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malenkiyscotPart 1
Part 2
Notes
1. Shalom Noah Brozofsky, Tractate The Slain is
Upon You: Articles about the Holocaust (Jerusalem:
Machon Emuna Vedaat, 1988), p. 28. [Hebrew] In this context,
Eliezer Schweid coined the expression “the truth comforts” as
a means of explaining Haredi philosophy’s efforts to cope with
the Holocaust. See Eliezer Schweid, From Ruin to Salvation: Responses of
Haredi Philosophy to the Holocaust in Its Time
(Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1994), p. 12.
[Hebrew]
2. See the definition provided by Haredi social
researcher Kimmy Caplan, who characterizes Haredi society as a
combination of ideological and theological opinions as well as
of a unique lifestyle. Kimmy Caplan, “Research into the Haredi
Community in
3. This is only the briefest of sketches of Katz’s and
his students’ research into Orthodoxy. For a bibliographical
survey of the subject, see Caplan, “Research into the Haredi
Community in
4. Jacob Katz, “Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective,”
in Studies in Contemporary
Jewry, part 2, ed. Peter Y. Medding (Bloomington:
Indiana University, 1986), p. 4. Katz published his collected
articles on Jewish Orthodoxy in his book Halacha in Distress: Obstacles on the Way
to Orthodoxy in Formation (Jerusalem: Magnes,
1992). [Hebrew]
5. Katz, “Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective,” p. 4.
For a discussion of the question of whether Orthodoxy is the
only possible reaction to modernity (in the context of an
analysis of Jews of Middle Eastern origin), see the
fascinating polemic between Zvi Zohar and Benjamin Brown,
“Eastern Sages and Religious Fanaticism: Points for a Renewed
Examination,” Akdamot
10 (2001), pp. 289-324 [Hebrew]; Zvi Zohar, “Orthodoxy Is Not
the Only Authentic Halachic Reaction to Modernity,” Akdamot 11 (2002), pp.
139-151 [Hebrew]; Benjamin Brown, “‘European’ Modernity,
Orthodox Reaction, and the Causal Connection,” Akdamot 11 (2002), pp.
153-160. [Hebrew]
6. Michael K. Silber, “The Emergence of
Ultra-Orthodoxy: The Invention of a Tradition,” in The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity
in the Modern Era, ed. Jack Wertheimer (New York:
Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), p.
24.
7. Israel Bartal, “Responses to Modernity: Haskala,
Orthodoxy, and Nationalism in Eastern Europe,” in Zionism and Religion, eds.
Shmuel Almog, Jehuda Reinharz, and Anita Shapira (Hanover:
Brandeis, 1998), p. 18.
8. The influence of the doctrine of daat tora and its
transformation from Haredi into religious-Zionist society
provoked a stormy debate, and increased the interest of both
researchers and the general public in its theological and
halachic roots. See Benjamin Brown, “Daat Tora in Religious
Judaism in Israel: The Background, the Positions, and Their
Implications,” in Religious
Zionism: An Era of Changes-Studies in Memory of Zvulun
Hammer, ed. Asher Cohen (Jerusalem: Bialik
Institute, 2004), pp. 422-474. [Hebrew] Discussions on the
daat tora principle are
based on articles by my teacher, Rabbi Dr. Benjamin Brown, and
on the course he taught at the Hebrew University in 2004, “The
Hafez Haim-Faith, Halacha, and Public Leadership.” My debt to
Brown does not end with those notes referring to his articles.
It is customary for the writer, after he has thanked his
teachers, to add that they are not responsible for his errors.
In my case, Brown told me that he does not agree with my
conclusions. It is therefore my duty, not only as a matter of
course, to say here that the errors-if there are any-are mine
alone.
9. Ze’ev Safrai and Avi Saguy, eds., Between Authority and Autonomy in Jewish
Tradition (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1997).
