Dear Rabbi Zahavy
Your Talmudic Advice Column
January 2019
Dear Rabbi Zahavy,
What is the meaning of life?
Wondering in Weehawken
Dear Wondering,
Sure, at this time of the new year it makes sense for a person to wax philosophical and to ask such a big question.
However, let me consider that perhaps you were not really serious in sending in this question to begin with.
In that case, I will answer by quoting to you from the epilogue, the last scene of the 1983 Monty Python comedy film “The Meaning of Life.” There the host opens an envelope containing, well yes, the meaning of life. She reads it out loud and here is her profound advice: “Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”
While that may not be the momentous meaning of life, that is not bad advice.
Now, let me consider the alternative, and take your question as a serious inquiry and try to reply in kind.
1/18/19
1/13/19
Is Haym Soloveitchik a hero?
[Republished from 3/14/2013] You may start reading about this controversy here.
Professor Haym Soloveitchik has stepped up yet again to "blow the whistle" on the "insufficiencies" of the scholarship of Professor Talya Fishman. Haym has raised his mission to the level of a crusade with his latest rejoinders and critiques, published here and here.
Why the crusade? Haym explains his motives through a personal anecdote in his rejoinder on his web site:
Haym has stepped up heroically to claim supremacy of his opinion over Fishman's based on his assertion that by his "rigorous standards of quality," Fishman is illiterate in rabbinics. Therefore her work is worthless. And unless Haym roots Fishman out of the profession, the field of "rabbinics" will be ruined.
So Haym imagines himself to be a scholar-hero. All we can say is, Bravo to brave Haym the Hero.
[Republished from 3/14/2013]
Professor Haym Soloveitchik has stepped up yet again to "blow the whistle" on the "insufficiencies" of the scholarship of Professor Talya Fishman. Haym has raised his mission to the level of a crusade with his latest rejoinders and critiques, published here and here.
Why the crusade? Haym explains his motives through a personal anecdote in his rejoinder on his web site:
When Becoming the People of the Talmud appeared and then won the Jewish Book Council Award for Scholarship, the danger posed by this was clear; nevertheless, I was conflicted about putting my assessment into print. I discussed the matter with one of my oldest colleagues over dinner. He listened carefully and said, “Haym, the only way you can justify the review that you are thinking of is if you state openly what the real reason for it is, the larger issue that is at stake here. You can only do that is by becoming first, a whistle-blower and then stating matters with an explicitness that breaches the proprieties of academic engagement. You have to point out not simply mistakes but also their elementary nature and what they say about the writer’s basic competence.” I thought about this during the meal and, as it was drawing to a close, replied: “Those rules of propriety, and they are good ones, apply when they are superimposed on the quality controls that function as a matter of course in academia. Everyone then understands what is being said by indirection. However, when that community is wholly in the dark as to what is transpiring, those rules must be breached. Look at what happened in Talmud. A few reviews were, in fact, written in the 1960s and ‘70s pointing out the errors of the author and hinting at his ignorance. The criticisms were shrugged off, because people thought, ‘Oh well, everyone makes mistakes.’ They didn’t know that the errors were ones that a schoolboy would never have made. This couldn’t be stated openly because it was against the rules of the game. Look at the situation now. If these rules aren’t finally broken and the whistle blown, there will be little left in a decade.”I that none of the scholarship in the field that Haym calls "Rabbinics" is scientific, or for that matter even vaguely social scientific. So "facts" are not at issue in judging the worth of contributions to the field. Assertions by these scholars are "opinion and conjecture" about matters that are far distant from us in time, space, culture and language.
Haym has stepped up heroically to claim supremacy of his opinion over Fishman's based on his assertion that by his "rigorous standards of quality," Fishman is illiterate in rabbinics. Therefore her work is worthless. And unless Haym roots Fishman out of the profession, the field of "rabbinics" will be ruined.
So Haym imagines himself to be a scholar-hero. All we can say is, Bravo to brave Haym the Hero.
[Republished from 3/14/2013]
Update on the Insults: A Battle Over a Book: Haym Soloveitchik v. Talya Fishman
[This post is edited and republished from my original post of 12/18/2012]
My once-upon-a-time teacher at Yeshiva University has panned a recent book about rabbinic cultural development.
