unique quality in his blessings, and of his healing abilities. He organizes tikkunim and purifies himself in the mikveh (ritual bath). Pedigree: None.

In many aspects, he is the wonderworker for the Religious Zionist world. And from the pictures of his audience, he is attaching a wide range of them. His approach is to connect different verses to an esoteric sod. This verse is the secret of that sefirah and gives this power, this verse is the secret of creation from sefer yetzirah, and this verse shows our current task to build the land. He is able to draw forth imperative not explicit in the text such as the whole mission of Mordechai in the Esther story was to rebuild the Temple.

The Helban builds on the writings of his ancestry Rabbi Itamar Cohen of Smyrna’s Midrash Talpiot which offers the same associative method and the same ability to draw conclusions from these association. His thought should not be confused with the grand project of Lurianic exegesis and kavvanot, rather it is of a more popular variety. For his writings and those of his ancestors- see here. If you want to hear his shiur in person- here are the details. Here are weekly audio and visual recordings of his shiurim.

Some of his ideas capture the spirit of segulot. Such as his suggestion to eat Matzah on Rosh Hashanah because matzah has the power of redemption and we can use some of that when we are doing teshuvah. (This should not be confused with the Pri Megadim suggesting to eat matzah the first night of Sukkot because a hekesh).

The Helban receives prognostications, I assume not by tyromancy, that Netanyahu has to bomb Iran now and the Helban offers other unilateral political visions on a regular basis.

My question is not about the effect of this in Israel, but the effect on Centrist Orthodoxy. If this is the teaching for smicha students then we will start hearing this from the pulpits in about 10-12 years. I am expecting the biggest resistance is going to be from those educated in the 1990’s by Rav Schechter and his students. This world of blessings, inner voices, segulot, sodot, and kabbalah creates a new playing field little in harmony with the language of mesorah, practical halakhah, and polemics. The baby-boomer’s who knew Rav Soloveitchik still hear their teacher saying that Jewish thought has to be done by the trained mind, by the intellectual, by the dialectics of mind and heart, universal and particular, individual and community, grandeur and humility. They will not enter into this discussion. But will the late 30’s and early 40 somethings say this is not our mesorah?

I know many who like the new Haredi Neo-Hasidism and several who love it and were instrumental in bring it to RIETS. Will the new generation be one of Neo-Hasidut from the milkman and the authors discussed here? Blessed Are the Cheesemakers!

Here is some Passover Torah about redemption. There are several good pamphlets of his material online as well as some free volumes of his works. Here is his Yamim Noraim volume. Here are soem chapters of his Devarim volume.

Here is a nice 5 minute example of his shiurim from this past Elul.

Here he is cool enough to sign with Ehud Banai

Go watch and read some of his material and then come back.

Greetings from Varanasi, India. An ancient town with continuous residence of the same people since the 6th century BCE and possibly continuous since the 13th century BCE. The town is also known as Kashi (its ancient name) and Benares (its Hindu name). This is the city that that you see in the pictures where thousands come out to bath in the Ganges and everyone waiting in line on the ghats (the staircases down to the river).

I am here as a Fulbright Senior Scholar for a while.

I am staying at the Benares Hindu University, the oldest and largest in Asia, a university founded in the colonial period by the Annie Besant. The campus is twice the size of Central Park and arranged as buildings set back among hibiscus and jasmine flowers. Picture the original vision of Givat Ram of the separate buildings behind the library. Now multiple it several fold. Most of the campus is for technology, agriculture, and medicine so the size of the Arts and Sciences section that I have to deal with is not that bad.

Below is the library.

Now that I am settled, the blog will resume with its regular posts. I am nine and a half hours ahead of DST and will be ten and a half hours ahead of EST. Power in this part of the country is spotty. I arrived during the cyclone when everything was worse. All forms of internet and wifi are also spotty. Even in an internet café the power or wifi can go at any time; the locals take it in stride. I will only be checking email and monitoring comments once a day around 5-AM EST, if there is wifi. I may get there as early as 2 AM EST but don’t count on it. The University has blocked Facebook.

My project here in India is three-fold. First, to go back and add some clarity to the Jewish Hindu encounters of 2007, 2008, and 2009. Let’s see how much they understood of each other and how much the Hindu side, the Hindu Dhrarma Acharya Sabha led by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, was representative of broader opinions. Here is a full set of documents from the encounters. (The online were from the right wing Hidutva parties.)

Second, to explain what is Judaism. There is almost no knowledge of the Judaism here and not even basic Jewish books. In a future post, I will show how bad it is. They basically only know Jews from the New Testament, Shakespeare, Marx, and the Holocaust. In their reading of Abraham and Isaac, Judaism grew out of a human sacrifice cult. Or if you asked them to explain Judaism they will start with Judaism of pillars in high places, soothsaying, golden calves and battles against Baal, we just evolved from there. Conversations usually start, with my being asked if the Jews are like the Pareses and then concluding with a question if we are part of Christianity.

Third, to explain back home the complexity of Hinduism(s). We are equally unaware of them. Unless you have a recent degree in the field, much of the Hinduism in the introductory American textbooks is based on the colonial era presentations, eclectic mixtures of ancient citations, 10th century texts, obscure cults, and ethnography of the populous. All of them having little to do with the current religion of your radiologist or IT specialist who is outsourcing your job, so please avoid the stereotypes or fragments of knowledge. I will be visiting Tirupati in the South where the shaitel hair comes from and other places around the country. If you have any specific research questions then email privately,

This town is not on the “Hummas-trail” of visiting Israelis since it is dedicated to education and ritual not to fun and freedom. I may post on the hummas trail in the future.

Varanasi is not the modernizing high tech part of India. It can take a half hour to go one km due to the sheer mass of people, with their bicycles and packages moving among the rickshaws, cows, dogs, 10 year olds on motorbikes, potholes, pushcarts, paupers, and holy men. Mark Twain say it all: “Benaras is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together”.

I am not the only one around this year or doing this activity. I cannot attend it but there will be a conference of scholars from Brandeis and Tel Aviv University explaining contemporary Judaism next month in Delhi , they have been doing this for several years already.

From 2007-2009
Below are some earlier thoughts from 2009
In 2000, the World Council of Religious Leaders was formed at the Millennium World Peace Summit. The objective of this new Council was the offering of the collective wisdom of the faith traditions toward the resolution of global problems. The Council’s secretary general Bawa Jain has been very active fostering the Hindu-Jewish dialogue.

