Avodah Mailing List

Volume 03 : Number 193

Monday, August 30 1999

• OUtsiders becoming insiders
• co-ed schools
• Re: R. Zevin censorship
• Re: Historical Perspectives
• Re: Revisionism:Black and white answers
• Re: co-ed schools
• Elite transmissions
• Re: Historical Perspectives
• Re: co-ed schools
• Eit sheqer sofirim: The lying pens of scribes.
• Re: Elite transmissions
• Re: historical revisionism
• Re: Historical Perspectives
• Re: Historical Perspectives
• Re: Eit sheqer sofirim: The lying pens of scribes.
• Re: Single girsah?
• Re: more on "lower criticism"

Kenneth G Miller wrote:

> However, the outsider views *himself* as just another Jew trying to
> understand Hashem's Torah, and I think that he is fully justified in
> resenting the doors which are closed in his face, and his chiyuv of
> Talmud Torah requires him to continue pursuing of the answers.

The ancient answer it to find yourself a rav. It also helps to have
associated issues to ask of a talmid chachom which provides opportunities
for discussing the more controversial ones. Walking up to a talmid chachom
and asking - what really happened in x - is a sure indication that you are
an outsider. As is asking an issue which requires 4 hours to provide
proper context. From my experience - the best way to get a talmid chachom
to open up is to become his driver or to get a ride in the car when he is
amongst friends. Rabbi Berkowitz recounted how Rav Aaron Kotler asked him
to accompany him on a train ride to Maine for a shiva call. Rav Aaron did
not like to fly. Rabbi Berkowitz said he packed various seforim so that he
would have what to talk about. Much to his surprise - Reb Aaron just
wanted to shmues. The Chofetz Chaim also liked to shmues. The setting is
very critical - so is making sure the gabbai is not around and the phone
is disconnected. Shiva calls and chasunos are also opportunities. Many
talmidei chachomim are isolated and really enjoy a relaxed conversation -
problem is to convince them that you are trustworthy with what they
divulge and that you are a good listener - and that you actually
understand what they are talking about. If they thought you would
broadcast their comments or publish them - they will be much more
reticent.

I am sure other members of this group have stories about how they got a
gadol or informant to talk.


                                   Daniel Eidensohn

p.s. forgot to mention the most important factor - don't be shy and don't
take it personally if you get your head bitten off every once in a while..

>  Have you opposed co-ed schools because everyone from
>  RYBS and rightwards was against them? Did you stop saying Hallel on Yom
>  Ha'atzma'ut because everyone from RYBS and rightwards was against it?
>  
Huh? What about Maimonides school?
RYBS was against hallel for technical not ideologocal reasons.
I don't know what you mean by right and left since all chied rabbis
of Israel have said to say hallel, at least without a bracha.
Does that make them left of RYBS?

Eli Turkel

On Mon, 30 Aug 1999, Shalom Carmy wrote:

> 
> This matter was aired in the letters to the editor column in Tradition,
> some time in the early 1980's. As I recall, the representative of
> ArtScroll claimed that the deletions were made at the request of R. 
> Zevin's widow, communicating his wishes. Why R. Zevin himself kept
> silent edition after edition, and why he told his wife to insist on the
> deletions only in English translations prepared after his death, remains
> a mystery. 
> 

Why does it remain a mystery?

Why didn't you (Tradition) send somebody to query the widow or the other
heirs?

YGB

Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
Cong. Bais Tefila, 3555 W. Peterson Ave., Chicago, IL, 60659
ygb@aishdas.org, http://www.aishdas.org/baistefila

On Mon, 30 Aug 1999 Joelirich@aol.com wrote:

> Just a practical point, when one acknowledges the above theory in their
> publications, it undermines the credibility of everything they publish.
> Interestingly (to me at least) is that HKBH seems to have taken a
> different tack in chumash by raising apparent shortcomings in the
> avot(at whatever level we understand those shortcomings as per our
> previous discussions) 
>

How is this point relevant to the issue we are discussing? 

YGB

Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
Cong. Bais Tefila, 3555 W. Peterson Ave., Chicago, IL, 60659
ygb@aishdas.org, http://www.aishdas.org/baistefila

Steve Katz wrote:

> Just as stealing one dollar is as much g'nevah as stealing 100,000, no
> matter for what the cause. So too revision of history to suit your own
> purposes no matter how noble is revisionism. Emes is emes and anything
> short of that is not.

