R' Kook on natural law and on the importance of open-mindedness

Following is my inexact translation of the first part Chapter 22 of the recently leaked ms. of R' Kook לנבוכי הדור. See here for the background of this book and here for a great analysis of its contents.

The most alarming matter of all, that which causes the great confusion of ideas in this world, and dominates with great commotion - even today the time of the explosion of ideas, is the tendency to limit ones outlook on life within the confines of ones own group.

The delusion of the observer is that in regard to a certain subject, be it in the sphere knowledge, ethics or actions; political or personal, only the particular idea that is beloved by him and is accepted by his group is important, and one need not pay any attention to any of its other aspects. If these other ideas that are not accepted by his group will seek by their nature, to expand, in more detail and to flourish, then there will arise from every side great opposition, as if [this new thing] is coming to swallow and overtake the aspect that is beloved by him.

As is understood this very commotion causes other groups to act in extreme ways as well in order to defend their own party and to view everything coming out of the [other party] as a destructive item that will damage the world, or at the very least, as unimportant or craziness. This trait exists among man in general, and among us the Jewish People in particular.

When will these men open their eyes and see that there is no need for this destruction. We need to add to the structure not lessen. It is enough that we are forced into natural conflict, which becomes necessary when two subjects, each worthy in its own right, come into conflict, and time and strength do not allow both of them to receive their due. Then the question arises which is pushed away before the other. However even this battle must be carefully calculated, so as not to lower unto dust the value of the issue that must be pushed away because the other issue is more important right now. It is the opposite, we must make known that the reason we are pushing away this other subject, which has value to us as well, is not because of there is no merit in acquiring that information, action, or ethics, but because of a lack of ability on our side to accept all the desirable things, so that we must choose one over the other. This is the path of careful thought that is built on foundations of truth which will also bring the blessing of peace on the part of those choosing.

This desire to destroy and to eradicate something where it is not completely necessary, is rooted in the evil inclination of a man, and an exaggerated self-love that causes him to hate everything else. The prohibition “do not destroy” stand up sharply against this character trait. Already, in the earlier days of the expansion of ideas, through the influence of the Haskalah in our nation, there was an explosion of this kind; instances and branches which continue on in each generation.

That which is understood on its own, the personal and pure ethics, and the laws, that is the laws of the Torah, when looked into can easily be seen to be two distinct subjects. But the idea that there must be conflict between them comes only from partisan blindness.

Those with inner understanding that looked into internal ethics and desired [only] the completion of a man through good ethics based on righteous and natural reasoning, when they should realized that the laws [of Torah] provide great assistance in the development of the ethical sense of pure humanity, and so there are many great benefits that the law gives us. Therefore if we are to turn to another group, that in our terms is wider then the simple desire to keep the law alone, it is worthy to constantly seek the path of peace, to keep both benefits at once – the benefits of natural ethics, and of the upkeep of the law. If we were to look into it, we would see that the ethics of keeping the law not only do not encroach on natural ethics but is actually at its base and expands upon it.

Politics in Satu-Mare: The early career of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum

I found an interesting pamphlet on Hebrewbooks - S'fas Emes relating to the controversy surrounding Rabbi Teitelbaum's appointment as Satmar Rav. I'm a little confused as to some of the details (no doubt the official biography of the Rav, Moshian Shel Yisrael provides a more thorough account). But there seems to have been some irregularity in the election. In the usual Hungarian fashion, some suggested that the community be divided in two so both R' Teitelbaum and his opponent (Rabbi Halberstam) could serve as Rabbis.

I assume it is the Munkatcher Rav's involvement here that lead to the kind of tension that caused his Minchas Elazer to be placed on a Satmar גניזה list.

Also interesting is the claim that the R' Teitelbaum's letter was censored - his statement concerning the halachic argumentation of the Rabbi of Bistritz(?) was removed.

Update: Bar Uryan sends us to an interesting Yiddish newspaper that contains "a laundry list of victims of Satmar campaign violence".

R' Chaim Brisker and the Rogatchover on Chinuch

A very moving letter from R Chaim Brisker on Jewish education. I have not seen this letter reproduced anywhere else. This seems to be written in response against the Maskilim who proposed a "method" (i.e. curriculum) which would involve minimal Talmud study.

Also very interesting is the Rogatchover's letter written in his unique style. A greater Talmud Chacham then I can perhaps let us know what he is trying to tell us. (Presumably the textbooks of the "Methodists" paraphrased the Torah and this is what he refers to as "לכנות פסוק" but I am not sure.)

The note of the "Bucher Zetzer" mentions some parody of these letters in HaMelitz and HaZefirah but I did not have time to try track them down.

This issue is bound together with a short biography of Ridvaz.

