Talmudic Chaos v. Halakhic Linearity in the Logic of Judaism

In 2011 I published an article, "In Search Of The Logic Of Judaism: From Talmudic Chaos To Halakhic Linearity," which you can download and read from the link here.   

In 2026 I augmented this paper with AI enhancements.

I used mathematical ideas to differentiate the linear organization of the halakhah from non-linear thinking of the Talmud. Our abstract says: 

In this paper I examine some common views of scholars concerning the idea of the halakhah in Judaism. I then explain why their methods failed to account for the main philological and historical evidence regarding the term from the Talmudic texts. Then I suggest as a heuristic explanation that the logic of the Talmud defies linearity and can be discussed productively using chaos theory.

The authors in this volume cover varied topics with sophistication and erudition. The publisher's page provides details about the book, as copied below. 

Was Charles Krauthammer Jewish?

Was columnist and Fox TV commentator Charles Krauthammer Jewish? Yes he was a Jew.

In JPost interview Krauthammer reflected on his Talmudic upbringing. He described himself in the interview we cite here as not very religious:

As for my own practice, it's fairly minimal, but I go on the required days. I go to Yizkor, those kinds of things. I once described to a friend my Jewishness - I said, I'm a Jewish Shinto. I believe in ancestor worship. That's the heart of my Judaism.

We disagreed with most of what neoconservative Charles Krauthammer said about foreign policy. But from the excellent interview he gave to the Jerusalem Post, "The unfashionable Charles Krauthammer," we learned that his eloquent argumentation skills derive in part from his Orthodox Talmudic education.

Can you talk a little bit about your own Jewish upbringing and sense of Jewishness, and how that influences you? ...
I grew up in a Modern Orthodox home. I went to Jewish day school right through high school, so half of my day was spent speaking Hebrew from age six to 16. I studied thousands of hours of Talmud. My father thought I didn't get enough Talmud at school, so I took the extra Talmud class at school and he had a rabbi come to the house three nights a week. One of those nights was Saturday night, so in synagogue Saturday morning my brother and I would pray very hard for snow so he wouldn't be able to come on Saturday night and we could watch hockey night in Canada. That's where I learned about prayer...

He suffered a tragic swimming accident when in medical school which left him paralyzed.

He was the subject of a Fox News program and was on Jon Stewart's show to promote his book, Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics.



Here is the entire article. It is no longer available at jPost.

"The unfashionable Charles Krauthammer"

Is the Hullin Scroll the Oldest Talmud Manuscript Ever Found?

What is the oldest known Talmud scroll?

Scroll of tractate Hullin, Babylonian Talmud (CUL T–S MISC. 26.53.17), acknowledgment to Dr. S.C. Reif, Director of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit at the Cambridge University Library, and the Syndics of the Library.

I was delighted in December, 2009 to hear Professor Shamma Friedman speak at a Talmud department seminar at JTS. He spoke about a controversial scholarly issue: whether Maimonides intended his Mishneh Torah to replace the Talmud.

This event reminded me of a Talmudic fact that Professor Friedman brought to light several years ago, i.e., that the Talmud was at an early time circulated in scroll form. He discussed this in his paper,  “An Ancient Scroll Fragment (Bavli Hullin 101a-105a) and the Rediscovery of the Babylonian Branch of Tannaitic Hebrew,” JQR 86:1 (1995), pp. 9–50.

Rav Soloveitchik, Rav Lichtenstein, Prof. Weidhorn, Prof. Flatto, Prof. Levy: My Five Greatest Teachers at Yeshiva University

I realized over the years since I graduated from Yeshiva College that so many of my teachers there imprinted upon me indelible lessons for life and learning. I have chosen here to recall five special teachers. I apologize to the many other wonderful teachers that I have omitted. I especially beg the forgiveness of those that I have chosen to so briefly and inadequately remember. Nothing that I say can do them justice.
[Periodic re-post -- to celebrate these great teachers.]

Maimonides and Pictures of Topless Women

Mitchel First (author of Esther Unmasked) alerted me to the fact that a Marc Shapiro found topless women adorning holy books - and indeed he had in his new book, Changing the Immutable, "a whole chapter there about the printing of Rambam's and other halakhic works that had illustrations of topless women on their title pages and ... this was normal at some point!"

That snip above is from the title page (TP) of Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Amsterdam 1702. Here is the whole title page.

The work was printed by the Athias printing house:

In the middle of the seventeenth century, Joseph Athias established a combined Hebrew-Dutch printing house in Amsterdam, which turned into a success. His son, Immanuel Athias took over the management of the Hebrew printing in 1685. In 1702, he published Maimonides' Mishneh Torah in four volumes. The edition was dedicated to Moses Machado, army purveyor of King William III of England, who gave financial support to the printing house for buying new printing equipment.

I do not think that Artscroll Mesorah publishers or any Orthodox publisher would approve today of such a depiction in any of their books.

And honestly, I don't know why. I cannot explain when and how some Orthodox Jews became Puritans. 

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's Haggadah for the Passover Seder by Rabbi M. Genack

Rabbi Menahem Genack published, The Seder Night: An Exalted Evening: The Passover Haggadah: With a Commentary Based on the Teachings of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. A Haggadah in English and Hebrew (2009).

We think it's a great book and happily added it both to our collection of Haggadahs and to our library of works about the teachings of my teacher, the Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. It is a handsome and professional volume, clearly written and packed with content based on the Rav's torah teachings.

Genack was known as one of the best students in the class when I was in the Rav's shiur back in college and in rabbinical school. He's pursued a career of Jewish service and teaching and continues over the decades to shine as an exemplary disciple of the Rav.