In 2007, the first Jewish Hindu Summit took place in Delhi, India where both sides affirmed that their “respective Traditions teach that there is One Supreme Being who is the Ultimate Reality, who has created this world in its blessed diversity and who has communicated Divine ways of action for humanity, for different peoples in different times and places.”

A second Hindu-Jewish Leadership Summit took place in Jerusalem, February, 2008. In this meeting they went further in their declarations and deemed Hinduism and Judaism as a shared “Creator and Guide of the Cosmos.” The Jewish delegation also accepted that true Hindus accept One Supreme Being and do not think that the representations are idols.” Hindus do not worship ‘gods’ and idols.’ The Hindu relates to only the One Supreme Being when he/she prays to a particular manifestation.”

In 2009, The Hindu representatives all shared a common perception of Christians as engaged in aggressive mission and that Christians have a hidden conversionary agenda in interfaith activity with Hindus. Even now in the US, the Hindus complain that they face aggressive missionary campaigns. They felt that with Jews they can share non-proselyting discussions. In addition, the Hindu representatives pointed to the lost of life by over 5 million Hindus in persecution by Muslim invaders because they chose not to convert. And now face an Islamist Islamic force both within and without India. Analogies to Jews and Israel were tacitly a given. In 2000 years there has been no indigenous anti-Semitism in India, which received unanimous applause at the meeting.

As part of the new multifaith America, the Hindus representatives emphasized that they can learn from Jews about community building as a Diaspora minority in America. More importantly, they wanted to fight anti-Hinduism and change the derogatory descriptions of Hinduism in textbooks.
The two substantive interfaith themes, reiterated from the first two summits, was the Hindu understanding of God and the swastika. The Swamis reiterated that they worship a single supreme being and that they are not polytheistic. And that they earnestly wanted Jews to know that the Swastika is an ancient Hindu symbol of auspicious times, which originally had nothing to do with Nazis.
Some of the Hindu leaders were too religious to be in the same room as women, while others gladly shared the podium with female Hindu leaders. Some would only have the fresh fruit, since they would not eat anything cooked in our utensils.

Why now?
In the post 9/11 world India and Israel have had a rapid rapprochement, pushing aside the prior 50 years of tensions. And as stated above, this is intertwined with the recent political and military links between Israeli and Indian, consisting of arms sales, joint intelligence, and work toward trade agreements. It is curious to ponder that Swamis who do not eat any sentient being are creating a safe backdrop for arms sales.
For the Swamis and rabbis involved there is great excitement to engage in encountering another religion with which one does not have any negative historical baggage.
It is connected to the over 40, 000 Israeli youth who visit India each year. As these youth mature, they are conceptualizing their Jewish religion with their perceptions of Hinduism. In the US, it allows the Jewish community to have a sister Diaspora religion.

The contextual study of the Talmud has generally focused on the Greco-Roman historical context. Asher Gulak in the field of Mishpat Ivri compared Roman and Talmudic Law, Boaz Cohen as a Talmudist compared concepts, and historian Shaye Cohen of Harvard situates Rabbinic family law in Roman context. In contrast, Chief Rabbi Herzog rejected the very idea of comparison. However for many, there was a standoff for decades between Erwin R. Goodenough who saw Judaism entirely enculturated in pagan Greco-Roman culture and Saul Lieberman who limited the influence to legal terms. Now, with the turn to cultural studies, Daniel Boyarin and others return the field to situating Rabbinics as part of a Greco-cultural world.

But what of Babylonian influence on the Talmud? Technically, we are speaking of the Sasanian dynasty that took power from the Parthians in 226 CE. It was bureaucratically centered in Mesopotamia which had a majority of Aramaic speakers, including Jews, Christians, and Mandeans, but also a ruling Persian speaking population. Their religion was Zoroastrian. Most scholars of the Talmud only made brief note of the context, leaving the discussion mainly to those in the field of religion.

They either saw Zoroastrian religion as polluting the pure ethics of the prophets or a conduit of perennial wisdom. They attributed much of the worldview unique to the Babylonian Talmud to this influence, including Talmudic magic, sorcery, angelology, demons as well as menstruation and purity laws. They also noted that Adam and Eve in the Bavli reflect the Iranian Mashya (man) and Mashyana, the Iranian Adam (man) and Eve. R. C. Zaehner, a professor of Eastern religions, argues for Zoroastrianism’s direct influence on Jewish eschatological myths, especially the resurrection of the dead with rewards and punishments.

The Hungarian Alexander Kohut, who edited and vastly expanded the classic 11th-century talmudic dictionary, the Arukh, and filled it with Persian etymologies, and was fascinated by the world of Zoroastrian angelology and demonology, charted many correspondences between the Persian system and its Jewish counterpart. The Austrian talmudist Isaac Hirsch Weiss was drawn to parallels between Zoroastrianism and the Talmud; he listed a number of critical areas in which, he argued, the rabbis had adopted Persian practices. Just as interesting, in other places Weiss claimed to have found signs of resistance—instances in which rabbis established practices specifically as a means of precluding certain “Persianisms.”

A Galician scholar Joshua Heschel Schorr wanted to reform his religion radically by subjecting it to the rules of logic and a rationalistic approach. Schorr did not see in the ancient Iranian tradition an admirable “natural” religion or otherwise sagacious philosophical system. In Schorr’s orientalism, the Zoroastrian “Bible,” or Avesta, was filled with strange and preposterous superstitions. Any parallel he found between the Avesta and the Bible or Talmud was a sign of corruption in the latter and a reason for excision and reform.

In general, the Iranian element has been relatively slighted. Jacob Neusner began to frame some of his research in terms that encompassed the study of Sassanian Babylonia; in 1982, the late E.S. Rosenthal urged the mastery of Middle Persian, the Sassanian lingua franca, as a gateway to Talmud study. However recently Isaiah Gafni, the historian had a student Geoffrey Herman who is developing the Iranian historical context and Yaakov Elman, the Talmudist has a student Shai Secunda who is publishing a book giving an introduction to the Iranian situated Talmud, called appropriately The Iranian Talmud. (University of Pennsylvania Press)[go order it]

Shai Secunda is a scholar at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a graduate of Ner Yisrael and a PhD from BRGS. He wrote his dissertation on “Dashtana – ‘Ki derekh nashim li'” : a study of the Babylonian rabbinic law of menstruation in relation to corresponding Zoroastrian texts,” which will be the topic of his second book. This semester he is teaching at Hebrew University “Women, Ritual and Religion in Late Antique Judaism.” In his forthcoming article “Zoroastrian and Rabbinic ‘Genealogies’ of Menstruation: Medicine, Myth, and Misogyny” he writes

The gender politics of textual production dictate that for the most part, ancient religious works which have survived into modern times were produced by and for men. When women are the subject of these texts, it is always through the male gaze. Hence female physiological processes, like menstruation, are often interpreted via male physiognomy, and the normative body is usually the male body. When we look at the way menstruation is depicted in male-authored texts, we find that at the very least the phenomenon is a source of wonder, if not always revulsion and misogyny.