[Update: I see now that they must be referring to the same Chumash banned by the Chafetz Chaim posted by S. here]

Great men and their correspondence

The more things change...

The following exchange is from the Robert Weltsch archives at LBI. I've always admired Lord Jakobovits, in part because of his ability to respect someone despite "differences in outlook and upbringing".

Another attempt at solving the authorship of Responsa Besamim Rosh

[Seforim Blog has a very thorough post on Besamim Rosh which links to some earlier posts of mine on the subject. Following is a rewrite of those posts]

Another attempt at solving the question of the authorship of ShuT Besamim Rosh

Besamim Rosh was first attacked as a forgery by R' Mordechai Banet [1]on the grounds that the book contains many halachic leniencies and heretic ideas that could not have been written by the Rosh. Even if this is sufficient proof to show that the Rosh cannot have written it, we still do not know if Saul Berlin forged it or if he was taken in by some earlier forgery.

I think I can show that R Saul Berlin who forged the letter. R' Berlin wrote a satirical work K'tav Yosher in which he attacks the Rabbis who placed Naftali Hertz Wessely's Divrei Shalmo V' Emet under ban. In the midst of this work, he refers sarcastically to several stringencies such as Chalav Akum:

pg. 8a - לו יאבה מלך לתת לי עד חצי המלכות ואשתה מחלב שחלבו גוי לא אעשנו

for which in Besamim Rosh No. 36 he has the Rosh ruling leniently in regards to Chalav Akum

pg. 4a – in response to a suggestion to Wessely's suggestion that Jews should become acculturated with the nation in which they are living, he writes:

- ולא עוד אלא שדרש ברבים להתקרב אל הגוים, ואנו אין לנו אלא שנתרחק מהם ב־תכלית הריחוק , ולא נבקש שלומם וטובתם כל הימים , ואם בשנאתם אותנו רבים צרינו הקמים עלינו לכלותינו, אדרבא זה הוא לטוב לנו כי עי׳׳ז נזכה לקדש שם שמים לעיני הגוים ומיום שחרב המקדש ובטלו הקרבנות , אין נחת רוח להשי"ת גדול מזה בהיותינו נהרגים ונשחטים כקרבן ועולה על קדושת שמו הגדול

and in Besamim Rosh no. 301 he writes that there is no obligation to die for the sake of heaven even during a time of שמד, but he repeats a similar point to that in K'tav Yosher that Mesiras Nefesh is a means to avoid assimilation:

אבל ישראל קדושים. מעצמם מותרים נפש. שלא להטמעות בין הגוים שזה הוא כאלו

מת ועבר ובטל

From the above, we see that the issues discussed in Besamim Rosh line up with the concerns of Saul Berlin in his K'tav Yosher. The discerning reader can probably find many more parallels.

[1] R Banet's letter to R Tzvi Hirsch Berlin was first published by Salomon Rosenthal in the literary supplement of “Der Orient” No. 6 53-55 No. 9 140-141 , and then later republished in Parashat Mordechai (1889) No.5. Another similar letter was published in והמה בכתובים, העתקות כתבי־יד מנחלת האחים לבית יעללעש pg. 20.

Chayei Yehuda and maskilic cognitive dissonance

Yitzhak has a brilliant post on two reactions to R' Yehuda Aryeh Modena's autobiography Chayei Yehuda which portrays him as being "all too human." I find the comment of R' Goldschmidt extremely puzzling as he refers to Chida's view of R' Yehuda -

וגם החיד”א בשם הגדולים לא כתב בגנותו, הגם שלא הללו

But neglects to mention that in that very entry Chida refers to Chayei Yehuda quoting a comment from the Sefer in regard to Gilgul (Chida also refers to Modena in Maagel Tov). At best, he could insist that the maskilim interpolated their own thoughts into the work. As in regard to Megillas Sefer, parallels abound and the accusation would be really foolish as well.

An interesting counter example of cognitive dissonance this time from the maskilic side can be found in Igros Yashar pg. 82 ff. In this case, because Yashar could not accept that his hero would believe something so irrational. He therefore argues with great vehemence that Chayei Yehuda could not have existed (for the really ridiculous reason that "why would he wait to write his memoirs until the end of his life) and - making use of an argument that has become very popular today to dismiss any view of any great Rabbi that doesn't conform to contemporary standards of religiosity - he insists that it must be some mistaken student who believed in Kabbalah who copied it over in the name of his teacher.

(Adelman in his dissertation refers to Yashar's arguments as a "multiplicity of mutually exclusive and self-defeating responses to the problem of Modena's supposed recantation of his views against transmigration. Today it would be argued that Reggio's scholarly accomplishments were in the service of his ideas and beliefs. It was, in fact, Reggio's desire to undermine the Kabbalah which prompted his research into the life and writings of Modena in the first place. When he found information which was contrary to his requirements, such as Azulai's report aobut Modena's recantation, he probed even deeper to explain it away. )

Similarly, A. Geiger conveniently omits the Gilgul story in his biography of Modena. So much for the great "objective critical scholarship" of the 19th century.

