The upshot of this is that they feature a nice big photo of Australian Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, with the proud declaration that he has just signed the London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism, and almost directly underneath it a tweet from @LSHTMPress, to the effect that “we need to understand parasites a lot better to treat them properly”.

At least, I’m assuming that this was an error…

Screenshot:

The above image – that of a religious Jewish man, wrapped in plastic aboard an El-Al plane – has gone “viral”. In the absence of any explanations, people simply made up their own. The Huffington Post’s religion correspondent originally declared that he was protecting himself from the presence of women – an idea that they’d not invented themselves, but which they had copied from the original Reddit post. Having been corrected, their updated article (with the exception of some nonsense about kohanim being “holy men”) at least gets the story straight.

In short, the issue pertains to an area of Jewish legislation that deals with purity and impurity, and to a ruling that was issued by Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv. Rav Elyashiv, who died last year at the age of 102, was the leader of Degel haTorah: the Lithuanian haredi political party that frequently runs with the hasidic Agudat Yisrael under the name of United Torah Judaism. He was accounted by Lithuanian haredim the “gadol hador” – a phrase that literally means “the great one of the generation”, and that refers to his having been considered the halakhic arbiter par excellence. (The phrase has an interesting history, and one that reflects on the gradual concentration of authority within Lithuanian Orthodox Judaism. This is something that I discussed in an earlier post, shortly after his passing).

Purity law is an extremely complex area of halakha, and most people are insufficiently qualified to be able to issue the sorts of rulings on this that were issued by Rav Elyashiv. To provide a very brief explanation of what is going on in the above picture, it is first important to bear in mind a couple of things. For a start, the biblical prohibition of a kohen defiling himself for the dead (eg: Leviticus 21:1-4) is understood by the rabbis, amongst other things, to extend to his inability to enter a cemetery. Secondly, it is also held that corpse impurity, if it rests on top of an object, extends upwards to the sky (Rambam, Hilkhot Tumat Met 19:5).

There is some debate as regards whether or not corpses in Israel transmit impurity through to the surface of the ground anyway, since the law is that they need to be surrounded by slabs between them and the earth, and since the distance between them and the soil constitutes a break in the earth through which the impurity will not travel. This is also the case in Australia, where the law requires corpses to be placed in a box, rather than directly into the ground itself. The general understanding, however, is that since the slabs sink down with time until they are touching the body (and since the box deteriorates) the corpse impurity is still transmitted to the surface of the earth and, from there, upwards to the sky. All of this only applies to the corpses of Jews.

There is a mishna in Eruvin 3:1 (26b-27a), which speaks of the food that one uses in order to symbolically extend the “Shabbat boundary”: the maximum distance that one can walk on Shabbat. This is also not a simple area of legislation, but the only important aspect of it, so far as this particular issue is concerned, is that the food be placed in a location that can be accessed by the person who is utilising it for this purpose. That would seem to mean, then, that if it were going to be used by a priest, it cannot be placed in a cemetery. Rabbi Yehuda, however, says that it can be placed there, since the priest can theoretically make a barrier for himself and enter.

What is a barrier? Technically, it needs to be a completely sealed object, which retains its own shape, and which is comprised of something that does not contract impurity – such as thick plastic, in the case of this ruling. There are problems with doing this on an airplane (some of which are so obvious that they don’t bear mentioning), and the easiest solution is to simply not take flights that are going to go over Jewish cemeteries. That, by the way, is what most people do. But Rav Elyashiv understood the relevant passages to technically permit something of this nature and, notwithstanding the fact that it might be forbidden by the crew onboard the plane, it can assist a kohen who is forced to fly on a plane that, due to unforeseen circumstances, is now going to be flying over a cemetery. How the bag is sealed, whether or not (and when) it can be punctured to allow air holes, as well as the necessary thickness of the bag, etc, are all things that are explained in his ruling.

In the Talmud’s elucidation of the mishna that I mentioned (Eruvin 30b), a debate is recorded between Rebbi and Rabbi Yosi as regards whether or not a priest who has been placed inside a box can be carried through the cemetery by others. Rebbi rules that he would become impure as a result, while Rabbi Yosi rules that he is pure. The way that the Talmud understands this debate is that a moving box is considered by Rabbi Yosi to be an obstacle to impurity (ie: “like a tent”), while Rebbi considers it no such obstacle.

The Rambam codifies the opinion of Rebbi: a moving box is not to be considered “like a tent”, and won’t block the impurity. For our purposes, that means that while a thick plastic bag (which cannot receive impurity at all) will protect the kohen, the airplane in which he is sitting (being that it is a “moving box” made chiefly out of metal) will not.

That said, however, there is another factor at play here as well, and one that explains why the vastly overwhelming majority of Torah observant kohanim would not behave in the fashion depicted above.

There are two components to the prohibition of a priest entering the cemetery: that he not physically enter the cemetery (or pass above it), and that he maintain his purity. Only the first of those two components remains in effect today, since with the absence of any contemporary means of divesting oneself of corpse impurity, and given the ease with which it is transferred, we are all of us impure.