Read introduction of the Ktzos.

> Apparently  the defenders of AS see this not as an
> issue of black and white; but emes is just that. Rav Aharon Solovechik
> has said "when emes and sholom are in conflict, we follow emes."
> kvct
> steve

Would appreciate sources justifying such a rigid position. In particular
what was the context for Rav Soloveichik's assertion. There are a number of
contrary positions in the literature which would argue that such an
assertion is not meant to be taken literally. Halacha is full of examples of
permitting prohibited actions under certain circumstances. In fact I seem to
recall there are only three things one must die for rather than transgress -
is telling the truth one of  them? It is hard to believe that he holds that
under no circumstances is one allowed to tell less than 100%  truth.

Daniel Eidensohn

On Mon, 30 Aug 1999, Eli Turkel wrote:

> Huh? What about Maimonides school?  RYBS was against hallel for

R' Schechter writes explicitly in the Nefesh Ha'Rav that RYBS only had
Maimonides co-ed because he could not get away with it being separate.
That is the source of my information. Ayain sham!

> technical not ideologocal reasons.  I don't know what you mean by right
> and left since all chied rabbis of Israel have said to say hallel, at
> least without a bracha.  Does that make them left of RYBS? 
>

Not all the Chief Rabbis, as R' Ovadia Yosef has a teshuva, I believe,
specifically against Hallel. But, the point was not to assess Hallel on
Yom Ha'atzma'ut per se, and therefore the issue of who did and did not say
is moot, rather, how a dyed in wool Hallel Sayer will react to opposing
viewpoints.

YGB

Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
Cong. Bais Tefila, 3555 W. Peterson Ave., Chicago, IL, 60659
ygb@aishdas.org, http://www.aishdas.org/baistefila

RDE has posted a number of responses along the lines of the following:  <An
interested outsider can also acquire some esoteric knowledge but is more
like to being given the run around or simply not have the opportunity to
talk with someone who knows. Sometimes the insider gets his information from
an academic source or newspaper but he than has a chance of clarifying it
with sources within the yeshiva. Again my point was that the existence of
Artscroll biographies and laws of lashon harah does not meant that those who
have need to know are denied the information ..>

While I believe there is a great deal in what RDE says about the
availability of "true' information within the "elite' circles of the
yeshivoh velt, I'm afraid there is much to be taken with at least a few
grains of salt- at least insofar as the impression is conveyed that this -
let's call it closely held, and generally oral - mechanism of preservation
and transmission , is either capable of sustaining a detailed picture of
events over many generations, or even wants to.   let me expand a bit  (hey,
I'm sitting at my own word processor here and you guys are wherever, who's
gonna stop me?).   On the most obvious level, there are many "elites" who,
while possessing  real -as well as false - information about a relatively
narrow topic (say, what really went on in voloshin  or whatever) simply have
little across the board insight.  this is not to gainsay the value of
traditions they are privy to, it is just a restatement of the unremarkable
insight that nobody was omnipresent or omniscient.  In many cases it has
been demonstrated that successor talmidim, who would be accounted in
anybody's elite, in fact maintained conflicting descriptions of the same
event.   most of the litvishe yeshivoh world represented these days by, e.g.
ponovitch, was quite clueless about what went on in chassidishe circles.
they were often clueless about what went on in neigboring yeshivos.  far
from being a cohesive fraternity of "elites" who all had keys to that same
locked file cabinet there was a community amongst which information, some
true, some false, some somewhere in between, and in any event all generally
quite fragmentary, all circulated.  Again this is no criticism - it happened
with amoroim and tannoim, why be surprised to find it operative amongst
today's, and yesterday's, gidolim?  Thus there are many conflicting eiduyos
within the "elites" about actions or intents of of the chasam sofer and
there is no doubt much to be mined, if only access were given by the
soloveitchick family re voloshin or even the groh - but enough conflicting
stories already exist by similarly (even better) placed elite members from
the past, that the implication that the full story is known amongst the
initiates, simply not shared, ought be greeted with a rather skeptical eye. 

