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Archive | 2007

Rabbinic Authorship as a Collective Enterprise

Martin S. Jaffee; Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert

ALL THAT WRITING – AND NO WRITERS? THE PUZZLE OF RABBINIC AUTHORSHIP Rabbinic literature of Late Antiquity certainly had its audience. But can it be said to have had authors? From the perspective of the rabbinic tradition itself, the axiomatic answer is, of course, “no.” A half millennium of tradition, the Mishnah tells us, links the moment at which “Moses received Torah from Sinai” to the teachings of the Men of the Great Assembly who, in the shadow of Persian hegemony, “said three things: be cautious in judgment, raise up many disciples, and build a fence for the Torah” (M. Avot 1:1). In the rabbinic view, formulations of collective rabbinic wisdom, such as those ascribed to the Men of the Great Assembly, are “said,” “received” or “heard,” and “transmitted.” But they are not “authored.” Not any more than a rhythmic refrain, stemming out of seventeenth-century West African tribal dance, that - transplanted with its enslaved bearers to the cotton fields of the American South - adopts the musical scale of Scotch-Irish reels and emerges in 1938 as a chord progression supporting this recorded confession of a Robert Johnson: I went down to the crossroad, fell down on my knees; I went down to the crossroad, fell down on my knees; asked the Lord above “Have mercy now, save poor Bob if you please.”


Shofar | 1992

How Much "Orality" in Oral Torah?: New Perspectives on the Composition and Transmission of Early Rabbinic Tradition

Martin S. Jaffee

Was there an oral tradition in early rabbinic Judaism prior to the publication of the Mishnah at the turn of the third century C.E.? How was this tradition transmitted? What was its content? These questions have formed the substance of much research in the history of rabbinic Judaism since the nineteenth century,1 and continue to be discussed today. In general, contemporary scholarship is divided between two divergent points ofview. One view,


Archive | 2007

Rabbinic Historiography and Representations of the Past

Isaiah Gafni; Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert; Martin S. Jaffee

At the very conclusion of his monumental Antiquities of the Jews , the noted Jewish historian Josephus, sensing that what he had just achieved was the exception, rather than the rule, among Jewish intellectuals of his day, indulges in a measure of self-adulation. Singularly among the learned men of his day, he claims, he alone has succeeded in bridging the gulf between Greek learning, apparently a sine qua non for the historiographical achievement embodied in the Antiquities , and a curriculum that was far more revered among his Jewish compatriots: “For our people . . . give credit for wisdom to those alone who have an exact knowledge of the law and who have the capability of interpreting the holy writings.” This hierarchy of Jewish knowledge, he seems to be saying, relegated historiographical undertakings of the Hellenistic-Roman model to a somewhat neglected status, and while he does not chastise his fellow Jews for this neglect, one might conclude that those who did devote themselves to the study of the law and its interpretation felt no pangs of remorse for not embracing a pursuit of the past in the critical manner of their Greco-Roman counterparts. Indeed, the variegated corpus of rabbinic literature did not preserve any work that might point to an effort on the part of the rabbis at producing a systematic and critical study of the past. To be sure, the biblical past was at the center of much of their deliberations, but this “past” was for them already laid out in its fullest detail, thereby providing the basis for an ongoing search of its religious significance, and hardly requiring any compilation and examination of sources in a Thucydidean-type search for “truth” and “accuracy.”


Ajs Review-the Journal of The Association for Jewish Studies | 2007

Howard Schwartz. Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism . New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. lxxxvi, 618 pp.

