11 Temmuz 2012 Çarşamba
10 Temmuz 2012 Salı
9 Temmuz 2012 Pazartesi
Boldly censoring a letter from Rabbi Jacob Joseph to Samuel Joseph Fuenn in RJJ's biography.
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Recently I was visiting a choshuve home, and I picked up a book that looked interesting, as it indeed was. It was "The Rav Hakolel and his Generation" by Rabbi Yonah Landau, an English translation of his "ספר דער רב הכולל �ון זיין תקופה." This book is the fruit of his research on Rabbi Jacob Joseph, much of which had appeared in the publication Der Yid, with a series of articles beginning in 1989. Rabbi Landau seems to have single-handedly revived interest in Rabbi Joseph, New York's first and only, lamented Chief Rabbi, and out of this renewed interest has even grown a sort of cult following around Rabbi Joseph, with many pious individuals making pilgrimages to his grave on his yahrzeit and other times. It only took 100 years for him to re-enter the hearts of New York Jews.
In any case, I didn't read the book, I had no time. But I did flip through it and found it to be very interesting. Normally one begins a review with the positive and then moves on to the negative, but first let me mention some negative and only then move on to the positive. The book was very, very sloppily edited, spelling mistakes, etc. This is, possibly, the fault of the translator, who probably didn't know much about the people mentioned in the book. Here are some examples of this. Naturally J. D. Eisenstein is a name which recurs in this book many times. It is not such a big deal that he is called "Eizenstein." Fine. But one time it refers to his autobiography as "Sefer Zichronos." Another time it gets it right, "Otzar Zikhronosai." My guess is that in the original Landau wrote (in Yiddish) "his seyfer zichroynos," i.e., "his autobiography," while in the other place he named the autobiography. The translator didn't realize that he meant "his autobiography" and therefore wrote "Sefer Zichronos." Why does this matter? Suppose a reader wants to investigate further and tries to find "Yehuda David Eizenstein's Sefer Zichronos." Not going to find it with that title. This is only an example, and similar things occur. Next, almost every American rabbi who routinely went by his English name is given by his Hebrew name. It's hard to say if this was intended to frumify them or not, but one reads about Rabbi Chaim Pereira Mendes and Rabbi Duber Drachman, both men who surely were called this when they were called to the Torah, but that's it. And then Rabbi Sabato Morais is arbitrarily called "'Dr.' Shabsai Morris." The final negative is that it lacks footnotes and a bibliography. Perhaps the original has them.
The many positives are that it is chock full of interesting sources and references, and at the very least is useful as a guide to much further investigation about Rabbi Jacob Joseph. Rabbi Landau is a great researcher and uncovered many, many obscure things. And this is my impression from merely leafing through it. Of course the book is also a religious polemic, and of course the opinion of the Satmar Rav, who apparently on occasion referred to RJJ as a sort of failed precursor to himself, which is not wholly accurate to say the least, figures prominently. How the Litvish maggid of Vilna turned into a holy saint for Chasidim is surely an interesting phenomenon. See here for example for pictures of NY State Assemblyman David Weprin, a political candidate who was apparently dragged to Rabbi Jacob Joseph's grave as part of his campaigning, complete with him writing a kvitel to RJJ. See:
In any case, the book looks great, and I want to really read it. But here's something which has to be dealt with in full because it is really low-hanging fruit. One of the book's good qualities is its many photographic reproductions of various articles, title pages and the like. Landau really dug deep to find many rare things. Unfortunately, as I said, there is very little bibliographic info. Still, these are good leads for people who want to know more about RJJ and his period. So I was leafing through the book and something practically jumped out of the page and flashed at me. Here is what I mean:
I mean, come on. Don't make it so easy for me. Are you kidding me? Yes, this "correspondence from the Rav Hakolel to a Ruv after his arrival in NY" happens to have the name of the "Ruv" blurred out. Oh, come on. And then the footnote begins with 3, meaning the first two were removed. Was this not going to be noticed? I'll get to it in a minute, but here is a detail:
So who was this Rav whom Rabbi Jacob Joseph addressed, the very week after he arrived in New York, as "zekan beit Vilna," "the elder of Vilna," as "His honor, my beloved friend, the rabbi and ga'on in Torah and [secular] wisdom . . . " (and to his son)? I guessed who it was, it was that easy, although I guess it could have been someone else. It was S. J. Fuenn, the leading maskil in Vilna. As it happens, Fuenn was very popular in his time and had a reputation for moderation and (even) piety. This letter was published originally in 1963 in, naturally, Yeshiva University's journal Talpiot 8:3-4 (Nissan 5563), as "Two Letters From New York's Chief Rabbi Jacob Joseph Charif (From a Bundle of Letters of R. Samuel Joseph Fuenn)". When you see the original in Talpiot you see that not only was the name blurred but a lot more was removed from this picture. The funny thing is, there was no reason to remove the first two footnotes, as you will see, which I had assumed discussed and identified the blurred out rabbi who Rabbi Jacob Joseph says is beloved, but cannot be named in the book because it ruins the message.
As you can see, the entire title, everything above the Aleph was removed. You can also see that three additional words, "harofei doctor fin," that is, in Talpiot Fuenn's son, a medical doctor, is named, but in the Rav Hakolel book the name is taken out and it only says "to his son, the scholar." As you can further see, the second footnote does not explain who Fuenn was at all, it merely explain the acronym, as the first footnote did. If he hadn't removed it, by golly, it would have been less suspicious! The entire story about Fuenn is contained in an asterisk before the footnotes, so it could have kept in those first two footnotes.
For what it's worth, Chaim Reuven Rabinowitz, who published this letter, also is puzzled at the seemingly close relationship between RJJ and Vilna's leading maskil, although he points out that Fuenn was very different from maskilim like Lilienblum and J. L. Gordon. Furthermore, it contains a hilarious oral tradition (I guess) about Fuenn. They used to say about Fuenn that he davens mincha many times a day. Why? Because someone like him could not refuse to join a minyan, saying "I already prayed." If he said that then he'd be suspected of lying and not praying at all. Thus, he had no choice but to pray a few times every afternoon. Actually, the source of this story seems to be Klausner's Volume 4 of his History of Modern Hebrew Literature, where it says "5 times a day," unless Rabbinowitz had heard it independently. The truth is, it's not so hard to explain Fuenn's relationship with RJJ. He was also on very good terms with the Netziv. It just is what it is, but it doesn't work with the polemic of the book. Similarly, a journal like Hamaggid is called "Reform," even though this wasn't known to the rabbis, including some of the caliber of R. Yehoshua Heschel Levine, author of Aliyos Eliyahu on the Vilna Gaon, who advertised his book in the pages of Hamggid, one of countless other examples which can be given to prove that it was not "Reform." If Hamaggid was Reform, then so was J. D. Eisenstein, a well regarded source in this book. You want to see Reform? See my post on the Malbim from the other day (link).
Edit: see below: In Jeffrey Gurock's article "How "Frum" Was Rabbi Jacob Joseph's Court?" Jewish History Vol. 8:1-2 (1994) he discusses this sort of moderate rabbinic haskalah which, he says, was not foreign to some of the dayanim on RJJ's Beth Din. One example he gives is Rabbi Israel Kaplan, the father of Mordecai Kaplan, whom he says was given a letter of recommendation by Fuenn to Rabbi Alexander Kohut for coming to America. Gurock lists the Kaplan Diaries Vol. I Jan. 30 and Feb. 1, 1917 pp. 256 - 58. Fortunately, the Kaplan Diaries are now online. Fortunately on pp. 256 - 58 Kaplan discusses his father, upon his death, and also his feelings about the "Shiba." Unfortunately, nothing at all appears about Kohut or Fuenn on these pages. But there is this about his relationship with Rabbi Jacob Joseph:
Maybe the mistake is mine, but I read and reread and then reread those pages and it isn't there.
Edit: the mistake was indeed mine. In the comments it was pointed out that the part about Fuenn is in the published version of the journals, and this caused me to give a second look at the page. It was on the page - in a marginal note at the top added by Kaplan, which I did not read carefully at all. Here it is:
You can read or download the entire letter as it was originally published in Talpiot right here. By the way, lest anyone think that I have something against the revival of interest in Rabbi Jacob Joseph - not at all. I think it's great and it is largely if not entirely due to Rabbi Yonah Landau.
In any case, I didn't read the book, I had no time. But I did flip through it and found it to be very interesting. Normally one begins a review with the positive and then moves on to the negative, but first let me mention some negative and only then move on to the positive. The book was very, very sloppily edited, spelling mistakes, etc. This is, possibly, the fault of the translator, who probably didn't know much about the people mentioned in the book. Here are some examples of this. Naturally J. D. Eisenstein is a name which recurs in this book many times. It is not such a big deal that he is called "Eizenstein." Fine. But one time it refers to his autobiography as "Sefer Zichronos." Another time it gets it right, "Otzar Zikhronosai." My guess is that in the original Landau wrote (in Yiddish) "his seyfer zichroynos," i.e., "his autobiography," while in the other place he named the autobiography. The translator didn't realize that he meant "his autobiography" and therefore wrote "Sefer Zichronos." Why does this matter? Suppose a reader wants to investigate further and tries to find "Yehuda David Eizenstein's Sefer Zichronos." Not going to find it with that title. This is only an example, and similar things occur. Next, almost every American rabbi who routinely went by his English name is given by his Hebrew name. It's hard to say if this was intended to frumify them or not, but one reads about Rabbi Chaim Pereira Mendes and Rabbi Duber Drachman, both men who surely were called this when they were called to the Torah, but that's it. And then Rabbi Sabato Morais is arbitrarily called "'Dr.' Shabsai Morris." The final negative is that it lacks footnotes and a bibliography. Perhaps the original has them.The many positives are that it is chock full of interesting sources and references, and at the very least is useful as a guide to much further investigation about Rabbi Jacob Joseph. Rabbi Landau is a great researcher and uncovered many, many obscure things. And this is my impression from merely leafing through it. Of course the book is also a religious polemic, and of course the opinion of the Satmar Rav, who apparently on occasion referred to RJJ as a sort of failed precursor to himself, which is not wholly accurate to say the least, figures prominently. How the Litvish maggid of Vilna turned into a holy saint for Chasidim is surely an interesting phenomenon. See here for example for pictures of NY State Assemblyman David Weprin, a political candidate who was apparently dragged to Rabbi Jacob Joseph's grave as part of his campaigning, complete with him writing a kvitel to RJJ. See:
In any case, the book looks great, and I want to really read it. But here's something which has to be dealt with in full because it is really low-hanging fruit. One of the book's good qualities is its many photographic reproductions of various articles, title pages and the like. Landau really dug deep to find many rare things. Unfortunately, as I said, there is very little bibliographic info. Still, these are good leads for people who want to know more about RJJ and his period. So I was leafing through the book and something practically jumped out of the page and flashed at me. Here is what I mean:
I mean, come on. Don't make it so easy for me. Are you kidding me? Yes, this "correspondence from the Rav Hakolel to a Ruv after his arrival in NY" happens to have the name of the "Ruv" blurred out. Oh, come on. And then the footnote begins with 3, meaning the first two were removed. Was this not going to be noticed? I'll get to it in a minute, but here is a detail:
So who was this Rav whom Rabbi Jacob Joseph addressed, the very week after he arrived in New York, as "zekan beit Vilna," "the elder of Vilna," as "His honor, my beloved friend, the rabbi and ga'on in Torah and [secular] wisdom . . . " (and to his son)? I guessed who it was, it was that easy, although I guess it could have been someone else. It was S. J. Fuenn, the leading maskil in Vilna. As it happens, Fuenn was very popular in his time and had a reputation for moderation and (even) piety. This letter was published originally in 1963 in, naturally, Yeshiva University's journal Talpiot 8:3-4 (Nissan 5563), as "Two Letters From New York's Chief Rabbi Jacob Joseph Charif (From a Bundle of Letters of R. Samuel Joseph Fuenn)". When you see the original in Talpiot you see that not only was the name blurred but a lot more was removed from this picture. The funny thing is, there was no reason to remove the first two footnotes, as you will see, which I had assumed discussed and identified the blurred out rabbi who Rabbi Jacob Joseph says is beloved, but cannot be named in the book because it ruins the message.
As you can see, the entire title, everything above the Aleph was removed. You can also see that three additional words, "harofei doctor fin," that is, in Talpiot Fuenn's son, a medical doctor, is named, but in the Rav Hakolel book the name is taken out and it only says "to his son, the scholar." As you can further see, the second footnote does not explain who Fuenn was at all, it merely explain the acronym, as the first footnote did. If he hadn't removed it, by golly, it would have been less suspicious! The entire story about Fuenn is contained in an asterisk before the footnotes, so it could have kept in those first two footnotes.
For what it's worth, Chaim Reuven Rabinowitz, who published this letter, also is puzzled at the seemingly close relationship between RJJ and Vilna's leading maskil, although he points out that Fuenn was very different from maskilim like Lilienblum and J. L. Gordon. Furthermore, it contains a hilarious oral tradition (I guess) about Fuenn. They used to say about Fuenn that he davens mincha many times a day. Why? Because someone like him could not refuse to join a minyan, saying "I already prayed." If he said that then he'd be suspected of lying and not praying at all. Thus, he had no choice but to pray a few times every afternoon. Actually, the source of this story seems to be Klausner's Volume 4 of his History of Modern Hebrew Literature, where it says "5 times a day," unless Rabbinowitz had heard it independently. The truth is, it's not so hard to explain Fuenn's relationship with RJJ. He was also on very good terms with the Netziv. It just is what it is, but it doesn't work with the polemic of the book. Similarly, a journal like Hamaggid is called "Reform," even though this wasn't known to the rabbis, including some of the caliber of R. Yehoshua Heschel Levine, author of Aliyos Eliyahu on the Vilna Gaon, who advertised his book in the pages of Hamggid, one of countless other examples which can be given to prove that it was not "Reform." If Hamaggid was Reform, then so was J. D. Eisenstein, a well regarded source in this book. You want to see Reform? See my post on the Malbim from the other day (link).
Edit: see below: In Jeffrey Gurock's article "How "Frum" Was Rabbi Jacob Joseph's Court?" Jewish History Vol. 8:1-2 (1994) he discusses this sort of moderate rabbinic haskalah which, he says, was not foreign to some of the dayanim on RJJ's Beth Din. One example he gives is Rabbi Israel Kaplan, the father of Mordecai Kaplan, whom he says was given a letter of recommendation by Fuenn to Rabbi Alexander Kohut for coming to America. Gurock lists the Kaplan Diaries Vol. I Jan. 30 and Feb. 1, 1917 pp. 256 - 58. Fortunately, the Kaplan Diaries are now online. Fortunately on pp. 256 - 58 Kaplan discusses his father, upon his death, and also his feelings about the "Shiba." Unfortunately, nothing at all appears about Kohut or Fuenn on these pages. But there is this about his relationship with Rabbi Jacob Joseph:
Maybe the mistake is mine, but I read and reread and then reread those pages and it isn't there.