let me illustrate by one personal story.  unlike RDE I do not often have the
opportunity, especially these days, to go for car rides with card carrying
elite gidolim, and I certainly envy him both opportunity and zichus.  but I
have had the odd exeperience poh veshom.  I once had the opportunity to
engage in an extended conversation with the late R. Yechezqel Sarna, z"l.
In the course of this conversation , R. Sarna - certainly an insider's
insider of a godole if ever there was one - recounted to me and my two
companions some insider tales from the "old days" - in particular some
matters pertaining to the interaction between R. Chaim Brisker and one of
his well known and favorite students, part of the torah she'bi'al peh that
circulated amongst the inner elites which RDE has so eloquently described.
These very small snippets of  insider information were in turn being shared
with us because of an hashqofic point that R. sarna was engaged in making
clear to us.  the problem is that R. sarna's insider's version of the
information was in fact quite wrong, and wrong in such a way that just
happened to re-inforce, indeed to make, the hashqofic point he was driving
home to us.  Unbeknownst to R. sarna, one of my companions was none other
than the grandson of the favorite talmid in question (R. sarna could
certainly be excused for not making this connection considering how we all
looked) who was quite well versed in his family's history and immediately
caught the tendentious distortions (unintentional on R. sarna's part it goes
without saying) in the presentation.  and lest one think that it was R.
sarna who had the correct version of events rather than the pipsqueak of a
grandson, my friend later produced documentary proof supporting his version
(it hinged in part on the date of R. Chaim's death, a matter of public
record).  Now what can one learn from the vignette, at least ligabei the
inyon at issue. While one hesitates to draw cosmic conclusions from such, it
conforms to and reflects everything one knows about the nature of such oral
transmissions in many other socio-historical venues- compounded here by the
problem that the community of transmitters, RDE's elite, is frankly so
small.    So excellent source of true materials and unpublished insider
information? beyond any tzel shel sofeiq, but complete? unrelievedly
accurate?  not a prayer.

I  will also take the opportunity to comment RYGB's own vignette, where he
reports his  personal confirmation that the netziv's intro of secular
studies was well known to the elite even prior to thr RJJS article.  First
ligabei the article itself - while it is an excellent piece of work
reconstructing the issue at hand i confess to being puzzled by the tzimmes
over it.  In the end, the commonly held -pre article - view in fact holds up
quite nicely.  The netziv did close the yeshivoh over the intro of secular
studies into voloshin.  That in the final stages he may have, dragged
kicking and screaming, indeed briefly allowed a smidgeon of well isolated
secular infiltration into a closely guarded corner of the yeshivoh property,
did not mean anybody was going to confuse this with a european gymnasium or
even a jewish school "mi'ta'am". When this laughably small secular component
didn't satisfy the authorities for very long, he indeed closed the place
rather than acquiesce to the govt pressures. That some - perhaps agenda
driven - individuals disputed the reality of even this temporally brief
smidgeon, well RJJS has done yeoman scholarly service in setting the record
streight  But this hardly requires a radical reappraisal of voloshin or the
character of the netziv.   

But i suspect that there is much more of voloshin, none of which was
reviewed in RJJS's article,  which has been surpressed even within the
"elites".  Thus while i'm sure that all the initiates are aware that there
were major fights surrounding both the initial accession of the netziv to
leadership in voloshin - it's certainly not clear he had the best claim - as
well as the years later initiative to pass on the mantle to his son - and
the conflict with the soloveitchick clan (who actually had a closer family
claim) supporters in both eras- i suspect (though of course don't know) that
many of the details have been surpressed - many for obvious reasons such as
the pichisas kovode for the netziv and r chaim bar ilan that wold attend
preservation of memories of the extraordinary and and highly personally
degrading abuse they were subjected to by the talmidei hayeshivoh, up to and
including physical violence.  Similarly, while i have little doubt that many
of the elites are aware in a roshei piroqim sort of way I also suspect they
may not be fully cognizant of the extraordinary disrespect, even hatred,
which many talmidim bore towards the netziv's second wife or the reasons for
it, or the true nature and extent of the secret societies - both hascalic
and political - which infested voloshin since these , except in a most
general sense,  were not all known in detail even to contemporaries. 
 