As such, most people would not adopt the practice that is depicted in the image. By avoiding flights that fly over major Jewish cemeteries (and El-Al discloses which of their flights do and which do not), a concerned kohen is able to travel by plane and also fulfil his interpretation of this legislation. In the unforeseen event that he needs to change flights at the last minute, or his plane is rerouted, the issue is out of his control. He is not transgressing, therefore, by being onboard the plane. For him to construct a barrier around himself would be to try and fulfil the second component of the mitzvah, which is to maintain his purity: a moot point, given that he lost it already long ago.

While most people would therefore view the above practice as an unnecessary stringency, it is probably worth mentioning that haredim who adopt it are unlikely to see it as anything other than a practical solution to a contemporary halakhic problem. The stringent position would be to stay at home.

To which of these texts was the post-rock band alluding? Cleverly (if perhaps unintentionally), to both of them.

The inside of the record jacket includes the text from Jeremiah 4:23-27 in both Hebrew and English, putting the passage into its apocalyptic and eschatological context. A context, I should add, that is most fitting for this and for all of their other albums as well. But the te’amim (the trope signs) on the album cover are those of Genesis 1:2. Had they intended the cover to allude to Jeremiah 4:23, they would have utilised a tifcha under the first word and an atnachta under the second. Since they utilised instead two pashtin above the first word and a zaqef qatan above the second, the passage from which they were copying out their text was from Genesis instead.

If they meant to allude to Jeremiah, why did they copy the words from Genesis? Is it possible that they knew what they were doing, and that they were deliberately alluding to both? If so, I like to assume that they were also aware of the fact that they had included a small circle above the /heh/, which is not part of the te’amim at all. It’s a masoretic notation, found within the Leningrad Codex and other representatives of the MT (such as, as is more likely, the BHS) and it serves to direct the reader to a corresponding gloss in the margin.

The marginal gloss for this phrase features a single letter, ב, which represents the number 2. This means that the phrase in question occurs twice within the biblical literature – the second instance, of course, being Jeremiah 4:23. Copying the te’amim from Genesis and including the circle is both the smartest and the subtlest way that they could have alluded to both passages simultaneously. I really hope that they intended to do so.

A Currency of Need

As early as 1914, when faced with the depreciation of the German Papiermark and the fact that the metal used to mint coins was worth more than the coins themselves, institutions that were unaffiliated with the German banks began printing a makeshift currency that could be used in certain specific locations within the towns of their origin. This currency has come to be known as Notgeld (“Necessity Money”), and it takes a variety of forms. Largely worthless at the time (although in some cases their usage did help to stimulate the economy), they quickly became an object for collectors. Some of them are exceptionally rare.

Given that they were of limited usage, and given the interest that people had in them as works of art, many institutions that produced this currency (be they hotels, or post-offices, or town councils) took the time to decorate them with motifs of religious or cultural value. After the defeat of Germany in the Great War and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, several of the Notgeld issued were of an antisemitic character. The following are the items (all uncirculated) that I have thus far collected.

Brakel, Germany (2 mark, 1921):

The inscription on the front tells of a [Jewish] man who suspended his youngest child out of the window to defecate, but to his surprise a councilman was walking by at the time. It concludes by noting that this was a “true story” (Wahrhaftige), which occurred in 1655.

On the back, you can see the guilty Jew chained to a post, with a vulture looking down upon him:

Sternberg, Germany (1 mark, 1921):

These ones comprise a series (a Serienscheine), which concerns itself with the purported desecration of the host in 1492, when a priest named Peter Däne alleged that the local Jews had been torturing Jesus after death. The first item in the series shows him selling the hosts to the Jews:

The second item in the series depicts the Jews torturing the hosts:

The third and final item in the series shows the Jews being punished for their desecration:

The backs of the three notes are all decorated with a picture of Sternberg in 1492, the year that 26 Jews were burned at the stake for this fictitious crime:

Tostedt, Germany (50 pfennig 1921):

The front of the note depicts two Jews, hanged from a tree and surrounded by ravens. The German declares that “this should happen to all of the profiteers and Germany would be better off”.

Frankfurt, Germany (25 pfennig, 1921):

Presented in the style of the surrealists, this note depicts crooked and, in one case, possibly hornéd Jews. The symbol on the chest of the man in the foreground is possibly reminiscent of the communist hammer and sickle. Unlike the other items, there is nothing overtly antisemitic about this one, and it is only the historical context that makes of it something foreboding.

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The Currency of Death

As they had done in Oranienberg as early as 1933, the Nazis introduced money to Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943, and for much the same reason. A “model camp”, and one to which the Red Cross had access, it was important to carefully decorate the thin veneer of normalcy. In the infamous and unreleased propaganda film that the Nazis made of Theresienstadt, Jews can be seen lining up outside a bank, waiting to deposit their money. Depositing it in the bank was one of very few things that could actually be done with it, as a result of which they are almost all of them in uncirculated condition.

