Reflecting on Judaism

This is a quotation from an English poet named Thomas Gray

Born December 26 1716 and died 30 June 1771.

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College

"Yet ah! Why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise."

If someone had asked me say, 50 years ago or even 40 years ago, what the basis of Judaism was, answering the question would have been no problem. Why of course, it's the Torah. And if they had gone on to ask the purpose of the Talmud this too would have been an easy one. The rabbis of the Talmud period interpreted and explained the difficulties and hiatuses found in the Torah. And if they continued asking how the rabbis of the Talmud period knew that their explanations were correct; they received them as Oral Law by way of continuous tradition which was given to Moses at Sinai. Had someone finally asked whether the Torah as we have it today is exactly the same, word for word, letter by letter, as the Torah Moses received at Sinai, and being told that one had to believe it to be a good Jew, why and how could I have denied it? Then I became older and I started asking questions. Orthodox rabbis recommended interesting books for me to read and these books introduced me to different concepts to explain our religion’s development. As a consequence, after having read them, I am confused. I now have no simple answers. Let's have a look.

Maimonides Eighth Principle states that 'The Torah in our hands is exactly the same as the Torah that Moses presented to the children of Israel' and he said that anyone who does not believe it is a heretic.

Having now read the recommended writings including those of Prof. James Kugel, Rabbi Dr. David Weiss Halivni, Prof. Marc B Shapiro, Prof. Richard Elliot Friedman and Rabbi Dr. Louis Jacobs it is difficult to put one's hand on one's heart and give an unqualified acceptance of Maimonides Principle. Let us look at these authors qualifications (Taken from the Wikipedia Encyclopaedia) and then let us see what they have to say, for they are all widely respected and eminent leaders within the Jewish Religious community.

Their Qualifications Let us start with Prof. Shapiro because his approach differs from that of the other four.

“Prof. Marc B Shapiro (*1) is the Weinberg Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Scranton and the author of various books on Jewish history, philosophy, and theology. His writings often challenge the bounds of the conventional Orthodox understanding of Judaism using Modern Orthodox methodology”.

He challenges, inter alia, Maimonides’ Eighth of his 13 Principles and shows that many great rabbis of the post-Maimonides period disagreed with most of his Principles including his Eighth. I have been told that Prof. Shapiro is a graduate of the Yeshiva University. His book, ‘The limits of Orthodox Theology’ gives many examples to support his challenge.

The other four belong to the Modern Biblical School of researchers. From Professor Kugel's book I learn that "starting around 150 years ago a major effort was launched in universities and divinity schools to understand the bible afresh. A great deal of new information had just then begun to emerge that might shed light on the world of the Bible's creation. Sometimes what the archeologists found included bits of writing, inscriptions from here and there, and indeed whole libraries of documents written by ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, and other neighbouring civilizations of biblical Israel." From the deciphering of these documents was started the science of Modern Biblical Scholarship.

“Prof. James Kugel (1945- ) is chair of the Institute for the History of the Jewish Bible at Bar Ilan University in Israel and the Harry M. Starr Professor Emeritus of Classical and Modern Hebrew Literature at Harvard University”.

“Rabbi Dr. David Weiss Halivni (*2) studied at Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in New York. He also served as Littauer Professor of Talmud and Classical Rabbinics in the Department of Religion at Columbia University. He is Head of the Metivta of the Union for Traditional Judaism”.

“Prof. Richard Elliot Friedman is a biblical scholar and the Ann and Jay Davis Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Georgia. He joined the faculty of the UGA Religion Department in 2006. Prior to his appointment there, he was the Katzin Professor of Jewish Civilization: Hebrew Bible; Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at UCSD from 1994 until 2006”.

“Rabbi Dr. Louis Jacobs studied at Manchester Yeshivah, and later at the kolel in Gateshead. His teachers included Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, an orthodox expositor of Jewish moral and theological teachings. Jacobs was ordained as an Orthodox Jewish rabbi at Manchester Yeshivah. Later in his career he studied at University College London where he earned his PhD, on the topic of 'The Business Life of the Jews in Babylon, 200-500 BCE'. Jacobs was appointed rabbi at Manchester Central Synagogue in 1948”.

Rabbi Jacobs also held senior rabbinic positions within the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jewish Communities in England but was subsequently sidelined by these Communities for openly expressing his views.

What do these four have to say and what caused them to say it?

From their study of Modern Biblical Scholars’ research the above-mentioned academics say, in their own different ways, is that today's Torah is not as Maimonides stated it to be and they discuss different aspects of changes to the Bible that have occurred over a period of time.