Here is Howard Adelman's analysis of Chida's excerpt of Chayei Yehuda in his exhaustive dissertation on Modena pg. 28 ff.:

Azulai wrote that Modena had recorded all that had happened to him during his life, including personal matters. According to Azulai, Modena had also written that at first he did not believe in transmigration of souls, already a well known fact by 1774. Then, according to Azulai's report a neighbor of Modena's gave birth to a son who within a month became very sick. When after six months the infant began to expire, his mother called in Modena to recite biblical verses. While Modena was there, the infant sang hymns, said the "Shema" (Deuteronomy 6: 4), and then died.
From that day on, according to Azulai, Modena believed in transmigration of souls because he had seen that the young child had the soul of an old sage in him. 30

This account was very important for future studies of Modena. It seemingly contradicted all of Modena's anti-kabbalistic writings. The appearance of this story in Azulai's catalogue motivated many subsequent researchers to seek more information about Modena's views on Kabbalah as
well as to find a copy of Hayye Yehudah. Many tendentious views of Modena would be based on Azulai' s account. Most writers, especially those who opposed Kabbalah, considered
it to have been a forgery.31

The story related by Azulai is not in any known manuscript of Hayye Yehuda~, including the autograph copy. However, it still needs explanation. 32 It appears unlikely both that Azulai actually had a copy of Hayye Yehudah in his possession and that he invented the story in its entirely.

Had he desired to discredit Modena on the basis of his autobiography, there was enough incriminating material in it itself, so that there would have been no need to forge material. It is also noteworthy that Azulai did not make use of the great wealth of bibliographic information contained in Hayye Yehudah. Significantly, Azulai wrote that he had "seen" Hayye Yehudah. It is possible that on his short visit to Venice in 1754, when he saw copies of Ari nohem, he also got a brief look at Hayye Yehudah and made quick hostile references to that work in his journal, too. 33

Twenty- f.ive years later, after having read many books and manuscripts with descriptions of similar incidents, including one in Sefer elim by Joseph Solomon Delmedigo,34
who was mentioned regularly by Modena in Ari nohem, and another in Ari nohem itself concerning a man's soul which entered a young girl because he had denied that Simon bar Yohai was the author of the Zohar, 35 Azulai confused some of the details of these stories with Modena. Two additional facts may have contributed to such confusion. At the time that Modena was becoming known as the leading anti-kabbalistic figure, the church had just exposed him as
a newly discovered convert to Catholicism.

Further, Modena himself may have planted the seed for Azulai's claim at the end of Ari nohem: there he wrote to Joseph Hamitz, his former student and a leading kabbalist, to whom the book had been addressed, that he hoped Hamitz would respond to the charges raised against the Kabbalah in Ari nohem, but cautioned Hamitz not to try to refute them in hopes that Modena, as the kabba1ists claimed about Maimonides, too would recant his views against Kabbalah. 36

As opposed to the attitude of Goldschmidt, Shir was able (at least at first) to accept that a great man can have faults and still be considered great (Igrot Shir pg. 71):

מספר חיי יהודה, אשר האיש המסופר ממנו גדול בעיני מאז עד מאד, ועוד גם עתה אחרי כל החסרונות הנודעים לנו ממנו.

However on learning of Modena's heterodox views as expressed in his sharp criticism of Rabbinic Judaism in Kol Sachal, Shir quickly changed his tune (Igrot Shir pg. 208):

לא נבהלתי משמיע קול סכל ושאנת אריה, זה האריה אשר נגלו עתה שניו הטורפות ונראה למחנק נפשות, כי היה מאז חשוד בעינינו, אחרי ידענוהו למבלה זמנו במשך רוב שנותיו לשחק בקוביא, ועם כל ידיעותיו וחמדת לשונו ונועם תוכחתו לרבים בפה ובכתב, לא היה יכול לשחרר את נפשו מתאוה בזויה כזאת. ועתה ננלה לעיני כל כי מרמה היתה כל תוכחתו. צוף על לשונו ולענה בקרב לבו. ותחת אשר קרא לעצמו בונה[1], סותר יקרא, כי סותר באמת כל התורה . ועד מהרה נתתי לו שם ויד בין איזה חנפים וצבועים אשר לבשתנו נמצאים גם בעמנו

[1] A reference to Modena's commentary on Ein Yaakov - HaBoneh

[I see Artscroll's Early Achronim has an entry on Modena which I look forward to reading, I suspect their treatment of him was similar to that of R Azariah De Rossi.]