The designer of the notes was a Jew named Peter Kien, who was under instructions from Reinhard Heydrich to make the Moses on the banknotes look semitic, and to ensure that the sixth commandment (“Thou shalt not kill”) be excluded from the picture. This second stipulation has led to the erroneous claim that Moses’ hand is obscuring the sixth commandment. This claim can be found in Joel Forman, “Holocaust Numismatics” (1997), John Sandrock, “The Use of Banknotes as an Instrument of Propaganda” (2004) and Stephen Feinstein, “Art and Imagery of the Ghetto – During and After the Holocaust” (2005). Embarrassingly, this misinformation is even perpetuated by the Tauber Holocaust Library and Zachor, 2005: two sources whose authors I would expect to be more familiar with Hebrew. In actual fact, Moses’ hand is partially obscuring the fourth commandment (the letters כו of the word זכור can be glimpsed through his fingers, meaning that this version of the decalogue is the one found in Exodus 20), and completely obscuring the fifth (“Remember the Shabbat” and “Honour thy parents”, respectively).

The Nazis wanted the money to serve as part of an elaborate illusion. Simply introducing the notes was not sufficient for this fantasy to appear real. Therefore, they made a significant effort toward having the money seem like it was actually being used. Around eighty people were given jobs keeping track of payroll, coupons, and salaries. Meticulous records were kept, all as part of the illusion that the money had some sort of value. Everyone who worked in the ghetto, or was a prominent figure, was paid a monthly salary that varied by job, sex, and status…

The Nazis wanted to get the money to circulate, but without a real value, the inmates did not see a lot of incentive in earning the money or spending it. Everyone was required to save some of their wages, but ultimately there was nothing to spend them on. Shops were set up in which it was ostensibly possible to buy the items that had been confiscated from prisoners upon entering the ghetto. These items were priced so high, however, that the money was never really taken seriously.

- Ray Feller and Steve Feller, Silent Witnesses: Civilian Camp Money of World War II (ed. J.E. Boling; 2007), 81.

The design on all of these notes is the same, although the notes increase in size as the denomination increases. Each note is dated January 1st 1943 (although they only became available mid-April of that year) and features on the back the signature of Jakob Edelstein, who was the first Elder of the Jews in Theresienstadt and who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944:

(The above images are not photos that I have taken of my own banknotes, but are images that I downloaded.)

Unlike the notes from Theresienstadt, the notes from the Lodz ghetto are all thoroughly well-used. There, having a little money might mean the difference between life and death. As is discussed in Ray and Steve Feller’s Silent Witnesses: Civilian Camp Money of World War II, providing the ghetto inmates with a currency of their own was but one of many ways in which the Nazis were able to reappropriate all of their property. Instead of simply stealing what they wanted, they purchased it from them and converted the money (minus a 30% tax) into the ghetto’s currency. Were somebody to escape, the currency would be useless to them outside the ghetto. Inside the ghetto, it was needed in order to survive.

This item is a postage stamp, valued at 10 pfennig. All such notes are dated either “17 April 1942″ or “15 Mai 1944″, the latter date being within three months of the liquidation of the ghetto and the extermination of its remaining members.

The following images are of the actual items that I purchased. They each feature the use of the menorah as an image, as well as that of the magen david – both by itself and in the form of barbed wire. Although it may be hard to see on the images below, each note also features an identifying mark that, together with its serial code, the nature of the printing and the fabric of the note, helps to identify counterfeits. The identifying mark is always on the face of each note; where I also have a photograph for the back of the note, the face of the note is shown first. Each note also features the signature of the Elder of the Jews of Lodz Ghetto, the controversial Chaim Rumkowski, also printed on the face.

The identifying feature of the 50 pfennig note is a dot within the magen david that is found within the 0 of the number 50.

The identifying feature of the 1 mark note is a small dot between the /M/ of “Mark” and the following /a/, level with the top of the /a/.

The identifying feature of the 2 mark note is a similarly placed dot, level with the middle of the /a/.

The identifying feature of the 5 mark note is a dot within the /k/ of the word “Mark”.

The identifying feature of the 10 mark note is a dot within the /h/ of the word “Zehn”.

The identifying feature of the 20 mark note is a dot within the loop that is formed by the top of the initial /Z/ in “Zwanzig”. There is also a 50 mark note, but it is somewhat rarer and therefore more difficult to acquire.

My final item is an example of a promissory note (Konversionskasse), to the value of 5 mark. These notes were given to people (primarily Jews) who wished to move abroad and keep their money. After paying an exorbitant tax, the remainder of their wealth was transferred into notes of this nature, which they would soon discover were completely worthless. They are almost always stamped with WERTLOS (“worthless”) or with ENTWERTET (“cancelled”).

