TODAY: Fascinating English Tour in the Old City

This afternoon, Wednesday, February 5, there will be”h be an English-delivered tour of the Muslim quarter, given by Daniel Luria, executive director of Ateret Kohanim.
The tour is meant for yeshiva students who are currently studying in Israel, and will be given for free (the guy giving the tour charges usually 50-60 shekels per person…).
Meeting 13:45 at Sha’ar Shchem train station. Aiming to finish somewhere around 15:00.
This tour is expected to be fascinating and uplifting.
For more info: 0545373574
[Communicated.]

Kabbalah Really Belongs to the MISNAGDIM!

Where’s the ‘Snag Kabbalah?

I went into my neighborhood seforim shop (in Flatbush, we have neighborhood seforim shops, it’s the B&N that necessitates a big trip “out of town”) to peruse the new translation (by R’ Avraham Yaakov Finkel, noted translator of short books for school fundraisers) of the Nefesh haChaim, the central expression of Misnagdish Torah philosophy by the founder of the Lithuanian Yeshiva Movement, R’ Chaim Volozhin.
It looked rather small for a book whose modern editions tend to be fairly large and thick. I started flipping through the back and saw that the entire text was included in Hebrew in the back. Whoops – filler! How much actual English text is there? Not a lot, and the print isn’t even that small.

Why is that? There was a note from the author at the beginning, that he had not translated the kabbalistic material. Huh?

One of the big strengths of the Nefesh haChaim is that it speaks in the same kabbalistic idiom as the Chassidic books. It was addressing the same early-19th-century audience, and making a case for the primacy of Torah study over other non-prayer activities. I’ve even seen some of the same imagery in both R’ Chaim’s writings and in the writings of the last Lubavitcher Rebbe – that the mitzvos are a rope between ourselves and God, strands being severed by sins. By cutting out the Kabbalah, R’ Finkel has cut the meat off the bones of the Father of Yeshivos, leaving his work a poor meal indeed.

Note, I haven’t extensively studied the Nefesh haChaim, so it will wait for someone more knowledgeable to write a proper review. I’m just talking about the form; the substance needs deeper appreciation.

But what about Kabbalah for Misnagdim? Following the publication of the works of the Ari, Kabbalah spread throughout the Jewish world, supplanting the pure intellectualism of post-Maimonidean philosophy. This led to the Sabbatean disaster, and in an effort to root out secret conventicles of Sabbateans, different communities had different approaches. The Sephardim, I don’t know, there was some strong opposition, but did secret Sabbateans continue much among them? The Ashkenazim were plagued with them throughout the 18th century. Two distinct approaches developed:

The Chasidim gave a quasi-messianic role to their Tzaddikim, their Rebbes. Not that “every Chasid thinks his Rebbe is Moshiach”, which is a canard put forth by some Lubavitchers to justify their continuing belief that their late Rebbe is/was [a suitable candidate for] Moshiach. Rather, they believe (see, e.g., Beis Aharon by R’ Aharon of Karlin) that the soul of Moshiach is distributed among all Jews, with Tzaddikim having a somewhat higher proportion of that soul.

The Misnagdim outlawed Kabbalah. This continues to this day. Until the end of the 18th century, the major rabbinic figures in the Ashkenazic world were almost all Kabbalists, and thought of their Judaism to some extent through its filters. Some of the greatest wrote amulets for the common folk, who believed wholeheartedly in the Kabbalah. It’s clear that the general run of educated Jews in that time knew Kabbalah, because the Chasidic writings for them are all written in Kabbalistic idiom. But after the founding of the yeshiva at Volozhin, Kabbalah was taken out of the yeshiva curriculum. So today, Misnagdim don’t know Kabbalah. And there are no more Misnagdish Sabbateans, nor are there messianic obsessions such as arose over the last Lubavitcher Rebbe.

However, the Chasidim and Sephardim still deal in Kabbalah. Only kooks and entrepreneurs (such as the Bergs and lehavdil R’ Aryeh bar Tzadok) seem to be truly involved in Kabbalah in the yeshivish and modernish world. More and more kabbalah is becoming available, even in English, but it’s still frowned upon. The closest one gets is an underground shiur in Tanya at major yeshivos, such as Philadelphia or Ner Israel. Even at YU, the “intro to Kabbalah” is taught in the college and the graduate school, not in the yeshiva.

Hence this edition of the Nefesh haChaim, and both English translations of the Ramban’s commentary on the Torah, have excised all Kabbalistic material, even though that’s a lot of the meat of the writers’ material.

The Sabbateans have been gone for 200 years in western Orthodoxy. Is it perhaps time for the yeshivish world to rejoin the rest of Judaism, and expose its practitioners to Kabbalah in some organized, controlled way?

From ThanBook, here.

Some Arguments in Favor of the Natrona’i Gaon-Ra’avad Techeiles Method

How to tie your tzitzit: arguments in favour of Ra’avad

About half a decade ago, I wrote an article justifying the opinion of haRav Bar Hayyim regarding how to tie tzitzit. It was the first time I had tried my hand at this sort of thing, and it came out a bit of a mess. I recently took another look at it, however, and I found the arguments more convincing than I remembered, though it needed a lot of editing. So without further ado here is my first foray into Rabbinics (Click here).

From Haggadah Berurah, here.

המסר של גאולת עזרא: לתאם ציפיות

מתוך “זכרונות השרידי אש” (הרב יחיאל יעקב ויינברג זצ”ל), ירושלים, שבט תש”פ, עמוד קל”ז – טרי מהדפוס:
זכורני שבהספד שנשא תלמידו של בעל ה”שרידי אש”, הרב קלמן כהנא זצ”ל, ב”שלושים” לפטירתו, סיפר שהוא בא לבקר את הרב ויינברג במונטרה, וכשנסע ליווה אותו הרב לתחנת הרכבת וטרם עלה הרב כהנא על הרכבת הביא לו הרב את הפסוק “ורבים מהכהנים והלוים וראשי האבות הזקנים אשר ראו את הבית הראשון ביסדו זה הבית בעיניהם בכים בקול גדול” (עזרא ג, י”ב).
“ואמר לי הרב שהבכי של הזקנים לא היה על ההשוואה בין בית המקדש הראשון בתפארתו והבית השני “בעליבותו” ביחס לבית הראשון. הענין עמוק יותר: בשעה שיש לאדם דבר שיקר לו מאד, אם ח”ו הדבר הלך לאיבוד או נחרב, האדם מקווה שיקבל את תמורתו או שהדבר ייבנה מחדש. ומשך תקוותו הארוכה הוא גם חולם חלום כיצד תיראה תמורתו, מה צביון יהיה לבנין החדש. ואם לאחר זמן הדבר נבנה והוא אינו תואם את החלום שהיה לו, הרי הוא מוכרח לבכות. לא בהשוואה בין הבית הראשון לבית השני עסקינן, אלא בין החלום ובין המציאות…”
ויפה הבין הרב כהנא את הרמז, באשר לבנין הארץ.
כי רבה הייתה הציפייה בעת התחדשות היישוב היהודי בארץ ישראל.

[הובא בפורום אוהבי ציון ע”י אחד הקוראים.]