Haredim for World Peace

A quote from a responsum:

It is obligatory for every haredi to work toward world peace, so that innocent blood is not shed in the world, and war ceases.

 Who wrote this and when? Check out my latest blog post at FindNeedles.

Hillel Praises; Shammai Appraises

Hillel and Shammai are perhaps the most famous pair of rabbinic rivals in the Talmud. Their rivalry, and their differences in personality, are a theme that runs through all parts of rabbinic literature - halakha and aggada, Mishna and Tosefta, Bavli and Yerushalmi. Any discussion of Jewish attitudes toward pluralism and its limits begins with Hillel and Shammai.

This rivalry has been treated extensively, so I doubt that I would have much to contribute on this front. Nevertheless, I had an insight into their names several years ago (thanks, David G, for reminding me about that blog post), and I believe it to be a true chiddush.

The name Hillel is related to hallel - praise. The name Shammai is related to shuma - evaluation. In fact, the Modern Hebrew word for an appraiser is a "shammai". The personalities of Hillel and Shammai are thematized along these lines. While Shammai and his disciples are concerned with the true, present, objective value of something, Hillel and his academy have a more generous outlook; they are able to see how something might have greater subjective value or potential value.

In the audio shiur I posted yesterday (and in a latent form in this post), this difference is used to understand the divergent approaches of Hillel and Shammai when confronting the prospective gerim. Shammai kicks them out using a yardstick - a tool of precise quantification, symbolizing the standards that potential gerim must meet, but that these do not. Hillel, in my reading, perceives some nobility in their motives and is willing to act based on their potential.

A similar dispute appears in Avot De-Rabbi Natan 2:9. Shammai's academy had very strict acceptance standards, whereas anyone could study at Hillel's. According to that passage, Hillel's lack of standards was not predicated on the belief in universal Torah education, but on the notion that it is impossible to know what sort of background will produce the next rabbinic leaders. Both Hillel and Shammai want to produce greatness, but whereas Shammai insists that greatness requires certain raw materials, Hillel contends that one's present state is not a good predictor of potential. So he refuses to evaluate, and lets everyone in.

Perhaps the most poignant example of this difference between Hillel and Shammai appears in Sanhedrin 16b-17a. The disciples of Hillel and Shammai disagree about "how one dances before the bride." Beit Hillel maintains that one should always tell the groom that "the bride is beautiful and charming," whereas Beit Shammai states that one should tell it like it is. The dispute, according to the ensuing discussion, is about whether there is value in reinforcing the groom's subjective perception. For the Hillelites, the true "worth" of the bride is irrelevant; this is what the groom has settled upon, and it is proper and generous to reinforce his beliefs, even if they are erroneous on some objective plane. Beit Shammai is unwilling to violate its objective evaluation - that is, lie - to make another person feel good (an outstanding and hilarious dramatization of Shammai's dilemma can be viewed here).

A final example further illustrate this theme and may even locate the differences within the general demeanor of the two sages. In Beitza 16a, it is recorded that Hillel and Shammai took different approaches to Shabbat, and really to life. Shammai would constantly be on the lookout for delicacies that he could serve on Shabbat. Even if he already bought a fine beast, he would look for a better one and compare it to the first. The impression here is that Shammai's life was an unending series of appraisals and evaluations. He simply could not turn off his faculty of judgment; Halakhic Man on steroids or, if you wish, a life-long appointment with an optometrist ("Is this better, or is this? Which is better, this or this?"). Hillel, on the other hand, felt that as long as one was living life for the sake of heaven, there was no need for the constant evaluation; one could live life as it happened.

In this passage, Hillel's position is not articulated in the form of a dissenting opinion. His position is introduced by the phrase "Hillel had a different demeanor" ("mida acheret hayta bo"). Similarly, in his response (and later in the passage, his disciples' response), he does not directly dispute Shammai's incessant appraisal, but simply quotes Psalms 68:20 "Blessed be the Lord, day by day." "Barukh Hashem yom yom."