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I receive very mixed reactions from people when showing them my collection. While some are impressed with the connection to history that holding such items in one’s hands can create, others still are repulsed with the horror of it all, and uncertain as to why one might wish to acquire them. Myself, I have very mixed feelings. At times, I find myself drawn to them: they are something solid, tangible, real. They are silent witnesses in the true sense of the term, but even voiceless they speak louder than words. They testify to a period of utter hatred, and one that I remain uncertain of how to understand. While the antisemitism of the Notgeld is connected, for me, with a long history of political antisemitism (itself predicated upon broader social and religious forms of Jew-hatred), the horrors of the Holocaust are exploitative of such attitudes, though not necessarily a natural development from the same.

It is telling that the images on the antisemitic Notgeld are all either set in the distant past, centred on usurers and profiteers (rather than explicitly “Juden”) or, in the case of the Golem from Frankfurt, offensive by association only. There is a yawning gulf that lies between the contents of the red folder and the green, and while the items in the two folders interest me, challenge me, repulse me and inspire me, it is that gulf that I find most worthy of deliberation.

In Jeremiah 11:16, the prophet likens Israel to an olive tree. There are a couple of midrashim (Shemot Rabbah 36:1 and Shir haShirim Rabbah 1:21) that explain this in relation to olive oil: just as olive oil when mixed with other liquids always remains distinct, so too does Israel – despite being mixed with other nations – always maintain its integrity; just as olive oil always floats towards the surface, so too does Israel always come out on top.

There was a 17th century scholar named R’ Yaakov Moshe ben Avraham Helin who authored a commentary on Midrash Rabbah called Yedei Moshe. In it, he credits an observation to his brother-in-law, Rav Yitzhak – the Av Beit Din of Krakow. The observation is this: if you pour olive oil into whisky, the oil sinks to the bottom. Surprisingly, this is actually true: the gravity of pure alcohol is about 0.8 and oil about 0.9 (a measure of density with respect to water, water being measured as 1). If we consider the non-alcoholic parts of whisky to be water, a heavier oil could easily weigh more than 40% alcohol.

What to do? The midrash says clearly that oil always floats to the surface when mixed with other liquids, and here we have a case where that is patently incorrect. Rav Yitzhak’s suggestion? Whisky is not a liquid (!!). And not only that, but whisky therefore cannot be used for kiddush on Friday night, since the halakhot of kiddush demand of us that we use a liquid for that purpose.

In his commentary on Orach Chayim, R’ Avraham Gombiner notes some of the reasons held by people who allow the use of whisky (Magen Avraham, OC 272:6), although he doesn’t mention any of the reasons held by those who reject it. In his commentary on Magen Avraham, R’ Shmuel haLevi Klein fills in the gaps (Machatzit haSheqel, OC 272, s.v. ונ”ל דא”מ על יי”ש). Believe it or not but he actually quotes the Yedei Moshe, who rules that whisky isn’t to be considered a liquid, although he does conclude that we don’t learn halakha from such stories. To those of you who are interested, the following is the relevant part of his text:

ובס’ ידי משה על מדרש רבה כתב ראיה בשם גדול א’ דע”כ יי”ש לא מקרי משקה מדאמרינן במדרש למה נמשלו ישראל לשמן מה שמן עולה על כל המשקין ר”ל אם תתן שמן על כל המשקים השמן צף למעלה כן ישראל יעלו על כל או”ה. וביי”ש אם נותן לתוכו שמן, השמן שוקע למטה. וא”כ על כרחך אינו בכלל משקין לפ”ד המדרש הובא גם כן בספר ת”ש אלא דסיים שאין למידין הלכה מפי אגדה

“And in Sefer Yedei Moshe on Midrash Rabbah, he writes a proof in the name of a certain sage that if so, whisky (יין שרף) is not to be considered a liquid, since it says in the midrash: Why is Israel likened to oil? Just as oil rises above all liquids (which is to say that if you place oil in any liquid, the oil will float to the surface), so too will Israel rise above all the nations of the world. But with whisky, if you place oil into it the oil sinks to the bottom. If so, you are forced to say, according to the manner of midrash, that it is not in the category of “liquid”. This is also brought in Sefer T.S. (?), which concludes however that we don’t learn halakha from such stories.”

[H/T R' Ozer Alport, who first drew my attention to this Yedei Moshe and the corresponding passage in Machatzit haSheqel. And thank you, Sean, for your insights on the relative density of whisky and water.]

There are several reasons for this, the one in the Tur being that,by a sick person, Shabbat is like a weekday. The mechaber’s reason, which he mentions in his Bet Yosef (ibid.), is that it is better to commit a one-off violation than it is to commit frequent violations, even when those frequent violations are of a lesser order. Although there were scholars before the Tur who expressed the same halakha (notably the Rosh and the Mordekhai), this particular reason for it is attributed by the Bet Yosef to Rabbeinu Nissim (“the Ran”; Yoma 4b, s.v. וגרסינן), who holds that when eating non-kosher meat one is in violation of the halakha with every olive-sized mouthful.