It's a veritable battle over a book, Haym Soloveitchik v. Talya Fishman.
The book is Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Jewish Culture and Contexts)
.The review by Haym is locked away to subscribers only at the Jewish Review of Books. I infer from hearsay and from the rejoinder that it is quite negative. (see below for details.)
Fishman is busy issuing several rejoinders to the review, the first part is here - Response to Haym Soloveitchik “The People of the Book: Since When?” in Jewish Review of Books, Winter 2012, pp. 14-18.
She starts off, "Reading Professor Soloveitchik’s remarks, I was unable to recognize the book that I wrote." She then makes a methodical case for the inaccuracies and errors of Haym's review.
12/6/18
Does Religion Cause Terrorism? My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Zahavy Talmudic Advice Column for December 2018
Does Religion Cause Terrorism?
My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Zahavy Talmudic Advice Column for December 2018
Dear Rabbi Zahavy,
I sit next to a person in synagogue who frequently engages me in conversation and tells me how evil Islam is. He seems preoccupied with this subject. He says Islam is a terrorist religion and he fears that all Muslims are potential terrorists. He says that sure, some members of that religion pretend to be friendly. But he claims if you turn your back on a Muslim, they will slit your throat.
I know we need to be vigilant to protect ourselves against our enemies. But I feel this person has gone off the deep end and makes me more uncomfortable each time he goes on another tirade. What should I do about this?
Tired of Terror Tirades in Teaneck
Dear Tired,
My first impulse is to smile and tell you to change your seat in synagogue. But I know that where we sit often is not easily shifted. If you move to another place, you will perhaps cause a cascading domino effect of seating shifts. And who wants to upset the equilibrium of worship?
My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Zahavy Talmudic Advice Column for December 2018
Dear Rabbi Zahavy,
I sit next to a person in synagogue who frequently engages me in conversation and tells me how evil Islam is. He seems preoccupied with this subject. He says Islam is a terrorist religion and he fears that all Muslims are potential terrorists. He says that sure, some members of that religion pretend to be friendly. But he claims if you turn your back on a Muslim, they will slit your throat.
I know we need to be vigilant to protect ourselves against our enemies. But I feel this person has gone off the deep end and makes me more uncomfortable each time he goes on another tirade. What should I do about this?
Tired of Terror Tirades in Teaneck
Dear Tired,
My first impulse is to smile and tell you to change your seat in synagogue. But I know that where we sit often is not easily shifted. If you move to another place, you will perhaps cause a cascading domino effect of seating shifts. And who wants to upset the equilibrium of worship?
12/2/18
The Talmud Explains Hanukkah
There is no Mishnah or Talmud tractate for the festival of lights. Why is that?
It is an incredible question. Not going to speculate. All we have in rabbinic literature is this...
The Talmud (Bavli Shabbat 21b) explains what is Hanukkah:
What is Hanukkah? For our Rabbis taught: On the twenty-fifth of Kislev commence the days of Hanukkah, which are eight on which a lamentation for the dead and fasting are forbidden.
For when the Greeks entered the Temple, they defiled all the oils therein, and when the Hasmonean dynasty prevailed against and defeated them, they made search and found only one cruse of oil which lay with the seal of the High Priest, but which contained sufficient for one day's lighting only; yet a miracle was wrought therein and they lit the lamp therewith for eight days.
The following year these days were appointed a Festival with the recital of Hallel and thanksgiving.
What else is there to say?
It is an incredible question. Not going to speculate. All we have in rabbinic literature is this...
The Talmud (Bavli Shabbat 21b) explains what is Hanukkah:
What is Hanukkah? For our Rabbis taught: On the twenty-fifth of Kislev commence the days of Hanukkah, which are eight on which a lamentation for the dead and fasting are forbidden.
For when the Greeks entered the Temple, they defiled all the oils therein, and when the Hasmonean dynasty prevailed against and defeated them, they made search and found only one cruse of oil which lay with the seal of the High Priest, but which contained sufficient for one day's lighting only; yet a miracle was wrought therein and they lit the lamp therewith for eight days.