Martin S. Jaffee

the second part, Horowitz turns especially to evidence of a Jewish assault on medieval and early modern Christianity. Dozens of Christian texts allege, and some Jewish chronicles confirm, that Jews occasionally attacked the most sacred symbols of Christianity or that, in a few instances, they perpetrated religiously motivated violence against Christians themselves. Perhaps the weakest part of Horowitz’s argument stems from the fact that abuses of Christian religious symbols occurred not only during Purim but also around Passover and Easter or Shavuot and Ascension Day. Although this expands the scope of the Jewish “legacy of violence” well past Purim, Horowitz suggests that “spring fever” arising from an intensifying liturgical calendar may help explain the clustering of charges of Jewish violence in this period. Typically, Jewish (and some nonJewish) historians have assumed that accusations of Jewish violence had no basis in reality. In Christendom, where Jews represented a small minority, attacks on Christians and Christian symbols could only be self-destructive. Jews, some historians have assumed, had a better sense of self-preservation. Such accounts, then, must instead project irrational Christian fears of the Jewish minority and represent one aspect of Christian antisemitism. But Horowitz subjects the historians’ comfortable assumption to scrutiny. He shows that our sources seem to provide real evidence of occasional, religiously motivated Jewish violence against both Christians and their symbols. Although Horowitz has been criticized for unearthing only “three reported Christian deaths at the hands of Jews in the course of history,” calling into question the reality of a “legacy of Jewish violence,” the real story here is that in spite of the heavy retribution such violence elicited from the majority culture, Jewish violence should appear at all. Reckless Rites is a provocative volume, rich in historical detail. Horowitz tells a story, not without humor, that attempts to connect events of the distant past with contemporary conflicts. Unusual for a work of history, Reckless Rites is also a good read.


Ajs Review-the Journal of The Association for Jewish Studies | 2009

Martin Samuel Cohen. The Boy on the Door on the Ox: An Unusual Spiritual Journey through the Strangest Jewish Texts. New York: Aviv Press, 2008. 314 pp.

Martin S. Jaffee

Martin Samuel Cohen’s writing career is remarkable for its range of topics and genres. The author of a scholarly monograph on early rabbinic visionary texts of the shi’ur qomah tradition and a remarkably original translation and commentary on the Psalter, he is also a novelist, essayist, literary editor, and composer of liturgies for the synagogue whose pulpit he occupies in suburban Long Island. In the present work, he offers a genre-defying literary and theological homage to the foundational document of the rabbinic legal tradition. The “strangest Jewish texts” of the book’s subtitle are none other than the twelve tractates of the Mishnah’s Order of Purities (Seder Tohorot). The “spiritual journey” on which Cohen takes his readers is a hike through some of the most arcane topics of the halakhic system of the Tannaim. These laws govern how people, foods, and useful everyday objects—such as stoves, ovens, cattle prods, Hawaiian shirts (OK, Sidonian togas), and sieves—contract tum’ah, a form of intangible yet virulent contagion conveyed by corpses, menstruants, parturients, gonorrheacs, and those suffering a rash (żara’at) rather more troublesome than “the heartbreak of psoriasis.” Each of Cohen’s twelve chapters is devoted to an anonymous “spiritual guide” whom he discerns hiding in the shadows of an obscure mishnaic legal dilemma, silently pointing by his or her mute presence to the larger lesson about the life of the spirit that the compilers of the Mishnah (in Cohen’s view) conjured that very soul to embody. One of these mysterious psychopomps is “the boy on the door on the ox” of the book’s title. He makes his fleeting mishnaic debut (and curtain call) in Tractate Parah 3:2–4. There, the Mishnah illustrates the lengths to which participants in the rabbinic version of the Rite of the Red Cow (Numbers 19:1ff.) are preserved in a state of physical isolation from corpse contamination so that they may ensure the production of a purifying detergent made of the ashes of a red cow and water. “The boy,” raised since infancy in a Temple apartment isolated from all possible impurity, sits on a door tied to the back of an ox as he is conveyed to the pool of Shiloach. There, perched (according to at least one mishnaic Tanna) on the door to prevent himself from inadvertent pollution derived from a corpse that may have become buried in the waters, he draws water into stone vessels for use in the ceremony. Let us review the text in Cohen’s own free translation/paraphrase:


Ajs Review-the Journal of The Association for Jewish Studies | 2008

Michael Satlow. Creating Judaism: History, Tradition, Practice . New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. xii, 340 pp.