An additional little piece of trivia (for which I thank Rabbi Gil Student): the famous Fraenkel edition of the Rambam’s Mishne Torah contains an exhaustive index of commentaries at the back of each volume, entitled Sefer HaMafteach. It is well known that the editors of this edition omitted the names of any Modern Orthodox, Zionist and Lubavitch commentaries. And yet, Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik’s interpretation of Amaleq is just so good, they clearly couldn’t help themselves.

You can find it under Hilkhot Melakhim 5:5, in which they ask the following question:

לעיל סוף הל’ ד כ’ שאבדו ואבד זכרם, ואיך יתכן מחיית עמלק הרי גם הם אבד זכרם

“Above, at the end of halakha 4, it is written that [the seven Canaanite nations, whom we are commanded to destroy] are already destroyed [through the activities of Sennacherib] and their memory is destroyed, so how is it possible to wipe out Amaleq? Their memory is also destroyed!”

This is a famous enough question on the Rambam’s legal philosophy (why suggest that the obligation to destroy the seven Canaanite nations is no longer in effect, but not say the same about Amaleq?) that the Sefer HaMafteach lists no fewer than nine different commentaries, each of which poses a different solution. And at the very end of the list:

ר”מ סולובייצ’יק מוב’ בס’ בסוד היחיד והיחד עמ’ 392

“Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik, brought down in BeSod HaYachid VeHaYachad, p392.”

No mention, of course, of the fact that the book that they are quoting is by a Modern Orthodox Zionist who was friendly with Lubavitch, but it’s really just a drop in the ocean of their peculiar brand of misnagdischkeit. I wonder if there are any other drops of this nature?

When I actually play music (which you might be pleased to know is probably more often), I’ve a small but growing collection that I really enjoy. On my last trip to Melbourne, I picked up some CDs of cantorial music: Cantor Yitzchak Helfgot, the up-and-coming Cantor Shimon Walles, and the truly legendary Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt. Yitzchak Helfgot’s rendition of “Akavia” brings tears to my eyes.

If you enjoy that type of music – I absolutely love it, myself – then I strongly recommend the Milken Archive. This is a growing database of Jewish American music, and one that shows tremendous potential. Founded by Lowell Milken in 1990, the database aims at preserving “the diverse body of sacred and secular music inspired by 350 years of Jewish life in America”. Divided at present into twenty volumes of music (over 700 works by more than 200 different composers), the range is quite refreshingly diverse. You can see all of the individual volumes here, though will note that not all of them are presently available. Tracks can also be sampled prior to purchase.

This is a sample of the Kaddish Shalem, which will be available on the third volume, Seder T’fillot:

Here is another track that I found absolutely haunting. This one is from the upcoming fourth volume, Circle of Life in Synagogue and Home:

I’ve had a lot of fun browsing through the various tracks that are on the website already, and I look forward to more being made available. In the meantime, for anybody who was curious, I’ve included Cantor Yitzchak Helfgot’s rendition of “Akavia” below. As Chief Cantor of the Park East Synagogue in New York City, perhaps we will be able to look forward to his music being made available on the Milken Archive soon too. I certainly hope so.

Lyrics, from Mishna, Avot 3:1 -

עקביא בן מהללאל אומר
הסתכל בשלשה דברים ואי אתה בא לידי עברה
דע מאין באת
ולאן אתה הולך
ולפני מי אתה עתיד לתן דין וחשבון
מאין באת? מטפה סרוחה
ולאן אתה הולך? למקום עפר, רמה ותולעה
ולפני מי אתה עתיד לתן דין וחשבון? לפני מלך מלך מלכי המלכים
הקדוש ברוך הוא

Akavia ben Mehalalel would say,
Meditate on three things and you will not come to sin:
Know from whence you came
And whither you are going
And before whom you are destined to give judgment and reckoning.
Whence did you come? From a putrid drop.
Where are you going? To a place of dirt, grave-worms and maggots.
But before whom are you destined to give judgment and reckoning?
Before the king of kings,
The Holy One: Blessed is He.

Come to think of it, there’s not such a big difference between my music and Rav Kaplan’s mussar schmuessen after all…

As many people know, I have a love/hate relationship with Haredi Judaism. It is difficult for me to speak about people like the Chazon Ish and the Brisker Rov without feeling my pulse quicken, but it is also difficult for me to speak about people like Rav Shach or Rav Steinman without some measure of contempt. Some time ago, a friend of mine asked me why I found the Steipler Gaon so admirable, and my answer probably goes for the former two whom I admire as well: I don’t know much about him.

It seems that the more I learn about individual Haredim whom I admire, the easier it is for me to remember why I left. I look at Haredi society today and I see a community becoming further and further mired in their trenchant opposition to modernity. I see people who seek stringencies where leniencies have greater precedent. I see people who are beginning to manifest attitudes that are revoltingly misogynist and terrifyingly racist. So far as how they got here, they largely have themselves to blame.