Edit: the mistake was indeed mine. In the comments it was pointed out that the part about Fuenn is in the published version of the journals, and this caused me to give a second look at the page. It was on the page - in a marginal note at the top added by Kaplan, which I did not read carefully at all. Here it is:
You can read or download the entire letter as it was originally published in Talpiot right here. By the way, lest anyone think that I have something against the revival of interest in Rabbi Jacob Joseph - not at all. I think it's great and it is largely if not entirely due to Rabbi Yonah Landau.
What's a retired 'Shass Polack' to do? The eventual fate of Rabbi Hirsch Daenemark.
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A couple of years ago I posted about Rabbi Hirsch Denmark, who dazzled audiences all over Europe in the 1840s with his apparent ability to demonstrate that he had memorized the entire Talmud, not only its words, but the very form of the pages. Furthermore, he seemed able to do it with any text given to him. (link)
I wondered what became of him. With the caveat, that I can't promise that this is not another man going by the same name, although that seems unlikely, it turns out that he had a second career in the 1860s, as a traveling miracle working charlatan with, probably, some mental illness. This inspired various people to warn people about him in the newspaper Hamaggid. The first is from Hamaggid #22 1864. As you can see, the paragraph about him is actually censored by the Czar so we can't see his name mentioned. The only way I even know that this is talking about him is because a later issue refers to this one.
Writing from St. Petersburg, someone named D. Y. Kangisser wrote something about someone - we will see that it is Danemark - and in the part that we can read at the end he says that he wanted to notify the readers of Hamaggid in Galicia - where he was apparently from - perhaps they know the man, did he leave a wife behind, for example. Once the man's identity is established, maybe then we can know what to do with this "false prophet," (navi sheker).
Now that the media began covering him, another person, named Yeruchem Fischel Ze'ev Rosenzweig, sent in a letter, which appeared in #32. He says that when he met him several years earlier, he was going by the name (Rosh Barzel/ Iron Head - we will see below that he was using the name Eisenkopf). He asked him where he was staying. He told him that he was staying in a hostel owned by a Christian woman. Rosenzweig asked him why, and he told him that at that particular time he was not there for the Jews, but to perform miracles for the Christians. Upon seeing an example of his miracles, he was singularly unimpressed. Danemark told him that he can show him that he will impress people in the local (town hall?), but he merely did the same trick. Then he began to blaspheme against Judaism and even the Christian official couldn't take it, and the people wanted to beat him. The editor of Hamaggid added a note that he had also received a letter from someone in Mogilev about him, and how he impressed and collected much money from the superstitious women and fool[ish men] in his city. The editor believes it is important to publicize this man.
Then a few issues later, Shalom Barasch wrote, from Pest. This time he said that Denmark had lived in Pest for quite awhile, and married a young, poor girl of Polish origin in his city but he had divorced (or abandoned?) her. He was saying negative things (as he apparently was wont to do) and then he saw that it wasn't winning him fans, he disguised himself, dressing like a rabbi in black. He posed as an expert in Bible, Talmud and Aramaic. When he was exposed as a fraud, he left.
Then in Kovno someone came across him at the post office. He saw a crowd of men, women and children around this person, and he was saying nasty things, calling this one a bastard and that one a harlot. He asked who the man was, and was told "A crazy rabbi." He went to the police station to see if they knew anything about him, and they showed him that approbation letter he carried, which called him "The great rabbi Hirsch Denmark from Austria." So, obviously curious, he went to the place where Denmark was staying. He saw that he was surrounded by a group of course men, he was drinking, and saying terrible things about the Jews and their faith. He asked him, To which faith do you subscribe? Denmark answered "Karaite." But a moment passed and then he began cursing the Karaite. He could see, he writes, that the man was neither Jew, nor Karaite, nor Muslim - he was just a drunk.
Finally, this last piece is from Hamevasser, published in Lemberg. It refers to Barasch's letter in Hamaggid, and says that Denmark also visited his town, and called himself Eisenkopf. After doing his miracle schtick, people asked him, what did the Rambam write, what does it say in the Gemara? He declined to be tested in this manner. He was asked if he was married, and he confessed/ claimed that he had two wives.
In any case, I do find it strange that no one seems to have recognized him from what he was up to nearlt 20 years earlier - this is a reason, I suppose, to wonder if it was the same person. On the other hand, was his nom de plume "iron head" meant to evoke the great mind he possessed, or felt he possessed? But here it is.
I wondered what became of him. With the caveat, that I can't promise that this is not another man going by the same name, although that seems unlikely, it turns out that he had a second career in the 1860s, as a traveling miracle working charlatan with, probably, some mental illness. This inspired various people to warn people about him in the newspaper Hamaggid. The first is from Hamaggid #22 1864. As you can see, the paragraph about him is actually censored by the Czar so we can't see his name mentioned. The only way I even know that this is talking about him is because a later issue refers to this one.
Writing from St. Petersburg, someone named D. Y. Kangisser wrote something about someone - we will see that it is Danemark - and in the part that we can read at the end he says that he wanted to notify the readers of Hamaggid in Galicia - where he was apparently from - perhaps they know the man, did he leave a wife behind, for example. Once the man's identity is established, maybe then we can know what to do with this "false prophet," (navi sheker).
Now that the media began covering him, another person, named Yeruchem Fischel Ze'ev Rosenzweig, sent in a letter, which appeared in #32. He says that when he met him several years earlier, he was going by the name (Rosh Barzel/ Iron Head - we will see below that he was using the name Eisenkopf). He asked him where he was staying. He told him that he was staying in a hostel owned by a Christian woman. Rosenzweig asked him why, and he told him that at that particular time he was not there for the Jews, but to perform miracles for the Christians. Upon seeing an example of his miracles, he was singularly unimpressed. Danemark told him that he can show him that he will impress people in the local (town hall?), but he merely did the same trick. Then he began to blaspheme against Judaism and even the Christian official couldn't take it, and the people wanted to beat him. The editor of Hamaggid added a note that he had also received a letter from someone in Mogilev about him, and how he impressed and collected much money from the superstitious women and fool[ish men] in his city. The editor believes it is important to publicize this man.
Then a few issues later, Shalom Barasch wrote, from Pest. This time he said that Denmark had lived in Pest for quite awhile, and married a young, poor girl of Polish origin in his city but he had divorced (or abandoned?) her. He was saying negative things (as he apparently was wont to do) and then he saw that it wasn't winning him fans, he disguised himself, dressing like a rabbi in black. He posed as an expert in Bible, Talmud and Aramaic. When he was exposed as a fraud, he left.
Then in Kovno someone came across him at the post office. He saw a crowd of men, women and children around this person, and he was saying nasty things, calling this one a bastard and that one a harlot. He asked who the man was, and was told "A crazy rabbi." He went to the police station to see if they knew anything about him, and they showed him that approbation letter he carried, which called him "The great rabbi Hirsch Denmark from Austria." So, obviously curious, he went to the place where Denmark was staying. He saw that he was surrounded by a group of course men, he was drinking, and saying terrible things about the Jews and their faith. He asked him, To which faith do you subscribe? Denmark answered "Karaite." But a moment passed and then he began cursing the Karaite. He could see, he writes, that the man was neither Jew, nor Karaite, nor Muslim - he was just a drunk.Finally, this last piece is from Hamevasser, published in Lemberg. It refers to Barasch's letter in Hamaggid, and says that Denmark also visited his town, and called himself Eisenkopf. After doing his miracle schtick, people asked him, what did the Rambam write, what does it say in the Gemara? He declined to be tested in this manner. He was asked if he was married, and he confessed/ claimed that he had two wives.
In any case, I do find it strange that no one seems to have recognized him from what he was up to nearlt 20 years earlier - this is a reason, I suppose, to wonder if it was the same person. On the other hand, was his nom de plume "iron head" meant to evoke the great mind he possessed, or felt he possessed? But here it is.
Shadal series #12 - why translations of translations sometimes don't work.
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At the end of Shmuel Vargon's excellent article Isaiah 56:9-57:13: Time and Identity of the Author, According to Samuel David Luzzatto (Jewish Studies Quarterly 6 1999) we read
Indeed it is. Before I get to it, it is worth analyzing what the content of this paragraph seems to be saying. It quotes Shadal as saying that he has another purpose in mind for becoming a reputable critical scholar. It is to defend Judaism. Without having cultivated a stellar scholarly reputation, people would dismiss his views because he is "a pious man."
The actual letter is indeed partly printed in Abraham Kahana's article in Shadal in Hashiloah 4 (1898). Here it is:
We are immediately struck by something. Kahana does not indicate where this letter appears; it is in fact excerpted from a longer letter, but we cannot read it as it was originally printed without knowing where. The second thing is that Kahana did not indicate that he actually translated it from Italian, although it is only after locating the letter that we realize that.
Fortunately I was able to discover the letter in Epistolario, the collected Italian, French and Latin letters of Shadal. It is letter number CXL, on pp. 207 - 209, to Isaac Samuel Reggio, dated sep. 2, 1836.
The paragraph translated - from Hebrew - by Vargon reads as follows:
I feel that Kahana did translate responsibly, and Vargon translated Kahana responsibly. The trouble is that Vargon's translation is too far removed from the original - this is not his fault - to convey the actual intent of what Shadal meant. "A fanatic," or "a zealot" is not a true synonym for "a pious man." Many Bible scholars of the 19th century were pious men and were certainly part of the scholarly discourse of Bible studies.
The term 'aduk' is a rabbinic Hebrew word for a scrupulously observant person, and we can readily see what it meant by the other, more literal meanings of the term: to hold or to grasp (see, e.g., Metzia 7b). A person who is holding, therefore, is quite literally a pious person. By the 19th century the term had indeed taken on a flavor of fanaticism, which of course has a negative connotation to most people. Thus Kahana was correct to use this term. As far as I can think, his only alternative would have been 'kannai,' but I think that its connotation of zealousness would have made it too imprecise. By that token, since Vargon was translating 'ish aduk' it was reasonable for him to translate it merely as 'a pious person.' I do not fault him for not grasping that something more was intended. But as we can see, going back to the original, it isn't what Shadal wrote.
Actually, an other alternative term which Kahana might have chosen was 'orthodox.' While this is simply not what Shadal wrote - and he knew how to discuss how orthodox or not orthodox he was - it seems that at the time it would have been a reasonable term, for while piety and Bible scholarship may not have been totally at odds in 19th century Europe, modern Bible scholarship and orthodox religion surely were. Furthermore, in S. L. Gordon's 1901 translation of Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto we find:
Here is what Gordon was translating, from Zangwill's original:
As you can see, Zangwill wrote Orthodox [=ortodox] twice in this passage, which also gives a good illustration of what is lost in translation: accent. Gordon referred to the collective as 'ha-hareidim' and to the leader who may be or pretend to be 'ortodox' as 'ish aduk' or 'mit'adek,' which is the same term used by Kahana to translate Shadal's 'un fanatico.'
In any case, the original letter we are discussing is interesting in its own right. Shadal is writing to Reggio, who had been responsible for his employment as a teacher at the Rabbinical Seminary of Padua and at one time a sort of mentor to him, and explaining why it is that he had recently wrote and published his Introduction to a Grammar of the Hebrew Language (Ital.) for the benefit of his students. After spending the 1820s studying Hebrew in his own way, Reggio himself had referred him to a book by Gesenius, which absolutely revolutionized Shadal's own thinking about Hebrew. This was in 1829 and was the first complete book in German he ever read. When he began teaching that year, it was with this book. But over the next few years he began to make new discoveries and came up with a scholarly approach to Hebrew that differed in many respects from Gesenius, then the most famous Hebrew scholar in Europe (this is a fact; Gesenius, for his part, reputedly complimented Shadal by referring to him as Italy's greatest Orientalist). Furthermore, Shadal, continues, he was able to cultivate a good scholarly reputation when the Bible scholar Rosenmueller included his notes on Isaiah as part of his own Scholia in Jesajae Vaticinia.
Why, he explains to Reggio, is he working on these works of scholarship? After all, his job is to teach future Italian rabbis. It is so that he can raise the prestige of Judaism among outsiders. Furthermore, by enhancing his own scholarly reputation he also is able to enter his scholarly views into the mainstream of Bible scholarship and in so doing he is enabled to defend the faith of Judaism. If he had no reputation then his views could be easily dismissed, saying he is "a fanatic."
Interestingly, as the years went by Shadal seemed to care less about his reputation, probably because he had already established it (nearly every mid-19th century article on Biblical Aramaic or the Targums refer to his Ohev Ger, for example). Although he adhered to real scholarly standards: for example, in Kerem Hemed 3 (1838) he was involved in a deep polemic with Abraham Geiger over the latter's interpretation of a Mishnah in Eduyot which is fundamental to the question of rabbinic authority. Without getting into the details, Geiger understands the Mishnah to say that minority opinions are recorded so that a contemporary rabbinic court, greater in wisdom and number, can overrule a court and adopt a minority viewpoint (preserving the minority viewpoint lets it be aware of the viewpoint, which it can adopt). Interestingly, while this interpretation works for Geiger, who was trying to reform Judaism, it also worked for Shadal, who was not trying to reform Judaism, but did argue that halacha is inherently flexible, and halachic rigidity is a mistake, and foreign to the spirit of the Talmud. However, Shadal could not make it fit the words of the Mishnah, and he adopted Maimonides' interpretation that it referred to courts of different generations, not contemporary courts - who have no right to overrule one another. He writes that he liked Geiger's interpretation, but - ×¢×� כל ×–×” רו×�×” ×�× ×›×™ ש×�ין ×›×•×•× ×ª ×”×ª× ×� לומר כך, וחלילה ×œ× ×• לפרש מ×�חר של×� מדעת מי ש×�מרו / "Nevertheless I see that this isn't the intention of the Tanna to say this. Far be it for us to explain something other than the way the speaker intended." And this may well be said to be his credo.
So with this standard and what I have decided is his motto in mind, to "never explain someone's words in a way they didn't intend," I wanted to point out that even if he originally had some kind of ulterior motive in achieving a scholarly reputation, he later seems to have cared little for it. In the 1850s Heinrich Graetz initiated a correspondence with Shadal. He was so taken by the man that he made sure to pay him a visit in Padua, a visit he would later remember in his History of the Jews when, in writing about Shadal, he gives his personal impression of the man, and how moved he was by the state of poverty he found him in. Graetz writes (JPS edition):
Getting back to Graetz, in a letter which I have by now quoted several times, Shadal was asked if it might not be a good idea to print his Bible commentaries with square Hebrew letters, rather than Rashi, to make it easier for Christians to read. Shadal replied that he doesn't write Bible commentaries for Christians and truly he could not care less if a Christian interprets "alma" as "virgin." He does not engage in religious polemics; his only purpose is to teach his fellow Jews. Writing to Franz Delitzsch several years later, he reiterated this sentiment, that he cares not for the difference of opinion in interpreting 'alma.' (link). Thus we see that, perhaps, what Shadal cared for in 1836 - scholarly reputation in the world of European scholarship - he seemed to care for no more in 1856.