Like most books that present the Rav's torah, this one approaches the task with great reverence and nostalgia. Those are great characteristics for me and for the other several thousand students who personally sat at the feet of the Rav and gave themselves over to him as his uncritical disciples. Genack writes his condensed accounts of the Rav's lectures with the clarity that I need to hear again the Rav speaking. He was a charismatic teacher with a wealth of learning that he imparted in many ways.

In his public talks, the Rav emphasized the experiential side of Orthodox Judaism. He often spoke poetically, I think to prove two important points.

First, he wanted to prove a personal point, to show the world that he was not a cold Litvak, not just a product of the Lithuanian Yeshivas who valued only factual erudition and cold logic.

Second, he had a program in his work, to create and express a form of Orthodox Judaism that was on par with the other great religions of the world. For him that meant in his time and place and out of his training in Europe that he had to demonstrate the validity and fecundity of Orthodox Jewish religious experience. He believed that he was the Jewish Rudolph Otto or William James and that from his teachings the world would see that Orthodoxy stands proudly next to any form of the esteemed Protestant religions of the Old or New World.

The Rav had another mission in his teaching and preaching. That was to transmit the Brisker Torah, the innovative conceptual insights of his own and his family's heritage of learning. So the Rav sought to investigate the phenomenology of Orthodox Judaism, to seek out and abstract the core idea from each performance of the numerous commandments and from each recitation of the many prayers.

On completing the study once again of Talmud Tractate Hullin

Today marks the completion of daf yomi study of Tractate Hullin.  We are reposting our previous post of our recollections and of Rav Soloveitchik's remarks in 1974 at a siyyum for Hullin, previously published in a well-known compilation .

My translation of Talmud tractate Hullin, as described below, was re-issued recently by Hendrickson in print and on CD.

On April 1, 1973 in Rabbi Soloveitchik's Talmud shiur at Yeshiva University we completed learning the first chapter of Talmud Bavli Tractate Hullin. The Rav gave a dvar Torah at the Siyyum. He explained the meaning of the recitation of the hadran alakh, the prayer that promised upon the completion of learning a Talmud chapter or Tractate that we would return to study you - speaking to the text - again.

I kept the promise. Between 1992 and 1994 as a professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Minnesota I directed my research to the study of this chapter and the remaining eleven chapters of the tractate.

Do We Need More Hebrew in US Universities?

Yes indeed we need more Hebrew courses in US universities and in our communities.

The Jewish Week wrote (in 2006),

After much deliberation, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture decided that the northeastern corner of New Jersey, a New York City suburb with a large, deeply committed Jewish community, would host its pilot "Hebrew in America" program. The foundation, which provided the seed money for the project, is working closely with the local UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey.

Some time ago we wrote and essay about Hebrew pedagogy, "Teaching Mishnah, Midrash and Talmud at the University". We raised some basic issues and described our approaches.

Courses in Mishnah, Midrash and Talmud at the University address the classical texts either in the original Hebrew and Aramaic or in English translation. In analyzing the nature of such offerings we need to treat several issues independently.

• First, what are the goals and expectations of instruction of rabbinic texts in the original languages as part of the advanced Hebrew curriculum?
• How does the background of students affect the presentation?
• How does one select texts and textbooks?
• What are the secondary resources available?
• How does one achieve content-based language-skill acquisition?

Our full article is accessible here.

We have assembled a pedagogic resource of Jewish Studies course syllabi under the aegis of H-Net's H-Judaic Jewish Studies Network, including among them several courses devoted to Rabbinic literature.

• Mishnah/Midrash in English (UM)
• Talmud Texts (UM)
• Rabbinic Texts I (UM)
• Maimonides Texts (UM)
• Medieval Bible Commentaries (UM)
• Teaching Mishnah, Midrash and Talmud at the University 

• And on Our Own Site:
  

• Ancient Israel: the Hellenistic Period
• Bible: Wisdom, Poetry and Apocalyptic
• Introduction to Judaism
• Jewish Prayer
• Judaism in the Time of Early Christianity
• Maimonides' Texts
• Medieval Bible Commentaries
• Modern Judaism
• Rabbinic Texts
• Seminar for Jewish Educators
• Talmudic Texts
• The Dead Sea Scrolls
• The Mishnah and Midrash in English

Our Hebrew distance learning courses treat Biblical Hebrew. These are some of the course handbooks:

• Introduction to Classical Hebrew 1104
• Introduction to Classical Hebrew 1105
• Introduction to Classical Hebrew 1106

We offer again (republished) this assemblage of curricula to complement this worthy community initiative. (updated from 2006)

Was Moses Maimonides Jewish?

Yes, Moses Maimonides was a Jew. Many erudite Jews would say that the scholar Maimonides was the greatest Jew of all times.

Here is a summary about Maimonides that we wrote a while back.

The contributions of Maimonides in the twelfth century (d. 1204) illustrate how deeply Judaism absorbed the impact of Islamic culture, even while rejecting its religion.

The Islamic cultural context of the Jews in the Middle Ages influenced the style and thought of Judaism. In the thought of Judah Halevi we see, for instance, how a rabbi used the style of philosophical discourse. Still, Halevi rejected the content of the philosopher's message. Reason and rationality, he said, were subservient to revelation, philosophy, and tradition. Some trace a relationship between Halevi and Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111, author of the Incoherence of the Philosophers).

Times: Is Egypt Restoring Maimonides' Synagogue to Curry Favor with Unesco?

It seems to us that the Times speculates a lot more than it used to about the motives for various governmental actions in foreign states. We consider this story an example of how not to report news -- seeking to explain away a good deed by ferreting out an imagined ulterior motive.

Roger Cohen gives the background in his op-ed, "An Egyptian for Unesco," in which he reluctantly supports the appointment of Farouk Hosny, a "71-year-old painter who has served as President Hosni Mubarak’s cultural guru for more than two decades" as head of the United Nations cultural agency Unesco.