To an equally large extent, however, the blame lies with a belligerent Israeli government. Comprised originally of secular European intellectuals who thought their culture inherently superior, they treated North African Jews with disdain, Haredim with condescension, and Arabs with outright contempt. In all three cases, they grossly misjudged the people with whom they were dealing, and while the Knesset today is not plagued with this particular problem (leastways, not so far as Sephardim and Haredim are concerned), the damage has already been done.

That said, I cannot blame secular Zionists for their behaviour any more than I can blame Haredim for theirs; both attitudes were forged in the fires of the Shoah, and both are merely differing manifestations of trauma. With his typical astuteness, Raul Hilberg recognised the striking ferocity with which Zionists suddenly turned against the British and against the Arabs as a case of misplaced anger. The same could be said for the intensity with which Haredim turned against the fledgling state.

It is impossible to predict what Haredi society might have looked like in a world in which it had been allowed to flourish. With the recent advent of schools for girls, and with the solidarity that was afforded Haredim across Europe after the formation of the Agudah, it is tempting to imagine the development of a society both rigidly conservative in its interpretation of the law and socially progressive with its application of it. But such, in Israel, was not to be.

Instead, we see a society in which poskim seek to outdo one another with stringency, and in which any concession to the lifestyle or the background of the petitioner is deemed scandalously liberal. We see a society that is so phenomenally out of touch with the outside world that even the ways of North American Haredim are inscrutable to them. Most alarmingly of all, we see the utterly unprecedented phenomenon of people with deliberately machmir interpretations of the law, forcing their stringencies upon large communities of Jews who do not want them.

Without the politicisation of Haredi Judaism, such a thing would not be possible, but this politicisation was a two-edged sword. On the one hand, the formation of the Agudah in 1912 allowed for Haredi interests to be representated to the state – whether in Poland, where it was formed, or in Palestine. On the other hand, it has also afforded the potential, which we now see expressed, for foisting Haredi legislation upon the general public. This more recent and frightening manifestation was the brainchild of Rav Shach. Until he formed Degel haTorah and its media arm, Yated Neeman, Haredi power (insofar as it existed) rested only in a body of rabbis. The legacy of Rav Shach is such that power in the non-Hasidic world is increasingly coming to be represented in a single individual.

There is a certain irony to the fact that the Brisker Rov strongly opposed Heichal Shlomo, the office of the Chief Rabbinate, on the grounds that religious power should never be concentrated. His protegé, Rav Shach, has succeeded in creating just such a concentration – one that, through the machinations of the Eda haHaredis, is now exerting greater and greater influence over the rabbinate itself. While many Haredim look down on such political manoeuvring, and tend to value more highly a rav who does not dirty his hands in politics, it is frequently the one who professes the greatest disdain for power who wields it most of all.

Rav Elyashiv exerted greater influence than he could possibly have known. So divorced was he from the world around him that he had no comprehension as to how his rulings might affect the lives of other people – or even, perhaps, any real comprehension of other people at all. He was hardly alone for having lacked any vestige of empathy, but he was alone in having turned himself completely into a vessel for the halakha.

The breadth of knowledge of which Rav Elyashiv was possessed was savant-like, and I have great admiration for it. In the eighteen hours-or-so that he studied each day, until shortly before his death at 102, he very rarely opened the Shulchan Arukh. There was one time (and this, alone, speaks volumes), immediately after being informed that his daughter had died, when he is said to have closed the tractate of the Talmud that he was studying and opened up the laws of mourning in Yoreh Deah. Nonetheless, despite almost never consulting such material, when he deigned to answer people’s questions he demonstrated an awe-inspiring familiarity with the content of its commentaries. His preparation in this regard was to reacquiant himself with the relevant Talmudic passages – themselves the basis for the laws within the Shulchan Arukh, on which such texts were commenting.

I have no way of easily conveying just what it means to be able to do that. It’s like preparing yourself for a lecture on Newton’s understanding of Kepler by triangulating the stars. It doesn’t make any sense.

While eulogising him, Rav Nissan Kaplan of the Mir Yeshiva recounted an event when Rav Elyashiv was asked to issue a ruling on the legitimacy of wigs that came from India. He gave his ruling without consulting a single text. Wishing to understand it, a group of scholars came to his house to argue with him on the ruling. Their preparation for the argument was to learn Tractate Avodah Zarah in depth (with all of the mediaeval commentaries) and through to the halakha (to learn the relevant passages in the Rambam, the Tur and the Shulchan Arukh, together with all of the commentaries on the latter). Rav Elyashiv contented himself with merely revising the tractate, and after an hour of arguing they all acquiesced to his understanding of the law.

To so impress a community of people, in which it is not uncommon for a man to devote thirty or forty years of his life to uninterrupted study, is itself a powerful statement. That such a person should also exert so strong an influence over other people is a tragedy, but the problem lies moreso with his society in that respect than it does with him.

In a lecture on the genius of Rav Ovadiah Yosef, Prof. Marc Shapiro opines upon the difference between Ashkenazi and Sephardi poskim. Where the former, for their own sociohistorical reasons, have come to favour stringency and to eschew any form of compromise as needless modernisation, the latter (for sociohistorical reasons of their own) have tended to adopt a more lenient and compromised position. Were I in the market for a posek, it would not be a Haredi posek whom I would want, though that doesn’t mean that I think that Rav Elyashiv was ever “wrong”.