This "dispute" straddles the line between halakha and aggada. Shammai acted a certain way, and his disciples transformed their stories about him into a halakhic position. Hillel does not get drawn into Shammai's impulse for constant evaluation, and his disciples resist the temptation to transform stories about their master into actual halakhic positions. The poetics of this short passage indicate that the Bavli has indeed thematized the divergent tendencies attributed to Hillel and Shammai, and subsequently to their respective circles of disciples.

One might ask, so what? What difference does it make if the Bavli conceptualized Hillel and Shammai in this way? What is the aggada le-ma'aseh? As I noted in yesterday's post (and here I am indebted to insights of Barry Wimpfheimer as well as Moshe Simon and Chaim Saiman), I think this insight is significant because it externalizes a certain tension that every rabbi feels to a certain degree. On one hand, there is the impulse toward rule-making, and on the other hand is an impulse to accept every moment and every individual with a spirit of generosity, without trying to impose an existing set of rules and standards on it. The rabbis of the Bavli felt this tension, too. Thus, although they engaged in formulating and standardizing law, they also expressed reservations and resistance to that attitude. My contention here is that the Sages externalized these opposing tendencies through the figures of Hillel and Shammai, and that by showing Hillel to be their clear favorite, they, in some way, legitimated the resistance that has accompanied the impulse toward codification, standardization, and rule-making every step of the way.

A New Venture and a Pre-Shavu’ot Podcast

It has been an eventful few weeks. After three and a half years, I am no longer working for Jewish Ideas Daily. The parting was amicable and we did not discount the possibility of doing some work for JID or its affiliated projects.

The work that I’ve done for them, specifically building a model to take in the entire sweep of Jewish and Israeli news, opinion, and analysis on a daily basis, has prepared me for the next step. Together with Dr. Judah Levine, who worked with me for JID, I have launched a new venture called FindNeedles. We serve clients by going through vast amounts of content to find the items that are specifically relevant to them. Our process combines the power of machine aggregation with the human intelligence of curation. You can learn more by visiting our site, www.findneedles.com . And here’s a sample of something we recently provided for a client.

Please get in touch if you think we can be of value to your business or organization.

A few weeks ago, I gave a shi’ur in honor of my grandparents, as I do every year. This year I explored the uneasy and blurry relationship between halakha and aggada, between law and lore. I used the well-known stories of the non-Jews who came to Hillel and Shammai with the intention of converting to Judaism. The central thesis (and chiddush) of the shiur is that the figures of Hillel and Shammai are typologies that externalize rabbinic ambivalence about standardizing and codifying practice. I further argue that this ambivalence persists even after these stories are domesticated by halakha – that is, that aggada resists domestication and occasionally succeeds in injecting something of life’s messiness into the halakhic codes themselves. In fact, I argue, the impulse toward standardization of conversion and the impulse to resist standardization, both of which are manifest in contemporary debates about conversion, are discernible within the Talmud’s discourse; looking only at halakha or aggada simplifies the picture considerably.

This reading of the stories in the Gemara and the subsequent codification is both indebted to and critical of a recent work by Barry Wimpfheimer  called Narrating the Law. I hope to have occasion to flesh this out further in a review essay.

Since the subject matter pertains directly to the upcoming holiday of Shavu’ot, I thought it might be of interest over the next few days. The audio of the shiur is available here, and the associated source sheet is here.

Chag Sameach.

Blowing out the Candles for Shalom Bayit

The Talmud says that the reason the Sages instructed us to light candles at the onset of Shabbat is shalom bayit, tranquility in the home. Of course, on the most basic level, this simply means that we should not sit in the dark on Friday night, since it is not conducive to the evening meal. Over time, especially when light became a permanent feature of homes, the act of lighting candles became ritual, something that one does even in a room flooded with light.

But what if lighting flames in the home harms shalom bayit?

This question describes what goes on in many families with autistic children, according to Frances Victory, who has interviewed such families for her dissertation. Here's her report, from the Jewish Week:

And during the interviews, some mothers of a child with autism said they could not light Shabbat candles because they were afraid their child would “play with it, blow it out, touch it, or throw things at it.” It never occurred to me that lighting Shabbat candles on a Friday evening might not be possible for every Jewish woman who wanted to.