The following year these days were appointed a Festival with the recital of Hallel and thanksgiving.
What else is there to say?
11/8/18
Awesome 665 page translation of Hullin by Tzvee Zahavy - Great for Daf Yomi Study
Incredible 665 page translation of Talmud Hullin!For Daf Yomi Hullin for your Kindle or Kindle App. Here is the Product Description:
To know what food is kosher, that is, fit to eat according to rabbinic Judaism, you must study the principles set forth in this volume, the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Hullin.
This translation, (approx. 665 pages) adheres closely to the text so that the reader has a sense of the structure and balance of the original. Yet at the same time it conveys the flow of the legal arguments and debates, the dramatic unfolding of events in stories, and the sensitivities to words and language in the exegetical texts.
Its aim is to facilitate a smooth conversation between readers and the text so that, without consulting the original Hebrew and Aramaic version, they can appreciate the substantive meaning and recognize some major aspects of the style of the Talmudic text.
11/1/18
#MeToo and Jewish Sex Laws: My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Zahavy Talmudic Advice Column for November 2018
Dear Rabbi Zahavy,
I just read an opinion by an outspoken Orthodox rabbi that made sense to me. He said that many centuries ago Orthodox Judaism resolved the terrible problem of the harassment of women by instituting many practices and customs to govern relations between men and women. Isn’t he right? Shouldn’t we men speak up now about this, and let the world know how to resolve the #MeToo crisis by promoting and enforcing our Jewish rules?
Protector of Women in Paramus
Dear Protector,
I believe you refer to the recent article by an Orthodox rabbi, “A safer space for women in Orthodox Judaism’s rules for sex.” He calls the traditional regulations in this arena “realistic and wise.”
And do you know what? After the intense struggles of the past year over #MeToo, which brought down more than 200 powerful men who were accused of harassment (according to the New York Times), it’s really tempting to pause, consider the alternatives, and declare to the rabbis’ team a “touchdown” — to admit we need “rules for sex” and consider seriously advocating for the rabbinic system.
But allow me to develop a sports analogy. Sure, we “referees” can look at the hard-fought struggle on the field, and the struggle in our society, and then declare that tradition has the “touchdown” solution to the problems.
10/11/18
Who am I? My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Zahavy Talmudic Advice Column for October 2018
Jewish Standard
Dear Rabbi Zahavy
Talmudic Advice Column
October 2018
Dear Rabbi Zahavy,
I read a report in the news that psychologists have identified four major human personality types. Do you advise that I try to find out what is my type? What would the benefits be?
Typified in Tenafly
Dear Typified,
Indeed, this is a timely hot question for many reasons. In the September 10, 2018 issue of the New Yorker there’s an article, “What Personality Tests Really Deliver: They’re a two-billion-dollar industry. But are assessments like the Myers-Briggs more self-help than science?”
Its author, Louis Menand, discusses the famous and popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which helps people identify which of 16 personality types they are. The MBTI, it turns out, is controversial in terms of reliability and validity, but it is immensely popular in business settings and in personal growth efforts.
The newer study that you refer to was published recently and shows statistical evidence for the existence of four high-level personality types that the researchers call average, reserved, self-centered, and role model. These groupings depend on how much people display of five traits, specifically neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
I have reservations about getting all gung-ho about this study, even though it is based on a lot of real data, namely 1.5 million responses to four different personality surveys from respondents of all ages worldwide, analyzed by algorithms to sort the data into distinct clusters.
My hesitation is that the types in this study seem too general and almost common-sensical. That makes me wonder what the value of these distinctions may be. I have similar reservations about the MBTI and other instruments for personality identification and classification.
But on the other hand, sure, for many reasons we all could benefit from knowing more about ourselves. And if type-studies do assist us, then let’s embrace them for what they are — helpful augmentations to our intuitive insights into personalities.
Overall, I can think of several main reasons for seeking more clarity about human personality types, and identifying your own, to see where you fit in.