And so what does this have to do with the sudden rehabilitation of the Maimonides Synagogue in Cairo?

Michael Slackman connects the dots for us in his, "Cairo Journal - Private Motive for Egypt’s Public Embrace of a Jewish Past."

What is the proper state of mind or concentration - kavvanah - that one must have when reciting Jewish prayers?

We wrote about this subject in a paper, "Kavvanah (Concentration) for Prayer in the Mishnah and Talmud."

...Rabbinic sources express sophisticated notions regarding inner states of consciousness. When we examine several rabbinic texts and translate into more contemporary terms some concepts of the rabbinic rules and interpretations regarding inner states of mind, we discover strikingly mature attitudes towards those aspects of consciousness, intention or concentration during prayer, called in the texts, "kavvanah for prayer." ...historical analysis of the concept of kavvanah in early rabbinic sources shows that the idea does not remain static within rabbinic thought but evolves in the various documents...

You can read our essay here.

Arutz Sheva: Jewish History Professor Menachem Ben-Sasson Selected President of Hebrew University in Jerusalem

It is utterly breathtaking for the field of Jewish History that one of its leading professors has been chosen as head of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Ben Sasson has been active in the Society for Judeo-Arabic Studies and has served as President or World Union of Jewish Studies. His research interests are listed as: Medieval Jewish history in Muslim lands; Social and intellectual history; Geonic Responsa and texts; Geniza research.

Former Kadima MK Elected Hebrew University President
by Yehudah Lev Kay

(IsraelNN.com) Former Kadima Member of Knesset Dr. Menachem Ben-Sasson was elected to the post of President of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on Wednesday. He replaces Dr. Menachem Megidor, who was President since 1997.

Ben-Sasson holds a doctorate in Jewish History from Hebrew University and completed post-doctorate studies at Cambridge University in England. He served as an MK between 2006 and 2009, but was not reelected to the current Knesset. He served as Hebrew University's rector in the past.

“These are difficult times,” Ben-Sasson said after being elected to the new position. “The financial situation is so severe as to cast doubt even on the opening of the coming academic year. I call upon the government of Israel to honor its obligations [to education],” he added.

Ben-Sasson has taught in academic centers around the world, including Yeshiva University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Russian National Academy of Sciences. He also served as president of the World Union for Jewish Studies and as the head of a pedagogic committee at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.

The new President of Hebrew University lives in Jerusalem with his wife Dr. Ada Ben-Sasson. He has three children and three grandchildren.

Last year Prof. Sarah Stroumsa, a Maimonides scholar and specialist in Medieval Jewry, a member of the departments of Arabic Language and Literature and of Jewish Thought, was selected to serve as rector of the Hebrew University.

Times Op-ed: In his Cairo Speech Obama Neglected to Note the Arab Persecutions of the Jews

Two years ago we posted on this blog information identifying an Egyptian Jew living in our community,  Teaneck. That person immediately, within minutes of the post appearing, called us to beseech us to remove the post from our blog so as to protect the safety of members of his family who still live and do business in Egypt. If they were identified as Jews, he said, they would be put in danger of harm. We removed the post.

Now, related to this concern, in a Times Op-ed, Professor André Aciman reminds us all of a gaping omission on the part or President Obama from his Cairo speech.

The president never said a word about me. Or, for that matter, about any of the other 800,000 or so Jews born in the Middle East who fled the Arab and Muslim world or who were summarily expelled for being Jewish in the 20th century. With all his references to the history of Islam and to its (questionable) “proud tradition of tolerance” of other faiths, Mr. Obama never said anything about those Jews whose ancestors had been living in Arab lands long before the advent of Islam but were its first victims once rampant nationalism swept over the Arab world.

Nor did he bother to mention that with this flight and expulsion, Jewish assets were — let’s call it by its proper name — looted.

The writer, who is professor of comparative literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center, and the author of the memoir “Out of Egypt” concludes with this brilliant understatement:

It is strange that our president, a man so versed in history and so committed to the truth, should have omitted mentioning the Jews of Egypt. He either forgot, or just didn’t know, or just thought it wasn’t expedient or appropriate for this venue. But for him to speak in Cairo of a shared effort “to find common ground ... and to respect the dignity of all human beings” without mentioning people in my position would be like his speaking to the residents of Berlin about the future of Germany and forgetting to mention a small detail called World War II.

The president also forgot to mention the peace accord of Anwar Sadat and his subsequent assassination, chapters of history that were worthy of note for a statesman orating in Cairo about peace.

Mort Kondrake pointed this out immediately in a discussion that appeared on Fox:

The crowning missing ingredient in this entire speech, was any mention of Anwar Sadat. This is the 30th anniversary of Anwar Sadat, in Cairo, making peace with the Israelis. He should have said Anwar Sadat is a model for the entire Islamic world, especially the Arab world....

And one more thing. We think instead of a perfunctory citation from the Babylonian Talmud (should he have called it the Iraqi Talmud?), it would have been more appropriate for Barack to cite a passage from the writings of Maimonides, a famous medieval Egyptian Jewish rabbi-physician, or perhaps for the president to cite from the Palestinian Talmud, thus confounding the entire world.

Talmudic Analysis: Is Bill O'Reilly Responsible for the Terrorist Murder of Dr. George Tiller?

By the simplest Talmudic analysis, yes, TV newsman Bill O'Reilly is responsible for the terrorist murder of Dr. George Tiller.

It's almost a syllogism.

1. Anyone who is engaged in the pursuit of killing someone falls into the Talmudic category - "Rodef" - pursuer - and you can kill that person to save the life of the person being targeted.

2. On the air, Bill O'Reilly identified Dr. George Tiller as, "Tiller the Baby Killer" i. e., as a full-fledged Talmudic Rodef who is engaged in killing babies.