I tend to agree with the mothers here. The underlying purpose of lighting candles is shalom bayit, and it would seem ludicrous to compromise shalom bayit - to introduce fear, anxiety, and danger - in order to light Shabbat candles. One may technically use electric bulbs - even fluorescent - to fulfill the rabbinic instruction.

One mother, however, figured out a way to preserve the customary candle-lighting while keeping her shalom bayit intact. Victory continues:

 One mother of a child with autism said this:
“We do light Shabbat candles and she (her daughter with autism) takes great pleasure in blowing them out. We do let her do that. She walks away when we light the candles but she comes back down when we sing Shalom Alechiem.”

It is worth reading the whole article. It is enlightening.

Karpas Platters and Do-It-Yourself Marror (w. pics!)

This is how we roll at our Seder.

• For karpas, a vegetable appetizer in a dip, we use different kinds of vegetables and different kinds of dips. Each dip has some sort of educational of symbolic value. This year it's:
• Strawberries and bananas dipped in chocolate. These are generally considered fruits, but in fact their berakha is "ha-adama. " Great teachable moment (I've heard that R. Teitz of Elizabeth, NJ used to do this, for that very reason).
• Artichoke - same reason, and also because we're having Seder with my gourmet sister-in-law.
• Potato latkes in applesause - that's just becuase it's fun and yummy.
• Celery in peanut butter - celery is a traditional karpas food among Ashkenazim, and peanut butter is so that my kids have very clear memories that our family custom is to eat peanut products on Pesach and not treat them as kitniyot. (see Igrot Moshe OC 3:63).
• Parsley in saltwater, because that's what my forebears did.
• For marror:
• I accept Ari Schaffer's contention that horseradish is a relative latecomer to the marror menu and is likely not a true species of marror. It is increasingly common for poskim to recommend making the berakha of al akhilat marror on something in the lettuce family (several Israeli poskim say this, and I've heard that R. Schachter and R. Willig at YU rule this way as well).
• Nevertheless, I have horseradish with korekh. After all, the Seder is about preserving and continuing memories, and I do not want to forget - or want my kids to forget - the centuries of sojourning in those cold Ashkenazic lands. 
• So what do we make the berakha on? Prickly lettuce (lactuca serriola) and bitter lettuce (l. variosa). It grows wild, as a weed, all over the place. I found enough in my (admittedly overgrown) backyard for the Seder. This is a really interesting plant that has a long history and some fascinating medicinal properties.

Strawberries and bananas dipped in chocolate, ready for use as karpas

 

 Lactuca Serriola growing, picked, and in my son's hands

Rav Eliezer Melamed on Kitniyot (and the elusive mung bean)

Over the past year or so, one of the project's I've been working on is the editing the translation of R. Eliezer Melamed's (thus far) 14 volume Peninei Halakha series, which is fast becoming the Religious-Zionist Shulchan Arukh. Our original plan was to release the volume on Pesach in time for the holiday, but we did not complete the work in nearly enough time. It will appear next year instead.

Nevertheless, we have decided to release one chapter as a preview/teaser. Embedded below is the chapter on kitniyot. In the introductory letter, I note that a lot went into making this translation as precise and accurate as possible, and nowhere is this more evident than in the list of kitniyot species at the beginning of section 4.

I spend about a day researching the identities of each species listed by Rav Melamed (all of which appear in earlier literature). The most difficult to pin down is a species called sapir in halakhic works. It appears in several lists of kitniyot, but without any translation into any other language. I eventually found that it appears in Rambam's laws of kilayim in Mishneh Torah. From there I contacted a friend who is a botanist and a talmid chakham. He did not know the identity of this species, but sent me on to mishna Kilayim 1:1 which mentions it among several other species of legume. R. Ovadia of Bertinoro translates it as cicer - chick peas. This species already appeared on R. Melamed's list. Rambam, however, translates it into Arabic as ma'ash.