It is clear from this passage how important it was for him to be recognizes as a critical commentator and accepted in the scholarly - even Christian - world. In one letter, he writes: 'I have another purpose [in my Bible studies], and that is: When my reputation grants me some value in the scientific view, I shall later be able to go forth and defend our faith; for this mission requires defenders of some renown; if not for this condition, they will quickly decide: this is "a pious man."'61Vargon's footnote indicates: that "This letter is cited in A. Kahana, "Samuel David Luzzatto, His Life and Literary Opus" [Heb.], Ha-Shiloah 4 (1898-1899), 60.
Indeed it is. Before I get to it, it is worth analyzing what the content of this paragraph seems to be saying. It quotes Shadal as saying that he has another purpose in mind for becoming a reputable critical scholar. It is to defend Judaism. Without having cultivated a stellar scholarly reputation, people would dismiss his views because he is "a pious man."
The actual letter is indeed partly printed in Abraham Kahana's article in Shadal in Hashiloah 4 (1898). Here it is:
We are immediately struck by something. Kahana does not indicate where this letter appears; it is in fact excerpted from a longer letter, but we cannot read it as it was originally printed without knowing where. The second thing is that Kahana did not indicate that he actually translated it from Italian, although it is only after locating the letter that we realize that.
Fortunately I was able to discover the letter in Epistolario, the collected Italian, French and Latin letters of Shadal. It is letter number CXL, on pp. 207 - 209, to Isaac Samuel Reggio, dated sep. 2, 1836.
The paragraph translated - from Hebrew - by Vargon reads as follows:
Ho oltracciò un'altra considerazione, ed è che se il mio nome acquista mai qualche peso dal lato scientifico, io potrò un giorno con qualche speranza di buon esito prender la difesa del nostro Palladio; conciossiachè quest'è una causa che abbisogna di patrocinatori di qualche grido: altrimenti si fa presto a dire: questi è un fanatico.I want to focus on the final words. Kahana writes that Shadal says he is careful to cultivate a scholarly reputation, as indeed he had, otherwise his words in defense of the faith would be dismissed by those saying he is an "ish aduk." Vargon translated this as "a pious man." As we can see, Shadal's original words were "un fanatico," which means in Italian what it means in English: a fanatic. Is there a difference between pious and fanatic? More importantly, in the 19th century would those whom he made sure that he impressed have dismissed a scholar for being "pious" or rather for being a "fanatic?" Finally, does "ish aduk" properly convey the meaning of "un fanatico," and is "a pious man" what he intended after all?
I feel that Kahana did translate responsibly, and Vargon translated Kahana responsibly. The trouble is that Vargon's translation is too far removed from the original - this is not his fault - to convey the actual intent of what Shadal meant. "A fanatic," or "a zealot" is not a true synonym for "a pious man." Many Bible scholars of the 19th century were pious men and were certainly part of the scholarly discourse of Bible studies.
The term 'aduk' is a rabbinic Hebrew word for a scrupulously observant person, and we can readily see what it meant by the other, more literal meanings of the term: to hold or to grasp (see, e.g., Metzia 7b). A person who is holding, therefore, is quite literally a pious person. By the 19th century the term had indeed taken on a flavor of fanaticism, which of course has a negative connotation to most people. Thus Kahana was correct to use this term. As far as I can think, his only alternative would have been 'kannai,' but I think that its connotation of zealousness would have made it too imprecise. By that token, since Vargon was translating 'ish aduk' it was reasonable for him to translate it merely as 'a pious person.' I do not fault him for not grasping that something more was intended. But as we can see, going back to the original, it isn't what Shadal wrote.
Actually, an other alternative term which Kahana might have chosen was 'orthodox.' While this is simply not what Shadal wrote - and he knew how to discuss how orthodox or not orthodox he was - it seems that at the time it would have been a reasonable term, for while piety and Bible scholarship may not have been totally at odds in 19th century Europe, modern Bible scholarship and orthodox religion surely were. Furthermore, in S. L. Gordon's 1901 translation of Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto we find:
Here is what Gordon was translating, from Zangwill's original:
As you can see, Zangwill wrote Orthodox [=ortodox] twice in this passage, which also gives a good illustration of what is lost in translation: accent. Gordon referred to the collective as 'ha-hareidim' and to the leader who may be or pretend to be 'ortodox' as 'ish aduk' or 'mit'adek,' which is the same term used by Kahana to translate Shadal's 'un fanatico.'In any case, the original letter we are discussing is interesting in its own right. Shadal is writing to Reggio, who had been responsible for his employment as a teacher at the Rabbinical Seminary of Padua and at one time a sort of mentor to him, and explaining why it is that he had recently wrote and published his Introduction to a Grammar of the Hebrew Language (Ital.) for the benefit of his students. After spending the 1820s studying Hebrew in his own way, Reggio himself had referred him to a book by Gesenius, which absolutely revolutionized Shadal's own thinking about Hebrew. This was in 1829 and was the first complete book in German he ever read. When he began teaching that year, it was with this book. But over the next few years he began to make new discoveries and came up with a scholarly approach to Hebrew that differed in many respects from Gesenius, then the most famous Hebrew scholar in Europe (this is a fact; Gesenius, for his part, reputedly complimented Shadal by referring to him as Italy's greatest Orientalist). Furthermore, Shadal, continues, he was able to cultivate a good scholarly reputation when the Bible scholar Rosenmueller included his notes on Isaiah as part of his own Scholia in Jesajae Vaticinia.
Why, he explains to Reggio, is he working on these works of scholarship? After all, his job is to teach future Italian rabbis. It is so that he can raise the prestige of Judaism among outsiders. Furthermore, by enhancing his own scholarly reputation he also is able to enter his scholarly views into the mainstream of Bible scholarship and in so doing he is enabled to defend the faith of Judaism. If he had no reputation then his views could be easily dismissed, saying he is "a fanatic."
Interestingly, as the years went by Shadal seemed to care less about his reputation, probably because he had already established it (nearly every mid-19th century article on Biblical Aramaic or the Targums refer to his Ohev Ger, for example). Although he adhered to real scholarly standards: for example, in Kerem Hemed 3 (1838) he was involved in a deep polemic with Abraham Geiger over the latter's interpretation of a Mishnah in Eduyot which is fundamental to the question of rabbinic authority. Without getting into the details, Geiger understands the Mishnah to say that minority opinions are recorded so that a contemporary rabbinic court, greater in wisdom and number, can overrule a court and adopt a minority viewpoint (preserving the minority viewpoint lets it be aware of the viewpoint, which it can adopt). Interestingly, while this interpretation works for Geiger, who was trying to reform Judaism, it also worked for Shadal, who was not trying to reform Judaism, but did argue that halacha is inherently flexible, and halachic rigidity is a mistake, and foreign to the spirit of the Talmud. However, Shadal could not make it fit the words of the Mishnah, and he adopted Maimonides' interpretation that it referred to courts of different generations, not contemporary courts - who have no right to overrule one another. He writes that he liked Geiger's interpretation, but - ×¢×� כל ×–×” רו×�×” ×�× ×›×™ ש×�ין ×›×•×•× ×ª ×”×ª× ×� לומר כך, וחלילה ×œ× ×• לפרש מ×�חר של×� מדעת מי ש×�מרו / "Nevertheless I see that this isn't the intention of the Tanna to say this. Far be it for us to explain something other than the way the speaker intended." And this may well be said to be his credo.
So with this standard and what I have decided is his motto in mind, to "never explain someone's words in a way they didn't intend," I wanted to point out that even if he originally had some kind of ulterior motive in achieving a scholarly reputation, he later seems to have cared little for it. In the 1850s Heinrich Graetz initiated a correspondence with Shadal. He was so taken by the man that he made sure to pay him a visit in Padua, a visit he would later remember in his History of the Jews when, in writing about Shadal, he gives his personal impression of the man, and how moved he was by the state of poverty he found him in. Graetz writes (JPS edition):
The self-sacrifice of Jewish inquirers in the Middle Ages, who in the midst of unspeakable privations and sufferings had occupied themselves in the cultivation of their minds, Luzzatto also manifested as a model for the younger generation. During his whole life, and although he enjoyed European fame, Luzzatto and his family suffered through poverty. Privations, however, did not hinder him from increasing his knowledge with endurance all the more heroic because not publicly displayed. To be poor in Poland, as was the case with Rapoport and Erter, was not so distressing as to be poor in Italy, because in the former, requirements were slight, and contentment on the smallest means was almost universal; besides, generous, wealthy men saved the men of science from starvation. But in Italy, where even the middle class craved comfortable living, and where indifference to knowledge among the Jews had reached a high pitch, it is matter for great surprise that Luzzatto could find, amidst his struggles for daily bread, the peace and cheerfulness necessary to accomplish so much for the promotion of Jewish science. At every discovery, however trifling, Luzzatto felt childlike pleasure, which appears strange to an onlooker: it was the self created recreation of the martyr, which for a moment causes gnawing pain to be forgotten.This in turn reminded me of the poet Umbert Saba, Shadal's great-nephew, who wrote that Shadal was so poor that he mostly ate a single dish - panada, which is made of old bread, olive oil and bay leaves. This, according to family tradition, perfectly satisfied him. But not his wife, whom he alas provided for but little.
Getting back to Graetz, in a letter which I have by now quoted several times, Shadal was asked if it might not be a good idea to print his Bible commentaries with square Hebrew letters, rather than Rashi, to make it easier for Christians to read. Shadal replied that he doesn't write Bible commentaries for Christians and truly he could not care less if a Christian interprets "alma" as "virgin." He does not engage in religious polemics; his only purpose is to teach his fellow Jews. Writing to Franz Delitzsch several years later, he reiterated this sentiment, that he cares not for the difference of opinion in interpreting 'alma.' (link). Thus we see that, perhaps, what Shadal cared for in 1836 - scholarly reputation in the world of European scholarship - he seemed to care for no more in 1856.
A review of The Newlywed's Guide To Physical Intimacy, a sex manual for frum couples
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"עת ל�הוב The Newlywed's Guide To Physical Intimacy" ( Jerusalem 2011) by Jennie Rosenfeld, PhD and David S. Ribner, DSW, is a remarkable book ( link). The Hebrew title, a time for love, (from Ecc. 3:8), may well have been called עת לעשות. It is a book about sex for newly married Orthodox couples that is actually about sex, notwithstanding Steven Bayme's plaint that the book is flawed because it "ignore[s] the actual sexual behaviors of Modern Orthodox Jews" and instead takes a relatively traditional, by the book approach and does not deal with premarital fooling around or whatever (notwithstanding that it does do this, albeit in passing) (link).
I read it, and had my thoughts, but I also asked the authors some questions, and Dr. Rosenfeld was kind enough to reply.
The book begins with an introduction explaining who the audience is - brides, grooms, chassan and kallah teachers, rabbis and "anyone in the Torah-observant community with questions about sexuality," but it is primarily for couples about to get married and for their first year (i.e., as newlyweds). It includes a pep talk about how special and pleasurable sex is, and some religious words about how it is a gift from God (not "G-d"), like other pleasures in life. It notes that is it not an exhaustive resource, and some things should be discussed with a doctor. Nor is it a halachic work, although it is designed with Torah-observant (it doesn't say Orthodox) people in mind. They believe they have accommodated a wide range of viewpoints, but if anyone has religious questions you should feel free to consult a rabbi who knows you, the couple, and is competent in this area of halacha (nice disclaimer!). Finally, they explain why they wrote the book. Both are Torah-observant Jews who are involved with the issue of sexuality in the Orthdox and Haredi communities. Dr. Ribner is a sex therapist who has seen hundreds of couples in more than 30 years, and Dr. Rosenfeld has worked on sex education for only a few years, but both have experience in the kind of questions and problems couples have and in many cases these could have been prevented with adequate information. They write that they have seen people who felt isolated for feeling things which are completely normal, people who suffered from lack of familiarity with their own sexuality, and had difficulty forging a deep sexual connection with their spouse. So they decided to write this book, to address these issues. I would add that without being a sex therapist, but just by having experience in Orthodox communities and reading many different kinds of personal accounts, viewpoints and questions in various online forums, the idea that Religious Jews "have been happily shagging for millennia [...] Jews never had the concept of "original sin." only tells part of the story to say the least.
The first thing which struck me is that the book lacks a rabbinic approbation, or any notice of any kind of rabbinic input, and that is unusual for a book intended for a religious audience. Assuming this was not an accident, I asked why they chose not to pursue, or use, a haskamah (rabbinic approbation). I wondered this because it occurred to me that a certain percentage of the intended audience might be reluctant to use it without one, and since they must have known that, I assumed they did a cost-benefit analysis and concluded that it was better to publish it without one. It did not occur to me that they could not obtain one, because I am sure they could have. Dr. Rosenfeld replied that they hoped that the book "would speak to the gamut of Orthodoxy (from the Haredi to Chassidish to Centrist to Modern to Left-wing, etc.), we didn't want the haskama to alienate any of the potential readers. Seeing a rabbi to the right or to the left of one could cause them to think that the book is only for that particular group. And the book is really designed to speak to everyone. Ideally, couples could take the book to their rabbi to get his advice, or receive the book from their chatan and kallah teacher, with the teacher's halakhic input. That was our thinking. In terms of whether we would have been able to get the haskamot had we decided we wanted them, I really don't know."
I also noticed that while the book is surely modest by current secular norms, it is still quite frank - and it also includes a further reading list; more on that later. In addition, while clearly religious in orientation, it is almost entirely lacking in what they call "hashkafah," not to mention fluff. It is not coldly clinical at all, but there are no stories of rabbis, vertlach and facile analyses of the Mars/ Venus type, and where such generalizations do occur they clearly label them with terms like "may" or "tend to." There are no platitudes or quotations from various famous "Holy Letters." I assumed this resistance to turn the book into a piece of moralistic literature was not an accident either, and Rosenfeld confirmed that the lack of hashkafah comes from the same place as the lack of haskamah, on theone hand. On the other hand, she pointed out that such books already exist, but this one did not. I think it was a wise decision, because such books often feel preachy. Furthermore - more below - there is no laundry list of halachic or customary restrictions in this book, which are commonly disseminated by chassan and kallah teachers, and presumably they are the cause of not a small amount of what they have to deal with in therapeutic situations (this is my inference). Consult your rabbi if you need to, is all they suggest.
The first chapter is called His Body/ Her Body and Arousal. Taking no chances and making sure that everything is completely clear to whomever reads it, it begins with noting that no two bodies are alike and each responds differently to different stimulation. It even goes through some basic descriptive info about what male and female bodies look like! - as well as to explain what erogenous zones are, and what are some of them. While these things may seem obvious, or at least something intelligent people will figure out themselves, they take no chances and do not want readers who need to begin at the beginning to be left behind. Finally, there is a detailed description of the female and male body and the physical act of sexual intercourse itself.