3. Thereby O'Reilly gave his sanction to others to kill Dr. Tiller.

Now to be completely Talmudic, you rightfully may reply to this with what appears at first to be a valid counterargument.

You may say - aha - that the abortionist himself is the Talmudic Rodef because he is engaged in killing babies - and it should therefore be sanctioned to kill him.

The weakness of this argument is however dramatic and clear.

The Talmud does not deem a foetus to be a person. Nor does American law. So a doctor who performs abortions cannot be classified as a Rodef.

[Brad Hirschfield on Beliefnet discusses issues related to these arguments in his post, "Killing Doctors Who Perform Abortions: A Jewish Perspective." Psst. We like it better when a writer doesn't give a "perspective" and rather offers greater clarity on an issue.]

Accordingly our decision of law in Talmudic terms must be that Bill O'Reilly bears responsibility for falsely labeling Dr. Tiller a Rodef and for thereby causing his death.

In a further step of Talmudic analysis, it remains to be determined if O'Reilly, after falsely accusing Tiller of being a Rodef, thus leading to his ultimate murder, himself became a Rodef - a pursuer of Dr. Tiller - attempting to cause his death.

If that were the case, it would have been permissible for someone, say perhaps Keith Olbermann, to act against O'Reilly and kill him first before he caused the death of Dr. Tiller.

We are glad that Olbermann speaks up against the O'Reillys of our world and does not go out and commit violence.

We want to make this clear. In this blog - on Talmudic or on any other religious or logical grounds - we do not sanction acts of vigilante terrorist violence.

Times: See the Valmadonna Trust Library of Rare Hebrew and Aramaic Books at Sotheby’s Auction House

"A copy of the Babylonian Talmud (1519-23) made by the Christian printer Daniel Bomberg in Venice, was created with the advice of a panel of scholars that codified many aspects of how the Talmud is displayed and printed."

The collection is on display to the public through next Thursday, on view for the large institutional libraries and collectors who might be prepared to pay at least $40 million for what Sotheby’s, echoing scholars in the field, describes as “the finest private library of Hebrew books and manuscripts in the world.”

We say: Bad timing. Sorry but in this economic climate I doubt that the library, no matter how breathtaking, will fetch $40 million.

Also the Times' article is a bit imprecise when it says, "These are all books written in Hebrew or using Hebrew script, many of them rare or even unique." The Talmud is written mostly in Aramaic. True enough the script is the same as that used for Hebrew. The Samaritan Torah in the collection is written in a script that 99% of Hebrew readers could not make out. True, the article does call it an "ancient Hebrew script resembling inscriptions on archaeological finds rather than the letters that came to define mainstream Hebrew."

This to us at the Talmudic blog is the kind of imprecision that is just barely excusable, especially since you have a big fact checking desk over there at the Times whose job it is to know the difference between Hebrew and Aramaic and make sure the reports it publishes are clear about that.

Egypt Promises to Restore Maimonides Synagogue

Hat tip to Egyptology News:

Friday, November 02, 2007
Preservation of Jewish heritage in Egypt

American Jewish Committee

In Egypt for events marking the centennial of Cairo’s main synagogue, Shaar Hashamayim, an American Jewish Committee delegation met this week with Egyptian officials to discuss efforts to preserve the Jewish heritage in Egypt.

The delegation, led by Rabbi Andrew Baker, AJC’s director of International Jewish Affairs, met with Minister of Culture Farouk Hosny and Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. The Egyptian officials assured the AJC group that the Maimonides Yeshiva and Synagogue would be properly restored during the coming year.

The Yeshiva was the original study house of the 12th Century rabbinic scholar and is adjacent to a 19th century synagogue named for him. The Yeshiva has been a place of pilgrimage for Jews around the world, although the structures have long-since fallen into a state of disrepair. Dr. Hawass said that a full technical analysis had already taken place and preparatory work could begin almost immediately.

The centennial events were a reminder of the large and vibrant Jewish community that could be found in Cairo and Alexandria during the first half of the last century, when Egypt was a far more culturally diverse society.

The Forward: Rabbis Push Pagan Rituals - Let's Not Do Them

Kapparot are "a practice generally performed during the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in which a live chicken is swung over one’s head in a gesture of transferring one’s sins of the past year onto the animal."

Hey, let's not do this. This is a bizarre pagan ritual. Not my opinion but that of Maimonides and Joseph Caro, author of the Shulchan Aruch.

The Forward:

The kapparot ceremony is one of the more colorful elements of the High Holy Days but one of the most historically fraught. Maimonides and later Joseph Caro, author of the authoritative code of Jewish law, both claimed that kapparot had its roots in pagan ritual and should be abandoned by religious Jews. But Moses Isserles, the famed 16th-century talmudist from Krakow promoted the practice, as did many of the founders of Hasidic Jewish sects.

Today, many Modern Orthodox Jews swing money, instead of chickens, over their heads. But Hasidic Jews have retained the use of the live animals. Men are instructed to use roosters, which are grasped by their shoulder blades and rotated above the person’s head three times. Women use hens for the ritual (two if the practitioner is pregnant). The animal is then supposed to be slaughtered immediately after the ritual and donated to a poor family.

NO NO NO let's not swing chickens around this year. We are not pagans.