Mechy Frankel				H: (301) 593-3949
michael.frankel@dtra.mil			W: (703) 325-1277

Postcript:  I believe World of the Yeshiva was written not by Samulel
Heilman - unless he too published a book by that title- but by Willy
Helmreich, another of my old Washington Heights londsmen who used to be
quite  a boy wonder chazan back in R. Weinberg's shul on 161st.   I also
think that RDE is dismissing Willy's book a little too hastily.  it was a
sociological study of the yeshivoh - by focusing on a single unnamed NYC
yeshivoh, not ponovitch - and fairly illuminating for its limited scope.
his technique was to go spend a year learning there (with the cooperation of
the rosh yeshivoh - the same methodological technique he adopted to study
the working  of a minority gang in st louis, I think , though he enjoyed the
ancillary benefit of learning while free from fears of imminent arrest). but
its not surprising he was never taught that secret elite handshake.   

In a message dated 8/30/99 1:38:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
sbechhof@casbah.acns.nwu.edu writes:

<< 
 > Just a practical point, when one acknowledges the above theory in their
 > publications, it undermines the credibility of everything they publish.
 > Interestingly (to me at least) is that HKBH seems to have taken a
 > different tack in chumash by raising apparent shortcomings in the
 > avot(at whatever level we understand those shortcomings as per our
 > previous discussions) 
 >
 
 How is this point relevant to the issue we are discussing? 
 
 YGB >>
regarding the wisdom of not publishing elements of a gadol's life or work 
that some might find out of sync with what they would like

KVCT
Joel Rich

In a message dated 8/30/99 1:42:11 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
sbechhof@casbah.acns.nwu.edu writes:

<< 
 > Huh? What about Maimonides school?  RYBS was against hallel for
 
 R' Schechter writes explicitly in the Nefesh Ha'Rav that RYBS only had
 Maimonides co-ed because he could not get away with it being separate.
 That is the source of my information. Ayain sham!
  >>
Just for sake of clarification, there are a number of other Talmidei Harav 
that dispute this point in Nefesh Harav.

KVCT,
Joel Rich

me'divar sheqer tirchaq.

RYGB, to my amazement, writes: <Artscroll, IMHO, is, in fact, to be
commended for having deleted this line from hMbH. The translation of hMbH is
not meant to be a historical analysis of R' Shlomo Yosef Zevin (RSYZ)'s
perspectives and views. It would be harmful to RSYZ's image in the
unsophisticated narrow-minded segment (UNMS) of the right-wing community (a
small, but vocal segment, very similar to the UNMS of the left wing..> 

It is hard to believe that our usually thoughtful  RYGB invested much
analytic energy before penning the above.   And I would ask that he consider
the following.  In a recent interchange re the propriety of publishing the
SE's letters, a consensus -quite explicitly subscribed to by RYGB -
converged on the issue of personal privacy and the simple moral imperatives
attendant upon respecting such, especially where some indications exist that
the person  whose privacy is being posthumously violated might have been
disturbed by this.  While there may be halachic vectors here, there is the
common sense of yashrus which is playing a  heavy role.  Some issues are so
basic and the derech so clear that all the sophisticated, pilpulic,
justifications get swept out of the way before the power of the simple emes
discernible to all.  such i thought was RYGB's appreciation of the decision
to publish the SE. 

How much worse is the present situation.  here we have an instance where the
niftar who may no longer protest for himself suffers the worse fate of
literally having his real self replaced by a lie that better serves someone
else's perceived agendum.  can there be a gineivas daas more acute than
this?  is there an arrogance greater than that which determines that a
greater good justifies the repudiation and distortion of what a man really
was, besmirching his memory (for so one may well imagine he would have taken
it) and legacy to replace it by a lie which didn't exist because it makes
this non-him more palatable to some constituency?  is it too much to be
reminded that RZ's works were republished through eleven  (i think) editions
in the course of his lifetime, and he chose never to revise them to fit a
particular segment of the constituency - and let us not forget that
charedism even as we know it today, was not exactly invented in the 1990s,
there was plenty of it around during RZ's lifetime but it was his choice not
to censor himself here.  how dare someone else reverse that course.  if this
indeed makes him more palatable to some set (I have my doubts here.  the
inyon is so well known that I would think that yotzoh any percieved sichar
bihefseidoh.  and of course there is the much more serious issue of his
pro-army-draft  letter,but that is all besides the point) .  
if there is indeed a constituency which needs role models of a
pre-determined sort, let them use real ones.  There are plenty of gidolim
who were anti-zionist to the core who would serve well. Additionally there
are gidolim who perhaps never read newspapers, who despised secular
education (never even read uncle tom's cabin ), who promote young men's
torah learning as a replacement for the army, who think that sheirus li'umi
is an abomination, or that girl's schools as tame as michlala are in
cheirem....  pick one of them and hold him up as an example.  or simply
invent a convenient fictional character - a santa claus lihavdil - but don't
arrogate the right to decide that your mission is to educate UNMS outweighs
your moral obligation to not lie about the deceased.  And if this actually
causes some of the jewishly shallowly educated UNMS to "repudiate RSYZ and
his works", well they will not have lost much. By accepting someone who was
never there, they repudiated the real RSYZ along time ago. 