First, and what I believe is your motive for asking, knowing what is your type can increase your own self-awareness. The more you understand about yourself, the more mature you can be in approaching your life-decisions, such as what career to choose, what kinds of friends or spouse to seek, and many other basic issues that we all confront. That is a practical application that can be beneficial to you as an individual.
Typology-making also can be helpful in performing broader cultural analysis. The influential psychologist Carl Jung advanced the notion of personality archetypes in his 20th century writings. His followers, including Myers and Briggs, sought to apply his ideas to various aspects of cultures and societies, some more serious and scholarly, and others more popular.
A wonderful memorable illustration of the latter is the book “Goddesses in Every Woman: Powerful Archetypes in Women’s Lives” by Jean Bolen. Though her work refers to classical mythical goddesses, her purpose was to help people attain a secular understanding of their own personality types and those of others they may know.
For Bolen, a woman may be able to see herself through the prism of the goddesses of the Greek pantheon and thereby more clearly find her inner personality archetypes.
Typology-making also has been used to do constructive religious theology, the goal of which is not necessarily to gain personal insights, but rather to explain and promote the advantages and explicate the meanings of a particular religious system.
I was exposed to a topological brand of theology through the teachings of my rebbe, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who wrote about a type that he invented and called “Halakhic Man” in a famous long essay with the same title.
In that exercise, Soloveitchik constructed an ideal religious Jew (“Halakhic Man”) and contrasted that with two other human types that he called Cognitive Man and Religious Man. Cognitive Man, he says, represents an abstraction of a scientist, like a theoretical physicist or mathematician, who comes to know the world by constructing intellectual models and analyzing the actual world in systemic ways.
Religious Man, as Soloveitchik sees it, seeks to master the capacity for spiritual experience, to transcend physical reality and experience God’s immanent presence in the world.
Soloveitchik surprisingly relates the Halakhic Man type to Cognitive Man. Both approach the world with their respective intellectual models. Halachic Man comes to the world armed with the two Torahs, written and oral, revealed by God at Mount Sinai. Cognitive Man may use a model based on his received mathematical or scientific criteria, and Halachic Man understands his world via classical Jewish legal categories.
I’ve done my own theological application of typologies, in a book that I published in 2011 called “God’s Favorite Prayers.” I displayed there my analysis of the classic Jewish prayers through the prism of six personality types of Jews at prayer that I developed.
I devised types that I labelled the scribe, the priest, the performer, the meditator, the mystic, and the celebrity monotheist, to help me characterize the contents of the individual prayers that make up the composite prayer book that Jews compiled over the centuries.
My thesis in my book in brief is that the Shema prayer represents the values and traits of a scribe. The Amidah embodies the values of a priest. The grace after meals is an expression of a meditator. The Kaddish is a supplication of a mystic. And the Alenu prayer is a declaration of a celebrity monotheist, a triumphalist.
While my goal was to explain and bring focus on the substance and character of each prayer, I do expect that by delineating individual character types, I help people gain insights into their own religious personalities as well. Still, I haven’t yet devised a questionnaire to determine which archetype of prayer a person most closely matches. Perhaps I should put that on my creative agenda.
To get back to your question, clearly you may want to know your type to obtain a deeper personal self-understanding, or you may seek a better sense of broader social and cultural insights. Keep in mind that others around you will want to know your personality type for decidedly practical, and perhaps for pecuniary purposes.
Officers in the armed forces will want to precisely as possible identify the personality of its recruits to put them in the best possible tactical roles. So too will business managers want to know a personality type to place an employee in the best suited position. The Myers-Briggs inventory is used widely in business contexts.
Dating services will want to clearly know the traits of its clients to perform the best possible matching with potential mates. And of course, a marketing entity will want to know as much as possible about its potential clienteles, to target its efforts and to maximize its sales. Personality typing can be a shortcut to that goal.
Personality information is valuable in many respects. Current reports in the news tell us of a café near Brown University that will serve its clients coffee for payments not in money, but in the credits of the personal data that they provide.