Cultural and Socialist Zionism: Ahad Haam, Bialik, Syrkin, Gordon

Reading the greats of Zionism [from The Zionist Idea by Arthur Hertzberg]

Part 4: The Agnostic Rabbi -- Ahad Ha-Am 247

AHAD HA-AM (ASHER ZVI GINSBERG) 1856-1927 248
THE LAW OF THE HEART (1894) 251
FLESH AND SPIRIT (1904) 256
ON NATIONALISM AND RELIGION (1910) 261
THE JEWISH STATE AND THE JEWISH PROBLEM (1897) 262
THE NEGATION OF THE DIASPORA (1909) 270

HAYYIM NAHMAN BIALIK 1873-1934 278
BIALIK ON THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY (1925) 281

Part 6: The Zionism of Marxist and Utopian Socialists

NAHMAN SYRKIN 1867-1924 330
THE JEWISH PROBLEM AND THE SOCIALIST-JEWISH STATE (1898) 333
1. Jews and Gentiles 333
2. Emancipation and Anti-Semitism 336
3. Jews and Socialism 340
4. Zionism 345
5. The Socialist-Jewish State 349

AARON DAVID GORDON 1856-1922 368
LOGIC FOR THE FUTURE (1910) 371
PEOPLE AND LABOR (1911) 372
SOME OBSERVATIONS (1911) 375
OUR TASKS AHEAD (1920) 379
YOM KIPPUR (1921) 383
FINAL REFLECTIONS (1921) 384

To define cultural Zionism we turn to the US Country Study on Israel:

The counterpoint to Herzl's political Zionism was provided by Asher Ginsberg, better known by his pen name Ahad HaAm (One of the People). Ahad HaAm, who was the son of a Hasidic rabbi, was typical of the Russian maskalim. In 1886, at the age of thirty, he moved to Odessa with the vague hope of modernizing Judaism. His views on Zionism were rooted in the changing nature of Jewish communal life in Eastern Europe. Ahad HaAm realized that a new meaning to Jewish life would have to be found for the younger generation of East European Jews who were revolting against traditional Jewish practice. Whereas Jews in the West could participate in and benefit from a secular culture, Jews in the East were oppressed. While Herzl focused on the plight of Jews alone, Ahad HaAm was also interested in the plight of Judaism, which could no longer be contained within the limits of traditional religion.

Ahad HaAm's solution was cultural Zionism: the establishment in Palestine of small settlements aimed at reviving the Jewish spirit and culture in the modern world. In the cultural Zionist vision, a small number of Jewish cadres well versed in Jewish culture and speaking Hebrew would settle in Palestine. Ahad HaAm believed that by settling in that ancient land, religious Jews would replace their metaphysical attachment to the Holy Land with a new Hebrew cultural renaissance. Palestine and the Hebrew language were important not because of their religious significance but because they had been an integral part of the Jewish people's history and cultural heritage.

Inherent in the cultural Zionism espoused by Ahad HaAm was a deep mistrust of the gentile world. Ahad HaAm rejected Herzl's notion that the nations of the world would encourage Jews to move and establish a Jewish state. He believed that only through Jewish self-reliance and careful preparation would the Zionist enterprise succeed. Although Ahad HaAm's concept of a vanguard cultural elite establishing a foothold in Palestine was quixotic, his idea of piecemeal settlement in Palestine and the establishment of a Zionist infrastructure became an integral part of the Zionist movement.

The ascendancy of Ahad HaAm's cultural Zionism and its emphasis on practical settlement in Eretz Yisrael climaxed at the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903. After an initial discussion of settlement in the Sinai Peninsula, which was opposed by Egypt, Herzl came to the congress apparently willing to consider, as a temporary shelter, a British proposal for an autonomous Jewish entity in East Africa. The Uganda Plan, as it was called, was vehemently rejected by East European Zionists who, as before, insisted on the ancient political identity with Palestine. Exhausted, Herzl died of pneumonia in 1904, and from that time on the mantle of Zionism was carried by the cultural Zionists led by Ahad HaAm and his close colleague, Chaim Weizmann. They took over the WZO, increased support for Hibbat Tziyyon, and sought Jewish settlement in Palestine as a prerequisite to international support for a Jewish state.

Hertzberg summarizes regarding the chief spokesman for cultural Zionism:

AHAD HA-AM was born as Asher Zvi Ginsberg in Skvira, in the Russian Ukraine on August 18, 1856. His family belonged to the very highest aristocracy of the Jewish ghetto, being particularly close to the Hasidic rebbe of Sadagura. His formal education was so strictly pious that his teacher was forbidden to instruct him even in the letters of the Russian alphabet, lest this might lead to heresy (he nonetheless taught himself to read Russian at the age of eight from the signs on the store fronts of his town). By the middle of his adolescence Asher Ginsberg was already a considerable and even somewhat celebrated scholar of the Talmud and its literature, as well as of the devotional literature of the Hasidic movement.

In 1868 his family moved to an estate which his wealthy father had leased. There, locked in his room (then and later he had no interest in nature) he began on the road toward "enlightenment" by studying the works of the great medieval Jewish philosophers, especially of Maimonides. By stages he went on to the "forbidden books" of the modern Hebrew "enlightenment," and eventually, at the age of twenty, to the wider horizons of literature and philosophy in Russian and German. Soon, like his contemporary, Lilienblum, Ahad Ha-Am discovered the works of D. I. Pisarev, one of the founders of Russian positivism, and definitely lost his religious faith.

The years between 1879 and 1886 were the most painful period of his life, marked by abortive attempts to go to Vienna, Berlin, Breslau, and Leipzig to study. Personal troubles, the severe illness of his wife (as was the custom of his class, a marriage had been arranged for him at the age of twenty), and his own self-doubts and lack of resolution kept forcing him to return home after a few weeks with, as he put it, "a pained heart." The family finally moved to Odessa in 1886, not by choice but under the constraint of a new tsarist ukase forbidding Jews to lease land. Though this was a grave economic blow, Ahad HaAm was nonetheless relieved to be gone from a place which was associated in his memory with inner torment.

