Torah and the Judaism of Tradition

We use, or to be precise, misuse, the word “Tradition” in several inconsistent, incompatible, and misleading ways. When all else fails, says Rabbi Moshe D. Tendler of Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yitzhak Elchonon, “tell the truth.” And when all answers from logic, sources, and reasoned argument fail, we never fail to hear the heretical response, “we have a tradition.” In conventional speech, “tradition” has come to mean no more than conventional culture, the Jewish practices that we find comfortable, and which use as the benchmarks to validate ourselves as insiders to Judaism and to identify those with alternative traditions as outsiders.

Authentic “Tradition,” the normative complex of ideas, ideals, and ideology worthy of the name, has been identified by several scholars in different idioms. Maimionides and R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s first sense of Tradition in his monumental “”Two Kinds of Tradition” got the definition right: tradition is the public collection of Tradition approved by the Talmudic court of Rabina and Rab Ashi. No other sense of “tradition” is traditional, normative, or religiously binding.

The “tradition” of this rabbi’s father or that layperson’s grandmother may be of interest to the sociologist, historian, or therapist, but of no concern to the authentic Ish HaHalakhah, or scholar who is both committed to and learned in the Judaism that R. Jacob Neusner calls the “Judaism of the Dual [written and oral] Torah.” Without a supreme court of Israel, no culture tradition can claim to be oral Torah canonical tradition; post-Talmudic sages, called by some chachmei ha-Mesorah, make the wrong assumption that the oral Torah evolves, even after the Talmud came to closure, in the persons, intuitions, invented concepts, and proclivities of individuals, however great, learned, and pious. The claim that post-Talmudic rabbis possess the intuition, the conclusions of which are not subject to review, render the claimants of this position masters of conception who are engaged in deception. Only a supreme court of Israel is empowered by the Written Torah to expand the oral Torah. When both moderates [R. Daniel Sperber] and conservatives [R. Mayer Twersky] appeal to meta-halakhah, they both assert agendae which reflects their own reading regarding the vector Jewish law ought to take. While I regard the former sage as Ashkenazi Jewry’s preeminent expert on custom, Talmudic realia, and sane approach to Jewish legal application, I find that appeals to meta-halakhah are easily, if not mistakenly, open to misapplication. Rabbi Sperber appeals to meta-halakhah, notably respect for God’s human creations, to liberalize ritual access within the linguistic limits of the canonical statute, and Rabbi Twersky’s meta-halakhah appeals to “axiological” rules that only the right rabbis are able to identify, define, and apply.

The Maimonoidean model cited above worked for our ancient sages and, until a better model and hermeneutic is formulated, ought to be applied in our time as well. The same folks who claim that the claim “we have a tradition,” a claim that is not given to falsification without calling the claimants “liars,” is also accompanied with the retort “we do not follow Maimonides’ rulings.” Now if pressed, these folks may explain why “we do not follow Maimonides.” Some will say, “we are not sefardic, we are Ashkenazic, and Maimonides is Sefardic. Therefore, we have a different “tradition.” But God did not give the Torah in Ashkenazi, Sefardi, Yemenite, Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, or Reform versions. It has been claimed by Abraham b. David of Posquieres, an advocate of the intuitive tradition that Maimonides rejected, that Maimonides himself did not cite his sources when issuing rulings. In point of fact, Maimonides actually paraphrased the canonical sources for his opinions in his codal rulings, a technique mastered by his early modern protégé, Maran Joseph Qaro, who regularly ruled like and with the diction of Maimonides. Maimonides ruled that rulings do not follow the charisma of this rabbi or the reputation of that rabbi, but the ruling that seems to make sense. Any local rabbi has the authority to permit what is not forbidden by the Talmudic canon or to forbid, on the basis of policy, what is not required by the canon to be performed. Rulings of post-Talmudic rabbis remain valid as long as they do not contradict the canon. In his Bet Yosef, Maran [“our teacher,” a much more elegant epithet than mechabber, the “composer”] applies reason and manuscript data to determine the correct legal ruling. Maimonides also relied of accurate textual traditions in order to determine what “Tradition” really is and, when applied, ought to be. For advocates of intuitive Tradition, a public Torah sorely limits their authority by committing to justify their rulings on the basis of a public, accessible, reasoned set of hermeneutic rules.

