9:26 PM
Gil Student
Rabbi David Wolpe, Why Faith Matters, pp. 152, 154-155:Several anti-theistic books appeal to Occam's razor, a rhetorical principle teaching that entities or assumptions should not be multiplies beyond necessity. It is named after William of Occam (c. 1285-1349), an English Franciscan friar and philosopher. ccam's razor is used to propose, for example, that in theorizing about the creation of the world, if one can account for it without a Creator, so much the better.
9:36 PM
Gil Student
I don't always have the chance to review each book, so I'll list the books that I receive. Some of them will be quoted or reviewed in future posts. Here are the books I've received recently:
9:23 AM
Gil Student
9:01 AM
Gil Student
8:49 AM
Gil Student
Rules: link (Note that this post will move every day until the end of the week)
8:01 AM
Gil Student
7:55 AM
Gil Student
by Joel Rich
9:38 PM
Gil Student
R. Shmuel Goldin's latest book on the Torah, Unlocking the Torah Text: An In-Depth Journey Into the Parsha on Vayikra, was just published by Gefen and OU Press (I work for the latter). It will be available in the US after Pesach (join us at Judaica House in Teaneck on Sunday, April 11 from 1-3pm to celebrate the book's publication). At the end of an essay on this week's Torah portion, discussing the roles of Kohanim and egalitarianism in general in the broad sense of the term, R. Goldin discusses two different views on women's roles in Judaism (a condensed version of the initial discussion can be found here: link). Note that this was written long before the latest controversy but the author is sufficiently in tune with contemporary trends in our community to have presented a timely discussion.
9:28 PM
Gil Student
Guest post by Rabbi Daniel Roselaar (with a brief comment at the end by me - Gil)
9:35 PM
Gil Student
Testing a new layout for Hirhurim. Please take a look at it on a test blog and vote on the poll there: Hirhurim Test Blog.
9:31 PM
Gil Student
by Steve Brizel
9:23 PM
Gil Student
שאלה: האם מותר לאשה לשרת כרב של קהילה? יש מבוכה עכשיו בארצות הברית בענין זה ואולי הרב יחוה דעת תורתו כדי שישמעו חכמים ויוסיפו לקח. ואם יטעון הרב שכבודו במזרח והדיון בסוף מערב, הלא הרב הפרופ' שהסמיך לאשה בנדוננו גם דבריו יוצאים מירושלים.
9:21 PM
Gil Student
The "Churva Shul" in Jerusalem, which was destroyed in 1721, rebuilt in 1864 and destroyed again in 1948, was recently rebuilt and dedicated (link). I received (with permission to post) what I believe is an excerpt from the introduction to the shortly forthcoming Citadel and Tower: Quest for Jewish Majesty, volume 6 by R. Meir Belsky, and old-time student of R. Yitzchak Hunter who was among the first graduating class (so-to-speak) of Chaim Berlin:
The first volume of 'Citadel and Tower' appeared in 1988. The introduction spoke of revelation.These 'Essays' are about revelation. In a sense, revelation alone is Jewish majesty. We are the people to whom HaShem revealed majestic eternal truths. 'To you alone I revealed and made known... ' (Amos 3:2). And though we no longer live in a time of Prophets, we do remain the children of Prophets. The children of Prophets, too, reflect prophecy.
9:31 PM
Gil Student
I. Three Views
3:16 AM
Rabbi Ari Enkin
By: Rabbi Ari Enkin
6:14 PM
Gil Student
9:27 PM
Gil Student
My comments at a recent shul dinner:
8:48 AM
Gil Student
Rules: link (Note that this post will move every day until the end of the week) (Additional note: Sorry for yesterday's absence. Variations in my schedule will affect this blog feature.)
9:53 PM
Gil Student
by Joel Rich
9:34 PM
Gil Student
by Steve Brizel
9:27 PM
Gil Student
Please note that I work for the publisher of these two books, so assume bias. But that said, these haggados are must-haves, great commentaries that have become instant classics.The prime Passover shopping season is short, just a few weeks after Purim, but popular items this year appear to be “The Royal Table,” the new Haggadah by Rabbi Norman Lamm, and the year-old “The Seder Night: An Exalted Evening” by the late Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, says David Vesely, owner of Manhattan Judaica.The Royal Table: A Passover Haggadah by R. Norman Lamm (edited by Dr. Joel Wolowelsky) is collected from his sermons throughout the years, adapted for the haggadah and carefully edited and updated. The words are eloquent and the ideas are brilliantly incisive. Significantly, the whole commentary is extremely readable. And the appended essays on Shir HaShirim are fabulous. His defense of Yom Tov Sheini is worth the price of the book. Some excerpts from this haggadah are available on the OU website here: link 1, link 2, link 3. You can buy the book here: link.
9:27 PM
Gil Student
It is interesting to note that, according to R. Moshe Tendler's recollection (link), when R. Samuel Belkin convinced the at-the-time young Rabbi Tendler to take the first Orthodox pulpit in Long Island, the President of Yeshiva University cited the Arukh Ha-Shulchan I quoted in an earlier post (link), who says that the main function of ordination today is to certify a rabbi for serving in a pulpit.