Sheqer like shochad apparently has a power that may  "yi'aveir einei piqchim
(RYGB?), ve'saleif divire tzadiqim (RZ)".I would think that RYGB's same
sense of simple yosher which pushed him to such excesses of indignation in
an instance of publication of  truth, would, al achas kamoh vekamoh, cause
him to rethink this one and not applaud such a mayseh siluf of a real person
who cannot defend himself.  Some matters are so clear and the yoshor so
straight that pilpul ought not even be tried.  This is one of them.

eichoh somiru, chachomim anachnu vi'soras hashem eetonu. ochain, hineh
lisheqer osoh eit sheqer sofirim. (targumic  exegesis preferred)

Mechy Frankel				H: (301) 593-3949
michael.frankel@dtra.mil			W:(703) 325-1277	

The intersting thing is that for the most part much of this material is
recorded in R' Karlinsky's work on the Beis Halevi - but has nver been
translated. I believe this is in accordance with the principle I espouse,
a variation on an old theme:

Not everything one thinks need be said
Not everything one says need be written
Not everything one writes need be publishe
Not everthing one publishe need be translated

On Mon, 30 Aug 1999 Michael.Frankel@dtra.mil wrote:

> But i suspect that there is much more of voloshin, none of which was
> reviewed in RJJS's article, which has been surpressed even within the
> "elites".  Thus while i'm sure that all the initiates are aware that
> there were major fights surrounding both the initial accession of the
> netziv to leadership in voloshin - it's certainly not clear he had the
> best claim - as well as the years later initiative to pass on the mantle
> to his son - and the conflict with the soloveitchick clan (who actually
> had a closer family claim) supporters in both eras- i suspect (though of
> course don't know) that many of the details have been surpressed - many
> for obvious reasons such as the pichisas kovode for the netziv and r
> chaim bar ilan that wold attend preservation of memories of the
> extraordinary and and highly personally degrading abuse they were
> subjected to by the talmidei hayeshivoh, up to and including physical
> violence.  Similarly, while i have little doubt that many of the elites
> are aware in a roshei piroqim sort of way I also suspect they may not be
> fully cognizant of the extraordinary disrespect, even hatred, which many
> talmidim bore towards the netziv's second wife or the reasons for it, or
> the true nature and extent of the secret societies - both hascalic and
> political - which infested voloshin since these , except in a most
> general sense, were not all known in detail even to contemporaries. 
> 


YGB

Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
Cong. Bais Tefila, 3555 W. Peterson Ave., Chicago, IL, 60659
ygb@aishdas.org, http://www.aishdas.org/baistefila

In a message dated 8/30/99 2:14:08 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
sbechhof@casbah.acns.nwu.edu writes:

<< So, tell me, when was the last time you integrated the right
 wing position just by reading that some Gadol held that way. Have you
 limited your secular studies, say, because R' Boruch Ber Leibovitz was
 adamantly opposed? Have you opposed co-ed schools because everyone from
 RYBS and rightwards was against them? Did you stop saying Hallel on Yom
 Ha'atzma'ut because everyone from RYBS and rightwards was against it?
  >>
Not quite what I was saying. I guess I understand why you would want to put a 
positive light on the editing by Artscroll. All I am getting at is that 
honesty would compel Artscroll to include more controversial material, if 
authentic, and let the chips fall where they may with regard to those on the 
right fringe. The shitos of R' Zevin are neither right wing nor left wing, 
merely his shitos. Those on the right who might get turned off to him because 
of some ideas which are unexpected coming from someone they respect should 
consider the possibility that perhaps this seemingly "Zionist" shito needs to 
be taken seriously, especially because it comes from someone held in such 
high regard by them. R' Zevin is a big enough Talmid Chacham that I think he 
doesn't require protection from those few people who are too immature to deal 
with an honest discussion of Halachic issues. And by deleting this material, 
Artscroll does all serious Talmidim of R' Zevin, all those who are gettintg 
their first introduction to him, all those who are interested in the respons 
of Gedolei Torah to the Zionist  experiment, and most of all, R' Zevin's 
legacy a great disservice. 