For Sasanian rabbis and Zorasterian dadwars, menstruation was a physiological phenomenon accompanied by a set of prohibitions and purification practices… This paper will attempt a “genealogy” of menstruation in Judaism and Zoroastrianism that will include hitherto neglected texts like the Zand ī fragard ī jud-dēw-dād. The picture that emerges is one of intersecting discourses, many of which betray interaction between the two communities, yet also differences in outlook that remained.

1) Why is what you do exciting and interesting? How is what you do different than the fictional source critic David Malter from Potok?

I am blessed to be able to get up each morning, sit down in an office lined with books and a up-to-date computer, and read the same texts that Jews have been obsessing over for so long, and yet think about the infinite new and (I hope) important things that remain to be said – from the level of what the actual text (or texts) is, to how the text was produced, how it relates to its historical context, how it continued to affect Jews in the middle ages, and what it still means to Jews – and non-Jews – today.

Talmudic Scholars such as “Malter” and Halivni are, ironically, very traditional scholars. They charted out a specific derekh ha-limud – no simply task – and stuck with it to the very end. It may be at variance with yeshivish views of the Talmud and mesorah, but you find that even when pure yeshiva bochurim start reading Meqorot u-Mesorot, they quickly find their way. Prior approaches were not really engaged in other disciplines beyond philology – such as literary theory, feminist criticism, history of religions, etc. I’m trying to do more integrating across the humanities – history of religions, literary theory, gender, etc. And I acknowledge that this desire for integration is one of the (many) things Neusner did for the field. Also, and this is no false modesty, Halivni and Lieberman were iluyim, while I am just someone who tries to work hard and hone a set of integrated methods for productively reading rabbinic literature.

2) What does adding the Iranian context add?

However, the Iranian Talmud focuses on Zoroastrian texts written in Middle Persian (an ancestor of the Modern Persian spoken by Iranians today) because to my mind this to my mind is the most promising site of comparison. On the most basic level, the linguistic context of Iran undoubtedly influenced the Bavli. We have for example a few hundred Iranian – usually Middle Persian – loanwords in Babylonian Jewish Aramaic. Quite simply, knowing Iranian languages leads to a more accurate understanding of the Bavli when it uses these loanwords.

A favorite loanword of mine, the word פיקאר (dispute), shows up in the best textual witnesses to a story in Taanit 24b. The printed edition and less reliable manuscripts have the rather bland עסק דברים (dealings), which probably originated as a late gloss on the rare Iranian term. In the story, King Shapur II’s mother, Ifra Hormiz, is actually telling her son to avoid disputing the Jews, not simply having dealings with them.

Crucially, the linguistic connections can act as a gateway to appreciating more profound interactions between the Bavli and other Iranian texts from the same period, offering the Bavli’s literary context. In terms of my example from Taanit, an Iranian text that may have been part of the Sasanian “Book of Kings” describes Shapur II’s efforts to engage all of his subjects in disputes (pahikārišn). The talmudic storyteller was apparently tapping into the same literary tradition. I have other examples in the book that show that the amoraim and/or talmudic redactors were aware of Iranian (probably oral) texts and participated in the production of Sasanian “literature.”

While these textual intersections are interesting, usually when the public learns about people like me working on the Bavli’s Iranian context, they want to hear about sexy, direct, and unassailable evidence of Zoroastrian influence on halakha or core theological concepts. The truth is rarely that simple, but awareness of the Iranian context does help us appreciate the protracted development of certain, sometimes central Jewish institutions. I discuss at length some talmudic beliefs about hell in the book. My friend Yishai Kiel has suggested, in a Festschrift in honor of Yaakov Elman, that the Bavli’s insistence on wearing a ‘tallit qatan’ even when one would not otherwise be obligated to do so may have been influenced by the similar Zoroastrian requirement to tie the kustig- a ritual belt. These are nice explanations that account for some of the Bavli’s novel beliefs and requirements, although the mechanics about how this sort of influence might have operated needs to be worked out.

3) How does your approach relate to traditional Gemara learning and halakhah
There are traditionalists who see the Bavli as virtually God-given. As the old wort goes, אמר מר stands for אמר משה רבנו. My book The Iranian Talmud is an academic book and not specifically directed at this community, though I did try to write it in a relatively accessible manner.

Anyone that understands how halakha actually works knows that it doesn’t stand or fall by demonstrating that a halakhic institution is based on a misinterpretation of a gemara, a printing error, or possible evidence of foreign influence. The real challenges to halakha for modern Jews do not come from philology or history of religions, rather from profound shifts in our cultural assumptions, for example the equality of women.

Historical context leads to a much fuller experience of Talmud Torah. As for those who think that Talmud cannot have a cultural context because it is the mesorah, I’m not sure my theology would work for them. Nevertheless, I think most yeshivaleit have a notion of “the hashgacha made it develop that way.” Which means you can still study how the “hashgacha” made it develop.

4) How is this different than the work done on Greco-Roman influence on the Talmud by Boaz Cohen, Shaya J. D. Cohen, and others?
Well for one, Classics is a far more developed field, and Talmudists have been engaged with it on a high level for longer. So the Cohens and their colleagues are able to build scholarship on a much stronger foundation. But more importantly, the centrality of ritual in everyday Zoroastrian life and the discursiveness of Middle Persian legal and exegetical literature is profoundly different from the vast majority of Greco-Roman literature. Many of the surviving Middle Persian texts simply “feel” more rabbinic. They deal with subjects like impurity and more specifically the transmission of impurity in three-dimensional space. After learning Ohalot, you can really appreciate what they are trying to do. And this is just one example among manny. Also, Middle Persian literature contains disputes that are at times structured kind of like basic talmudic sugyot. Plus, they have a complex exegetical relationship with “Scripture,” namely, the Avesta.
Academics have also expressed some skepticism, and are weary of terms like “influence” and what they represent. Indeed, so am I. In the last chapter of the book I try to develop some methods of reading that focus on the texts themselves, and which show how we must first chart the internal development of rabbinic (and Zoroastrian) texts before considering how they might have interacted with relevant Iranian parallels.