The second chapter is called Getting Sexual. It begins with guidelines, such as that sex should be a learning experience, enjoyable, people should expect it to be different from what one may have seen or heard, and that men and women tend to have different needs and respond in different ways. Finally, if things are just not working, one should not hesitate to seek professional help. It then discusses the importance of communication, clearly knowing and labeling body parts, as well as the terms relating to sexual activity and response. Their point is that couples who bashfully talk about that thing with the thing - or no talking at all - are not going to end up on the same page, except by luck or chance. In this chapter, as well as in the others, there are gray boxes labeled "We were wondering..." which represent commonly asked questions (and Rosenfeld confirmed that these truly are common). So in this chapter, for example, one is about talking about sex before marriage and another is about discomfort with being naked. Also discussed in this chapter is all aspects of sex, from physical and mental preparations, to foreplay to kissing. To inject a personal note, someone told me that men and women kiss on the mouth and he cited Rashi to Shir Hashirim 1:2 (which is the false meaning, according to you-know-what). The authors, as I indicated, do not bother with such things. Two pages of this thin book (about 100 pages) is devoted to the female orgasm, with a promise, later to be fulfilled, about treating this in detail later. This chapter's "We were wondering..." includes questions about smell, painful intercourse, and experimentation.
The next chapter is called Alternate Intimacies. This leads me to the observation that the book seems to really try to push the envelope, but not be sexy itself. No one can accuse this instructional manual of being erotic! I am reasonably certain that mutual oral stimulation was never written about so pareve. But it is there. Two word summary of the chapter: oral, manual.
The next chapter is about managing time, niddah, pregnancy, babies, etc.
Chapter Five, When Your Sex Life Isn't Working, raises issues from physical to mental barriers, as well as childhood sexual abuse, negative body image, homosexuality and pornography, which they say should not be automatically viewed as addictive.
The next three chapters are called She Asks. He Asks. and They Ask. All of these are very frank discussions of common concerns, going into much greater detail than the small "We were wondering" sections. These discuss much of what you think they will, including less obvious things like frustration with niddah. As Bayme wrote in his review, they don't dismiss it with platitudes about how special niddah is. Nor do they wink, wink. They take it seriously, dignifying the issue, and assume that the couple is committed to niddah observance, and offer suggestions for dealing with it.
The book ends by asking readers to engage them in a dialogue, and requests feedback, leaving an email address.
Afterwards, there is a section called Resources, which include books with titles like Guide to Getting it On. Which led me to wonder, what this book has that Guide to Getting it On, which they really recommend, doesn't? The answer to me was obvious. Many people will read The Newlywed's Guide to Physical Intimacy, but they will not read Guide to Getting it On. Or they would not read it until after reading a book like this, which recommends a book like that, in the following manner: "Though this book uses slang and "street language," no other book can compete with its comprehensiveness, and its wit sets a comfortable tone." Although this section includes a disclaimer that the resources may "have content that is not relevant or appropriate for you" my impression was that they hoped that readers would 'graduate' to such books and learn about that which they were unable or unwilling to write.
Finally - the envelope. Pasted inside the back cover is an envelope with the following note printed on a sticker sealing it shut:
While I am tempted to show one of these illustrations, of course I will not. Suffice it to say they are perfectly correct, adventurous (by conservative standards) and utterly unsexy. I guess I sort of knew the answer, but I asked Rosenfeld about it, and she replied: "That was definitely intentional-- we didn't want them to feel like pornography. Especially for the many frum men who have looked at pornography in their past, we didn't want the pictures to evoke discomfort/ memories of their past experience with pornography. The goal was to be educational, without being arousing/ erotic, and it seems we achieved that goal.."
My impressions. The book seemed to try to push the envelope, for a worthy cause, and in certain respects did that. I don't know if female masturbation is a third rail or not, but the book does not mince words and clearly considers it a normal, even necessary part of sexual discovery (I know!). Although I make this inference myself, I assume that the lack of the same for men is due both to the halachic issue as well as the reality that in practice this is most likely ignored at least some of the time by most men anyway. At the same time, the book does not strive to be fun or light. Practical might be the best word to describe it's tone. It is also encouraging, delivering the message that most likely the reader is normal whatever they are experiencing, that there is much they can do themselves, primarily through education, communication, and practice and, finally, there are people to turn to if things are not working out.
The only real criticism I have is that the book missed an opportunity to deal with a probable cause of much sexual dissatisfaction in some frum communities, namely uniformly stringent approaches taught as normative and obligatory law, and in some cases these restrictions have little relation to contemporary sexual needs which even sheltered people have. Vehamevin yavin. (Another cause, of course, is the negative messages about sex that many receive for nearly their entire life.) However, I suspect that there was little the authors could do about this. To counter, or at least offer an alternative to such approaches on a textual basis, would be to enter the lists as a halachic, or purportedly halachic work, and that could have caused the book to be eschewed or even denounced. One hopes that eventually someone will publish such a work, in English - even to include stringent alongside lenient views, if that is necessary to get people to be aware of the true range of rabbinic views on sex. Word is, someone is thinking of doing just that.
I read it, and had my thoughts, but I also asked the authors some questions, and Dr. Rosenfeld was kind enough to reply.
The book begins with an introduction explaining who the audience is - brides, grooms, chassan and kallah teachers, rabbis and "anyone in the Torah-observant community with questions about sexuality," but it is primarily for couples about to get married and for their first year (i.e., as newlyweds). It includes a pep talk about how special and pleasurable sex is, and some religious words about how it is a gift from God (not "G-d"), like other pleasures in life. It notes that is it not an exhaustive resource, and some things should be discussed with a doctor. Nor is it a halachic work, although it is designed with Torah-observant (it doesn't say Orthodox) people in mind. They believe they have accommodated a wide range of viewpoints, but if anyone has religious questions you should feel free to consult a rabbi who knows you, the couple, and is competent in this area of halacha (nice disclaimer!). Finally, they explain why they wrote the book. Both are Torah-observant Jews who are involved with the issue of sexuality in the Orthdox and Haredi communities. Dr. Ribner is a sex therapist who has seen hundreds of couples in more than 30 years, and Dr. Rosenfeld has worked on sex education for only a few years, but both have experience in the kind of questions and problems couples have and in many cases these could have been prevented with adequate information. They write that they have seen people who felt isolated for feeling things which are completely normal, people who suffered from lack of familiarity with their own sexuality, and had difficulty forging a deep sexual connection with their spouse. So they decided to write this book, to address these issues. I would add that without being a sex therapist, but just by having experience in Orthodox communities and reading many different kinds of personal accounts, viewpoints and questions in various online forums, the idea that Religious Jews "have been happily shagging for millennia [...] Jews never had the concept of "original sin." only tells part of the story to say the least.
The first thing which struck me is that the book lacks a rabbinic approbation, or any notice of any kind of rabbinic input, and that is unusual for a book intended for a religious audience. Assuming this was not an accident, I asked why they chose not to pursue, or use, a haskamah (rabbinic approbation). I wondered this because it occurred to me that a certain percentage of the intended audience might be reluctant to use it without one, and since they must have known that, I assumed they did a cost-benefit analysis and concluded that it was better to publish it without one. It did not occur to me that they could not obtain one, because I am sure they could have. Dr. Rosenfeld replied that they hoped that the book "would speak to the gamut of Orthodoxy (from the Haredi to Chassidish to Centrist to Modern to Left-wing, etc.), we didn't want the haskama to alienate any of the potential readers. Seeing a rabbi to the right or to the left of one could cause them to think that the book is only for that particular group. And the book is really designed to speak to everyone. Ideally, couples could take the book to their rabbi to get his advice, or receive the book from their chatan and kallah teacher, with the teacher's halakhic input. That was our thinking. In terms of whether we would have been able to get the haskamot had we decided we wanted them, I really don't know."
I also noticed that while the book is surely modest by current secular norms, it is still quite frank - and it also includes a further reading list; more on that later. In addition, while clearly religious in orientation, it is almost entirely lacking in what they call "hashkafah," not to mention fluff. It is not coldly clinical at all, but there are no stories of rabbis, vertlach and facile analyses of the Mars/ Venus type, and where such generalizations do occur they clearly label them with terms like "may" or "tend to." There are no platitudes or quotations from various famous "Holy Letters." I assumed this resistance to turn the book into a piece of moralistic literature was not an accident either, and Rosenfeld confirmed that the lack of hashkafah comes from the same place as the lack of haskamah, on theone hand. On the other hand, she pointed out that such books already exist, but this one did not. I think it was a wise decision, because such books often feel preachy. Furthermore - more below - there is no laundry list of halachic or customary restrictions in this book, which are commonly disseminated by chassan and kallah teachers, and presumably they are the cause of not a small amount of what they have to deal with in therapeutic situations (this is my inference). Consult your rabbi if you need to, is all they suggest.
The first chapter is called His Body/ Her Body and Arousal. Taking no chances and making sure that everything is completely clear to whomever reads it, it begins with noting that no two bodies are alike and each responds differently to different stimulation. It even goes through some basic descriptive info about what male and female bodies look like! - as well as to explain what erogenous zones are, and what are some of them. While these things may seem obvious, or at least something intelligent people will figure out themselves, they take no chances and do not want readers who need to begin at the beginning to be left behind. Finally, there is a detailed description of the female and male body and the physical act of sexual intercourse itself.
The second chapter is called Getting Sexual. It begins with guidelines, such as that sex should be a learning experience, enjoyable, people should expect it to be different from what one may have seen or heard, and that men and women tend to have different needs and respond in different ways. Finally, if things are just not working, one should not hesitate to seek professional help. It then discusses the importance of communication, clearly knowing and labeling body parts, as well as the terms relating to sexual activity and response. Their point is that couples who bashfully talk about that thing with the thing - or no talking at all - are not going to end up on the same page, except by luck or chance. In this chapter, as well as in the others, there are gray boxes labeled "We were wondering..." which represent commonly asked questions (and Rosenfeld confirmed that these truly are common). So in this chapter, for example, one is about talking about sex before marriage and another is about discomfort with being naked. Also discussed in this chapter is all aspects of sex, from physical and mental preparations, to foreplay to kissing. To inject a personal note, someone told me that men and women kiss on the mouth and he cited Rashi to Shir Hashirim 1:2 (which is the false meaning, according to you-know-what). The authors, as I indicated, do not bother with such things. Two pages of this thin book (about 100 pages) is devoted to the female orgasm, with a promise, later to be fulfilled, about treating this in detail later. This chapter's "We were wondering..." includes questions about smell, painful intercourse, and experimentation.
The next chapter is called Alternate Intimacies. This leads me to the observation that the book seems to really try to push the envelope, but not be sexy itself. No one can accuse this instructional manual of being erotic! I am reasonably certain that mutual oral stimulation was never written about so pareve. But it is there. Two word summary of the chapter: oral, manual.
The next chapter is about managing time, niddah, pregnancy, babies, etc.
Chapter Five, When Your Sex Life Isn't Working, raises issues from physical to mental barriers, as well as childhood sexual abuse, negative body image, homosexuality and pornography, which they say should not be automatically viewed as addictive.
The next three chapters are called She Asks. He Asks. and They Ask. All of these are very frank discussions of common concerns, going into much greater detail than the small "We were wondering" sections. These discuss much of what you think they will, including less obvious things like frustration with niddah. As Bayme wrote in his review, they don't dismiss it with platitudes about how special niddah is. Nor do they wink, wink. They take it seriously, dignifying the issue, and assume that the couple is committed to niddah observance, and offer suggestions for dealing with it.
The book ends by asking readers to engage them in a dialogue, and requests feedback, leaving an email address.
Afterwards, there is a section called Resources, which include books with titles like Guide to Getting it On. Which led me to wonder, what this book has that Guide to Getting it On, which they really recommend, doesn't? The answer to me was obvious. Many people will read The Newlywed's Guide to Physical Intimacy, but they will not read Guide to Getting it On. Or they would not read it until after reading a book like this, which recommends a book like that, in the following manner: "Though this book uses slang and "street language," no other book can compete with its comprehensiveness, and its wit sets a comfortable tone." Although this section includes a disclaimer that the resources may "have content that is not relevant or appropriate for you" my impression was that they hoped that readers would 'graduate' to such books and learn about that which they were unable or unwilling to write.
Finally - the envelope. Pasted inside the back cover is an envelope with the following note printed on a sticker sealing it shut:
While I am tempted to show one of these illustrations, of course I will not. Suffice it to say they are perfectly correct, adventurous (by conservative standards) and utterly unsexy. I guess I sort of knew the answer, but I asked Rosenfeld about it, and she replied: "That was definitely intentional-- we didn't want them to feel like pornography. Especially for the many frum men who have looked at pornography in their past, we didn't want the pictures to evoke discomfort/ memories of their past experience with pornography. The goal was to be educational, without being arousing/ erotic, and it seems we achieved that goal.."
My impressions. The book seemed to try to push the envelope, for a worthy cause, and in certain respects did that. I don't know if female masturbation is a third rail or not, but the book does not mince words and clearly considers it a normal, even necessary part of sexual discovery (I know!). Although I make this inference myself, I assume that the lack of the same for men is due both to the halachic issue as well as the reality that in practice this is most likely ignored at least some of the time by most men anyway. At the same time, the book does not strive to be fun or light. Practical might be the best word to describe it's tone. It is also encouraging, delivering the message that most likely the reader is normal whatever they are experiencing, that there is much they can do themselves, primarily through education, communication, and practice and, finally, there are people to turn to if things are not working out.
The only real criticism I have is that the book missed an opportunity to deal with a probable cause of much sexual dissatisfaction in some frum communities, namely uniformly stringent approaches taught as normative and obligatory law, and in some cases these restrictions have little relation to contemporary sexual needs which even sheltered people have. Vehamevin yavin. (Another cause, of course, is the negative messages about sex that many receive for nearly their entire life.) However, I suspect that there was little the authors could do about this. To counter, or at least offer an alternative to such approaches on a textual basis, would be to enter the lists as a halachic, or purportedly halachic work, and that could have caused the book to be eschewed or even denounced. One hopes that eventually someone will publish such a work, in English - even to include stringent alongside lenient views, if that is necessary to get people to be aware of the true range of rabbinic views on sex. Word is, someone is thinking of doing just that.
The Maggid of Kelm's sermons against the Hebrew newspapers, as reported by one of the Hebrew newspapers
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Here are a couple of vintage notices in S. J. Fuenn's journal Hakarmel, concerning the Maggid of Kelm's sermons in two cities, about the Hebrew newspapers of the time.