Martin S. Jaffee

taboo by arguing, against the scholarly consensus in favor of a strictly innerJewish transmission, that the influence of the Book of the Watchers on 3 Enoch is most plausibly explained if we assume Jewish “back-borrowing” from Christian circles (270). This book is daring, both in scope and argument, and, I suspect, some will argue that it seeks to accomplish too much. I disagree. Reed covers a wide field of diverse materials, which necessarily leads her to make some general statements. She concludes her epilogue, for example, with the statement “that the ‘parting of the ways’ is an illusion” (277). Of course it isn’t—Judaism and Christianity really became two distinct religions. But such calls for further differentiation miss the point of the book. This book is a new kind of study on the reception history of a noncanonical text, the Enochic Book of the Watchers, and of an exegetical motif, the angelic descent in Genesis 6:1– 4, a study that is refreshingly different from the eclectic listing of a few scattered references one often sees elsewhere. Reed’s attempt to demonstrate that an investigation into the complex afterlife of the Book of the Watchers necessarily leads the exegete to contemplate several issues that stand at the center of the study of early Judaism and nascent Christianity has to be deemed a success.


Ajs Review-the Journal of The Association for Jewish Studies | 2007

‘Amudim be-toldot ha-sefer ha-‘ivry: ketivah ve-he‘etakah

Martin S. Jaffee

except for a few notable exceptions (i.e., some Sabbatean sects and Frankism), Kabbalah did not function as a subversive force in Judaism but rather as a force that deepened the commitment of Jews to halakhic norms. In Kabbalah, erotic energy is expressed within and strengthens the institution of marriage, deepening the halakhic obligation imposed on husbands to satisfy their wives’ sexual needs. Third, the erotic impulse of Kabbalah, especially in the theosophic-theurgic Kabbalah, explains how Kabbalah empowered its practitioners and why this tradition enhanced Judaism. Through their ritualized sexual acts with the proper intention, Jews believed they could participate in God’s inner life and bring about the redemptive unification of the male and the female aspects of God. Fourth, although Kabbalah absorbed the influences of other religious traditions and schools of thought, it is also different from them and should be understood on its own terms. On the whole, though the book rejects feminist methodology, especially the distinction between sex and gender (97), it actually confirms a feminist insight: Idel’s analysis of kabbalistic imaginaire gives us only the male perspective. Even if kabbalists included female intention in the sexual act, as Idel claims, women’s desire, intentionality, imagination, and concerns remain inaccessible to us. Kabbalah was produced by men and for men, reflecting the sensibilities of men. Although the book’s title and the author’s reputation will attract many readers, it is doubtful that this book could be understood by the general public. The nonspecialist might find many interesting and insightful comments but will get lost in the myriad details and technical vocabulary. The intended audience of this book is other scholars of Kabbalah, who will understand Idel’s method of reading kabbalistic texts (best exemplified in Chapter 4) and who can assess his debates with other interpreters of Kabbalah. Kabbalah and Eros is an important contribution to contemporary study of Kabbalah, but it should not be regarded as the final word on sex, sexuality, and gender in Kabbalah or in Judaism.


Ajs Review-the Journal of The Association for Jewish Studies | 2004

A Word From The Editors

Hillel J. Kieval; Martin S. Jaffee

With this issue, we launch our joint editorship of the AJS Review. It is therefore an appropriate moment to share with our readers our hopes and expectations for the intellectual direction of the journal. Some of what follows has already been articulated in a statement published in the AJS Perspectives (Spring/Summer, 2003) shortly after we assumed our tasks. We feel it bears repeating here for the sake of those who may not have seen the original article.


Ajs Review-the Journal of The Association for Jewish Studies | 2002

Marc (Menahem) Hirshman. Torah for the Entire World . Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1999. 189 pp. (Hebrew).

Martin S. Jaffee

Hirshmans cautious study promises a focus upon “a universalistic stream in the Tannaitic literature and its relationship to the wisdom of the nations.” The “universalism” he hopes to identify is a modest one: the notion that the Torah of Israel is intended ab origine to be a possession of all human communities (with some pointed exceptions, such as the Amalekites).


Archive | 2007

The Cambridge companion to the Talmud and rabbinic literature

Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert; Martin S. Jaffee

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Hillel J. Kieval

Washington University in St. Louis

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