Jewish Music

10 08 2012

I like to drive, as many people know. I find the long stretch of road between Sydney and Melbourne, or Sydney and Brisbane, most conducive to thought. While I frequently drive in silence, I just as often connect my iPod to the stereo and blast out some mussar schmuessen by Rav Nissan Kaplan. Word.

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…


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Categories : Jewish Tradition

On the Death of Rav Elyashiv

1 08 2012

Two weeks ago, I felt the need to comment on the passing of Rav Elyashiv. In the time since then, a few people have drawn articles to my attention (either privately or on Facebook) that have presented views at odds with the one I shared. Rav Elyashiv had no relationship with his family. Rav Elyashiv was responsible for further estranging Haredim from the state. Rav Elyashiv’s rulings have harmed women and converts. From such allegations, I cannot (nor will not) defend him. Instead, I think it best to make my feelings about Rav Elyashiv more properly understood.

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.


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Categories : Jewish Tradition, Personal Reflections

Additions to my Shelf

5 07 2012

This should be an ongoing series: books that I add to my collection.

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:

*

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!

*

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).

*

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).


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Categories : Random Musings

Online Torah Resources

4 07 2012

As the days turn to weeks and the weeks to months, I realise that this is the longest I have ever been away from my blog. In truth, I have been very busy.

In addition to everything else (preparing classes, teaching classes, slamming my head repeatedly against the desk, etc), I’ve been setting aside time each day to learn some Mishna. As it is, I’ve now worked through all eleven tractates of the first division, about six or seven times each, and am halfway through Masekhet Shabbat: the first tractate of the second division, “Moed”. My original plan was to then compile a breakdown called Rabbinic Agricultural Law, separated into neat categories, with an appendix noting every halakhic opinion (both stated and inferred), arranged alphabetically in accordance with its source. On closer consideration, I decided that if I were to be omitting the Yerushalmi, the Bavli’s treatment of these passages and their ‘related’ toseftot, the Rambam and all of the various mefarshim on the Mishna (not to mention the various codes, from Or Zarua to the Arukh haShulchan heAtid), then my title might be something of a misnomer.

Settling instead for Tannaitic Agricultural Law, I next demurred at the prospect that I’d need (at the very least) to also cover these tractates in the Tosefta, and any relevant passages in the halakhic midrashim. Not to worry: I shall call it Mishnaic Agricultural Law instead! An excellent idea and an exciting project, were it not for the simple fact that I am almost certainly going to encounter relevant material in the subsequent fifty-two tractates of the Mishna, and so such a project is best left off until I’ve finished the entire corpus.

It was a good idea at the time.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share some excellent Torah resources (some old, some new) that I have discovered online:

• I have long been a great fan of the DAF (“Dafyomi Advancement Forum”). If you click the tab that says “Talmud” in the menu on the left, you can then choose the tractate that you are studying, click on the tab marked “Point by Point Summary”, and then choose a page number. This is the Point by Point Summary of Masekhet Shabbat, by way of an example. If you play around with the site, you will find a number of other useful tools there as well;

• Rav Nissan Kaplan is the mashgiach ruchani at the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. As I’ve had occasion to mention already, his website (incongruously called “Daf Yomi Review“) contains a remarkable collection of mussar schmuessen and halakha shiurim, and more. If that’s your kind of thing of course;

• A friend and old yeshiva colleague of mine is working on a tool for helping people study Daf Yomi. With one cycle coming soon to a conclusion and another one about to begin (not to mention, with ArtScroll’s latest monstrosity soon to hit the virtual shelves), their timing is excellent. Check it out: it’s called The Mercava;

• Mordechai Torczyner, all on his lonesome, has created (and is still creating) a truly remarkable index of topics in the Talmud. It’s called WebShas, and I encourage you to have a look! I typed in “oxen”, on a whim, and it gave me this page on “Zoology“;

• Lastly, although by no means least, I would like to draw your attention to Mi Yodeya. This is an example of a Stack Exchange: a Q&A website, where anybody can ask questions and all can answer them. You can find me there under “Shimon bM”, asking and answering away.

So that’s it, folks. I hope to be able to write again soon – at the very least, in order to report on the new Koren translation of Masekhet Berakhot, about which I have very mixed feelings.


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Categories : Random Musings

Marat/Sade

14 04 2012

Of the hundred-or-so films in my Top Ten list, I notice a striking predilection for movies that are “layered”. In some instances, these films are a real pleasure to watch, while in others the cinematic experience is more of a chore. While I definitely prefer movies to be well acted, steadily filmed and smoothly edited, the features that I am completely unprepared to sacrifice concern the psychological complexity of the characters, the depth of the plot and the quality of the script.