I might disagree with him strongly, but my disagreement merely signals the fact that I do not like his rulings. That he, with his terrifying familiarity with the vastness of halakhic Judaism, should have felt that the rulings he made were consonant with the system as a whole is not something that I, with my knowledge of nothing, can either validate or deny. The greatest scholars often make the lousiest humanists, and Rav Elyashiv (who, were he not Haredi, would very likely be considered on the autism spectrum) was a lousy humanist. He was not a good father, nor a good husband, nor a good posek nor anyone’s friend. He had no personality, save what could be gleaned from his posture or the tone of his voice. He almost never smiled at anybody and his only relationships were with the books that he loved.

Bobby Fisher, despite all of the ugly things that could be said about Bobby Fisher, never ceased being the world’s greatest chess player. Rav Elyashiv, for all of the damage that he might have caused both within and outside of Haredi society, was an unparalleled master of the art of halakha. He had no peer.

For all I know, I’m the only person who reads these particular posts, but for my own edification, the following are the books that I have acquired since last writing about the state of my library:

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Torah, and Torah-Related:

• The Kedushas Levi of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, disciple of the Maggid and of one of his disciples, Rabbi Shmelke of Nikolsburg;

• The Yismach Moshe of Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum, great-great-grandfather of the Satmar Rebbe and the rebbe of Ujhely, in Hungary. The Yismach Moshe was a disciple of Rabbi Yaakov Yitzhak (“the Seer”) of Lublin, himself a disciple of the Maggid and of two of the Maggid’s other disciples: Rabbi Shmelke of Nikolsburg and Rabbi Elimelekh of Lizhensk;

• The Kedushas Yom-Tov of Rabbi Hananiah Yom-Tov Lipa Teitelbaum, the father of the Satmar Rebbe and the rebbe of Sighet, in Hungary;

• Something I had never seen before! Known as HaMe’orot haGedolim, this is structured like a Miqra’ot Gedolot: a passage of text on the upper right-hand side, a number of commentaries around it. This time, however, instead of featuring commentaries on Torah or Nach, it features the Torah with Rashi (and Onkelos) and eleven different super-commentaries on Rashi:

1. Rabbi Eliyahu Mizrachi (the “Re’em“. His commentary is referred to as “Mizrachi”);
2. Rabbi Yehudah Loew ben Bezalel (the “Maharal“. His commentary is titled “Gur Aryeh”);
3. Rabbi Mordekhai Yoffe (the “Levush“. His commentary is titled “Levush ha’Orah”);
4. Rabbi Shabbetai Bass (the “Siftei Chachamim“, which is the title of his commentary);
5. Rabbi Avraham ben Shlomo haLevi Bukrat (His commentary is titled “Sefer haZikaron”);
6. Rabbi Shlomo Luria (the “Maharshal“. His commentary is titled “Yeriot Shlomo”);
7. Rabbi Moshe Mat, a disciple of the Maharshal. (His commentary is titled “Ho’il Moshe”);
8. Rabbi Yissachar Ber Eilenberg. (His commentary is titled “Tzidah leDerekh”);
9. Rabbi Yaakov Solnik, son of Rabbi Binyamin Solnik. (His commentary is titled “Nachalat Yaakov”);
10. Rabbi David Pardo. (His commentary is titled “Maskil leDavid”);
11. Rabbi Meir Binyamin Menachem Donun. (His commentary is titled “Be’er beSadeh”).

• Rabbi Shaul Lieberman‘s incredible Tosefta and Tosefta kiPheshuta. A critical edition of the Tosefta together with an extensive commentary (and one that demonstrates the author’s truly phenomenal knowledge of the rabbinic literature), the project was unfortunately never finished. It is complete for the first three divisions of the Tosefta (Zeraim, Moed and Nashim), and includes the first tractate of the fourth division (Nezikin [= Bava Kama, Bava Metzia, Bava Batra]), which was published posthumously. Altogether, it runs to twelve impressive volumes;

• A new and updated version of the Shemirat Shabbat keHilkheta, by Rabbi Yehoshua Yeshaya Neuwirth, disciple of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach. This is the definitive exposition of Rav Shlomo Zalman’s treatment of Shabbat;

• Rabbi Binyamin Lau, The Sages: Character, Context and Creativity: The Second Temple Period (trans. M. Prawer; Connecticut: Maggid Books, 2010);

• Rabbi Binyamin Lau, The Sages: Character, Context and Creativity: From Yavneh to the Bar Kokhba Revolt (trans. I. Kurshan; Connecticut: Maggid Books, 2011);