[Hebrew]
10. Jacob Katz, “Daat Tora: The Unqualified Authority
Claimed by Halachists,” in Safrai and Saguy, Between Authority and Autonomy in Jewish
Tradition, pp. 95-104. [Hebrew] Although this is a
research anthology, Katz did not refrain from expressing his
personal opinion, as he writes at the end of his article: “It
[the emergence of the phenomenon of daat tora] is a result of
special historical circumstances, and though a historian
should never try to prophesy, he is not prevented from hoping
that what has emerged in the course of history may also
disappear in the course of time.” Katz, “Daat Tora,” p.
103.
11. Lawrence Kaplan, “Daat Tora-A Modern
Conception of Rabbinic Authority,” in Rabbinic Authority and Personal
Autonomy, ed. Moshe Sokol (Northvale, NJ: Jason
Aronson, 1992), pp. 1-60. Kaplan even anticipated that the
ideology of daat Tora,
as a result of a proliferation of contradictory authorities,
would become a victim of its own success: “As a result of the
proliferation of conflicting daat
tora viewpoints, of conflicting de’ot tora… the concept of
daat tora as the
expression of the sole legitimate, authentic Tora viewpoint
would seem to be in trouble.” Kaplan, “Daat Tora,” p. 53.
12. Mishna Avot 5:22.
13. Hagiga 12a.
14. Benjamin Brown, “The Doctrine of ‘Daat Tora’: Three Stages,” in
Way of the Spirit: Book on the
Jubilee of Eliezer Schweid, vol. 2 (Jerusalem:
Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies, 2004), p. 594.
[Hebrew]
15. Thus Jacob Katz also refers to the phenomenon of
the Musar (“moral”) movement of Rabbi Israel Salanter in the
mid-nineteenth century as a kind of reaction to modernism.
Katz, “Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective,” p. 6. Lawrence
Kaplan claims that the attempts of the Hazon Ish (Rabbi
Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz), the leader of the Haredi
community in Israel, to neutralize the effect of the Musar
movement are also reactions to modernity. Lawrence Kaplan,
“The Hazon Ish: Haredi Critic of Traditional Orthodoxy,” in
The Uses of Tradition,
pp. 145-173. Moreover, Menachem Friedman and Haym Soloveitchik
regard the strictness imposed by the Hazon Ish as a result of
a literary tradition that developed in yeshivot that were not
tied to any particular Haredi community, and had thus cut
themselves off from the communal tradition and its customs.
Haym Soloveitchik, “Rupture and Reconstruction: The
Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy,” Tradition 28 (1994), pp.
64-130; Menachem Friedman, “The Lost Tradition: How the
Written Word Defeated the Living Tradition-A Perspective on
the Lessons Debate,” in The Quest
for Halacha: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Jewish
Law, ed. Amichai Berholz (Tel Aviv: Yediot
Aharonot, 2003), pp. 196-218.
[Hebrew]
16. Menachem Friedman, The
Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) Society: Sources, Trends, and
Processes (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for
Israel Studies, 1991), p. 77.
[Hebrew]
17. Joseph Dan, “Prevailing Haredi Society: A Product
of a Secular Israel,” Alpayim 15 (1998), p. 241.
18. It is interesting to note that those researchers
and intellectuals who are not experts in the history of the
Jewish people are more respectful of the Haredi experience of
continuity. Thus, for example, Emmanuel Sivan wrote: “This
‘highlighted’ past is experienced with utmost contemporaneity,
spoken about in the same way one talks about figures and
events appearing in the major text, the product of the
revelation, which carries authority in the enclave.
Chronological distance is abolished, as is clear to any
observer watching Haredim on the ninth of Av as they lament
the 70 c.e. destruction of the Temple
and the onset of Exile, or Shi’ites weeping in
self-flagellation for the murder of Imam Husayn, ‘Ali’s
grandson, on the tenth of Ramadan (‘Ashura).” Emmanuel Sivan,
“The Enclave Culture,” in Fundamentalisms Comprehended,
eds. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University
of Chicago, 1995), p. 38. As a result of a trip he took to the
Geula and Mea Shearim districts in Jerusalem, the author Amos
Oz also writes: “Here in northwestern Jerusalem everything
remains almost as it was. Enlightenment and assimilation, the
return to Zion, the murder of Europe’s Jews, and the
establishment of the State of Israel seem swallowed up,
covered over by the growth of this Judaism, fierce and
tropical, like some primeval jungle.” Amos Oz, In the Land of Israel, trans.