5) How is the Talmud closer to Sasanian law than Roman law?
This is one of the most fascinating aspects of law in Iran. While relatively early on in the history of Roman law, civil law was no longer the domain of the priests, in Sasanian law many of the jurists that show up in ritual discussions are also ruling in what we would call purely civil contexts. Legal systems that have two-way traffic between ritual and civil domains develop in interesting ways. I actually think it’s one of the things that make halakha what it is and so fascinating. It’s because of this two way traffic that, for example, property rights invade the ritual sphere in halakha – think the mitzvah of taking arba minim which must be, legally, owned. Similarly, the role that ‘intention’ comes to play in non-ritual halakha, I believe, is at least partially indebted to the ritual side of rabbinic law. We find some of the same features in Zoroastrian / Sasanian law.

6) In your article in Nashim, you show that the du-partzufim of the Talmud refers to an Iranian story and not the Greek story? Why is that important?

I respond there to Daniel Boyarin’s suggestion in his influential book, Carnal Israel, that the midrash about Adam and Eve being created as a kind of two-sided androgyne was a rabbinic response to Neo-platonic ideas. By comparing the midrash not just with Classical sources, but also with texts from across the Indo-European spectrum – including Iranian – I argue that in fact, the rabbis weren’t explicitly, polemically rejecting Neo-platonic ideas by describing a physical Adam-Eve creature in Eden, but participating in a version of the Indo-European myth. This is clear since other versions of the myth show up in, for example, late antique Zoroastrian texts that were not at all Neo-Platonic. Practically speaking, this awareness means that we need to stop thinking of classical Judaism (up until Judaism today)as something that emerged from an encounter between Jerusalem and Athens. There also is Pumbedita and the Sasanian winter capital, Ctesiphon. (see article)

7) What are the best things to come out in the field in the 30 years since the early work of Shamma Friedman?
There’s so much that has happened beyond Talmudic source-criticism. Some of the developments that I appreciate the most include the rabbinic literature + literary/folk theory school, which in Israel took off with the late Dov Noy and Yonah Frankel, and was advanced in Israel especially by Galit Hasan-Rokem and Josh Levinson and in the US by Jeffrey Rubenstein and others too. The new generation of law and narrative people is quite exciting, such as Barry Wimpfheimer and Moshe Simon-Shoshan, and Hasan-Rokem’s student, Dina Stein, who is the best practitioner of Talmud and Theory out there.

Gender also comes to mind. We have, apart from Boyarin, scholars such as Tal Ilan who has devoted enormous resources to feminist history and commentary, and Ishay Rosen-Zvi who has melded philology and gender criticism in fascinating ways. It’s great to see how along with more awareness of feminist critiques in the broader community, academic talmudists are hard at work thinking about how to use feminist concerns to read rabbinic texts more productively. I hope that more of the academic work on gender will make its way into the broader community, and also that vice versa, the community’s concerns and interest will encourage and dialog with scholarship. This is already happening to an extent.

Interestingly, also during this time the philologists have finally published important editions of classical rabbinic texts. Menahem Kahana’s dream edition of Sifrei Bamidbar was produced and finally published. It will set the standard for the foreseeable future. It is based on decades of running after every scrap of manuscript evidence in the world – from the great British libraries to the former Soviet houses of learning – and then writing an extensive commentary (which is not fully published yet) that takes into account every relevant parallel. When you pick up the edition you can see that the manuscript variants and parallel texts make an enormous difference in understanding the basic meaning of the midrash. Most importantly, Kahana has devoted years of thinking about how to make an edition that is both exacting, accurate, and accessible.

And after a decades-long delay, virtually every scrap of parchment on which Talmudic literature is written is classified in a three volume catalog. This was a project that dates back to the beginnings of Talmud scholarship at the Hebrew University, which survived years when only Israeli soldiers were stationed on Mount Scopus, and which was the life’s work of one of the century’s greatest Talmudists – Yaakov Sussman. The catalog is briefly discussed on the Talmud blog (http://thetalmudblog.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/shavua-hasefer-2012/)

And the biggest thing that happened in the last thirty years? One word – digitization. It changed everything: How we conduct research using multi-variable searches, how we read and manipulate the talmudic text, etc etc. Along with Elli Fischer I hope to write a book, that began as a review of the Artscroll Talmud app at the Jewish Review of Books, that will look at digitization and Jewish learning. (link: http://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/83/brave-new-bavli-talmud-in-the-age-of-the-ipad/)

8) Have you taken up an interest in Zoroastrianism? Do you have a desire to visit Iran or know more about its culture?
I am very interested in Zoroastrianism, and publish in Iranian studies journals, sometimes without direct mention of Jewish studies. I am also interested in the modern day religion which is struggling to survive. I also am interested in modern day Iran and have been lucky enough to have some – very limited – contact with Iranists working in Iran today. And I have literally dreamed about walking around Tehran. I fervently hope that I one day will be able to do so while awake. The rich world of Iranian Jewish cultural production fascinated me as well, especially the great Judeo-Persian poets. All that said, I am professionally only engaged with rabbinic lit on the one hand, and pre-Islamic Iranian studies on the other.

The Pew Research Center just released a major 200 page study of American Jewry including both demography and affiliation. If the Jewish community could not afford or agree on a major study, then the Pew foundation picked up the slack. Here are some of the statistic that I found interesting. The Forward has a nice general article that shows thought and has comments from professionals.

Pew estimates that there are 6.7 million American Jews overall, including 5.3 million adults.

Jews make up a smaller percentage of America due to Hispanic immigration, and the percentage of Jews by religion among Hispanics is even lower than in the general public. On the other hand, there have been two major waves of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union in recent decades, and as a result,the share of Jewish adults who are foreign-born today (14%) is only a little lower than the share of all U.S.

Despite the changes in Jewish identity in America, 94% of U.S. Jews say they are proud to be Jewish. Three-quarters of U.S. Jews also say they have “a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people.”

The survey tolls the end of the triumphalist sense of an Orthodox return. The losses from Orthodoxy are several times larger than the gains. The survey finds that approximately one-quarter of people who were raised Orthodox have since become Conservative or Reform Jews, Just 7% of Jews raised in the Reform movement have become Conservative or Orthodox, and just 4% of those raised in Conservative Judaism have become Orthodox. This was despite the millions spent on an army of kiruv workers during those years.