Bialystok. From a letter from our friend to his friend in Vilna we heard of the wonderful derashos of the Maggid of Kelm:
This is what the Maggid of Kelm preached in the Bet Midrash of Rabbi S. Bulkowstein; there are four holy things - the Shulchan Aruch's four sections. Opposing them are are four satanic blemishes, Hamaggid, Hakarmel, Hameliz, and Hazefirah. A man eats and drinks on the holy Sabbath and fills his belly with good food, and sleeps a restful nap, beneficial to the body, and when he awakens he also wants to benefit his soul. With what pleasure does he feed it? Not with Mishna or Gemara, not with Shulchan Aruch or mussar works or kabbalah. Instead many gather in groups and read [these newspapers] - Woe to us! For our many sins, they read Hamaggid, Hakarmel, Hameliz and Hazefirah, newspapers which arrive by mail, even by telegraph (telegram?). These are the food for the soul, for the spirit. If there happens to be words of Torah in these newspapers, behold they are satanic, for this is the way of the Evil Inclination, to dress in white garments.The next letter is from #16. The writer, from Pinsk, replies concerning the Maggid of Kelm, and says that he too heard one of his derashos in his city. He described how the Maggid mispronounced the word bildung (at least I think that's what it means) and called every enlightened man a "puschzak," an empty-headed person. Oh, no! Woe is us, continues the writer, that this befalls us in our times, when the Four Blights, Hamaggid, Hakarmel, Hameliz and Hazefirah, are among us. The maggid continues: Know without a doubt that if one sees a youth reading one of the gazettes then without a doubt he is a heretic. Whoever reads them is a heretic , a heretic in their youth, and a heretic as a man, and a heretic in their old age. The editors of these gazettes have no World to Come.
8 Temmuz 2012 Pazar
Boldly censoring a letter from Rabbi Jacob Joseph to Samuel Joseph Fuenn in RJJ's biography.
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Recently I was visiting a choshuve home, and I picked up a book that looked interesting, as it indeed was. It was "The Rav Hakolel and his Generation" by Rabbi Yonah Landau, an English translation of his "ספר דער רב הכולל �ון זיין תקופה." This book is the fruit of his research on Rabbi Jacob Joseph, much of which had appeared in the publication Der Yid, with a series of articles beginning in 1989. Rabbi Landau seems to have single-handedly revived interest in Rabbi Joseph, New York's first and only, lamented Chief Rabbi, and out of this renewed interest has even grown a sort of cult following around Rabbi Joseph, with many pious individuals making pilgrimages to his grave on his yahrzeit and other times. It only took 100 years for him to re-enter the hearts of New York Jews.
In any case, I didn't read the book, I had no time. But I did flip through it and found it to be very interesting. Normally one begins a review with the positive and then moves on to the negative, but first let me mention some negative and only then move on to the positive. The book was very, very sloppily edited, spelling mistakes, etc. This is, possibly, the fault of the translator, who probably didn't know much about the people mentioned in the book. Here are some examples of this. Naturally J. D. Eisenstein is a name which recurs in this book many times. It is not such a big deal that he is called "Eizenstein." Fine. But one time it refers to his autobiography as "Sefer Zichronos." Another time it gets it right, "Otzar Zikhronosai." My guess is that in the original Landau wrote (in Yiddish) "his seyfer zichroynos," i.e., "his autobiography," while in the other place he named the autobiography. The translator didn't realize that he meant "his autobiography" and therefore wrote "Sefer Zichronos." Why does this matter? Suppose a reader wants to investigate further and tries to find "Yehuda David Eizenstein's Sefer Zichronos." Not going to find it with that title. This is only an example, and similar things occur. Next, almost every American rabbi who routinely went by his English name is given by his Hebrew name. It's hard to say if this was intended to frumify them or not, but one reads about Rabbi Chaim Pereira Mendes and Rabbi Duber Drachman, both men who surely were called this when they were called to the Torah, but that's it. And then Rabbi Sabato Morais is arbitrarily called "'Dr.' Shabsai Morris." The final negative is that it lacks footnotes and a bibliography. Perhaps the original has them.
The many positives are that it is chock full of interesting sources and references, and at the very least is useful as a guide to much further investigation about Rabbi Jacob Joseph. Rabbi Landau is a great researcher and uncovered many, many obscure things. And this is my impression from merely leafing through it. Of course the book is also a religious polemic, and of course the opinion of the Satmar Rav, who apparently on occasion referred to RJJ as a sort of failed precursor to himself, which is not wholly accurate to say the least, figures prominently. How the Litvish maggid of Vilna turned into a holy saint for Chasidim is surely an interesting phenomenon. See here for example for pictures of NY State Assemblyman David Weprin, a political candidate who was apparently dragged to Rabbi Jacob Joseph's grave as part of his campaigning, complete with him writing a kvitel to RJJ. See:
In any case, the book looks great, and I want to really read it. But here's something which has to be dealt with in full because it is really low-hanging fruit. One of the book's good qualities is its many photographic reproductions of various articles, title pages and the like. Landau really dug deep to find many rare things. Unfortunately, as I said, there is very little bibliographic info. Still, these are good leads for people who want to know more about RJJ and his period. So I was leafing through the book and something practically jumped out of the page and flashed at me. Here is what I mean:
I mean, come on. Don't make it so easy for me. Are you kidding me? Yes, this "correspondence from the Rav Hakolel to a Ruv after his arrival in NY" happens to have the name of the "Ruv" blurred out. Oh, come on. And then the footnote begins with 3, meaning the first two were removed. Was this not going to be noticed? I'll get to it in a minute, but here is a detail:
So who was this Rav whom Rabbi Jacob Joseph addressed, the very week after he arrived in New York, as "zekan beit Vilna," "the elder of Vilna," as "His honor, my beloved friend, the rabbi and ga'on in Torah and [secular] wisdom . . . " (and to his son)? I guessed who it was, it was that easy, although I guess it could have been someone else. It was S. J. Fuenn, the leading maskil in Vilna. As it happens, Fuenn was very popular in his time and had a reputation for moderation and (even) piety. This letter was published originally in 1963 in, naturally, Yeshiva University's journal Talpiot 8:3-4 (Nissan 5563), as "Two Letters From New York's Chief Rabbi Jacob Joseph Charif (From a Bundle of Letters of R. Samuel Joseph Fuenn)". When you see the original in Talpiot you see that not only was the name blurred but a lot more was removed from this picture. The funny thing is, there was no reason to remove the first two footnotes, as you will see, which I had assumed discussed and identified the blurred out rabbi who Rabbi Jacob Joseph says is beloved, but cannot be named in the book because it ruins the message.
As you can see, the entire title, everything above the Aleph was removed. You can also see that three additional words, "harofei doctor fin," that is, in Talpiot Fuenn's son, a medical doctor, is named, but in the Rav Hakolel book the name is taken out and it only says "to his son, the scholar." As you can further see, the second footnote does not explain who Fuenn was at all, it merely explain the acronym, as the first footnote did. If he hadn't removed it, by golly, it would have been less suspicious! The entire story about Fuenn is contained in an asterisk before the footnotes, so it could have kept in those first two footnotes.
For what it's worth, Chaim Reuven Rabinowitz, who published this letter, also is puzzled at the seemingly close relationship between RJJ and Vilna's leading maskil, although he points out that Fuenn was very different from maskilim like Lilienblum and J. L. Gordon. Furthermore, it contains a hilarious oral tradition (I guess) about Fuenn. They used to say about Fuenn that he davens mincha many times a day. Why? Because someone like him could not refuse to join a minyan, saying "I already prayed." If he said that then he'd be suspected of lying and not praying at all. Thus, he had no choice but to pray a few times every afternoon. Actually, the source of this story seems to be Klausner's Volume 4 of his History of Modern Hebrew Literature, where it says "5 times a day," unless Rabbinowitz had heard it independently. The truth is, it's not so hard to explain Fuenn's relationship with RJJ. He was also on very good terms with the Netziv. It just is what it is, but it doesn't work with the polemic of the book. Similarly, a journal like Hamaggid is called "Reform," even though this wasn't known to the rabbis, including some of the caliber of R. Yehoshua Heschel Levine, author of Aliyos Eliyahu on the Vilna Gaon, who advertised his book in the pages of Hamggid, one of countless other examples which can be given to prove that it was not "Reform." If Hamaggid was Reform, then so was J. D. Eisenstein, a well regarded source in this book. You want to see Reform? See my post on the Malbim from the other day (link).
Edit: see below: In Jeffrey Gurock's article "How "Frum" Was Rabbi Jacob Joseph's Court?" Jewish History Vol. 8:1-2 (1994) he discusses this sort of moderate rabbinic haskalah which, he says, was not foreign to some of the dayanim on RJJ's Beth Din. One example he gives is Rabbi Israel Kaplan, the father of Mordecai Kaplan, whom he says was given a letter of recommendation by Fuenn to Rabbi Alexander Kohut for coming to America. Gurock lists the Kaplan Diaries Vol. I Jan. 30 and Feb. 1, 1917 pp. 256 - 58. Fortunately, the Kaplan Diaries are now online. Fortunately on pp. 256 - 58 Kaplan discusses his father, upon his death, and also his feelings about the "Shiba." Unfortunately, nothing at all appears about Kohut or Fuenn on these pages. But there is this about his relationship with Rabbi Jacob Joseph:
Maybe the mistake is mine, but I read and reread and then reread those pages and it isn't there.
Edit: the mistake was indeed mine. In the comments it was pointed out that the part about Fuenn is in the published version of the journals, and this caused me to give a second look at the page. It was on the page - in a marginal note at the top added by Kaplan, which I did not read carefully at all. Here it is:
You can read or download the entire letter as it was originally published in Talpiot right here. By the way, lest anyone think that I have something against the revival of interest in Rabbi Jacob Joseph - not at all. I think it's great and it is largely if not entirely due to Rabbi Yonah Landau.
In any case, I didn't read the book, I had no time. But I did flip through it and found it to be very interesting. Normally one begins a review with the positive and then moves on to the negative, but first let me mention some negative and only then move on to the positive. The book was very, very sloppily edited, spelling mistakes, etc. This is, possibly, the fault of the translator, who probably didn't know much about the people mentioned in the book. Here are some examples of this. Naturally J. D. Eisenstein is a name which recurs in this book many times. It is not such a big deal that he is called "Eizenstein." Fine. But one time it refers to his autobiography as "Sefer Zichronos." Another time it gets it right, "Otzar Zikhronosai." My guess is that in the original Landau wrote (in Yiddish) "his seyfer zichroynos," i.e., "his autobiography," while in the other place he named the autobiography. The translator didn't realize that he meant "his autobiography" and therefore wrote "Sefer Zichronos." Why does this matter? Suppose a reader wants to investigate further and tries to find "Yehuda David Eizenstein's Sefer Zichronos." Not going to find it with that title. This is only an example, and similar things occur. Next, almost every American rabbi who routinely went by his English name is given by his Hebrew name. It's hard to say if this was intended to frumify them or not, but one reads about Rabbi Chaim Pereira Mendes and Rabbi Duber Drachman, both men who surely were called this when they were called to the Torah, but that's it. And then Rabbi Sabato Morais is arbitrarily called "'Dr.' Shabsai Morris." The final negative is that it lacks footnotes and a bibliography. Perhaps the original has them.The many positives are that it is chock full of interesting sources and references, and at the very least is useful as a guide to much further investigation about Rabbi Jacob Joseph. Rabbi Landau is a great researcher and uncovered many, many obscure things. And this is my impression from merely leafing through it. Of course the book is also a religious polemic, and of course the opinion of the Satmar Rav, who apparently on occasion referred to RJJ as a sort of failed precursor to himself, which is not wholly accurate to say the least, figures prominently. How the Litvish maggid of Vilna turned into a holy saint for Chasidim is surely an interesting phenomenon. See here for example for pictures of NY State Assemblyman David Weprin, a political candidate who was apparently dragged to Rabbi Jacob Joseph's grave as part of his campaigning, complete with him writing a kvitel to RJJ. See:
In any case, the book looks great, and I want to really read it. But here's something which has to be dealt with in full because it is really low-hanging fruit. One of the book's good qualities is its many photographic reproductions of various articles, title pages and the like. Landau really dug deep to find many rare things. Unfortunately, as I said, there is very little bibliographic info. Still, these are good leads for people who want to know more about RJJ and his period. So I was leafing through the book and something practically jumped out of the page and flashed at me. Here is what I mean:
I mean, come on. Don't make it so easy for me. Are you kidding me? Yes, this "correspondence from the Rav Hakolel to a Ruv after his arrival in NY" happens to have the name of the "Ruv" blurred out. Oh, come on. And then the footnote begins with 3, meaning the first two were removed. Was this not going to be noticed? I'll get to it in a minute, but here is a detail:
So who was this Rav whom Rabbi Jacob Joseph addressed, the very week after he arrived in New York, as "zekan beit Vilna," "the elder of Vilna," as "His honor, my beloved friend, the rabbi and ga'on in Torah and [secular] wisdom . . . " (and to his son)? I guessed who it was, it was that easy, although I guess it could have been someone else. It was S. J. Fuenn, the leading maskil in Vilna. As it happens, Fuenn was very popular in his time and had a reputation for moderation and (even) piety. This letter was published originally in 1963 in, naturally, Yeshiva University's journal Talpiot 8:3-4 (Nissan 5563), as "Two Letters From New York's Chief Rabbi Jacob Joseph Charif (From a Bundle of Letters of R. Samuel Joseph Fuenn)". When you see the original in Talpiot you see that not only was the name blurred but a lot more was removed from this picture. The funny thing is, there was no reason to remove the first two footnotes, as you will see, which I had assumed discussed and identified the blurred out rabbi who Rabbi Jacob Joseph says is beloved, but cannot be named in the book because it ruins the message.
As you can see, the entire title, everything above the Aleph was removed. You can also see that three additional words, "harofei doctor fin," that is, in Talpiot Fuenn's son, a medical doctor, is named, but in the Rav Hakolel book the name is taken out and it only says "to his son, the scholar." As you can further see, the second footnote does not explain who Fuenn was at all, it merely explain the acronym, as the first footnote did. If he hadn't removed it, by golly, it would have been less suspicious! The entire story about Fuenn is contained in an asterisk before the footnotes, so it could have kept in those first two footnotes.
For what it's worth, Chaim Reuven Rabinowitz, who published this letter, also is puzzled at the seemingly close relationship between RJJ and Vilna's leading maskil, although he points out that Fuenn was very different from maskilim like Lilienblum and J. L. Gordon. Furthermore, it contains a hilarious oral tradition (I guess) about Fuenn. They used to say about Fuenn that he davens mincha many times a day. Why? Because someone like him could not refuse to join a minyan, saying "I already prayed." If he said that then he'd be suspected of lying and not praying at all. Thus, he had no choice but to pray a few times every afternoon. Actually, the source of this story seems to be Klausner's Volume 4 of his History of Modern Hebrew Literature, where it says "5 times a day," unless Rabbinowitz had heard it independently. The truth is, it's not so hard to explain Fuenn's relationship with RJJ. He was also on very good terms with the Netziv. It just is what it is, but it doesn't work with the polemic of the book. Similarly, a journal like Hamaggid is called "Reform," even though this wasn't known to the rabbis, including some of the caliber of R. Yehoshua Heschel Levine, author of Aliyos Eliyahu on the Vilna Gaon, who advertised his book in the pages of Hamggid, one of countless other examples which can be given to prove that it was not "Reform." If Hamaggid was Reform, then so was J. D. Eisenstein, a well regarded source in this book. You want to see Reform? See my post on the Malbim from the other day (link).