9:33 PM
Gil Student
New issue of Tradition 42:4 (Winter 2009) (link):
9:26 PM
Gil Student
While the Rabba issue has more or less been resolved, it is has revealed tensions in our community that are quickly reaching a boiling point. As people have pointed out, the controversy seemed to be only about a change in title. While I think the title has halakhic ramifications (as discussed here: link), I also think that there was more to the controversy. It was not just about titles.
3:28 AM
Rabbi Ari Enkin
By: Rabbi Ari Enkin
10:44 PM
Gil Student
mi.yodeya - An online community for Q&A about Jewish life and learning
button in the top right corner of Hirhurim. See here for readership statistics and here for instructions on buying an announcement. Please note that announcements now cost $36 each.)
9:37 PM
Gil Student
JQR's recently published 100th anniversary issue contains a few articles reviewing James Kugel’s How to Read the Bible. William Kolbrener, a professor of English Literature at Bar Ilan University in Israel who blogs here (link), has graciously provided on my request an abstract of his article, “The Real Thing: How to Read the Bible.” This and other articles may be purchased online here: link. Following the abstract I provide a link to Dr. Kugel's response and my thoughts on his response. In How to Read the Bible, James Kugel employs the many resources at his disposal - among them archaeology, anthropology and linguistic - to reveal a Bible, at once thought unified, to be rather “contradictory and incoherent.” The story which takes center stage in the book is the contrast between the reading habits of “ancient interpreters” and “modern scholars,” - and of how “people went from one way of reading the Bible” to “reading it in another.”After the publication of the journal, Kugel responded online to the various critiques here: link (PDF). His last paragraph is reserved for Dr. Kolbrener. Kugel argues that Kolbrener only addressed his literary analysis, arguing that it is based on questionable assumptions and at best no more valid than ancient interpretations. However, Kugel responds that his assumptions are informed from various historical and archeological studies. This is, it seems to me, a vast overstatement.
Click here to read moreThe heroes of Kugel’s account, modern scholars, he explains, “understand the Bible afresh”; reading it “scientifically” and “without any presuppositions,” they embark upon a “cold, objective search for the truth about the text.” They write about the text’s “real meaning,” its “original meaning,” or the Bible at “face value.” Ancient interpreters “had a stake in what the text would end up saying,” while modern biblical scholars oblige by telling us what “really happened”; where “Biblical texts really come from”; and what these texts “really mean.”
Claiming allegiance to both sets of traditions, Kugel fashions himself as the one who delivers “reality” - that is, “the real Bible,” summoned by his own “unbiased interpretation.” For Kugel, there are two Bibles: the real biblical texts and the “Interpreted Bible”: they “make up side by side, two completely different books.” Modern biblical scholars are said to deliver the former; traditionalists, liberal theologians and literary critics offer instead the debris of “human dogmas” and “interpretations.” Kugel ends up delivering what Thomas Nagel calls a “voice from nowhere” - the ostensible perspective of objectivity and so-called unbiased interpretation. How to Read the Bible thus fulfills the dream of the nineteenth century, in having finally revealed what von Ranke calls “Wie es eigentlich gewesen,” the world—in Kugel’s case, the Bible—as it really was.
Kugel’s hypothetical “unInterpreted Bible” is also a fantasy – the fantasy of modern biblical scholars. Not just from a post-modernist sensibility (which Kugel rightfully dismisses), but, from a perspective which ranges from Aristotle to Kuhn, from Milton to Wittgenstein, that understands that perceptions are never innocent of assumptions, and traditions of interpretation are always the vehicles for encountering texts. The mostly etiological (that is causal) interpretations of Kugel’s modern scholars may be elegant, clever and ordered, but such interpretations leave the Bible as simplistic, even simpleminded. Kugel claims that the ancient interpreters ignore the “plain sense” of Scripture and supply the “final and definitive interpretation,” but it’s really the explanations he advocates that provide final and definitive interpretations of the biblical text. In Kugel’s reading, it is predictably the heroic modern biblical scholar, from his (ostensibly) Archimedean vantage point, who provides the causal link that renders everything coherent and final.
Foregoing the objectivity which turns the Bible into a sloppy collection of unrelated fragments may not mean, as Kugel says of traditional interpreters “crouching” in front of the Biblical text, but rather trying to occupy the traditions of those ancient interpreters which allow us to attend to a work that transcends our (sometimes overly narrow scholarly) expectations of what texts should be.
8:47 AM
Gil Student
Rules: link (Note that this post will move every day until the end of the week)
10:27 PM
Gil Student
by Joel RichNOTICE:
At the advice of gedolei Yisroel, we are continuing to update this site. We plan to post a fuller statement in the future.
10:16 PM
Gil Student
The news recently carried the story that some rabbis are questioning the kosher status of lox (link). As it turns out, this is technically incorrect (link). Here is the real story, and its larger theological implications.
11:39 PM
Gil Student
Fifth Avenue Synagogue Pre-Pesach Yom Iyun button in the top right corner of Hirhurim. See here for readership statistics and here for instructions on buying an announcement. Please note that announcements now cost $36 each.)