As for my respect, well, don't let my perhaps caustic tone distract you. All 
my remarks were made with the assumption that I hold the members of this 
list, even those with whom I disagree, in the highest regard, R'YGB not the 
least. 

As far as some of the other points. I think it is a little disingenuous to 
put R'YBS in the category of those who oppose coed schools, or Hallel on Yom 
Ha'atzmaut. It is however, clever, as it makes it harder to argue. His 
approach to the co-ed issue is a little more complex than you make it seem. 
And his opposition to Hallel on Yom Ha'atzmaut, as far as I understand, was 
not concerned with Zionism as it was with the general reluctance of the 
Lithuanian, and more specifically Brisker, Gedolim to tamper with the order 
of Davening, or the text of Brachot.
And its not a question of whether or not I integrate the "Right wing" shitos 
of R' Baruch Ber et al. The question is how much respect do I give to the 
"right wing" shitos when they come out of the mouths of the Gedolim more 
identified with the Center and Left. And that is a question about my personal 
observance which you should know better than to ask.

Jordan

  

On Mon, 30 Aug 1999 Joelirich@aol.com wrote:

> regarding the wisdom of not publishing elements of a gadol's life or
> work that some might find out of sync with what they would like
>

Notice how much of the Avos' lives and careers are omitted! Notice that
Ma'aseh Bilha is written euphemistically. Notice, most importantly, that
Ma'aseh Yehuda v'Tamar is *read but not translated* :-) !

YGB

Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
Cong. Bais Tefila, 3555 W. Peterson Ave., Chicago, IL, 60659
ygb@aishdas.org, http://www.aishdas.org/baistefila

In a message dated 8/30/99 9:59:14 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
yadmoshe@netmedia.net.il writes:

<<  Both Rabbi Zlatowitz and Rabbi Sherman are
 intelligent, knowledgeable individuals who are well aware of the
 issues you raise. So are the gedolim with whom they consult. >>

R' Zlatowitz and R' Sherman are indeed Torah Jews of the highest order. That 
does not exempt them from criticism. 

Jordan

On Mon, 30 Aug 1999 Michael.Frankel@dtra.mil wrote:

> me'divar sheqer tirchaq.
> 
> RYGB, to my amazement, writes: <Artscroll, IMHO, is, in fact, to be
> commended for having deleted this line from hMbH. The translation of
> hMbH is not meant to be a historical analysis of R' Shlomo Yosef Zevin
> (RSYZ)'s perspectives and views. It would be harmful to RSYZ's image in
> the unsophisticated narrow-minded segment (UNMS) of the right-wing
> community (a small, but vocal segment, very similar to the UNMS of the
> left wing..>
> 
> It is hard to believe that our usually thoughtful RYGB invested much
> analytic energy before penning the above.  And I would ask that he
> consider the following.  In a recent interchange re the propriety of
> publishing the SE's letters, a consensus -quite explicitly subscribed to
> by RYGB - converged on the issue of personal privacy and the simple
> moral imperatives attendant upon respecting such, especially where some
> indications exist that the person whose privacy is being posthumously
> violated might have been disturbed by this.  While there may be halachic
> vectors here, there is the common sense of yashrus which is playing a
> heavy role.  Some issues are so basic and the derech so clear that all
> the sophisticated, pilpulic, justifications get swept out of the way
> before the power of the simple emes discernible to all.  such i thought
> was RYGB's appreciation of the decision to publish the SE.
> 

There is, I believe, a significant difference between shev ve'al ta'aseh
and kum va'aseh. To publish something onerous is a grave avla. To refrain
from translating is simply not similar.

Now, perhaps I am not making myself clear. I love Rav Zevin's seforim
(particularly La'Torah v'La'Moadim). I would love everyone to think like
Rav Zevin. The world would be a much better place. Artscroll aside, it is
now, let us say it were up to me to decide how I can get everyone to read
as much Rav Zevin as they possibly can. How do I go about doing this,
while not engagin, c"v, in sheker. 