Edit: see below: In Jeffrey Gurock's article "How "Frum" Was Rabbi Jacob Joseph's Court?" Jewish History Vol. 8:1-2 (1994) he discusses this sort of moderate rabbinic haskalah which, he says, was not foreign to some of the dayanim on RJJ's Beth Din. One example he gives is Rabbi Israel Kaplan, the father of Mordecai Kaplan, whom he says was given a letter of recommendation by Fuenn to Rabbi Alexander Kohut for coming to America. Gurock lists the Kaplan Diaries Vol. I Jan. 30 and Feb. 1, 1917 pp. 256 - 58. Fortunately, the Kaplan Diaries are now online. Fortunately on pp. 256 - 58 Kaplan discusses his father, upon his death, and also his feelings about the "Shiba." Unfortunately, nothing at all appears about Kohut or Fuenn on these pages. But there is this about his relationship with Rabbi Jacob Joseph:
Maybe the mistake is mine, but I read and reread and then reread those pages and it isn't there.
Edit: the mistake was indeed mine. In the comments it was pointed out that the part about Fuenn is in the published version of the journals, and this caused me to give a second look at the page. It was on the page - in a marginal note at the top added by Kaplan, which I did not read carefully at all. Here it is:
You can read or download the entire letter as it was originally published in Talpiot right here. By the way, lest anyone think that I have something against the revival of interest in Rabbi Jacob Joseph - not at all. I think it's great and it is largely if not entirely due to Rabbi Yonah Landau.
What's a retired 'Shass Polack' to do? The eventual fate of Rabbi Hirsch Daenemark.
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A couple of years ago I posted about Rabbi Hirsch Denmark, who dazzled audiences all over Europe in the 1840s with his apparent ability to demonstrate that he had memorized the entire Talmud, not only its words, but the very form of the pages. Furthermore, he seemed able to do it with any text given to him. (link)
I wondered what became of him. With the caveat, that I can't promise that this is not another man going by the same name, although that seems unlikely, it turns out that he had a second career in the 1860s, as a traveling miracle working charlatan with, probably, some mental illness. This inspired various people to warn people about him in the newspaper Hamaggid. The first is from Hamaggid #22 1864. As you can see, the paragraph about him is actually censored by the Czar so we can't see his name mentioned. The only way I even know that this is talking about him is because a later issue refers to this one.
Writing from St. Petersburg, someone named D. Y. Kangisser wrote something about someone - we will see that it is Danemark - and in the part that we can read at the end he says that he wanted to notify the readers of Hamaggid in Galicia - where he was apparently from - perhaps they know the man, did he leave a wife behind, for example. Once the man's identity is established, maybe then we can know what to do with this "false prophet," (navi sheker).
Now that the media began covering him, another person, named Yeruchem Fischel Ze'ev Rosenzweig, sent in a letter, which appeared in #32. He says that when he met him several years earlier, he was going by the name (Rosh Barzel/ Iron Head - we will see below that he was using the name Eisenkopf). He asked him where he was staying. He told him that he was staying in a hostel owned by a Christian woman. Rosenzweig asked him why, and he told him that at that particular time he was not there for the Jews, but to perform miracles for the Christians. Upon seeing an example of his miracles, he was singularly unimpressed. Danemark told him that he can show him that he will impress people in the local (town hall?), but he merely did the same trick. Then he began to blaspheme against Judaism and even the Christian official couldn't take it, and the people wanted to beat him. The editor of Hamaggid added a note that he had also received a letter from someone in Mogilev about him, and how he impressed and collected much money from the superstitious women and fool[ish men] in his city. The editor believes it is important to publicize this man.
Then a few issues later, Shalom Barasch wrote, from Pest. This time he said that Denmark had lived in Pest for quite awhile, and married a young, poor girl of Polish origin in his city but he had divorced (or abandoned?) her. He was saying negative things (as he apparently was wont to do) and then he saw that it wasn't winning him fans, he disguised himself, dressing like a rabbi in black. He posed as an expert in Bible, Talmud and Aramaic. When he was exposed as a fraud, he left.
Then in Kovno someone came across him at the post office. He saw a crowd of men, women and children around this person, and he was saying nasty things, calling this one a bastard and that one a harlot. He asked who the man was, and was told "A crazy rabbi." He went to the police station to see if they knew anything about him, and they showed him that approbation letter he carried, which called him "The great rabbi Hirsch Denmark from Austria." So, obviously curious, he went to the place where Denmark was staying. He saw that he was surrounded by a group of course men, he was drinking, and saying terrible things about the Jews and their faith. He asked him, To which faith do you subscribe? Denmark answered "Karaite." But a moment passed and then he began cursing the Karaite. He could see, he writes, that the man was neither Jew, nor Karaite, nor Muslim - he was just a drunk.
Finally, this last piece is from Hamevasser, published in Lemberg. It refers to Barasch's letter in Hamaggid, and says that Denmark also visited his town, and called himself Eisenkopf. After doing his miracle schtick, people asked him, what did the Rambam write, what does it say in the Gemara? He declined to be tested in this manner. He was asked if he was married, and he confessed/ claimed that he had two wives.
In any case, I do find it strange that no one seems to have recognized him from what he was up to nearlt 20 years earlier - this is a reason, I suppose, to wonder if it was the same person. On the other hand, was his nom de plume "iron head" meant to evoke the great mind he possessed, or felt he possessed? But here it is.
I wondered what became of him. With the caveat, that I can't promise that this is not another man going by the same name, although that seems unlikely, it turns out that he had a second career in the 1860s, as a traveling miracle working charlatan with, probably, some mental illness. This inspired various people to warn people about him in the newspaper Hamaggid. The first is from Hamaggid #22 1864. As you can see, the paragraph about him is actually censored by the Czar so we can't see his name mentioned. The only way I even know that this is talking about him is because a later issue refers to this one.
Writing from St. Petersburg, someone named D. Y. Kangisser wrote something about someone - we will see that it is Danemark - and in the part that we can read at the end he says that he wanted to notify the readers of Hamaggid in Galicia - where he was apparently from - perhaps they know the man, did he leave a wife behind, for example. Once the man's identity is established, maybe then we can know what to do with this "false prophet," (navi sheker).
Now that the media began covering him, another person, named Yeruchem Fischel Ze'ev Rosenzweig, sent in a letter, which appeared in #32. He says that when he met him several years earlier, he was going by the name (Rosh Barzel/ Iron Head - we will see below that he was using the name Eisenkopf). He asked him where he was staying. He told him that he was staying in a hostel owned by a Christian woman. Rosenzweig asked him why, and he told him that at that particular time he was not there for the Jews, but to perform miracles for the Christians. Upon seeing an example of his miracles, he was singularly unimpressed. Danemark told him that he can show him that he will impress people in the local (town hall?), but he merely did the same trick. Then he began to blaspheme against Judaism and even the Christian official couldn't take it, and the people wanted to beat him. The editor of Hamaggid added a note that he had also received a letter from someone in Mogilev about him, and how he impressed and collected much money from the superstitious women and fool[ish men] in his city. The editor believes it is important to publicize this man.
Then a few issues later, Shalom Barasch wrote, from Pest. This time he said that Denmark had lived in Pest for quite awhile, and married a young, poor girl of Polish origin in his city but he had divorced (or abandoned?) her. He was saying negative things (as he apparently was wont to do) and then he saw that it wasn't winning him fans, he disguised himself, dressing like a rabbi in black. He posed as an expert in Bible, Talmud and Aramaic. When he was exposed as a fraud, he left.
Then in Kovno someone came across him at the post office. He saw a crowd of men, women and children around this person, and he was saying nasty things, calling this one a bastard and that one a harlot. He asked who the man was, and was told "A crazy rabbi." He went to the police station to see if they knew anything about him, and they showed him that approbation letter he carried, which called him "The great rabbi Hirsch Denmark from Austria." So, obviously curious, he went to the place where Denmark was staying. He saw that he was surrounded by a group of course men, he was drinking, and saying terrible things about the Jews and their faith. He asked him, To which faith do you subscribe? Denmark answered "Karaite." But a moment passed and then he began cursing the Karaite. He could see, he writes, that the man was neither Jew, nor Karaite, nor Muslim - he was just a drunk.Finally, this last piece is from Hamevasser, published in Lemberg. It refers to Barasch's letter in Hamaggid, and says that Denmark also visited his town, and called himself Eisenkopf. After doing his miracle schtick, people asked him, what did the Rambam write, what does it say in the Gemara? He declined to be tested in this manner. He was asked if he was married, and he confessed/ claimed that he had two wives.
In any case, I do find it strange that no one seems to have recognized him from what he was up to nearlt 20 years earlier - this is a reason, I suppose, to wonder if it was the same person. On the other hand, was his nom de plume "iron head" meant to evoke the great mind he possessed, or felt he possessed? But here it is.
Shadal series #12 - why translations of translations sometimes don't work.
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At the end of Shmuel Vargon's excellent article Isaiah 56:9-57:13: Time and Identity of the Author, According to Samuel David Luzzatto (Jewish Studies Quarterly 6 1999) we read
Indeed it is. Before I get to it, it is worth analyzing what the content of this paragraph seems to be saying. It quotes Shadal as saying that he has another purpose in mind for becoming a reputable critical scholar. It is to defend Judaism. Without having cultivated a stellar scholarly reputation, people would dismiss his views because he is "a pious man."
The actual letter is indeed partly printed in Abraham Kahana's article in Shadal in Hashiloah 4 (1898). Here it is:
We are immediately struck by something. Kahana does not indicate where this letter appears; it is in fact excerpted from a longer letter, but we cannot read it as it was originally printed without knowing where. The second thing is that Kahana did not indicate that he actually translated it from Italian, although it is only after locating the letter that we realize that.
Fortunately I was able to discover the letter in Epistolario, the collected Italian, French and Latin letters of Shadal. It is letter number CXL, on pp. 207 - 209, to Isaac Samuel Reggio, dated sep. 2, 1836.
The paragraph translated - from Hebrew - by Vargon reads as follows:
I feel that Kahana did translate responsibly, and Vargon translated Kahana responsibly. The trouble is that Vargon's translation is too far removed from the original - this is not his fault - to convey the actual intent of what Shadal meant. "A fanatic," or "a zealot" is not a true synonym for "a pious man." Many Bible scholars of the 19th century were pious men and were certainly part of the scholarly discourse of Bible studies.
The term 'aduk' is a rabbinic Hebrew word for a scrupulously observant person, and we can readily see what it meant by the other, more literal meanings of the term: to hold or to grasp (see, e.g., Metzia 7b). A person who is holding, therefore, is quite literally a pious person. By the 19th century the term had indeed taken on a flavor of fanaticism, which of course has a negative connotation to most people. Thus Kahana was correct to use this term. As far as I can think, his only alternative would have been 'kannai,' but I think that its connotation of zealousness would have made it too imprecise. By that token, since Vargon was translating 'ish aduk' it was reasonable for him to translate it merely as 'a pious person.' I do not fault him for not grasping that something more was intended. But as we can see, going back to the original, it isn't what Shadal wrote.
Actually, an other alternative term which Kahana might have chosen was 'orthodox.' While this is simply not what Shadal wrote - and he knew how to discuss how orthodox or not orthodox he was - it seems that at the time it would have been a reasonable term, for while piety and Bible scholarship may not have been totally at odds in 19th century Europe, modern Bible scholarship and orthodox religion surely were. Furthermore, in S. L. Gordon's 1901 translation of Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto we find:
Here is what Gordon was translating, from Zangwill's original:
As you can see, Zangwill wrote Orthodox [=ortodox] twice in this passage, which also gives a good illustration of what is lost in translation: accent. Gordon referred to the collective as 'ha-hareidim' and to the leader who may be or pretend to be 'ortodox' as 'ish aduk' or 'mit'adek,' which is the same term used by Kahana to translate Shadal's 'un fanatico.'
In any case, the original letter we are discussing is interesting in its own right. Shadal is writing to Reggio, who had been responsible for his employment as a teacher at the Rabbinical Seminary of Padua and at one time a sort of mentor to him, and explaining why it is that he had recently wrote and published his Introduction to a Grammar of the Hebrew Language (Ital.) for the benefit of his students. After spending the 1820s studying Hebrew in his own way, Reggio himself had referred him to a book by Gesenius, which absolutely revolutionized Shadal's own thinking about Hebrew. This was in 1829 and was the first complete book in German he ever read. When he began teaching that year, it was with this book. But over the next few years he began to make new discoveries and came up with a scholarly approach to Hebrew that differed in many respects from Gesenius, then the most famous Hebrew scholar in Europe (this is a fact; Gesenius, for his part, reputedly complimented Shadal by referring to him as Italy's greatest Orientalist). Furthermore, Shadal, continues, he was able to cultivate a good scholarly reputation when the Bible scholar Rosenmueller included his notes on Isaiah as part of his own Scholia in Jesajae Vaticinia.
Why, he explains to Reggio, is he working on these works of scholarship? After all, his job is to teach future Italian rabbis. It is so that he can raise the prestige of Judaism among outsiders. Furthermore, by enhancing his own scholarly reputation he also is able to enter his scholarly views into the mainstream of Bible scholarship and in so doing he is enabled to defend the faith of Judaism. If he had no reputation then his views could be easily dismissed, saying he is "a fanatic."
Interestingly, as the years went by Shadal seemed to care less about his reputation, probably because he had already established it (nearly every mid-19th century article on Biblical Aramaic or the Targums refer to his Ohev Ger, for example). Although he adhered to real scholarly standards: for example, in Kerem Hemed 3 (1838) he was involved in a deep polemic with Abraham Geiger over the latter's interpretation of a Mishnah in Eduyot which is fundamental to the question of rabbinic authority. Without getting into the details, Geiger understands the Mishnah to say that minority opinions are recorded so that a contemporary rabbinic court, greater in wisdom and number, can overrule a court and adopt a minority viewpoint (preserving the minority viewpoint lets it be aware of the viewpoint, which it can adopt). Interestingly, while this interpretation works for Geiger, who was trying to reform Judaism, it also worked for Shadal, who was not trying to reform Judaism, but did argue that halacha is inherently flexible, and halachic rigidity is a mistake, and foreign to the spirit of the Talmud. However, Shadal could not make it fit the words of the Mishnah, and he adopted Maimonides' interpretation that it referred to courts of different generations, not contemporary courts - who have no right to overrule one another. He writes that he liked Geiger's interpretation, but - ×¢×� כל ×–×” רו×�×” ×�× ×›×™ ש×�ין ×›×•×•× ×ª ×”×ª× ×� לומר כך, וחלילה ×œ× ×• לפרש מ×�חר של×� מדעת מי ש×�מרו / "Nevertheless I see that this isn't the intention of the Tanna to say this. Far be it for us to explain something other than the way the speaker intended." And this may well be said to be his credo.