Rabbi Professor Haym Soloveitchik insightfully and courageously referred to R. Abraham b. David as a “disrupter of tradition.” Being an old venerated writer does not make one’s writings “right.” R. Abraham b. David particular rudeness to Maimonides is emulated by “masoretic sages” of our time who defame and demean those with whom they disagree. Because these rabbis are masoretic sages, their views are not subject to review and criticism of them is labeled slander. And because of their hierarchal superiority over other rabbis, however learned, insightful, and talented, their intuitively and divinely inspired speech may not, by definition, be construed as slander. In the insightful words of Rabbi Herschel Shachter, “great rabbis may rule from intuition, but other rabbis do not have a right to an opinion.” The second sense of tradition identified by R. Soloveitchik is that of inherited culture monitored, enforced, and policed by masoretic sages. This kind of Tradition is expressed in several forms and forums. The notion that the rebbe who is a mystic has a right to rule, to use R. Schachter’s pregnant idiom, “from the gut,” reflects how rabbis often rule in our time. Lesser light rabbis are said to have vertigo; they are too biased to make a culturally correct readings of the canon. They do not, cannot, and therefore may not issue rulings, the yoreh yoreh [you may (indeed) issue rulings] ordination license notwithstanding. In other words, the bearers of this culture tradition are rejecting the traditions of the de jure binding canonical Tradition. The so-called mystical Kabbalah, with its theosophic images and legal penchant for “spiritual” rulings, requires not only the reading of God’s public canonical texts; it requires the reading of God’s mind on the part of those divines deemed adequately devoted to the Divine. All other Jewish adherents must be modest and nullify their will not only before God, but before God’s self-appointed spokespeople. Were Maimonides were alive today, he might suggest that “we do not rule according to Rabbi Schachter.”

Rabbi Abraham Karelitz eschewed the application of newly manuscript information when considering the change of culturally accepted practice, ostensibly because divine providence determines what information is made available. There are two problems with this approach. First, it assigns infallibility to certain rabbis and to the accidents of culture, a claim that neither written nor oral Torah make, and which explicitly rejected by Leviticus 4 and the Talmudic tract called Horayyot; second, if a reading of a canonical text and a ruling based on that reading, was once hidden because of providence, its subsequent revelation, to this logic and reasoning, providentially requires [1] rereading, [2] reconsideration, and [3] implementation of God’s newly revealed word in deference to God’s will. By calling Zoharic thinking “Kabbalah” or “Tradition”, the traditions of the few supersedes the public Tradition that is revealed in the Dual Torah. We recall that Moses himself taught that there are no secret Traditions! Academic Judaic studies, for Rabbi Ahron Soloveitchik, undermines the “holiness of Torah.” Rather, by rendering a philological read of the canon—as advocated by R. Sperber–the analytic invention of culturally contingent biases are revealed, the learned scholar is empowered to make autonomous judgments, and the Torah becomes accessible not just to the clique of Chachmei ha-Masorah, but to every Jew willing and able to study, learn, think and reason. After all, “Torah was commanded to us by Moses, a Tradition for the House of Jacob,” a demographic set a tide wider than those elite rabbis who have assumed the mantle of Masoretic Sages. For academically inclined modern Orthodox thinkers, who by dint of their philological biases tend to God at His word, we would prefer the words of Moses our revelator and teacher, and our Holy Teacher, Rabbenu ha-Qadosh, R. Judah the Prince, compiler of the Mishnah, to the innovative claim that Tradition is private, it requires the intuition of the authorized elite in order to be divined. Therefore, if Rabbis Abraham Karelitz, Mayer Twersky, and Herschel Schachter can demonstrate, with cogent reasoning and rational demonstration, on the basis of the Oral Torah canon, why their reading of the canon is superior to Maimonides, R. Sperber, and those inclined to view Torah in an alternate fashion, we must show respect to them by giving them a hearing and by deferring to the power of their persuasion. But if these learned advocates of private tradition, inspired intuition, and social conservatism, argue that their intuitions are not subject to review, we will show them respect by giving them a hearing and we will show primary deference to the Torah’s ultimate Author by comparing arguments grounded upon intuition but without demonstration to arguments defended with demonstrations that are candid, cogent, and convincing.