His first article, "This Is Not the Way," was published in 1889 when he was thirty-three. Not regarding himself as a writer, he signed it as Ahad Ha-Am, i.e., "one of the people," the pen name by which he was to be known henceforth. He always refused to consider himself as a man of letters, even when increasing poverty of his family forced him to take a job in 1896 as the editor of a Hebrew monthly, Ha-Shiloah, in order to support his wife and, by then, three children. After six years of editing this literary journal, which he intended as a platform for the discussion of the contemporary problems of Judaism, he resigned his post, feeling bitter and depressed but relieved to be free of the hateful burdens of being a public servant. He became an official of a tea concern and traveled widely on its behalf throughout Russia for four years. He moved to London in 1907, when his firm opened a branch there, and remained there for fourteen years, until 1921, when he settled in Palestine.

Ahad Ha-Am's debut in Hebrew literature occurred in the era which followed after the pogroms of 1881, in the day of the Hibbat Zion movement. In his first essay and, within several years, in long pieces of analytical reportage that he wrote from the recently founded few colonies in Palestine, he appeared as a disturber of the peace. Comparing the high-flown verbiage of this early Zionism with its paltry and often ill-conceived practical achievements, Ahad Ha-Am was uncompromising in his insistence that work in Palestine needed to be done slowly and with great care. Above all, he suggested that the true meaning of Hibbat Zion was not to be found, as leaders like Lilienblum thought, in mass action but in the cultural revival and modernization of the Jewish people through the agency of a carefully chosen few. From the very beginning these views aroused a storm and his continued reiteration of them after the appearance of Herzl simply continued the controversy. The agnostic definitions that he was proposing for a new Jewish spiritual culture involved him in another continuing argument, a debate with the orthodox. On the other hand, the conservatism of his thought, in practical application, made him the target of many of the younger and more rebellious voices in modern Hebrew literature, who found him too traditionalist in temper, a hard taskmaster as an editor, and lacking in interest in art and belles-lettres for their own sake.

Socialist Zionism is the underpinning of the modern State of Israel. Also known as Labor Zionism, the movement governed the development of the fledgling State of Israel through its first 25 years.

See http://www.mideastweb.org/labor_zionism.htm

The World Zionist Organization speaks glowingly of Socialist Zionism:

Socialist Zionism rose out of a criticism of both existing Zionism and Jewish Socialism in the Early Zionist era.

Socialist Zionism is not simply a mechanical combination of two words: Zionism and Socialism. Nor is it a compromise between two conflicting principles. Anyone who believes that this is so has never grasped its ideology and spirit, nor its intrinsic integrity. Socialist Zionism made its appearance after Jewish Socialism was established. In other words there were not only socialists from among the Jewish people delegated to convert the masses to Socialism but there was also the Bund, the trade union of Jewish workers organised as a Jewish body from amongst the Jewish people. But the Bund learned its socialism from �the great teachers" and presented it wholemeal to the Jewish worker, without making use of its own intellectual force to analyse how this new kind of world (for reasons of brevity called: the social revolution) would actually operate within the sphere of Jewish life, nor did it have the power to evaluate the particular fate of the Jewish worker linked to the fate of his own people.

Socialist Zionism rose out of a criticism of both existing Zionism and Jewish Socialism. This movement arose because of the realization of a deep contradiction between the Jewish world and the theories of the leading movements: General Zionism (i.e. the Bourgeoisie) and general Socialism in its Jewish aspect (i.e. the Bund). Syrkin saw that General Zionism distinguished for its overblown grandiose style was smugly satisfied with a miserly philanthropy, actually supporting the forces of reaction, incapable of large scale settlement, and not even daring to take it into consideration. It was creating a deep chasm-between the Zionist idea, the idea of deliverance from the Exile and coping with the vital needs of the Jewish masses. Syrkin saw the Bund as some kind of organization for stuffing the Jewish worker with Marxist phrases, lacking a solid basic program for creating an independent culture that could lead to national liberation. It lacked an understanding of the fact that there was no true redemption for the Jewish worker if his people were not delivered from their Exile.

Socialist Zionism began as one of the revolutionary movements of that time. It cracked the whip of its criticism not only over the bourgeoisie and capitalist world, it revolted not only against the autocratic rule of the Tsar, the secret police and agent-provocateurs, it also struck against the accepted dogmas of the socialist world. It dared to think independently and weigh up its own responsibility - a most difficult undertaking. At a time when most of the socialist intellectuals among the Jewish people were satisfied with ready-made ideas, lapped up the Erfurt Programme of the German Social Democratic Party in 1891 and the illegal literature of the Russian Social Democrats, nor dared to question the doctrines of their teachers which they considered sacrosanct - Socialist Zionism probed the validity of the most hallowed doctrines.

Socialist Zionism, just as a scientist baulked by a tiny detail contradicting the whole accepted formula is impelled to re-examine the whole formula, is also impelled to scrutinize these wide generalizations in the light of the "tiny detail" - the harrowing Jewish problem - which was not considered nor resolved within the universal formula. The first generation of Socialist Zionists felt the suffering of the Jewish people. They realized that stock phrases were no complete answer to the question, and the universal panacea no remedy for the unique Jewish malady. From the outset they understood that the main problem was providing work for the Jewish masses, and with piercing insight maintained that the downfall of Russian Tsarism and the granting of "equal rights" and the abolition of the Pale of Settlement, the common aspiration of both the Jewish bourgeoisie and the socialists - would not save the people from their eternal wanderings nor the life of the 'luftmensch'. If there was no future for the Jewish worker in the Exile, there was no future for Socialism-in-Exile. Socialist Zionism sharply and furiously mocked at the paucity of spirit and the shallowness of Jewish Socialism, its cowardly thinking, the open enslavement within the revolution and the brash confidence of the ignorant mingling in Jewish life, as Syrkin described the Bund; or the theoretical "alrightist� type of the Jewish Labour Movement in America, and in its perpetual inner criticism, Socialist Zionism enlarged the scope of its analyses beyond the boundaries of the Jewish world.