Maurie Goldberg-Bartura
(London: Chatto and Windus, 1983), p.
7.
19. As Benjamin Brown points out: “Some would try to
attribute the success of the Haredi world in Israel to the
Zionist state whose existence it opposed and to the democratic
government… but this claim, even if it is correct, cannot
diminish the extent of the achievement of the Haredi
community, because every achievement is built, among other
things, by using the conditions created by the opponent. The
very ability of this society to adapt its course to a changing
reality without significantly straying from its fundamental
values demonstrates the power of its existence. In order to
succeed it is not enough to open the window of opportunity;
you have to know how to use it properly.” See Benjamin Brown,
“Rabbi Schach: Admiring the Spirit, Critique of Nationalism,
and Political Decision Making in the State of Israel,” in
Religion and Nationalism in Israel
and the Middle East, ed. Neri Horowitz (Tel Aviv:
Am Oved, 2003), p. 318. [Hebrew]
20. Throughout his book, Friedman emphasizes the
existentialist crisis facing Haredi society. See, for example,
Friedman, The Haredi
Society, pp. 4, 75-77, 129,
190-191.
21. Friedman, The Haredi
Society, p. 191.
22. Friedman, The Haredi
Society, p. 192.
23. Friedman, The Haredi
Society, p. 188. It should be emphasized that
other researchers proposed a more complex analysis than
Friedman’s narrow economic one. Many of them maintained that
research into Haredi society must take into consideration its
ideological elements, as well. Charles Liebman, for example,
argues that Rabbi Schach’s decision not to join the
government’s leftist coalition despite the economic incentives
shows that the political behavior of the Haredim cannot be
explained in purely economic terms. Charles Liebman, “Joining
the Government Coalition in Light of the Haredi Reaction to
the Yom Kippur War,” Perspectives
on the Revival of Israel 3 (1993), pp. 380-398.
[Hebrew] For Liebman, Haredi society is based first and
foremost on an obligation to religious-ideological principles,
in the name of which it demands material sacrifices from its
adherents. Moreover, “its religious leaders, as distinct from
its political ones, provide an example of simple life if not
actual poverty in their private lives.” Liebman, “Joining the
Government Coalition,” p. 384. As Liebman states, the Haredi
sense of moral responsibility for the Jewishness of Israeli
society has increased since the Yom Kippur War. In his view,
the trauma of Yom Kippur aroused the feeling that Israeli
society was part of the rhythm of Jewish history, “a feeling
that stems from the fact that the pain, suffering, and
humiliation Israel endured during that war are consistent, as
far as the Haredim are concerned, with the Jewish nation’s
bitter experience since the destruction of the Temple.”
Liebman, “Joining the Government Coalition,” p. 387.
24. Studies of this professional training provided a
wealth of insight into Haredi society, from anthropological
fieldwork to philosophical and historical reviews of changes
in Haredi attitudes toward work. The reader will find a good
summary in Joel Rebibo, “The Road Back from Utopia,” Azure 11 (Summer 2001), pp. 131-167.
For the latest literature: Yohai Hakak, Between Sanctity and Tachles: Haredi Men
Learn a Trade (Jerusalem: Florsheim Institute for
Political Research, 2004).
[Hebrew]
25. Yair Sheleg, The New
Religious Jews: Recent Developments Among Observant Jews in
Israel (Jerusalem: Keter, 2000).
[Hebrew]
26. Sheleg, The New
Religious Jews, p.
13.
27. Sheleg, The New
Religious Jews, p.
145.
28. Tamar Elor and Eran Neria, “The Wandering Haredi:
Time and Space Consumption among the Haredi Community in
Jerusalem,” in Israeli
Haredim, pp. 171-195.
29. Elor and Neria, “The Wandering Haredi,” p.
195.