“Tradition” is invoked to justify the status quo and the power of rabbis whose livelihood, social station, and authority is wedded to the culturally conditioned look” of religious life. Therefore we are taught that there are sins of innovation that should be avoided. Rabbi Moses Sofer of Pressburg taught that “innovation is forbidden according to the Torah.” Thus, Torah authorities have forbidden bat mitsva, 15^th of Shebat sedarim, Israeli Independence Day celebrations, eating turkey [for which it is wrongly claimed we have no tradition—the lack of prohibition is the traditional ground for the kashrut of turkeys] or observing the Thanksgiving holiday altogether. All of these “innovations” are seen as problematic, officially because this statute or that “accepted” practice is violated by the audacious innovation. It’s newness is threatening, violating what is now taken or mistaken to be Tradition as well as the intuitive insights of those who claim to speak for “Tradition,” whose thoughts are consistent with God’s will as they so intuit that will.

There have been innovations in Jewish law over the ages, some of which while accepted in the community, are unacceptable to modern Orthodox Jews with intellectual and philological integrity. Rabbi Saul Berman of Yeshiva University, Columbia University, and now Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, a serious modern Orthodox Jew whose heart and mind are equally open, taught my daughter [1] community erubin are difficult to justify, [2] married women ought to wear head coverings, and [3] hats and not wigs are the proper head covering. The same message was taught to my wife by Rabbanit Vickey Riskin, and the same message was taught the greatest Talmudist of our age, ha-Gaon Rav Shaul Lieberman, as well as his more famous prodigious cousin, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Ironically, Rabbi Sofer, for whom innovation violates Torah, the women’s wig is kosher because “a custom breaks a law.” Kapporos are for Nahmanides and Maran Joseph Qaro sinful, as well as unmentioned in the canon, but for R. Isserles, the practice is justified as “our custom.” Men dancing with the Torah on Simhat Torah is acceptable, in spite of the explicit rule of bBetsa 30, but women holding the Torah that they too are obliged to uphold, we are told, violates “tradition.” My research indicates that neither Rabbis Lieberman nor Soloveitchik danced on festival days, and the tradition/policy of Rabbi Shabbatei Kohen, “we have not seen the act, so that act is forbidden,” is countered by mEduyyot 2:2, a prohibition may not be derived from absence of usage. It would be an expression of candor, honesty, and integrity to articulate what is the real reason for the ruling:   “men, who have social and political power to enforce their will, find women holding a Torah to be an offensive breach in piety, propriety and conditioned usage, or “popular” tradition. Therefore, with the power vested in nostalgic habit, rule that women holding the Torah indeed offends our sense of what we expect to experience in public ritual.” When all else fails, we are reminded by Rabbi Tender, we do well tell the truth, as commanded in the Torah, “distance yourself from falsehood.”

We do rule according to Maimonides, unless a better reasoned ruling is offered for consideration, evaluation, and application:

• A practice that is neither forbidden nor required is authorized as option in a local community. The local rabbi, and not gedolei Yisrael, determine how the strategic and intentional gaps in the oral Torah law are to be locally applied
• Women have the right to tallet, tefililn, and lulav, but should not say blessings

-                     We agree with Rashi and not Tosafot that women ought not to say blessings not appropriate to women. Reciting a questionable blessing is without question an improper act, the acceptance of the unlettered community notwithstanding

-                     Tosafot have the right to rule restrictively for their place and time, to restrict the permitted—but not required—rituals, but Tosafot do not necessarily rule for us today.

1. Tosafot’s ruling regarding female hygiene applies to his time and clime and not ours
2. The Talmud permits women to slaughter animals, as do the Tosafists. R. Isserles, in Eastern Europe, is restrictive. Talmudic law remains the template, with legitimate adjustments for local needs and realities

• All rabbinic rules should be obeyed, except in emergency situations as determined by the local rabbis
• Customs that are not accepted by all Israel are open to change, and are not considered to be vows because this consideration, attested by R. Nisim Gerondi, is unattested in the canon and is therefore not binding
• Customs that violate Talmudic law [clapping hands on holy days, saying Hallel with a commandment blessing on days other than the 18 in Israel/21 in diaspora, women being exempt from the Israeli military service, along with men, ought over time and without strife, be abolished

If one can show that their reading of the canon is superior to that of Maimonides, they must be given a respectful hearing. But it is the demonstration and not remonstration that carries the day. So when all else fails, we dare not fail to tell the truth about a tradition to be true, is public, to be truthful, is verifiable, and must be honest to God by being honest to us, because the Tradition was not given only to Masoretic sages, it was given to us, all of us, in tact, perfect and whole, and therefore holy, without need of subtractions or additions.