I was faced with a similar problem with the writing of an essay concerning
my personal hero. At the end of one of R' Avrohom Elya Kaplan's essay, he
has a line:

"U'k'chol she'gadla shayachusi l'Elokim gadla shayachusi la'Tziiyonut."

I do not know if RAEK maintained that position later or not, but I do know
that while in the 1910's it would be acceptable, in the 1990's, if I want
to expose a new generation to RAEK, I cannot include that line. Indeed,
to do so would be a grave disservice to RAEK, because the UNMS would
immediately either dismiss him as a "Tzionishe", or, just as bad from my
perspective, embrace him solely on the basis of his being "Dati Leumi".

So, there is no essay - and I have written many - on RAEK that includes
this line. To date, R' Zvi Kaplan, his son, has not protested this
omission, despite the fact that in Ha'Ma'ayan I quote from that essay (on
Herzl) right up to that point, and then stop. I think we both know why he
does not protest: We are all interested in getting RAEK's character,
depth, and learning, to touch as many people as possible, and not have
people who are still in the UNMS turned off. This way, they, inspired,
will study more of RAEK, eventually hit that line, understand it in
context, and be much more likely to then sit back and ponder how things
were eighty years ago, how things have changed, etc.

They wil be engaged in growthful, purposeful thought.

It is to bring as many segments - UNMS and SBMS - to such thoughtfulness
that is my overriding tachlis in life. It is, again, to move them
incrementally along to learn and appreciate all of RSYZ's weltanschaunng
that "bitula zo he kiyuma".

Sometimes that means that values that in the scholarly world may be held
supreme (although I have my doubts) need be appraised in a different
light.

I do not know if this was Artscroll's mechuvan. Probaly not :-). 
Nevetheless, the course they chose, perhaps unwittingly, is the best for
moving Am Yisroel further along the lines of expanded, independent
thought.

YGB

Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
Cong. Bais Tefila, 3555 W. Peterson Ave., Chicago, IL, 60659
ygb@aishdas.org, http://www.aishdas.org/baistefila

R' RWolpoe asks:

>Question: did the Masoretes have one uniform Girso with which to work or were 
there discrepancies at that point in time?  

The fact that it was decided to accept the version of Ben Asher rather than Ben 
Naftali shows that there were at least two major opinions.  In addition other de'ot are 
noted, e.g., R' Moshe Mocha, R' Pinehas Rosh Yeshiva, and Aharon ben Asher's father 
and grandfather.  So, obviously there was not a standard girsah.

RRW's term "girsoh" bothers me just a bit despite its being the correct term. It could 
give the impression that there were substantial differences between the de'ot.  The 
differences were almost infinitesimal.  A look at Sefer Ha-chilufin shows that the 
different opinions were usually on whether and where to place a meteg, whether milra 
or mil'el, dagesh or rafeh, makaf or no makaf etc and on only a small number of words.

Re:  OK Mechy how would you deal with an hypothetical Bayis sheini Torah that was 
unearthed and had deviations from our halachically accepted version?  Would you 
point out that it was nignaz because of its deviations?  Or would you claim that every 
Kosher Torah scroll that ever was matches ours?  That there never ever was a text 
that deviated from what we now have?

What is the need for hypothetical questions and claims for unity.  Why not talk of 
facts. The fact is that Yemenite sifrei Torah have nine spelling differences from the 
Ashkenazi and Sefaradi. The fact is that even in some non-Yemenite sefarim, daka is 
spelled  with an alef instead of a hei.  The fact is that the Ramah (RM"H) states clearly 
that he could not write a sefer Torah because he found that no two were completely 
alike. That is what made him investigate further and fix the present accepted text 
(with a few completions and corrections by the Meiri, and Ohr Torah).  Are we to 
passel all these "deviants"? (I've seen people refuse to make a brakha on a sefer 
written with sefardic or Ari  letters rather than Bet Yosef.)  Rashi, who lived before the 
RM"H, had an "incorrect" sefer.  See his comments on mezuzot and pilagshim where 
he evidently had  spelling different from that of the Keter and the RM"H's text that is 
now our standard.

BTW, whenever a malei-chaser error or a questionable letter shape is found during 
the kri'ah, a Rav, Rosh Yeshiva Ketana and talmid of the Hazon Ish who sits in front of 
me in shul usually smiles as he says "And what makes them think the other sefer is 
any better."

*********************


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