A gist of what they say, and they give examples, is that errors have crept into the Torah, by way of additional or omitted paragraphs or words, either accidently or deliberately, and that many of these errors have been openly acknowledged as such by great rabbis in the past. They also say that the today’s Torah was not originally a single scroll but comprises a collection of ancient manuscripts, some say compiled by Ezra, when the Jews returned to their land from Babylon in circa. 458 BCE.

None of their writings has an anti-religious bias; none of them denies that something happened at Sinai, three of them let it be known that they are observant Jews who faithfully observe the mitzvoth and that they consider today's Torah to be sacred and is to be honoured.

Prof. James Kugel has a sentence at the beginning of his book, 'How to read the bible' which says:-

"There is one group of readers who must be cautioned about its contents. Precisely because this book deals with Modern Biblical Scholarship, many of the things it discusses contradict the accepted teachings of Judaism and may thus be disturbing to people of traditional faith".

He provides two interesting thoughts at the end of his book:-

The first. "My own view therefore – though others may disagree – is that Modern Biblical Scholarship and traditional Judaism are and must remain completely irreconcilable".

The second. "Judaism has at its heart a great secret. It endlessly lavishes praise on the written Torah, exalting its role as a divinely given guidebook and probing lovingly the tiniest details of its wording and even spelling. Yet on inspection Judaism turns out to be quite the opposite of fundamentalism. The written text alone is not all-powerful; in fact, it rarely stands on its own. Its true significance usually lies not in the plain words but in what the Oral Law has made of those words; this is its definitive and final interpretation."

These two thoughts are troublesome. How can one believe both in the Eighth Principle of Maimonides, i.e. traditional Judaism, and the findings of Modern Biblical Scholarship at one and the same time if they are completely irreconcilable? I can only assume that the rabbis of the Talmud period thought, or wanted to believe, that their explanations were correct and also thought, or wanted to believe, that the Oral Law was received by way of continuous tradition as given to Moses at Sinai.

The reasons for my doubts stem from my reading a number of History books, written by Jewish historians, from which I learned that the beliefs and teachings of the early rabbis differ greatly from beliefs and teachings of the Priests who preceded them and that it was the priests who were those actually appointed by the Torah to be the Teachers of Israel (*3). Having usurped the religious leadership the rabbis then rewrote history to justify their own version. (*4)

I mentioned my doubts to an Orthodox Jewish Professor at Bar Ilan University and the reply I received is both interesting and revealing. It might perhaps be read as support of my doubts. The Professor replied, inter alia, "I think the key to resolving this cognitive dissonance lies in understanding the traditional accounts as religious myths and relating to them accordingly.  Although they may have informative kernels, their main function is to foster loyalty, to shape attitudes and engender ritual, and not to provide scientific information". Theologically, it really doesn't matter who preceded the rabbis and that they manufactured history to suit their purposes (we all construct the past to a certain extent in accordance with our biases of the present).  I also do not accept the notion that the import of concepts that were originally "foreign to our religion" renders them treif.  The Torah itself is full of ideas that stem from paganism; the same may be said regarding Rambam's rationalism that is borrowed from Aristotle and some of the metaphysical imagery of the kabbalah that is borrowed from neo-Platonism, gnosticism and elsewhere .  What makes these concepts Jewish is not their origin but the fact that they were adopted and assimilated into the Jewish tradition and served to foster the religious development of mainstream Judaism" .

I wrote to the professor commenting on the above reply and this is the clarification that I received.

“I think you have misunderstood me.  

I do not say that the divinity of the Torah is "unfounded in history" – in the sense that history disproves its divine nature.  What I do say is: whatever account we adopt as to the historical and literary genesis of the Torah is absolutely irrelevant to the question of its divinity.  Viewing the Torah as a message from God is a value judgment or a choice.  Such a judgment or choice is supported by the form of life to which it is bound rather than by the exact mechanics of how it developed.  

I think it is Agnon who once said: "How do you assess the validity of gradma's marriage?  Not by burrowing in her attic trunks in order to inspect the legal kashrut of her ketuba.  Look rather at the eineklach (grandchildren) which this marriage produced, see them sitting around the Shabbat table, singing zemirot and learning Torah."