The big news is that 17% of the 20-somethings have left Orthodoxy but a whopping 43% left Orthodoxy from the millennial and gen x generations, and these younger generations were raised after the triumphal rise of a more committed Orthodoxy. Old news was that 59% of the baby boomers raised Orthodox left, but that was a different era when many were non-observant Orthodox to start.

Rates of intermarriage among Jews are perhaps most directly comparable to rates of intermarriage among other relatively small U.S. religious groups, such as Mormons and Muslims. Same basic statistics no more or less just proportional to our numbers.

One-in-ten Jews identify with Orthodox Judaism (10%), including 6% who belong to Ultra-Orthodox groups and 3% who are Modern Orthodox. This would yield 670, 000 Orthodox Jews. 202, 000 Modern Orthodox, 403, 000 Ultra-Orthodox. (From other studies we have a percentage of over 75% of this Hasidim and less than 25% yeshivish, maybe as low as 16%. The yeshiva world makes much noise for its size.). and we have 101, 000 of other including Sfardim, Edot Hamizrah, Israelis, immigrants from Latin America and the Former Soviet Union who self-identify as Orthodox but not as Modern Orthodox or Ultra-Orthodox.

Here is a shocker. When asked: Can you be Jewish and not believe in God? The following numbers said yes. Notice that Modern Orthodoxy has the least concern for God. (Hashem Yirachem!)
Ultra-Orthodox 50 Modern Orthodox 70 Conservative 56 Reform 66
When asked about their own belief in God as yes, somewhat/unsure, or no, we have 19% of Modern Orthodox as unsure and 3 % as outright deniers.
Ultra-Orthodox 96 , 2, 1,
Modern 77 19 3
Conservative 41, 46, 9
Reform 29, 47, 20

Here is a little tidbit- only 76% of Ultra-Orthodox avoid handling money on Sabbath

Here is another good tidbit when asked whether they attend a non-Jewish religious services at least few times a year, both Modern and ultra Orthodox have 15% that do, but with note that it is negligible in high density area like Brooklyn. So it is much higher than 15 % in small towns.

Should Homosexuality be accepted? Ultra-Orthodox 20% Modern Orthodox 50%. On one hand, this is a divide between the two groups but at the same time a dividing point in the modern camp.

How many went to college? Ultra-Orthodox 25 Modern 65 Conservative 62 Reform 61. Modern Orthodoxy is the highest but in line with the other denominations.

But the biggest and most significant question is do you have household income of $150,000+, placing you in the top 8%. Ultra-Orthodox 24, Modern 37, Conservative 23, Reform 2 9. Modern Orthodoxy is the wealthiest and living in a disproportionate bubble that is wealthier than Reform.

The demographic of Ultra-Orthodox yields only a 4.1 live birth number and if you remove those who leave Orthodoxy and those who die or never produce children, then we have a rough statistic that a statistical couple would only produce three ultra-Orthodox offspring. A far cry from the false numbers in the kiruv literature.

Finally, the Reform movement is growing and the Conservative movement is shrinking rapidly. But the Forward received a wise email from Prof. Sarna.

For Jonathan Sarna, a professor of Jewish studies at Brandies University who also advised the Pew study, the grim statistics facing the Conservative movement could be good for its members. Comparing the movement’s situation to that of the Orthodox movement in the 1950s and the Reform movement in the ’30s, relative lulls preceding large growth, Sarna said that the apparent collapse could force the movement into creative reinvention. It would be “wise to hedge all predictions,”

Go read the report.

This blog celebrated its fourth anniversary this past week during hol ha-moed.  Last year, I forgot to notice the third year milestone.

Over this time the posts have gotten longer and more like articles than short posts. People print and read them as articles. Or they note them and get to them a week or two later.

The original content was to reflect the tension between philosophy and lived religion, hence the title taken from Saadyah was to reflect the tension of philosophy –which Saadyah calls Emunot, things we cognitively accept– and the world of actual lived religion with its sects, personal opinions, and cultural forms- which he calls Deot, things based on character and predilection.

I did less philosophy this year because the discussions and papers about Torah min Hashamayim took a lion’s share of time.  These posts got the blog included on a list of the top fifty blogs on the Bible. I also did less interfaith and parallels to Christianity because the general online world is more aware of the similarities of the Jewish and American Christian world and more aware of how much interfaith encounter, exchange, and discussion goes on even in Orthodoxy, but without the word dialogue.  We had a long run on popular culture and Orthodoxy.

I do not post as much on the current religious recession. Even outreach professional have mainly lost their millenarian triumphalism and are acknowledging the loss and fallout from religion, as well as recognizing how much the community let its image be tarnished.

Currently, my main big project is a book on the Varieties of Modern Orthodoxy 1780-2000, which I hope to shop for publishers in 2015 and publish in 2017. It is on theology and not social history, institutional history, or polemics. It will be based on my 2005 YU course available here- tinyurl.com/4brqh The project has grow much larger than the original course and I have modified the dozen categories in a more narrative approach. I have some other project that I am working on that I will post by the end of Oct.

Those academics and clergy that want an interview about your books or a guest post, then please let me know. I would be glad to oblige qualified people. Please don’t be shy. Everyone has enjoyed the process.

Thank you for your readership. However, if you want to comment, your comment must actually reflect that you needed to read the post to make the comment and you must be a reader of academic works. If that violates your opinion of the world, then this is not the place to hang out.  (Please see the rules for comments.) And because of unscrupulous people, I cannot accept untraceable comments anymore.  I need a real email that can be verified with a fixed IP address (no malinator). I really dont want to have to install a sign-up for comments.

Also dont forget to buy, or have your institution buy, my two recent books Judaism and Other Religions; Judaism and World Religion. or directly from me.