• Rav Shlomo Lorincz, In Their Shadow: Wisdom and Guidance of the Gedolim (Vol. I; trans. Y. Rosenblum; Jerusalem: Feldheim, 2011). Rav Shlomo Lorincz was an MK for Agudat Yisrael, and a close confidante of Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz (the “Chazon Ish“), Rabbi Yitzhak Ze’ev Soloveitchik (the “Brisker Rov“) and Rabbi Elazar Shach. This first volume constitutes brief biographies of, and his reminiscences of, those three individuals;

• Rav Shlomo Lorincz, In Their Shadow: Wisdom and Guidance of the Gedolim (Vol. II; trans. M. Musman; Jerusalem: Feldheim, 2011). This volume constitutes brief biographies of, and the authors reminiscences of, Rav Yerucham Levovitz, Rav Baruch Ber Leibowitz, Rav Elchanan Wasserman, Rav Yaakov Yechezkiyahu Greenwald (the Pupa Rebbe), Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, Rav Eliyahu Meir Bloch, Rav Aharon Rokach (the Belzer Rebbe), Rav Akiva Sofer, Rav Avraham Yaakov Friedman (the Sadigerer Rebbe), Rav Aharon Kotler, Rav Eliezer Yehudah Finkel, Rav Dov Berish Weidenfeld (the Tchebiner Rav) and Rav Avraham Yehoshua Heschel (the Kopitshnitzer Rebbe);

• Rav Shlomo Lorincz, In Their Shadow: Wisdom and Guidance of the Gedolim (Vol. III; trans. M. Musman; Jerusalem: Feldheim, 2011). This volume constitutes brief biographies of, and the authors reminiscences of, Rav Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman (the Ponevezher Rav), Rav Eliyahu Lopian, Rav Moshe Yechiel Epstein (the Ozhrover Rebbe), Rav Chaim Meir Hager (the Vizhnitzer Rebbe), Rav Yechezkel Levenstein, Rav Yechezkel Abramsky, Rav Yisrael Alter (the Gerrer Rebbe), Rav Yoel Teitelbaum (the Satmar Rebbe), Rav Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky, Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, Rav Moshe Feinstein, Rav Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam (the Klausenberger Rebbe) and Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach;

• Rabbi Dr Tzvi Hersh Weinreb (ed.), Koren Talmud Bavli: Berakhot (Jerusalem: Koren, 2012). I shall write more about this one later!

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Shoah, and Shoah-Related:

• Bartrop, P.R. and S.L. Jacobs (eds.) Fifty Key Thinkers on the Holocaust and Genocide (London: Routledge, 2011);

• Feller, R. and S. Feller, Silent Witnesses: Civilian Camp Money of World War II (Ohio: BNR Press, 2007);

• Friedländer, S. Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997);

• Friedländer, S. Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Extermination, 1939-1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007);

• Gilbert, M. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War (New York: Henry Holt, 1987);

• Gilbert, M. The Macmillan Atlas of the Holocaust (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1982);

• Hilberg, R. Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 1992);

• Hilberg, R. The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996);

• Lowy, A. I Am a Survivor (Sydney Jewish Museum, 2011).

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From the library of Heinz Bohm, z”l:

• Aharoni, Y. and M. Avi-Yonah. The Macmillan Bible Atlas (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1976);

• Alcalay, R. The Complete English-Hebrew Dictionary (2 vols; Jerusalem: Massada, 1970);

• Alcalay, R. The Complete Hebrew-English Dictionary (Jerusalem: Massada, 1970);

• Albright, W.F. From the Stone Age to Christianity: Monotheism and the Historical Process (Anchor Books, 1957);

• Amiran, R. Ancient Pottery of the Holy Land: From its Beginnings in the Neolithic Period to the End of the Iron Age (Rutgers University Press, 1970);

• Coggins, R.J. The Cambridge Bible Commentary: The First and Second Books of the Chronicles (Cambridge University Press, 1976);

• Crim, K. (ed.) The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: An Illustrated Encyclopedia: Supplementary Volume (Tennessee: Abingdon, 1976);

• Dawidowicz, L. (ed.) The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe (New York: Schocken Books, 1987);

• Heschel, A.J. The Prophets (New York: JPS, 1962);

• Koestler, A. The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and its Heritage (London: Pan Books, 1977);

• Levi, E. משנה מפורשת: מסכת ברכות (Tel Aviv: Sinai);

• Sadek, V., J. Šedinová and J. Macht. Pražské Ghetto (Prague: Olympia, 1991);

• Salfellner, H. Franz Kafka and Prague (Prague: Vitalis, 2002);

• Schüller, E.L. Hebrew Ballads and Other Poems (trans. and ed. A. Durschlag and J. Litman-Demeestère; Philadelphia: JPS, 1980);

• Simon, S. יהושוע און שופטים (New York: Farlag Matones, 1952);

• Thomas, D.W. (ed.) Archaeology and Old Testament Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967);

• The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, With an English Translation; and with Various Readings and Critical Notes (London: Samuel Bagster & Sons, 1976);

• Hilkhot Talmud Torah, with the glosses of the Raavad and the commentary of the Kesef Mishna (Jerusalem: Eshkol, 1968).