From there I consulted with an Arabic-speaking friend, who was unfamiliar with the word but helped me navigate Arabic-language websites. We eventually found that it refers to a species known as mash beans, or she'u'it mash in Modern Hebrew. The English equivalent is "mung beans", and a look at cognates in other languages shows that both "mash" and "mung" descend from the term for this bean in central Asian languages like Urdu and Farsi. Mystery solved.

I bring this up as an illustration of the degree of precision used by Rav Melamed, and which we used in rendering his works into English.

Chag kasher ve-same'ach, and stay away from the mung beans.
Without further ado, Rav Melamed's chapter on kitniyot.

Peninei Halakha: Kitniyot by Elli Fischer

Ruth Calderon's Speech, Yair Lapid's Religion, the Temple Mount, and Tattoos

Events in Israel and around the Jewish world remain as interesting as ever, and I've tried to contribute a bit by writing when I have the opportunity (i.e., when I'm paid to write; can't afford the lucrative work-for-free opportunities).

Having been inspired by Ruth Calderon's inaugural Knesset speech, I contacted several Jewish media outlets about translating the speech, and the New York Jewish Week agreed that it would be important to get this remarkable speech in front of the English-speaking Jewish world. The translation, like the speech, was shared far and wide and was adapted as subtitles on the original speech. Here is a link to my translation:
http://www.thejewishweek.com/editorial-opinion/opinion/heritage-all-israel

Yesterday's events at the Kotel have drawn, as usual, a global audience, but as many of you know I have long advocated viewing the struggle for women at the Kotel and for Jews on the Temple Mount as fundamentally linked. So in addition to the standard articles, we have this from Matti Friedman, exploring the increasing relevance of Har Habayit. He quotes me at the end of the article and links back to a blog post I wrote on the subject last year. Here's hoping that attitudes continue to deepen, soften, and converge.

Elsewhere on the Israeli scene, I analyzed Yair Lapid's well-known Ono College speech from over a year ago, in which he "conceded defeat" to the Haredim. It was a remarkable speech, which articulated a vision for a new type of Israeli secularism. In his tone, Lapid has certainly distanced himself from his father. But is that change merely tactical? Check it out:
http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/5979/features/yair-lapids-religion/

Finally, on a different note, I explore, in the New York Jewish Week, the ancient Jewish ban on tattoos. There is a talmudic argument about whether the ban is due to the perception of tattoos as a pagan practice or is simply not rational - whether as a taboo or divine fiat. I contend that this ancient argument continued through the medieval debate and continues to frame the contemporary debate as well. This was a fun article - it combines quotes from the Torah, Tanakh, Talmud, and Maimonides with references to Lenny Bruce, Amy Winehouse, Drew Barrymore, The Nanny, and Curb your Enthusiasm. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/short-takes/tattoo-stil-taboo

Work-Life Balance

I've been working from home as a freelance translator/editor/writer/researcher for over 5 years now. I've enjoyed much of it, but lately I have found that my work-life balance is completely skewed.

In simple terms, there are four competing demands for my time. There is work, by which I mean activity that generates or manages income in some immediate sense. There is family time. There is "down time". And there is writing the kinds of things that I really want to be studying and writing.

Ideally, I would love to get to a point where I could earn a living by writing the things I want to write. Realistically, very few people earn a living doing that. I would like to dedicate an hour a day to creative writing, but I find that the absence of any real division between work time and other time makes this virtually impossible.

So I'm on the lookout for a full-time position that would allow me to, for the most part, leave my work at work, and allow me to actually be at home when I'm at home.

I'm looking into various avenues, but the key will be to find something that can maximize my skill set - something that will take advantage of my skills as a translator and editor, my research skills, my varied interests, my critical and creative thought. I'm pursuing a few leads at the moment, but would be happy to hear other ideas.

Something to chew on (besides dried carob)

I've started writing somewhat regularly for the New York Jewish Week.
This week, I look at the custom of eating dried fruit on Tu Bi-Shvat and think about ways to "freshen" the custom to reflect the contemporary reality in Israel and abroad.

My first column, on rabbinic attitudes toward weapons, appeared a few weeks ago.
Enjoy!