I must admit that I find this reply both thought provoking and radical for it is a long way away from the concept that many Jews have of our religion’s development. I am also not sure that the example of grandchildren singing Zemirot and learning Torah is proof of their Jewishness. When these grandchildren want to get married the authorities will nevertheless want proof to establish that they are Jewish by examining their mother’s ketuba. And it should be the same with our religion. I believe that our history should play an important part in establishing genuine Halachah.

None of the afore-mentioned Modern Biblical Scholars says that the Torah has no Divine basis but only that it is not as perfect as Maimonides wants us to believe. The difference between the traditionalists and the Modern Biblical Scholars might be in the early rabbis’ interpretation of the Torah. Possibly, if we fully knew the Priests' interpretation some of the difficulties might fall away.

So what do traditionalists say about the Modern Bible Scholars? Rabbi Nathan Lopes Natan Cardozo, Dean of Machon Ohr Aaron, in his booklet 'The Torah as God's Mind' writes, "We can also understand why the Jewish tradition holds the proponents of literary criticism of the Bible in such contempt. Bible criticism claims to invalidate the divine authorship of the Pentateuchal text by pointing out its seeming contradictions, repetitions, and differences in style. On this basis it is claimed that the Torah is a composite text, containing sections written by a number of authors; and even worse, that it is riddled with scribal errors and revisions added at a far later date. These arguments lose all credibility once we understand the true nature of the Torah. Its textual structure, with its sometimes abbreviated, sometimes elaborated language, is a necessary vehicle for the expression of the divine mind in all its dimensions. Thus this text cannot be approached using the same criteria one would apply to other texts. It is as if one were to apply the laws governing inorganic matter when trying to understand the inner workings of a highly developed living being."

The late Chief Rabbi Hertz in his commentary to the Torah says, “My conviction that the criticism of the Pentateuch associated with the name of Wellhausen is a perversion of history and a desecration or religion is unshaken”. Wellhausen was a founder of the Modern Bible Scholar’s movement and lived some 150 years ago.

But if all of these conflicting views are not enough reason to make us think more deeply about our understanding of the Torah we have two further problems. The first arises from the transliteration of the Torah and the second from of the 'String of Letters' theory.

Transliteration (*5). It is a little known fact, accepted by the experts and confirmed by the rabbis in Gomorra 'Sanhedrin', that the origin of the square script, which we use for writing our Torah today, dates only from circa 800 BCE, some 400 years after Sinai. Ezra transliterated the Torah into this square script circa 450 BCE, some 750 years after Sinai. The reason given for his doing so is that the Jews of his period could no longer read the original Phoenician script. Neither the original script nor the currently used square script has vowels and so both are difficult to read in any event and so misreading, and therefore misunderstanding, could easily have occurred. I compared the two scripts in the Encyclopedia Judaica and noticed that the square script contains two additional letters not contained in the original Phoenician script. This suggests that Ezra's transliteration might not have been very accurate.

String of letters (*6). In Hertz Chumash and commentary page 410, he discusses why the last letter, of the first word of Sedrah Vayikra, has a small letter ‘aleph’. Quoting Luzzato he writes, “The sacred text was in ancient times written in a continuous row of letters, without any division between the words. When the last letter of a word was the same as the first letter of the next, one character would often serve for both”. As a friend of mine commented, if the scribes could make mistakes when copying the written Torah how much more likely are they to have put the spaces between the words in the wrong place, with disastrous results.

What we are left with are questions concerning the accuracy of the traditional understanding of the bible. The questions fall into 6 different categories. Is the Torah a collection of earlier manuscripts? Have errors crept into the Torah? Is our understanding of the Torah correct because of possible errors when it was transliterated? If the ‘string of letters’ theory is correct can we be sure that the spaces were correctly inserted? Would our understanding of Judaism be reduced if Maimonides had never formulated his 13 Principles? Does it matter if the early rabbis rewrote our history?

Against these theories stand the traditionalists who say that we cannot accept the results of modern research. It is a pity that there is not more open discussion of these differences in order to help the lay person get a better understanding of the issues involved and disentangle the confusion. I find all of these theories very interesting but some might say that, ‘Where ignorance is bliss ‘Tis folly to be wise.

In this essay I have made a number of statements without justifying them. To have done so would have made the essay inordinately long. However, essays justifying my statements appear on my website under the following titles.

(*1) Transliteration of the Torah, Revisited (*2) The Torah

(*3) Sadducees and Pharisees conflict, 2 (*4) Ethics of the Fathers

(*5) Transliteration of the Torah, Revisited (*6) The Torah

My website is www.reflectingonjudaism.com

Woolf Abrahams May 2009.