30. Cited in Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz, Splendor of Our Generation: Selections
from the Life and Writings of Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu
Karelitz, the “Hazon Ish,” ed. Shlomo Cohen, part
1 (Bnei Brak: Netzah, 1969), pp. 292-293.
[Hebrew]
31. Sheleg, The New
Religious Jews, p. 164. Yet another example of a
baseless prediction on the future of Haredi society is
Sheleg’s pronouncement that the death of Rabbi Schach would
lead to a lessening of the status of the rabbinic leadership
in the Haredi world, and a rise in the status of its
politicians. In truth, four years have passed since the death
of Rabbi Schach, and there is no discernible change on the
horizon. Sheleg also claims that the rightist tendencies of
the Haredi community will lead it into conflict with the
authority of daat tora.
Yet the support of the United Tora Judaism party for Sharon’s
disengagement coalition is obvious proof, if any were needed,
of the ability of daat tora
to prevail over rightist tendencies among the
Haredim.
32. For the Haredi slant, see the apologia of prominent
Haredi author and journalist Moshe Grylak, The Haredim: Who Are We Really?
(Jerusalem: Keter, 2002), pp. 24-27.
[Hebrew]
33. Menachem Friedman, The
Haredi Woman (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for
Israel Studies, 1988). [Hebrew] The article was also published
with minor changes as “The Haredi Woman,” in A Window on the Lives of Women in Jewish
Societies, ed. Yael Atzmon (Jerusalem: Zalman
Shazar Center, 1995), pp. 273-290.
[Hebrew]
34. Menachem Friedman, “The King’s Daughter Is All
Glorious Without,” in Blessed Be He
Who Made Me a Woman? Women in Judaism: From Biblical to
Present Times, eds. David Joel Ariel, Maya
Leibowitz, and Yoram Mazor (Tel Aviv: Miskal, 1999), p. 193.
[Hebrew]
35. Friedman, “The King’s Daughter,” p.
205.
36. Leo Strauss describes the idea of progress as one
composed of several rudiments: A parallelism between
intellectual progress and social progress; the determination
that human thought is a developing process, and that modern
thinking from the seventeenth century on is an example of a
type of progress that cannot be reversed; and the possibility
of infinite progress. See Leo Strauss, “Progress or
Return?” in Leo
Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical
Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo
Strauss: Essays and Lectures, ed. Thomas L. Pangle
(Chicago: University of Chicago, 1989), p. 238. The idea of
progress in modern culture is expressed mainly through the
charm that the “new” holds for consumers. A member of the
Musar movement, Rabbi Moshe Rosenstein (1880-1941), who was
active in Lithuania between the wars, compares “the lust for
change” with the quest for truth. In his efforts to discourage
his students from yearning after the trappings of modernity,
he blamed the philosophers of his time: “For their view that
if they follow the path trod by all the Sages of past
generations, they will be unable to do much to bring about
changes that will shake up the entire world…. They found no
other way, except to cause a revolution in the spiritual world
and to choose a new path for themselves and leave the one that
the great of the world trod for thousands of years.” See Moshe
Rosenstein, Ahavat
Meisharim, vol. 1, second ed. (Petah Tikva:
Gnuzot, 1995), p. 47. At the peak of the ideological age,
Rabbi Rosenstein warns that just as it is impossible to bring
about a revolution in the physical world and “destroy the
civilization enjoyed by the world’s peoples until now,” so,
too, in the spiritual world “a man would be crazy to have the
arrogance to pull down what previous generations have built.”
He wonders at those of his own generation who are led astray
in search of novelty, “who will be quick to be attracted by
the new opinion of any crazy and deceitful man and place the
crown of wisdom upon his head without much scrutiny of his
veracity.” Rosenstein, Ahavat
Meisharim, pp. 48, 49.
In contrast to others in the Musar movement, who
view the attraction of men to the new as a simple lust for
anarchy, Rabbi Rosenstein argues that most people are
miserable because they are distracted by the new as opposed to being engaged
in the search for truth: “So when they hear a new opinion from
some crazy and misguided person, they grab it with both hands,
thinking, perhaps, to find something helpful in this opinion
that will improve their lives.” Rosenstein, Ahavat Meisharim, pp.