Front, Left, and Center: Orthodoxy in our Time and the Time to reclaim Orthodoxy

Memory is the quality that makes us human. Memory reminds us of events, feelings, and people past, so that our instincts in our present do not determine who and what we are. We remember and as a consequence, we think and become human.

In Hebrew, what is [mis]taken to be the present tense verb is really a verbal noun. In Hebrew, “the lady sings” really means “the singing lady.” Animals and slaves live in an imaginary world of a never present and always fleeting present. Free human beings are reflective because their present fleeting moments are infected, informed, inundated, and intoxicated by a thoughtful and pulsating memory. Animals live in an unstable, never present, present tense. Humans remember their past, consider their present, and plot, plan and therefore prepare for their future.

Consider the memories of Cain, Abraham, Moses, and Elijah.

Cain had a very short term memory. There are two incidents recorded by the Torah regarding Cain’s life. In the first incident, Abel offers God a sacrifice of grilled lamb and Cain presents a gift of grilled vegetables. Abel’s offering is accepted, Cain’s veggies are rejected, and Cain, now thinking that he as opposing to his offering was rejected by God, becomes angry and dejected. God reminds Cain that he could and should do better, that he has free choice to do good as well as evil. God is telling Cain that his actions were wrong but that he was redeemable if he would improve his actions.

In the second Cain incident, Abel and Cain were walking in the field and Cain, anger still seething, arose and killed Abel, his brother. God then comes to Cain, asking “where is Abel, your brother.” Cain responds as a man with no past and with no memory, “I do not know, am I my brother’s keeper?” Just as his seething anger reflected the violent instinct of his compulsive rage infected present, nursing the lingering hurt of rejection but too enraged to recall the memory of the divine moral mentoring, Cain is the human animal who is endowed with amoral cunning. Not killed but exiled with “the mark of Cain” on his head and in his soul, Cain comes to realize that he has a future and acquires his memory. Cain however is eventually killed because the violence he inflicted upon his brother begot the violence inflicted upon him. This lesson is presented to the reader in order to teach that violence spawns violence when memory and morality are not brought to mind.

Sadly, Cain’s temper remains with us in our Jewish society. We get angry, sometimes enraged, often sarcastic, caustic, cruel, hurtful, vengeful, and mean-spirited. We want to win at the battle of life and we relish the fall of our adversaries, we delight in the demise of opponents, and we gloat at the groanings of our enemies. We want to win now; we do not wish to wait. Orthodox Jews are not immune to the curse of Cain, the failure of memory, and the reign of rage which translates in everyday life to the collapse of conscience:

• we say mean words about non-Orthodox Jews
• we drive Orthodox competitors out of business
• we allow for “acceptable sins” for ourselves, but zero slack for others
• we are generous with our jibes and stingy with our praise.
• we protest all criticism directed to us as individuals or as a community as bashing and anti-Semitism, but are very generous in our criticism of others

Without memory, there is no morality; without morality, there is no humanity. Memory is what makes us human. Memory reminds us to restrain our anger. We are the “last angry men” and women. We do not realize or remember that angry people do not last.

Rabbis Jose Faur and Marc Angel observed that when Sarah, his soul mate and life partner, that Abraham [1] eulogized her and [2] then cried over his loss. Usually one cries at the event of the loss, and the good words, the eulogy, [eu+logoV] come later. Only when eulogizing his wife, putting his memory of Sarah into words, Abraham realized the enormity of his loss, the virtues of his wife, the soul of his soul mate, the piety of his partner, and the emotional vacuum of his now bereaved empty tent. The realization of death is the immediate cause of the emotion of the moment; when put in words, the loss of a loved one becomes more poignant and profound because the memory is manifest in the tangibility of the love. But this memory endures more than initial sting of the loss. We never find Abraham angry, but we find him without sin, without anger, but blessed with memory.