So with this standard and what I have decided is his motto in mind, to "never explain someone's words in a way they didn't intend," I wanted to point out that even if he originally had some kind of ulterior motive in achieving a scholarly reputation, he later seems to have cared little for it. In the 1850s Heinrich Graetz initiated a correspondence with Shadal. He was so taken by the man that he made sure to pay him a visit in Padua, a visit he would later remember in his History of the Jews when, in writing about Shadal, he gives his personal impression of the man, and how moved he was by the state of poverty he found him in. Graetz writes (JPS edition):
Getting back to Graetz, in a letter which I have by now quoted several times, Shadal was asked if it might not be a good idea to print his Bible commentaries with square Hebrew letters, rather than Rashi, to make it easier for Christians to read. Shadal replied that he doesn't write Bible commentaries for Christians and truly he could not care less if a Christian interprets "alma" as "virgin." He does not engage in religious polemics; his only purpose is to teach his fellow Jews. Writing to Franz Delitzsch several years later, he reiterated this sentiment, that he cares not for the difference of opinion in interpreting 'alma.' (link). Thus we see that, perhaps, what Shadal cared for in 1836 - scholarly reputation in the world of European scholarship - he seemed to care for no more in 1856.
It is clear from this passage how important it was for him to be recognizes as a critical commentator and accepted in the scholarly - even Christian - world. In one letter, he writes: 'I have another purpose [in my Bible studies], and that is: When my reputation grants me some value in the scientific view, I shall later be able to go forth and defend our faith; for this mission requires defenders of some renown; if not for this condition, they will quickly decide: this is "a pious man."'61Vargon's footnote indicates: that "This letter is cited in A. Kahana, "Samuel David Luzzatto, His Life and Literary Opus" [Heb.], Ha-Shiloah 4 (1898-1899), 60.
Indeed it is. Before I get to it, it is worth analyzing what the content of this paragraph seems to be saying. It quotes Shadal as saying that he has another purpose in mind for becoming a reputable critical scholar. It is to defend Judaism. Without having cultivated a stellar scholarly reputation, people would dismiss his views because he is "a pious man."
The actual letter is indeed partly printed in Abraham Kahana's article in Shadal in Hashiloah 4 (1898). Here it is:
We are immediately struck by something. Kahana does not indicate where this letter appears; it is in fact excerpted from a longer letter, but we cannot read it as it was originally printed without knowing where. The second thing is that Kahana did not indicate that he actually translated it from Italian, although it is only after locating the letter that we realize that.
Fortunately I was able to discover the letter in Epistolario, the collected Italian, French and Latin letters of Shadal. It is letter number CXL, on pp. 207 - 209, to Isaac Samuel Reggio, dated sep. 2, 1836.
The paragraph translated - from Hebrew - by Vargon reads as follows:
Ho oltracciò un'altra considerazione, ed è che se il mio nome acquista mai qualche peso dal lato scientifico, io potrò un giorno con qualche speranza di buon esito prender la difesa del nostro Palladio; conciossiachè quest'è una causa che abbisogna di patrocinatori di qualche grido: altrimenti si fa presto a dire: questi è un fanatico.I want to focus on the final words. Kahana writes that Shadal says he is careful to cultivate a scholarly reputation, as indeed he had, otherwise his words in defense of the faith would be dismissed by those saying he is an "ish aduk." Vargon translated this as "a pious man." As we can see, Shadal's original words were "un fanatico," which means in Italian what it means in English: a fanatic. Is there a difference between pious and fanatic? More importantly, in the 19th century would those whom he made sure that he impressed have dismissed a scholar for being "pious" or rather for being a "fanatic?" Finally, does "ish aduk" properly convey the meaning of "un fanatico," and is "a pious man" what he intended after all?
I feel that Kahana did translate responsibly, and Vargon translated Kahana responsibly. The trouble is that Vargon's translation is too far removed from the original - this is not his fault - to convey the actual intent of what Shadal meant. "A fanatic," or "a zealot" is not a true synonym for "a pious man." Many Bible scholars of the 19th century were pious men and were certainly part of the scholarly discourse of Bible studies.
The term 'aduk' is a rabbinic Hebrew word for a scrupulously observant person, and we can readily see what it meant by the other, more literal meanings of the term: to hold or to grasp (see, e.g., Metzia 7b). A person who is holding, therefore, is quite literally a pious person. By the 19th century the term had indeed taken on a flavor of fanaticism, which of course has a negative connotation to most people. Thus Kahana was correct to use this term. As far as I can think, his only alternative would have been 'kannai,' but I think that its connotation of zealousness would have made it too imprecise. By that token, since Vargon was translating 'ish aduk' it was reasonable for him to translate it merely as 'a pious person.' I do not fault him for not grasping that something more was intended. But as we can see, going back to the original, it isn't what Shadal wrote.
Actually, an other alternative term which Kahana might have chosen was 'orthodox.' While this is simply not what Shadal wrote - and he knew how to discuss how orthodox or not orthodox he was - it seems that at the time it would have been a reasonable term, for while piety and Bible scholarship may not have been totally at odds in 19th century Europe, modern Bible scholarship and orthodox religion surely were. Furthermore, in S. L. Gordon's 1901 translation of Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto we find:
Here is what Gordon was translating, from Zangwill's original:
As you can see, Zangwill wrote Orthodox [=ortodox] twice in this passage, which also gives a good illustration of what is lost in translation: accent. Gordon referred to the collective as 'ha-hareidim' and to the leader who may be or pretend to be 'ortodox' as 'ish aduk' or 'mit'adek,' which is the same term used by Kahana to translate Shadal's 'un fanatico.'In any case, the original letter we are discussing is interesting in its own right. Shadal is writing to Reggio, who had been responsible for his employment as a teacher at the Rabbinical Seminary of Padua and at one time a sort of mentor to him, and explaining why it is that he had recently wrote and published his Introduction to a Grammar of the Hebrew Language (Ital.) for the benefit of his students. After spending the 1820s studying Hebrew in his own way, Reggio himself had referred him to a book by Gesenius, which absolutely revolutionized Shadal's own thinking about Hebrew. This was in 1829 and was the first complete book in German he ever read. When he began teaching that year, it was with this book. But over the next few years he began to make new discoveries and came up with a scholarly approach to Hebrew that differed in many respects from Gesenius, then the most famous Hebrew scholar in Europe (this is a fact; Gesenius, for his part, reputedly complimented Shadal by referring to him as Italy's greatest Orientalist). Furthermore, Shadal, continues, he was able to cultivate a good scholarly reputation when the Bible scholar Rosenmueller included his notes on Isaiah as part of his own Scholia in Jesajae Vaticinia.
Why, he explains to Reggio, is he working on these works of scholarship? After all, his job is to teach future Italian rabbis. It is so that he can raise the prestige of Judaism among outsiders. Furthermore, by enhancing his own scholarly reputation he also is able to enter his scholarly views into the mainstream of Bible scholarship and in so doing he is enabled to defend the faith of Judaism. If he had no reputation then his views could be easily dismissed, saying he is "a fanatic."
Interestingly, as the years went by Shadal seemed to care less about his reputation, probably because he had already established it (nearly every mid-19th century article on Biblical Aramaic or the Targums refer to his Ohev Ger, for example). Although he adhered to real scholarly standards: for example, in Kerem Hemed 3 (1838) he was involved in a deep polemic with Abraham Geiger over the latter's interpretation of a Mishnah in Eduyot which is fundamental to the question of rabbinic authority. Without getting into the details, Geiger understands the Mishnah to say that minority opinions are recorded so that a contemporary rabbinic court, greater in wisdom and number, can overrule a court and adopt a minority viewpoint (preserving the minority viewpoint lets it be aware of the viewpoint, which it can adopt). Interestingly, while this interpretation works for Geiger, who was trying to reform Judaism, it also worked for Shadal, who was not trying to reform Judaism, but did argue that halacha is inherently flexible, and halachic rigidity is a mistake, and foreign to the spirit of the Talmud. However, Shadal could not make it fit the words of the Mishnah, and he adopted Maimonides' interpretation that it referred to courts of different generations, not contemporary courts - who have no right to overrule one another. He writes that he liked Geiger's interpretation, but - ×¢×� כל ×–×” רו×�×” ×�× ×›×™ ש×�ין ×›×•×•× ×ª ×”×ª× ×� לומר כך, וחלילה ×œ× ×• לפרש מ×�חר של×� מדעת מי ש×�מרו / "Nevertheless I see that this isn't the intention of the Tanna to say this. Far be it for us to explain something other than the way the speaker intended." And this may well be said to be his credo.
So with this standard and what I have decided is his motto in mind, to "never explain someone's words in a way they didn't intend," I wanted to point out that even if he originally had some kind of ulterior motive in achieving a scholarly reputation, he later seems to have cared little for it. In the 1850s Heinrich Graetz initiated a correspondence with Shadal. He was so taken by the man that he made sure to pay him a visit in Padua, a visit he would later remember in his History of the Jews when, in writing about Shadal, he gives his personal impression of the man, and how moved he was by the state of poverty he found him in. Graetz writes (JPS edition):
The self-sacrifice of Jewish inquirers in the Middle Ages, who in the midst of unspeakable privations and sufferings had occupied themselves in the cultivation of their minds, Luzzatto also manifested as a model for the younger generation. During his whole life, and although he enjoyed European fame, Luzzatto and his family suffered through poverty. Privations, however, did not hinder him from increasing his knowledge with endurance all the more heroic because not publicly displayed. To be poor in Poland, as was the case with Rapoport and Erter, was not so distressing as to be poor in Italy, because in the former, requirements were slight, and contentment on the smallest means was almost universal; besides, generous, wealthy men saved the men of science from starvation. But in Italy, where even the middle class craved comfortable living, and where indifference to knowledge among the Jews had reached a high pitch, it is matter for great surprise that Luzzatto could find, amidst his struggles for daily bread, the peace and cheerfulness necessary to accomplish so much for the promotion of Jewish science. At every discovery, however trifling, Luzzatto felt childlike pleasure, which appears strange to an onlooker: it was the self created recreation of the martyr, which for a moment causes gnawing pain to be forgotten.This in turn reminded me of the poet Umbert Saba, Shadal's great-nephew, who wrote that Shadal was so poor that he mostly ate a single dish - panada, which is made of old bread, olive oil and bay leaves. This, according to family tradition, perfectly satisfied him. But not his wife, whom he alas provided for but little.
Getting back to Graetz, in a letter which I have by now quoted several times, Shadal was asked if it might not be a good idea to print his Bible commentaries with square Hebrew letters, rather than Rashi, to make it easier for Christians to read. Shadal replied that he doesn't write Bible commentaries for Christians and truly he could not care less if a Christian interprets "alma" as "virgin." He does not engage in religious polemics; his only purpose is to teach his fellow Jews. Writing to Franz Delitzsch several years later, he reiterated this sentiment, that he cares not for the difference of opinion in interpreting 'alma.' (link). Thus we see that, perhaps, what Shadal cared for in 1836 - scholarly reputation in the world of European scholarship - he seemed to care for no more in 1856.
A review of The Newlywed's Guide To Physical Intimacy, a sex manual for frum couples
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"עת ל�הוב The Newlywed's Guide To Physical Intimacy" ( Jerusalem 2011) by Jennie Rosenfeld, PhD and David S. Ribner, DSW, is a remarkable book ( link). The Hebrew title, a time for love, (from Ecc. 3:8), may well have been called עת לעשות. It is a book about sex for newly married Orthodox couples that is actually about sex, notwithstanding Steven Bayme's plaint that the book is flawed because it "ignore[s] the actual sexual behaviors of Modern Orthodox Jews" and instead takes a relatively traditional, by the book approach and does not deal with premarital fooling around or whatever (notwithstanding that it does do this, albeit in passing) (link).
I read it, and had my thoughts, but I also asked the authors some questions, and Dr. Rosenfeld was kind enough to reply.
The book begins with an introduction explaining who the audience is - brides, grooms, chassan and kallah teachers, rabbis and "anyone in the Torah-observant community with questions about sexuality," but it is primarily for couples about to get married and for their first year (i.e., as newlyweds). It includes a pep talk about how special and pleasurable sex is, and some religious words about how it is a gift from God (not "G-d"), like other pleasures in life. It notes that is it not an exhaustive resource, and some things should be discussed with a doctor. Nor is it a halachic work, although it is designed with Torah-observant (it doesn't say Orthodox) people in mind. They believe they have accommodated a wide range of viewpoints, but if anyone has religious questions you should feel free to consult a rabbi who knows you, the couple, and is competent in this area of halacha (nice disclaimer!). Finally, they explain why they wrote the book. Both are Torah-observant Jews who are involved with the issue of sexuality in the Orthdox and Haredi communities. Dr. Ribner is a sex therapist who has seen hundreds of couples in more than 30 years, and Dr. Rosenfeld has worked on sex education for only a few years, but both have experience in the kind of questions and problems couples have and in many cases these could have been prevented with adequate information. They write that they have seen people who felt isolated for feeling things which are completely normal, people who suffered from lack of familiarity with their own sexuality, and had difficulty forging a deep sexual connection with their spouse. So they decided to write this book, to address these issues. I would add that without being a sex therapist, but just by having experience in Orthodox communities and reading many different kinds of personal accounts, viewpoints and questions in various online forums, the idea that Religious Jews "have been happily shagging for millennia [...] Jews never had the concept of "original sin." only tells part of the story to say the least.
The first thing which struck me is that the book lacks a rabbinic approbation, or any notice of any kind of rabbinic input, and that is unusual for a book intended for a religious audience. Assuming this was not an accident, I asked why they chose not to pursue, or use, a haskamah (rabbinic approbation). I wondered this because it occurred to me that a certain percentage of the intended audience might be reluctant to use it without one, and since they must have known that, I assumed they did a cost-benefit analysis and concluded that it was better to publish it without one. It did not occur to me that they could not obtain one, because I am sure they could have. Dr. Rosenfeld replied that they hoped that the book "would speak to the gamut of Orthodoxy (from the Haredi to Chassidish to Centrist to Modern to Left-wing, etc.), we didn't want the haskama to alienate any of the potential readers. Seeing a rabbi to the right or to the left of one could cause them to think that the book is only for that particular group. And the book is really designed to speak to everyone. Ideally, couples could take the book to their rabbi to get his advice, or receive the book from their chatan and kallah teacher, with the teacher's halakhic input. That was our thinking. In terms of whether we would have been able to get the haskamot had we decided we wanted them, I really don't know."
I also noticed that while the book is surely modest by current secular norms, it is still quite frank - and it also includes a further reading list; more on that later. In addition, while clearly religious in orientation, it is almost entirely lacking in what they call "hashkafah," not to mention fluff. It is not coldly clinical at all, but there are no stories of rabbis, vertlach and facile analyses of the Mars/ Venus type, and where such generalizations do occur they clearly label them with terms like "may" or "tend to." There are no platitudes or quotations from various famous "Holy Letters." I assumed this resistance to turn the book into a piece of moralistic literature was not an accident either, and Rosenfeld confirmed that the lack of hashkafah comes from the same place as the lack of haskamah, on theone hand. On the other hand, she pointed out that such books already exist, but this one did not. I think it was a wise decision, because such books often feel preachy. Furthermore - more below - there is no laundry list of halachic or customary restrictions in this book, which are commonly disseminated by chassan and kallah teachers, and presumably they are the cause of not a small amount of what they have to deal with in therapeutic situations (this is my inference). Consult your rabbi if you need to, is all they suggest.