49-50.
37. Schweid, From Ruin to
Salvation, p. 9.
38. Much has been written on the topic of “first” and
“last” in Jewish tradition, but as yet there have been no
exhaustive studies on yeridat
hadorot in Haredi philosophy. On first and last in
Hasidut, see Mendel Piekarz, Hasidic Leadership: Authority and Faith
in Tzadikim as Reflected in the Hasidic Literature
(Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1999), pp. 60-77. [Hebrew] See
there the references in notes 1-7. Benjamin Brown says that
yeridat hadorot and
daat tora are the final
two of the fifteen essential principles of Haredi society. If
I were bold enough I might say that they are principles 1 and
2 and only after them come the other thirteen principles of
Maimonides.
39. Eliyahu E. Dessler, Strive for Truth! Michtav Me-Eliyahu: The
Selected Writings of Rabbi Eliyahu E. Dessler,
part 1, trans. Aryeh Carmell (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 2002), p.
205.
40. Shalom Noah Brozofsky, Paths of Peace: An Anthology of
Discussions for the First Watch (Jerusalem: Machon
Emuna Vadaat, 1990), p. 60.
[Hebrew]
41. Yeshayahu Halevi Horowitz, The Two Tablets of the
Covenant (Jerusalem, 1963), introduction, Beit Hochma, p. 18.
[Hebrew]
42. Shalom Noah Brozofsky, Paths of Peace, p.
94.
43. Yekutiel Yehuda Halberstam, Way of Life: Chapters on Education,
Guidance, and the Foundations of Judaism According to Tora and
Hasidut (Union City, N.J.: R.M.L. Goldman, 1997),
pp. 180-181. [Hebrew]
44. Yekutiel Yehuda Halberstam, Way of Life, pp.
190-191.
45. It should be emphasized that the great historian of
the Jewish dispersal in Christian Spain, Yitzhak Baer, accepts
the authority of the testimony of the Hasid Yabetz (Rabbi
Joseph Yabetz). See Yitzhak Baer, A
History of the Jews in Christian Spain, vol. 2, From the Fourteenth
Century to the Expulsion, trans. Louis Schoffman
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of
America, 1978), p. 443. Other historians have disagreed
with Baer. See Israel M. Ta-Shma, Studies in Medieval Rabbinic
Literature, vol. 2, Spain (Jerusalem:
Bialik Institute, 2004), pp. 279-296. [Hebrew] See the
discussion of Avishai Ben Haim, Man
of Vision: The Ultra-Orthodox Ideology of Rabbi
Schach (Jerusalem: Mozaika, 2004), pp. 149-159.
[Hebrew] For the citation by Rabbi Schach see Eliezer Menachem
Schach, Letters and
Articles, part 4 (Bnei Brak, 1980), p. 154.
[Hebrew]
46. This was recently brought into sharp focus by the
way Haredi newspapers (non-affiliated) covered the
disengagement process. The Haredi newspapers were unable to
remain indifferent when faced with a settlement without
television like Atzmona, or the Torat Haim yeshiva in Neve
Dekalim, whose principal, Rabbi Shmuel Tal, is closer to the
Haredi Tora sages than to the religious Zionist community. In
the most popular Haredi chat site on the Internet, Behadrei Haredim (“In the
Haredi inner sanctum”), part of the Israel-based Hyde Park
general forum, some visitors claimed that the Haredim have no
right to be arrogant after “the mizrahnikim [religious
Zionists] took devotion to the mitzvot away from
them.”
47. Schach, Letters and
Articles, part 1, p.
31.