Here are my posts of the past year that received the biggest readership
Conversation with James Kugel about Revelation
Prof Tamar Ross on Revelation and Biblical Criticism
Interview with Prof. Jacob Wright of Emory University
Post-Orthodoxy
Sarah Benor on Orthodox Culture
Interview with Eliyahu Stern author of The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism
Prof Brian Klug on Revelation and Torah from Heaven

These posts had many readers but no way near as big as the top 7
Rabbi Soloveitchk on Original Sin
Rabbi David Stav on Popular Culture– Bein HaZmanim
Robert Wuthnow, The God Problem
Conversation with James Kugel- A Follow-Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits and Christiaan Barnard
Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Morgenstern on Vayishlach: Meditation, Fiery Prayer, Divine in the Material World—Also Some Possible RIETS news.
The new Haredi Hasidism – Zilberstein, Erlanger, Morgenstern, Kluger, and Schwartz
Prof. Joshua Berman Returns for a Follow-Up Interview on Biblical Law
Could Louis Jacobs have been accepted?
Why Maimonides Matters – Kenneth Hart Green- Part I
Peter Schafer responds to Daniel Boyarin.
Orthodox Jewry and the Civil Rights Movement

Most popular of the first three years
Half Shabbos
Interview with David M. Carr- Current state of Bible Scholarship
Cremation and Modern Jewish History
Rabbi Morgenstern and Meditation
Daniel Boyarin and Orthodoxy: An Interview
Arthur Green- Radical Judaism #2 of 5 parts
Aryeh Kaplan: a lost homily from his Iowa pulpit and outreach at SUNY-Albany

Runner-ups of the first three years
The Lubavitcher Rebbe on Transcendental Meditation
Joseph Weiler, traditional Jew, defends the freedom to affix a Crucifix
Is there a Post-Orthodox Judaism that Corresponds to Post Evangelical?
Rav Shagar – Movie tribute to his life and thought
Richard Kearney, Anatheism: Returning to God after God.
Critique of Kugel #1
Arthur Green responds to Daniel Landes
Religion as a Chain of Memory – Daniele Hervieu-Leger
Redemption through Judaism: A Shabbat Guest of Frankist Lineage
Rabbi Riskin declares Christians have entered through revelation into a special relationship with the God of Israel
New unpublished Rav Kook
An Interview with Rabbi Shai Held
Arthur Green- Radical Judaism #1 of 5 posts
Rav Soloveitchik- Religious Definitions of Man and his Social Institutions (1959) Part 3 of 7
Peter Schafer responds to Daniel Boyarin.
Passover Seder Through Muslim Eyes
Rabbi Riskin engages Christians in dialogue about our “United Mission” (updated)Interview with Charlie Buckholtz, co-author of new book with David Hartman
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks- Introductory Speaker for Pope Benedict.
An interview with Professor Samuel Fleischacker
Half-Shabbos goes Viral for Real (Updated)
Herbert Loewe on British Orthodoxy 1915
The new Haredi Hasidism – Zilberstein, Erlanger, Morgenstern, Kluger, and Schwartz
Women, Kabbalat Shabbat and 23 years.
A chat with Rabbi Shlomo Einhorn

In honor of its sixtieth anniversary the Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies is hosting the Msgr. John M. Oesterreicher Conference at Seton Hall University on September 22, 2013- This Sunday.
The conference is free and open to the public and will feature a keynote lecture at 3:30 in the Beck rooms by Dr. John Connelly, Professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley and author of From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Thinking on the Jews, 1933 -1965 (Harvard University Press, 2012),
His talk will be followed by “Reflections” by Gregory Baum, McGill University, Quebec, Canada who together with Cardinal Bea and Msgr.Oesterreicher were instrumental in the creation of the first draft of Nostra Aetate.
There will be closing comments from Rabbi Noam Marans of the AJC.

The day will open with three introductory presentations starting at 1:00PM:
 “John Oesterreicher’s Response to French and Italian Antisemitism” by Cristiana Facchini, University of Bologna, Italy
 “Catholic-Jewish Relations during the Six Day War” by Jason Olson, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts
 “‘Death of God’ thinkers and Jewish and Christian responses” by Peter H. Greene, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana

Here is an excerpt from the book.
Here John Connelly provides a nice summary of his own book here at the Forward.
The Forward readers asked many questions about the topic of the book and I was asked to respond to their queries here.

A group of religious-Zionist Bnei Akiva youth started organized prayers on behalf of Syrian civilians who are at risk due to the ongoing civil war in their country. The prayer initiative, which began with the Bnei Akiva volunteers who are doing a year of national civilian service in Petach Tikva, has now spread. .

While Judaism teaches that any individual can pray to God and be heard, prayers said together as a group can have special power. The young volunteers also wished to have a formal prayer to say, in order to ask for divine mercy with the best possible wording.

They asked Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, a leading figure in the religious-Zionist world and the head of the Petach Tikva hesder yeshiva, to help them find the ideal wording for their request for divine assistance for Syrian civilians.

Rabbi Cherlow suggested that Psalm 37 and Psalm 120 would be particularly appropriate for the occasion. Both psalms speak of the plight of the innocent righteous when evil men plot against them.

Rabbi Cherlow also wrote his own prayer, which is beautifully translated by Elli Sacks of Modi’in (be sure to give Sacks credit). Here is the original Hebrew. Read in English about story here.

Master of the universe, who makes peace on high

Though we are not accustomed to new formal prayers, we can no longer look at the slaughter taking place in Your world and fail to pray about it. Though we know that both sides in the war are guilty of wanton bloodshed, we are unable to keep silent when so many who are beyond the circle of conflict have fallen victim.

We beseech You in prayer to arouse in the killers their basic humanity and evoke mercy in their hearts, that they may recognize that we are all created in the image of God, and that there are limits even to human cruelty. May You bring to pass what is written in Your Torah: “He who sheds the blood of man, by man his blood shall be shed, for in God’s image was man created.”

Grant us the wisdom to know how to act in this hour of distress, when the dark face of humanity’s evil inclination is once again fully exposed and we are unsure how to stand against it. Enable us to act with all our energies to prevent bloodshed in Your world, above all in the Holy Land and its environs, as it is written in Your Torah: “You shall not pollute the land where you are for blood pollutes the land; and the land will not expiate the blood shed upon it, but with the blood of he that shed it.”

May God who makes peace on high, make peace upon us and upon all Israel, and let us say amen.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the “I have a dream speech,” here are selections from an unpublished BA thesis on the role of Orthodox Jews, Orthodox Rabbis, and YU students in the Civil Rights movement.It is not exhaustive because there were other Orthodox Rabbis such as Danny Landes of Pardes who spent the night in jail.

“Justice, Justice You Will Pursue?” Orthodox Jewry and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1970
A Thesis Presented By Lora Rabin Dagi, Bachelor of Arts with Honors, Harvard University, March 2006

On March 21, 1965, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led thousands of marchers from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in a political move that would ultimately lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Though Rabbi Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel’s presence at the front of the crowd has graced photographs of the event ever since, the story of Rabbi Saul Berman’s imprisonment in a Selma jailhouse just days before seems to have drawn a smaller audience.