Rabbi Angel reminds us that we are religiously obliged to eulogize the dead. How many things did we have to say, that we ought to have said, but did not say because we did not remember to say them in the lifetime of the deceased? Rabbi Angel recalls the death of a Jewish boy in a gang war in The Bronx, New York. At the house of mourning, the deceased was sadly remembered as a tough but “good heart” who traveled in the wrong circles, like Abraham’s wayward nephew, Lot. It is easy and morally cheap to say good words about the dead, no longer with us, no longer able to savor a never heard generous word. Rabbi Angel then reports that that a friend of his who was present at the house of mourning got up and accused those present, “now you have good things to say? When he was alive, you rejected him, he was a thug, a tough, a hooligan, evil, and violent?” If he heard good words when he was here to hear, it might still be here and this house of mourning would not be necessary.

Recall that Abraham said to Sarah, before their descent into Egypt, “now I know that you are beautiful.” Memories are made by good words; good words make good works and in turn make the memory that makes life human and our social space a goodly world. We have to remember so say good words that make a good world better.

We remember to say good words in good time, and not when the good consequences of good words are diminished or trivialized because the right time for the right words have passed.

Moses was by every account a great man and is known as “our teacher.” He performed amazing deeds, like

1. mustering the courage to kill the taskmaster who was whipping the Hebrew slave
2. arguing forcefully, patiently, powerfully, and effectively with both Pharaoh and God
3. leading Israel for 40 challenging, difficult, trying, and at the time unappreciated years

But once, when frustrated, Israel asked for water and Moses lost his temper, like Cain, Moses railed with rage. Recall Moses’ indignation when the Egyptian taskmaster was beating the Hebrew. Often we loose patience. For all his greatness, Moses had an anger management problem. Moses berated Israel with the angry taunt, “listen here you rebels! Will we draw water from this rock?” Moses thoughtlessly did not remember to include God in the discussion, giving the unintended impression that the people and Moses brought forth the water. For this angry memory lapse, Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land. Moses could have but did not remember to say “I am sorry.” This memory failure cost Moses dearly. There are appropriate things we have to say and do not say, there are words we should not say but blurt out regardless, and the consequences of memory failure continue without repair. If Moses is not immune from the consequences of this flaw, a one time tragic lapse of memory, than neither of are we.

Jewish tradition provides two images of the prophet Elijah. The biblical image is not entirely a sympathetic one. The biblical Elijah is a hard, uncompromising zealot with a sincere but insensitive conscience. God tries but then tires of training the biblical Elijah. The biblical Elijah cannot tolerate imperfection in this less than perfect world. So God tells Elijah to anoint Elisha as his successor and ascend to Heaven without suffering death. He is unable to hear, or head, much less remember God’s directive, that human life is with real people, that people are imperfect but are nevertheless perfectible, and that being gracious is a strength and not a weakness.

The prophet Malachi provides the first instance of a different, humanized, gracious image of Elijah. This reinvented Elijah has learned to be a reconciler and not a railler against wrongs, his rage is replaced with reason, his gall with graciousness, his anger with a memory informed by graciousness. The rabbis understand the new Elijah to be the answerer of questions. Elijah overcomes his anger problem but Moses does not. Moses pleads to enter Israel but does not express contrition. He is too hard a man; Elijah is recalled to heaven in order to be retooled, re-schooled, reformatted, and redeemed, emerging as the angel who visits the seder, drinks the wine of the 5^th cup, answers our questions and doing what Moses did not do, of “reconciling the parents with the children.” Note well that the responsibility for reconciliation likes with parents, not the children. Parents are not right by dint of age. We know better and would do well to remember that we know better. Honor is not coming to us; love must be flowing from us.

The parent must understand and bend because age should be a source of wisdom and accumulated memory. Parents are obliged to create memories for their children and grandchildren. Anger was a problem for Cain, Moses and Elijah. Only the rabbinic Elijah overcame anger and learned to communicate. Abraham learned with time how to speak and feel.

If we wish to make memories, we must first learn to control our anger; if we hope than memories endure, we must say the right words, at the right time, in the right way. Moses did not say the right words, “I am sorry.” Moses teaches even by his mistakes. To ensure our enduring memory:

• we learn to stifle our anger, unlike Cain, Moses, and Elijah
• like Abraham, we appreciate the humanity of those near and dear
• we say sorry and are sorry when we do things we should not do
• we are trying to reconcile, and are not so proud as to not take initiative
• Elijah comes to our house and drinks with us the cup of wine, “to life.” We have to join himi
• Life cannot be satisfying with anger, obduracy, grudges or hurts. Life can be satisfying with reconciliation and with memory.