At that period, on the threshold of the twentieth century, European Socialism conceived the existence of a placid, idyllic life, and its thinking - confident and optimistic - was established by venerable �disciples" who pursued the ways that had been set for them. The Jewish intellectual enthusiastically accepted everything put out by the apostles of Karl Kautsky and Georgi Plekhanov, in the same way as the provincial city blindly follows the dictates of fashion. Somewhere in Paris, the arbiter of fashion cuts, sews and controls the market. In intellectual life, too, many are bound to this "Paris Couturier" and those who do not follow the intellectual fashion are regarded as being "queer", like somebody from another planet. In those days Socialist Zionism undertook to work intensively. It was as if these �unruly� impudent pupils, Syrkin, Zytlovsky, Borochov, and their colleagues said to the dictators of Socialism: - �If you cannot grasp our problem, this is a sign that there are many other matters which have escaped you." With assimilation -"emancipation in the Exile" - as a point of departure, Socialist Zionist thinking was spurred on to a criticism of the values of actual Socialism. Opinions prevailing on the interpretation of nationalism and the nationalist movements, the agrarian question, the small farmer, cooperation, the migration of peoples, the settlement of lands, the poor grasp of what was exactly involved in the task of the pioneering avant-garde Socialist worker, the lack of orientation towards the obligations of personal commitment - all these issues, even then, engaged and perturbed Zionist Socialist thinking and forced it to charter its own course.

This was the movement in its early days, when it had the power to negotiate the stumbling blocks of life in Exile, and reach the harbour of redemption. Later it crashed on these very obstacles. Many of its standard-bearers and disciples could not muster sufficient strength to sustain them and complete what they had daringly and heroically commenced. They did not have the stamina to pursue their independent, revolutionary ideas, to uphold in actual life the change to values which they had evolved and in the struggle for which they had become united. They became exhausted finally and bowed to the �style of the Paris Couturier�, the controlling dictator and legislator. But this dictator, or dictatorship (depending on whether it is individual or collective) is also vulnerable. He, too, was more than once cast down from the sublime heights to the deep pit below, but this throne never stood vacant. It was always filled by someone else. That is the fate of a "Paris Couturier". As a ruler, he is an absolute despotic infallible sovereign. Who would dare to challenge him? Only a few stubborn people would renounce public acclaim, would turn away from the smoothly constructed highway into the unknown path, and they were the people who laid out the paths that we tread today.

It is doubtful whether our movement in the land of Israel would have acted as it did if not for the daring exploration of Socialist Zionism in its early days. A great spiritual heritage was accumulated in our movement from the time of Moses Hess to the present day. And if this heritage had been bequeathed to our younger generation then it would have saved countless victims.

Hertzberg summarizes the work of Socialist Zionist writer Nahum Syrkin as follows:

SOCIALISM AND NATIONALISM had been combined by the first great Zionist writer, Moses Hess, but his work was forgotten. That such a combination would be made again, when Herzlian Zionism appeared, was inevitable, for socialism was then, in the 1890's, the greatest single influence on the thought of young Jewish intellectuals. Bernard Lazare (for him, see part 8), one of Herzl's earliest associates in France, was immediately impelled to rewrite Hess, without knowing it, but he, too, founded no school of thought and is today almost unremembered. The more obvious soil for such ideas was the misery and ferment of Russian Jewry; Socialist-Zionism, which is to this day the dominant force within the state of Israel, arose in the context of Russian Jewish life, and one of its immediate ancestors is Nahman Syrkin.

He began life in a pious family in Mohilev. By temperament a rebel, he soon fought his way to secular education and entered the local high school. The young Syrkin was soon expelled for objecting to antiSemitic remarks by a teacher, and he finished school in Minsk, where he joined a group of Hibbat Zion and also was involved in the revolutionary underground. After being jailed briefly for these activities, which sealed a personal breach with his family, Syrkin emigrated to London, where supposedly he even acted on the Yiddish stage for a few months. By 1888 he was in Berlin, starving but nonetheless studying at the university and becoming ever more expert in all varieties of contemporary economic thought and socialist theory.

At that time the major schools of learning in both Germany and Switzerland were full of Russian Jewish students like himself, who had come to the more liberal west because they were barred, as Jews, from the Russian universities. Within the milieu of these student circles all the clashing "isms" of the day were hotly debated, and Syrkin was one of the most notable of a whole galaxy of celebrated controversialists. As he was to tell later in reminiscence, it took all the inner certainty and skill in argument he could muster to stand alone, at war with the entire intelligentsia within which he moved, when he first announced his Socialist-Zionism. Syrkin first published his thesis in a pamphlet in 1898, Die Judenfrage und der sozialistische Judenstaat, his debut in print, of which the most important passages are in the text below.

Syrkin had attended the First Zionist Congress the year before and he remained in the organization until 1905, when it was definite that the British offer of Uganda had come to naught. For four years he was a Territorialist (i.e., one who believed that a Jewish state should be founded on any available land, not necessarily in Palestine) and then he returned to Zionism as representative of the newly formed Poale Zion (Workers of Zion) party. Throughout this decade, both as Zionist and as Territorialist, Syrkin was actively writing propaganda and editing journals in Yiddish and Hebrew in support of his views. He moved to the United States in 1907 to continue his career as official of the Labor Zionist movement and as controversialist. Unfortunately his essays are scattered in many periodicals and, despite abortive attempts, they have not yet been adequately collected. Syrkin died in New York in 1924.