My answer to your inquiry is, then, yes. You will want at some point for your own benefit and perhaps to serve the purposes of others, to ascertain details of your own personality type. But there is no hurry to do this. This area of psychological and social analysis is changing rapidly. Artificial intelligence algorithms and machine learning models are being refined, developed, and introduced as we speak, and used in the areas of these inquiries.
I can foresee in the near future the emergence of advanced and more granular typologies that identify not four or 16 but hundreds or thousands of personality types by applying models and algorithms to massive amounts of data.
And yet even given the state of the field, I could point out to you that there are plenty of naysayers who question the validity of these kinds of studies, and others who oppose its invasiveness on ethical grounds. Humorously, I could say to you that there are two basic types of people in the world, those who believe that personality type studies are immensely useful, and those who do not like them at all. I am closer to the former type.
The recent study we alluded to has limitations, as does any similar past attempts at typology. Deciding on the boundaries of types is often arbitrary. And though major personality traits are fixed in an individual, age does play a factor, and people can change. Young people, for instance, tend to be self-centered. Older people often seek to be role models. And yes, people who self-report on tests or inventories may deliberately or inadvertently misrepresent their own traits and preferences.
And again, all those test outcome observations seem close to the common-sense insights that a sage cultural critic could advance without resorting to any sophisticated questionnaire or data mining.
In any case, the longer you wait to explore this area of research, the more sophisticated the results and insights will be. Do follow up if you are so inclined, but keep in mind all of the above caveats and limitations, and don’t be in any rush to become typified.
Tzvee Zahavy of Teaneck has been a professor of Talmud, Jewish law codes, Jewish liturgy, Jewish history, Near Eastern and Jewish studies, and religious studies at major U.S. research universities and seminaries. His book “God’s Favorite Prayers” is available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle format. He received his Ph.D. from Brown University and his rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University. Go to www.tzvee.com for details.
10/5/18
Are you a hedgehog or a fox?
So I went over to the library and read the book, as I often did when one of my teachers mentioned a volume with high praise.
The other day at the office I tried to explain the archetypes to a talented programmer, noting after summarizing Berlin's theory that said developer came across as a hedgehog. And right then I realized that apparently I had lapsed into speaking Aramaic - or that was the look I got from my colleague.
Wikipedia has a nice precis of the book (it's just an essay really of 90 or so pages which is here in a PDF)...
"The Hedgehog and the Fox"You can read the first ten pages or so at Questia or here. Or the whole essay here.is the title of an essay by Isaiah Berlin, regarding the Russian author Leo Tolstoy's theory of history.
The title is a reference to a fragment attributed to the ancient Greek poet Archilochus: πόλλ' οἶδ ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα ("The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing"). In Erasmus Rotterdamus's Adagia from 1500, the expression is recorded as Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum.)
Berlin expands upon this idea to divide writers and thinkers into two categories: hedgehogs, who view the world through the lens of a single defining idea (examples given include Dante, Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Proust) and foxes who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea (examples given include Shakespeare, Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, Joyce, Anderson).
Turning to Tolstoy, Berlin contends that at first glance, Tolstoy escapes definition into one of these two groups. He postulates, rather, that while Tolstoy's talents are those of a fox, his beliefs are that one ought to be a hedgehog, and thus Tolstoy's own voluminous assessments of his own work are misleading. Berlin goes on to use this idea of Tolstoy as a basis for an analysis of the theory of history that Tolstoy presents in his novel War and Peace.
The essay has been published separately and as part of the collection Russian Thinkers, edited by Henry Hardy and Aileen Kelly.
Some authors, for instance Michael Walzer, have used the same pattern of description on Berlin, as a person who knows many things, compared to the purported narrowness of many other contemporary political philosophers. Berlin's former student, Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, has been dubbed a hedgehog by Berlin and readily admits to it in an interview after receiving the 2007 Templeton Prize.
Berlin expanded on this concept in the 1997 book The Proper Study of Mankind. Philip Tetlock, a political psychology professor in the Haas Business school at UC, Berkeley, draws heavily on this distinction in his exploration of the accuracy of experts and forecasters in various fields (especially politics) in his 2005 book Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?.
And now we must ask, Are you a hedgehog or a fox? Choose!
(reposted from 7/08)
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