The first chapter is called His Body/ Her Body and Arousal. Taking no chances and making sure that everything is completely clear to whomever reads it, it begins with noting that no two bodies are alike and each responds differently to different stimulation. It even goes through some basic descriptive info about what male and female bodies look like! - as well as to explain what erogenous zones are, and what are some of them. While these things may seem obvious, or at least something intelligent people will figure out themselves, they take no chances and do not want readers who need to begin at the beginning to be left behind. Finally, there is a detailed description of the female and male body and the physical act of sexual intercourse itself.
The second chapter is called Getting Sexual. It begins with guidelines, such as that sex should be a learning experience, enjoyable, people should expect it to be different from what one may have seen or heard, and that men and women tend to have different needs and respond in different ways. Finally, if things are just not working, one should not hesitate to seek professional help. It then discusses the importance of communication, clearly knowing and labeling body parts, as well as the terms relating to sexual activity and response. Their point is that couples who bashfully talk about that thing with the thing - or no talking at all - are not going to end up on the same page, except by luck or chance. In this chapter, as well as in the others, there are gray boxes labeled "We were wondering..." which represent commonly asked questions (and Rosenfeld confirmed that these truly are common). So in this chapter, for example, one is about talking about sex before marriage and another is about discomfort with being naked. Also discussed in this chapter is all aspects of sex, from physical and mental preparations, to foreplay to kissing. To inject a personal note, someone told me that men and women kiss on the mouth and he cited Rashi to Shir Hashirim 1:2 (which is the false meaning, according to you-know-what). The authors, as I indicated, do not bother with such things. Two pages of this thin book (about 100 pages) is devoted to the female orgasm, with a promise, later to be fulfilled, about treating this in detail later. This chapter's "We were wondering..." includes questions about smell, painful intercourse, and experimentation.
The next chapter is called Alternate Intimacies. This leads me to the observation that the book seems to really try to push the envelope, but not be sexy itself. No one can accuse this instructional manual of being erotic! I am reasonably certain that mutual oral stimulation was never written about so pareve. But it is there. Two word summary of the chapter: oral, manual.
The next chapter is about managing time, niddah, pregnancy, babies, etc.
Chapter Five, When Your Sex Life Isn't Working, raises issues from physical to mental barriers, as well as childhood sexual abuse, negative body image, homosexuality and pornography, which they say should not be automatically viewed as addictive.
The next three chapters are called She Asks. He Asks. and They Ask. All of these are very frank discussions of common concerns, going into much greater detail than the small "We were wondering" sections. These discuss much of what you think they will, including less obvious things like frustration with niddah. As Bayme wrote in his review, they don't dismiss it with platitudes about how special niddah is. Nor do they wink, wink. They take it seriously, dignifying the issue, and assume that the couple is committed to niddah observance, and offer suggestions for dealing with it.
The book ends by asking readers to engage them in a dialogue, and requests feedback, leaving an email address.
Afterwards, there is a section called Resources, which include books with titles like Guide to Getting it On. Which led me to wonder, what this book has that Guide to Getting it On, which they really recommend, doesn't? The answer to me was obvious. Many people will read The Newlywed's Guide to Physical Intimacy, but they will not read Guide to Getting it On. Or they would not read it until after reading a book like this, which recommends a book like that, in the following manner: "Though this book uses slang and "street language," no other book can compete with its comprehensiveness, and its wit sets a comfortable tone." Although this section includes a disclaimer that the resources may "have content that is not relevant or appropriate for you" my impression was that they hoped that readers would 'graduate' to such books and learn about that which they were unable or unwilling to write.
Finally - the envelope. Pasted inside the back cover is an envelope with the following note printed on a sticker sealing it shut:
While I am tempted to show one of these illustrations, of course I will not. Suffice it to say they are perfectly correct, adventurous (by conservative standards) and utterly unsexy. I guess I sort of knew the answer, but I asked Rosenfeld about it, and she replied: "That was definitely intentional-- we didn't want them to feel like pornography. Especially for the many frum men who have looked at pornography in their past, we didn't want the pictures to evoke discomfort/ memories of their past experience with pornography. The goal was to be educational, without being arousing/ erotic, and it seems we achieved that goal.."
My impressions. The book seemed to try to push the envelope, for a worthy cause, and in certain respects did that. I don't know if female masturbation is a third rail or not, but the book does not mince words and clearly considers it a normal, even necessary part of sexual discovery (I know!). Although I make this inference myself, I assume that the lack of the same for men is due both to the halachic issue as well as the reality that in practice this is most likely ignored at least some of the time by most men anyway. At the same time, the book does not strive to be fun or light. Practical might be the best word to describe it's tone. It is also encouraging, delivering the message that most likely the reader is normal whatever they are experiencing, that there is much they can do themselves, primarily through education, communication, and practice and, finally, there are people to turn to if things are not working out.
The only real criticism I have is that the book missed an opportunity to deal with a probable cause of much sexual dissatisfaction in some frum communities, namely uniformly stringent approaches taught as normative and obligatory law, and in some cases these restrictions have little relation to contemporary sexual needs which even sheltered people have. Vehamevin yavin. (Another cause, of course, is the negative messages about sex that many receive for nearly their entire life.) However, I suspect that there was little the authors could do about this. To counter, or at least offer an alternative to such approaches on a textual basis, would be to enter the lists as a halachic, or purportedly halachic work, and that could have caused the book to be eschewed or even denounced. One hopes that eventually someone will publish such a work, in English - even to include stringent alongside lenient views, if that is necessary to get people to be aware of the true range of rabbinic views on sex. Word is, someone is thinking of doing just that.
I read it, and had my thoughts, but I also asked the authors some questions, and Dr. Rosenfeld was kind enough to reply.
The book begins with an introduction explaining who the audience is - brides, grooms, chassan and kallah teachers, rabbis and "anyone in the Torah-observant community with questions about sexuality," but it is primarily for couples about to get married and for their first year (i.e., as newlyweds). It includes a pep talk about how special and pleasurable sex is, and some religious words about how it is a gift from God (not "G-d"), like other pleasures in life. It notes that is it not an exhaustive resource, and some things should be discussed with a doctor. Nor is it a halachic work, although it is designed with Torah-observant (it doesn't say Orthodox) people in mind. They believe they have accommodated a wide range of viewpoints, but if anyone has religious questions you should feel free to consult a rabbi who knows you, the couple, and is competent in this area of halacha (nice disclaimer!). Finally, they explain why they wrote the book. Both are Torah-observant Jews who are involved with the issue of sexuality in the Orthdox and Haredi communities. Dr. Ribner is a sex therapist who has seen hundreds of couples in more than 30 years, and Dr. Rosenfeld has worked on sex education for only a few years, but both have experience in the kind of questions and problems couples have and in many cases these could have been prevented with adequate information. They write that they have seen people who felt isolated for feeling things which are completely normal, people who suffered from lack of familiarity with their own sexuality, and had difficulty forging a deep sexual connection with their spouse. So they decided to write this book, to address these issues. I would add that without being a sex therapist, but just by having experience in Orthodox communities and reading many different kinds of personal accounts, viewpoints and questions in various online forums, the idea that Religious Jews "have been happily shagging for millennia [...] Jews never had the concept of "original sin." only tells part of the story to say the least.
The first thing which struck me is that the book lacks a rabbinic approbation, or any notice of any kind of rabbinic input, and that is unusual for a book intended for a religious audience. Assuming this was not an accident, I asked why they chose not to pursue, or use, a haskamah (rabbinic approbation). I wondered this because it occurred to me that a certain percentage of the intended audience might be reluctant to use it without one, and since they must have known that, I assumed they did a cost-benefit analysis and concluded that it was better to publish it without one. It did not occur to me that they could not obtain one, because I am sure they could have. Dr. Rosenfeld replied that they hoped that the book "would speak to the gamut of Orthodoxy (from the Haredi to Chassidish to Centrist to Modern to Left-wing, etc.), we didn't want the haskama to alienate any of the potential readers. Seeing a rabbi to the right or to the left of one could cause them to think that the book is only for that particular group. And the book is really designed to speak to everyone. Ideally, couples could take the book to their rabbi to get his advice, or receive the book from their chatan and kallah teacher, with the teacher's halakhic input. That was our thinking. In terms of whether we would have been able to get the haskamot had we decided we wanted them, I really don't know."
I also noticed that while the book is surely modest by current secular norms, it is still quite frank - and it also includes a further reading list; more on that later. In addition, while clearly religious in orientation, it is almost entirely lacking in what they call "hashkafah," not to mention fluff. It is not coldly clinical at all, but there are no stories of rabbis, vertlach and facile analyses of the Mars/ Venus type, and where such generalizations do occur they clearly label them with terms like "may" or "tend to." There are no platitudes or quotations from various famous "Holy Letters." I assumed this resistance to turn the book into a piece of moralistic literature was not an accident either, and Rosenfeld confirmed that the lack of hashkafah comes from the same place as the lack of haskamah, on theone hand. On the other hand, she pointed out that such books already exist, but this one did not. I think it was a wise decision, because such books often feel preachy. Furthermore - more below - there is no laundry list of halachic or customary restrictions in this book, which are commonly disseminated by chassan and kallah teachers, and presumably they are the cause of not a small amount of what they have to deal with in therapeutic situations (this is my inference). Consult your rabbi if you need to, is all they suggest.
The first chapter is called His Body/ Her Body and Arousal. Taking no chances and making sure that everything is completely clear to whomever reads it, it begins with noting that no two bodies are alike and each responds differently to different stimulation. It even goes through some basic descriptive info about what male and female bodies look like! - as well as to explain what erogenous zones are, and what are some of them. While these things may seem obvious, or at least something intelligent people will figure out themselves, they take no chances and do not want readers who need to begin at the beginning to be left behind. Finally, there is a detailed description of the female and male body and the physical act of sexual intercourse itself.
The second chapter is called Getting Sexual. It begins with guidelines, such as that sex should be a learning experience, enjoyable, people should expect it to be different from what one may have seen or heard, and that men and women tend to have different needs and respond in different ways. Finally, if things are just not working, one should not hesitate to seek professional help. It then discusses the importance of communication, clearly knowing and labeling body parts, as well as the terms relating to sexual activity and response. Their point is that couples who bashfully talk about that thing with the thing - or no talking at all - are not going to end up on the same page, except by luck or chance. In this chapter, as well as in the others, there are gray boxes labeled "We were wondering..." which represent commonly asked questions (and Rosenfeld confirmed that these truly are common). So in this chapter, for example, one is about talking about sex before marriage and another is about discomfort with being naked. Also discussed in this chapter is all aspects of sex, from physical and mental preparations, to foreplay to kissing. To inject a personal note, someone told me that men and women kiss on the mouth and he cited Rashi to Shir Hashirim 1:2 (which is the false meaning, according to you-know-what). The authors, as I indicated, do not bother with such things. Two pages of this thin book (about 100 pages) is devoted to the female orgasm, with a promise, later to be fulfilled, about treating this in detail later. This chapter's "We were wondering..." includes questions about smell, painful intercourse, and experimentation.
The next chapter is called Alternate Intimacies. This leads me to the observation that the book seems to really try to push the envelope, but not be sexy itself. No one can accuse this instructional manual of being erotic! I am reasonably certain that mutual oral stimulation was never written about so pareve. But it is there. Two word summary of the chapter: oral, manual.
The next chapter is about managing time, niddah, pregnancy, babies, etc.
Chapter Five, When Your Sex Life Isn't Working, raises issues from physical to mental barriers, as well as childhood sexual abuse, negative body image, homosexuality and pornography, which they say should not be automatically viewed as addictive.
The next three chapters are called She Asks. He Asks. and They Ask. All of these are very frank discussions of common concerns, going into much greater detail than the small "We were wondering" sections. These discuss much of what you think they will, including less obvious things like frustration with niddah. As Bayme wrote in his review, they don't dismiss it with platitudes about how special niddah is. Nor do they wink, wink. They take it seriously, dignifying the issue, and assume that the couple is committed to niddah observance, and offer suggestions for dealing with it.
The book ends by asking readers to engage them in a dialogue, and requests feedback, leaving an email address.
Afterwards, there is a section called Resources, which include books with titles like Guide to Getting it On. Which led me to wonder, what this book has that Guide to Getting it On, which they really recommend, doesn't? The answer to me was obvious. Many people will read The Newlywed's Guide to Physical Intimacy, but they will not read Guide to Getting it On. Or they would not read it until after reading a book like this, which recommends a book like that, in the following manner: "Though this book uses slang and "street language," no other book can compete with its comprehensiveness, and its wit sets a comfortable tone." Although this section includes a disclaimer that the resources may "have content that is not relevant or appropriate for you" my impression was that they hoped that readers would 'graduate' to such books and learn about that which they were unable or unwilling to write.
Finally - the envelope. Pasted inside the back cover is an envelope with the following note printed on a sticker sealing it shut:
While I am tempted to show one of these illustrations, of course I will not. Suffice it to say they are perfectly correct, adventurous (by conservative standards) and utterly unsexy. I guess I sort of knew the answer, but I asked Rosenfeld about it, and she replied: "That was definitely intentional-- we didn't want them to feel like pornography. Especially for the many frum men who have looked at pornography in their past, we didn't want the pictures to evoke discomfort/ memories of their past experience with pornography. The goal was to be educational, without being arousing/ erotic, and it seems we achieved that goal.."
My impressions. The book seemed to try to push the envelope, for a worthy cause, and in certain respects did that. I don't know if female masturbation is a third rail or not, but the book does not mince words and clearly considers it a normal, even necessary part of sexual discovery (I know!). Although I make this inference myself, I assume that the lack of the same for men is due both to the halachic issue as well as the reality that in practice this is most likely ignored at least some of the time by most men anyway. At the same time, the book does not strive to be fun or light. Practical might be the best word to describe it's tone. It is also encouraging, delivering the message that most likely the reader is normal whatever they are experiencing, that there is much they can do themselves, primarily through education, communication, and practice and, finally, there are people to turn to if things are not working out.
The only real criticism I have is that the book missed an opportunity to deal with a probable cause of much sexual dissatisfaction in some frum communities, namely uniformly stringent approaches taught as normative and obligatory law, and in some cases these restrictions have little relation to contemporary sexual needs which even sheltered people have. Vehamevin yavin. (Another cause, of course, is the negative messages about sex that many receive for nearly their entire life.) However, I suspect that there was little the authors could do about this. To counter, or at least offer an alternative to such approaches on a textual basis, would be to enter the lists as a halachic, or purportedly halachic work, and that could have caused the book to be eschewed or even denounced. One hopes that eventually someone will publish such a work, in English - even to include stringent alongside lenient views, if that is necessary to get people to be aware of the true range of rabbinic views on sex. Word is, someone is thinking of doing just that.
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