Syrkin's socialism was not Marxist but ethical and utopian; it was rooted, like Hess's, in love of humanity and the ideals of biblical prophecy. The newest note in Syrkin, present also in Lazare, was the assertion that Herzl's vision of a state would be realized only by the poor. Herzl's early hopes that the men of wealth within Jewry would be converted to his Jewish nationalism and take the lead in realizing its aims had been denied by Syrkin from the very beginning. He had even less faith that the existing order of western national states would help create a new state for the Jews. Society, both Jewish and general, was, in his view, dominated by the class interests of the bourgeoisie, which ran counter to Jewish nationalism, or even to the French, German, and other nationalisms which the wielders of power professed. Nor could Syrkin have unqualified faith in a socialist new order, because he forecast that even within it the position of the Jew would still be different, for he would still be prey to exclusion as the member of a minority. Hence, the only true bearers of Jewish nationalism were the masses; the only true socialism would have to include a Zionist solution of the Jewish problem.

Bar Ilan Responsa Library Comes Online

The Bar Ilan Responsa data base is now online at
http://www.responsa.co.il/.

Globes reports:

The Bar Ilan University Responsa Project is now available online.

The Responsa Project is the world's largest electronic collection of Torah literature. Like its CD version, launched in 1991, the Online Responsa encompasses Jewish sources representing over three thousand years of Jewish literary heritage. It includes the Bible and its principal commentaries, the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud with commentaries, Midrashim, Zohar, Rambam, Shulchan Aruch with commentaries, and the collection of Responsa questions and answers on matters of Jewish law.

... The Responsa texts in this online database include over 80,000 legal decisions, representing over a thousand years of development of Jewish law, and capturing the historical, social, and economic milieu of Jewish communities all over the world.

... Bar-Ilan University can now allow all Internet users full access to its Jewish cultural treasures, thanks to C.D.I.'s NetIS technology, which identifies users and protects the data from being abused. The multi-lingual interface (Hebrew, English, and French) enables users to swiftly browse and study the contents of several sources simultaneously.

Subscribers can choose between various options, such as subscriptions to specific parts of the database, annual or monthly subscriptions, or cumulative time viewing rights.

The results of a search come up quickly. A search for "Tzvee" produced 4907 hits, showing two lines of the reference. Further access to the texts is restricted by login.

Login is not necessary in order to view a result list.
If you wish to view content, you will have to login as a subscriber or register as a guest.

After login, the content will be displayed according to your access rights.
Login is also required for browsing the online store and viewing your personal account.

More to follow after a thorough review.

Announcing Charedi Air

Attempt-at-humor email that is making the rounds:

In view of El Al's handling of the recent unfortunate situation of potentially having aircraft and passengers stranded on Erev Shabbat in the aftermath of a general strike in Israel, I propose that a new Charedi airline should now be established offering the following facilities:-

Strict pre flight passenger religious profiling. Booking available through Haimishe Travel Agents only, positively no Internet booking or check in facilities. No airport (or any other) taxes.

Flexible departure times, Magen Avraham, Gra, Rabbenu Tam etc.

* Security personal to be replaced by modesty police to check appropriate attire.

* Exclusive Platinum check in desk for all passengers.

* Unique "Maso Umattan" desk to negotiate upgrades and denied boarding compensation.

* Flight check in to commence 90 minutes after scheduled departure time.

* Unlimited checked in and hand baggage allowances.

* Only 279 Passengers may be booked for seating on any flight. Additional passengers may board right before takeoff to "Standing Room Only" area for "Simchas Ya'aleh V'yavo".

* Arrival at the departure gate 15 minutes after the last call positively encouraged.

* Frequent flyer "Middos Points" awarded on the basis of in flight Blatt Gemora learned. Bonus points available for the most original new Chumras submitted to the Board.

* On board fully equipped Beis Hamidrash offering running Minyanim, shiurim and live video links to your Rebbe. Unrestricted use of mobile (Kosher) phones, absolutely no Internet access.

* Pilots cabin will be reconfigured to hold 3-5 baby seats (in addition to normal cabin crew).

* Emergency under seat inflatable vests will now come in black or dark navy as Yellow is not a Tznisudik color.

* To offset operating expenses Charedi Air will lease its planes from a reputable Brooklyn car leasing establishment (don't worry about excess mileage).

* Four unique travel classes ranging from the exclusive Rambam First Class for Gedolei Hador only; Shelita Class for Dayanim and senior Rabbonim; Kolel Class for those who have been in full time learning for at least 30 years and Yeshivishe Class with optional seating. Women will be seated at the rear of the hold (subject to receiving permission to board from the modesty police). Women deemed to be immodesty dressed or wearing wigs with Indian hair will be relegated into overhead compartment.

* Mashgichim Temidim to replace flight attendants offering a choice of cuisine with outstanding Hechsherim ranging from Bedatz to Monsey Super Glatt.

* No refreshments will be served on the following Taanesim:- Taanis Esther, Tzom Gedalyo, Asoro BeTeves, Shivo Osor BeTammuz and Hey Iyyar.

* To prevent the possible desecration of the holy Shabbos (chas v' sholom) flights will only be scheduled on Monday to Wednesday. In addition flights will not run on the following days:-Erev Yom Tov, Yom Tov Sheini Shel Golyus, Isru Chag, Purim, 1-10 Av (until after Chatzos). Schedules are subject to disruption after Purim during which time aircraft will be thoroughly Kashered for Pesach.

*Floor of plane should be granite, hardwood, imported Italian tile or thick carpet.

*Seat belts will be replaced by "Seat Gartels".

*"Pre flight" safety video will be replaced by professional make and female actors (all shoimer shabbos who will depict instructions).

*Free retouching of passport pictures for single girls 16 and over.

*Lighting should be chandeliers.

*All cabin crew should be either Hispanic or polish with shared passport.

*First class isn't booked, it's auctioned for a tzedaka.

*Baby carriages don't have to be stored, they can be left in the aisles.

*Planes are allowed to double and triple park on runways if pilot has to "run into terminal for just a second."