Rabbi Berman was arrested on the Jewish fast day of Ta’anit Esther, which fell that year on March 17. At nightfall, when the fast ended, Rabbi Berman was not able to break his fast on prison food, for it did not meet traditional Jewish dietary restrictions; a friend rummaged through Rabbi Berman’s suitcase and brought back the salami upon which Rabbi Berman was hoping to break fast. This friend also found another cylindrical item in the suitcase – a scroll containing the text of Megillat Esther, the tale of a Jewish girl who became queen of a massive kingdom and saved her people from certain destruction. Both the salami and the Megillat Esther proved to be of great use to Rabbi Berman: having broken the fast, Rabbi Berman celebrated Purim, a holiday commemorating the story of Megillat Esther, by reading the scroll out loud to “about 250 people” crowded into the jail. One can imagine the power reverberating throughout the room as a young Orthodox rabbi, far from his congregation, read an ancient narrative recounting the deeds of a Jewish queen who saved her people from an enemy within the government – a story that could easily resonate with a group of people hoping to save blacks from their own government’s voter registration prejudices.

Just two years before, rabbinical degree in hand, Rabbi Berman arrived in Berkeley, California ready to work at Congregation Beth Israel. For the five years he served there, Rabbi Berman worked to better the rights of blacks in Berkeley and beyond. He returned to Berkeley after the 1965 Selma-Montgomery March determined to become more engaged with local civil rights politics. Though Berkeley’s high school was integrated, its lower education public school district lines were drawn in a way that separated white and non-white students. According to Rabbi Berman, two opposing forces were at work at once: one group wished to redraw the school lines so as to integrate the lower schools, while another group hoped to create a second high school that would essentially keep students segregated. Rabbi Berman primarily toiled to integrate the schools, though the community agenda additionally dealt with issues of free speech and, ultimately, the Vietnam War.

Rabbi Berman’s case, though not the norm for the majority of Orthodox Jews in America, is by no means unique. Rabbis and some Orthodox laymen throughout the United States of America not only endorsed the Civil Rights Movement, but also worked to end racism against blacks

Rabbi Berman’s colleague in New York, Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, also contributed to the Civil Rights Movement. Along with his wife, Rabbi Greenberg first supported the Movement through donations to “various civil rights groups and voting for candidates that were sympathetic to the [Movement];” soon, the two were “attending rallies or special demonstrations” for the improvement of the status of blacks in American society. As a faculty member at Yeshiva University, a Modern Orthodox institution in New York City, Rabbi Greenberg took the opportunity to bring in speakers who discussed various aspects of the Civil Rights Movement. As a rabbi of the Riverdale Jewish Center, an Orthodox congregation, Rabbi Greenberg “spoke passionately” about the Movement’s necessity.

Finally, Rabbi Greenberg involved himself in HaTza’ad HaRishon, a controversial and ultimately unsuccessful group founded for the benefit of so-called black Jews. Certain American communities of blacks were presenting themselves as Jews, though the Orthodox community did not accept them as such. For instance, the Commandment Keepers Congregation of the Living God, based in Harlem, NY, identified itself as a sect of Judaism, though petition for institutional acceptance failed. Established in 1964, HaTza’ad HaRishon, or “The First Step,” hoped “to serve the Jewish social, cultural, and educational needs of New York’s Israelites, to unify their communities, and to integrate Black Jews into…mainstream” Judaism. It funded and organized social gatherings, Israeli dancing, “activities with other [white] Jewish youth groups,” prayer events, financial aid and placement in Jewish schools, educational discussion-based seminars, and edifying liaisons to white Jews who would discuss the existence of black Jewish communities. In addition, the group provided access to Orthodox conversion resources, should its members desire to ensure their full acceptance by all parts of the Jewish community. Ultimately, between incredibly charged questions of Jewish legitimacy, authority, and conversion, this group collapsed. HaTza’ad HaRishon, though not the norm, represents both the race-blind aspect of Jewish conversion, and the fact that at least some Orthodox Jews did not view blacks through the lens of ‘absolute other.’

In New York, Rabbi Greenberg was joined by the young Tsvi Blanchard, not yet a rabbi. Rabbi Blanchard was heavily involved by the late 1950s, and continued to take part in the Movement until the year after the 1965 Selma-Montgomery March. Splitting his time between college and yeshiva (a traditional Jewish institution of learning) in St. Louis, Rabbi Blanchard worked hard in Missouri and around his home in Rochester, New York to further the Movement’s goals. In St. Louis, he “was involved in redeveloping areas of the black ghetto.” In addition, Rabbi Blanchard participated in the boycotting and picketing of Woolworth’s and Eastman Kodak. The Woolworth’s story is fairly well known: in 1960, four black students started a sit-in at a Greensboro Woolworth’s to protest segregated seating; within weeks, the “Greensboro four” had inspired sit-ins and picketings across the country. In contrast, the Eastman Kodak narrative dealt with employment issues: Rabbi Blanchard joined Saul Alinsky, community organizer extraordinaire, to challenge Rochester’s Eastman Kodak to hire more black workers. At the same time, Rabbi Blanchard involved himself in “a whole series of various and sundry picketings of racist speakers,” and supported “black self-organization efforts” such as those surrounding the Kodak protest. The Selma-Montgomery March both highlights and marks the final stage of Rabbi Blanchard’s activity in this paper’s time period.

Even the South, homeland of the Jim Crow laws and their overt supporters, hosted at least two Orthodox rabbis who quietly worked to promote the message of the Civil Rights Movement. One rabbi from Atlanta chooses to remain anonymous, but writes that he participated casually throughout the time period; for instance, he would occasionally deliver sermons supportive of the Movement. At times he would host observant Jewish activists who had recently been released from jails in Atlanta, Birmingham, Montgomery and elsewhere. Finally, this rabbi took part in “informal discussion groups” on the matter. Another Southern rabbi, Rabbi Louis Tuchman of Durham, North Carolina, followed a similar pattern. Though his congregation hired him specifically because he was not a Civil Rights activist, Rabbi Tuchman was preaching pro-integration by 1957. He specifically incorporated the themes of freedom during the Jewish Purim and Hannukah holidays, relating the holidays to the black quest for full integration. Unfortunately for Rabbi Tuchman, that same year his congregation moved to the suburbs and to Conservative Judaism.