48. Chaim Grade, The
Yeshiva, trans. Curt Leviant (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merril, 1976), pp. 384-385. On the historical importance
of Grade’s theories, see the evidence of one of the greatest
Talmud researchers, Saul Lieberman: “When I read The Yeshiva I was filled with
amazement at the accuracy of the historical-literary
descriptions…. I knew personally almost all the people in
Grade’s novel about the yeshiva.” Saul Lieberman, “On Chaim
Grade the Storyteller,” Bitzaron 3 (April
1981), p. 29. [Hebrew]
49. Exodus 42:21-22.
50. Psalms 105:15.
51. For a fascinating and sensitive description of
Haredi education see Samuel Heilman, Defenders of the Faith: Inside
Ultra-Orthodox Jewry (New York: Schocken, 1992),
especially pp. 168-177, but also in the chapters describing
the heder (elementary
school) and the yeshiva. And see also the references to Haredi
educational literature.
52. Maimonides, Mishneh
Tora, Laws of Festival Offerings
2:3.
53. Shlomo Wolbe, Alei
Shur, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Beit Hamusar, 1998), p.
259. (The book was originally published
anonymously.)
54.
An assertion to this effect is also made by Eliezer Schweid,
who sees the revival of Haredi society as one of the most
amazing paradoxes of our time. The reason is, according to
him, that Haredi society represents not only a nostalgic past
but “a real advantage that makes it relevant to extremely
pressing current problems.” In Schweid’s opinion, in contrast
with the “emptiness of the non-religious community” the Haredi
community offers “an overall religious attitude to life and a
rich family and communal lifestyle, and above all it gives a
man a definite direction in his life, a personal and social
purpose, and meaning. Once more Haredi society has been found
to provide answers to questions raised by the tensions, risks,
and superficiality of post-modern societies.” But Schweid
indicates not only the advantages of the Haredi community but
also the moral price it pays for its success: A relationship
of lack of responsibility towards the society and the culture
thanks to which and in which it exists; narrowness of horizons
and a restriction on the extent of its creativity; behavior
according to the standards of a dual morality, one directed
internally and the other externally; repression of natural
urges; and an accumulation of mental and social tensions. See
Eliezer Schweid, “Haredi Society as a Product of Post-Modern
Culture,” Nativ 1
(1988), pp. 27-32.
[Hebrew]
55.
On this point it is worth referring to the book by the scholar
of contemporary Judaism Charles S. Liebman and the political
scientist Bernard Susser, Choosing
Survival: Strategies for a Jewish Future (New
York: Oxford, 1999). These two researchers, who do not
describe themselves as Orthodox, took upon themselves a task
that is beyond narrow academic endeavor: To propose ways of
preserving Jewish existence-cultural, not physical-in Israel
and worldwide. To do this the authors have to define Jewish
survival and non-survival, which they believe ends with
assimilation. Susser and Liebman, Choosing Survival, p. 135.
The authors are severely critical of the liberal Jewish
streams in the United States that identify liberalism with
Judaism, or more accurately, the identification between “being
Jewish” and the lifestyle mapped out according to the liberal
worldview. Susser and Liebman, Choosing Survival, p. 77.
They claim that Judaism and the liberal culture represent two
opposing cultures. Susser and Liebman ask a rhetorical
question: “Is there a single assumption, implication, or
conclusion adopted by the privatizers that runs against the
grain of an urban, upper-middle-class American consensus?”
Susser and Liebman, Choosing
Survival, p. 87. Therefore, when Judaism is
redesigned in the liberal style, both the American and Jewish
cultures will come out losers-the former because the
independent critical voice of Jewish civilization has been
denied it, and the latter-because it has lost its Jewish
identity: “A Jewish community claiming personalism,
universalism, and so on, as its content will quickly learn
that its members are adept at finding their personalism,
universalism, and so on, elsewhere.” Susser and Liebman, Choosing Survival, p. 88.
Susser and Liebman see the flowering of Haredi society as a
rebuttal of Spinoza’s famous observation: “As to their
continued existence for so many years when scattered and
stateless, this is in no way surprising, since they have
separated themselves from other nations to such a degree as to
incur the hatred of all…. That they are preserved largely
through the hatred of other nations is demonstrated by
historical fact.” See Benedict de Spinoza, Theologico-Political
Treatise, trans. Samuel Shirley, second ed.
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