Rabbi Tuchman and his anonymous colleague in Atlanta deserve special recognition for their work. According to Mark Bauman, fewer than forty Orthodox rabbis served congregations in the South in 1954. The states of “Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Mississippi…claimed a total of three Orthodox rabbis,” and no Orthodox rabbis served Florida communities apart from those in Miami and Miami Beach. Bauman posits that the “limited” involvement of Orthodox rabbis in the South corresponds to the small number of Orthodox rabbis actually present. This theory relies upon only one incidence of Orthodox involvement noted in his book’s collection; however, one cannot ignore the fact that some forms of informal involvement may prove quite difficult to trace. For instance, more than one or two Orthodox rabbis may have presented this controversial topic to their congregants through holiday sermons. Since participation in the Civil Rights Movement can include actions outside of a certain model of 1960s volunteering, the judgment of ‘limited’ involvement may be based upon somewhat incomplete evidence.

Some, such as Chicago’s Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik, were better known; this leading Orthodox scholar passionately discussed the basis for equality in halakhah in the keynote address at a national convention for Orthodox affiliate Young Israel.
By 1964, supposedly motivated by competition for “allegiance of the young” liberals flocking to Conservative and Reform denominations, the Rabbinical Council of America publicly declared its support for the Civil Rights Movement. Young Israel, another Orthodox group, had already backed the Movement in a 1962 editorial. The Orthodox Union, in turn, preceded Young Israel by agreeing with a “strongly liberal” plan for “civil rights and civil liberties” in the 1950s, and it continued to support the “civil rights gains of blacks” throughout the 1960s.

Yeshiva University Students: The Civil Rights Movement and Other Priorities

Without question, YU students actively discussed the Civil Rights Movement, though not necessarily right away. The record for the 1950s is largely silent on the matter, and aside from late-night dorm-room conversations and a short editorial despairing over the bigotry extant at the University of Alabama, there may not have been much debate over the plight of blacks in America. However, analysis of student publications shows that by the beginning of the 1960s, students often discussed and educated themselves about the Movement. For instance, in 1961, Stern students listened to a Nigerian leader maintain the need for blacks and whites to work together. They later had the opportunity to hear the administrative assistant of the NAACP’s Executive Secretary speak about the history, purpose, methods, and goals of that prominent organization. In 1964, the YC Yavneh, an “Orthodox Jewish students organization,” hosted a panel on the Civil Rights Movement.

An entire supplementary edition of The Observer was dedicated to questions on the causes of black rioting, theoretical solutions to help alleviate racial tension, comparisons between blacks and Jews in the United States, and comparisons between blacks and Israeli-Arabs. In fact, from 1967 onwards, black rioting and episodes of black anti-Semitism clearly affected the rhetoric on campus. Musing over the previous summer’s black riots, one YC student wondered whether there was any possibility of calming the revolts. The editor of HaMevaser, the “official student publication of the religious divisions” of YU, acknowledged that SNCC had rejected Jews, yet felt that “a true religious person” could not blame all blacks for the actions of SNCC and its partners. Another Observer supplementary edition addressed issues of Black Power, Jewish racism, Jewish withdrawal from the black-Jewish dialogue, and black anti-Semitism. That same month, the grassroots campus publication Pulse published an author who was discouraged with the fact that black rioting and anti-Semitism had led some Jews to equate the push for black equality with extreme violence and fear, and thus to unsettling memories of the Holocaust. Rather than step away from American black society, this author hoped to encourage interracial discourse and the dissolution of negative black stereotypes among Jews. Still another student, disgusted with the turn of events, claimed that the Civil Rights Movement had generated a “Frankenstein” of violent militants.

YU students did not simply discuss the Civil Rights Movement; they also actively pursued its goals. For example, in 1960, YU was a member of the Metropolitan Students for Non-Violent Civil Rights Action, and YU students protested Woolworth’s Southern lunch counter policies by picketing and distributing leaflets in front of a New York branch. The next year, YU students started a tutoring program in a local public school; this program served as a model for other colleges. One wholeheartedly dedicated Stern student published her memoirs of the March on Washington, where Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech; she later reported on a Washington, D.C. conference on apartheid, Southern segregation, and Northern discrimination. This student soon worked with other Yavneh leaders to organize a “mass boycott of New York City public schools,” in which Yavneh members taught freedom schools and picketed throughout Harlem and Washington Heights. In fact, YU even donated the use of one of its buildings for the endeavor. By the late 1960s, over 100 YC students were tutoring through the Yeshiva University Neighborhood Youth Corps (YUNYC), and SC started its own version of the same.

YU as an institution encouraged a positive perspective on the Civil Rights Movement. In 1961, it awarded an “honorary Doctor of Laws degree” to Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was quite influential in the 1954 vote to end segregation.

In addition, its medical school application did not ask for a photograph, and thus had color-blind admissions. This fact is noteworthy in a country whose medical schools were not fully open to blacks until 1966. Starting in 1969, the medical school’s King-Kennedy Medical Program subsidized lower-income blacks as they prepared their pre-medical curriculum, so that they could later improve medical care in their ghetto communities. That same year, a black Jewish YC freshman discussed his identity in The Commentator; clearly, a black Jewish student in the College was not only tolerated, but openly accepted.
Though the institution seems to have acknowledged certain values of the Civil Rights Movement, a vocal group also begged its contemporaries to work with caution. For instance, one student responding to the Woolworth’s protest unashamedly critiqued the Student Council for officially backing the picketing: because of this backing, the Student Council had turned YU students into unwilling representatives of all East-coast Jews. Rabbi Lichtenstein, a major figure in the school, felt that Orthodoxy’s slow response to issues such as the Civil Rights Movement was due to an appropriate sense of prudence; still others felt YU could not afford to critique society publicly when it was just proving the possibility of living religiously and functioning fully within America.

Yet another group of students may not have formulated extensive opinions on the Civil Rights Movement at all. Throughout the timeframe, The Commentator and The Observer published articles scorning the supposedly commonplace apathetic student lifestyle. Whether deriding the student body for voting half-heartedly, if at all, in the Student Council elections, or simply condemning students for displaying “indifference” towards non-academic activities, student leaders at SC and YC despaired over the seemingly “contagious” apathy displayed by their classmates. This laziness does not necessarily point to an entire generation of bookworms.

In May of 1961, The Observer reported that nearly half the graduating class was already married, and two women had already borne children. Interest in femininity encouraged the young women to bring a special instructor on “posture, hair care, make-up, and fashion” to the school three times during the 1963 to 1964 school year.