Rarely, although occasionally, a movie delivers on every one of those things. If I were to make a list of near-perfect films, it would include two that characterise better than any other the sort of layeredness of which I speak: Spike Jonze’s Adaptation. (2002), and Joel Coen’s Blood Simple (1984).

In the former case, Adaptation. possesses a self-recursiveness in both form and content that would make even Douglas Hofstadter weep. It is no surprise that the film was written by Charlie Kaufmann, whose flawed but brilliant directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, succeeded in turning an entire movie in upon itself; layer under layer, recursively deep.

Blood Simple, on the other hand, was the directorial debut of Joel Coen. While the Coen Brothers have gone on to produce some of the greatest films that I have seen, there is nothing that matches Blood Simple for the complexity of its dialogue. Despite its poor acting and the occasional clunkiness of its camera work, there is scarcely a line in this film that doesn’t function on two, sometimes three, levels simultaneously. It is a masterpiece of screenwriting.

Yesterday evening, I watched a film that I had never seen before, and one that is layered in a manner that I had never previously considered. In a sense, it is as though every aspect of the film (its dialogue, its acting, its setting and its production) operates independently of every other. It is entitled Marat/Sade, and was directed by Peter Brook in 1967. It is a cinematic representation of a German play that was written by Peter Weiss in 1963, entitled (in English), “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed By the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade”. The film (and the play on which it is based) is set in 1808, only fifteen years after the bathtub murder of French revolutionary, Jean-Paul Marat. It concerns a performance by the inmates of a lunatic asylum of the last hours of Marat’s life to an audience of powdered aristocrats.

The film works simultaneously on a number of different levels, and while it has a self-referential quality, it does not “swallow itself” in the manner of Kaufmann’s creations. Consider the different levels, both of the production itself and of its substance, in content and in form:

1. The Film (“Form”):

• Peter Brook, who directed the movie, was heavily influenced by Antonin Artaud’s surrealistic conception of Théâtre de la Cruauté: Theatre of Cruelty. It was his belief that theatre needed to show the audience uncomfortable truths, and force them to wrestle with things that they might otherwise avoid. While Michael Haneke took this concept to its absurd limit in his disgusting and artistically worthless Funny Games, Brook utilises it in a far more modest fashion. He presents Marat/Sade voyeuristically, the camera alternating between a dispassionate long-shot that shows the audience of 1808 in silhouetted foreground, and a passionate and involved series of close-ups that follow the individual players, and watch them as they garble their lines, behave inappropriately, and occasionally attempt to molest one another. Brook, who faithfully produces the original script, affects the form of the production, but not its content;

2. The Play (“Content”):

• Peter Weiss, who wrote the original play, was both a pacifist and, politically, a communist. His three-volume opus, The Aesthetics of Resistance, explores the interplay between art and political resistance, which is a theme that comes to the fore in “Marat/Sade” as well. There, he depicts the Marquis de Sade – himself renowned for having adopted a certain proto-Socialism – in his efforts to present his political opinions to an audience of dilettantes and effetes, whose only connection to the events of the French revolution was that it lay in the past, “in history”, and that things are “different now”. Weiss, who certainly had an influence on the form of his original theatrical production, influences the film directed by Brook in terms of its content only;

The Content of the Film/Play:

• The Marquis de Sade (Donatien Alphonse François) was, indeed, imprisoned at the asylum in Charenton, where he spent the final thirteen years of his life. Arrested on the grounds that his literature was pornographic and deranged (although he would better have been arrested on the grounds that it was contrived and poorly written), he has since become a symbol of individualism and the freedom of expression. It is also true that the Marquis was permitted by the asylum’s director to direct plays of his own composition with the inmates as his cast. It is there, however, that the historical verisimilitude ends, for while the Marquis did write some political pamphlets, there is no evidence to suppose that his performances at Charenton were of so overtly a political nature, and what little he wrote on the subject demonstrates that he was actually an admirer of Jean-Paul Marat, and not one of his detractors. So far as the depiction of his play in Marat/Sade is concerned, this play within a play itself operates on more than one level:

3. The Play Within a Play (“Form”):

• For a start, there is the fact of its being performed by lunatics (themselves played by the Royal Shakespeare Company with aplomb). As a result, we must separate the content of the play from its form, for the outer performance of the written material is what immediately captivates us. The leading lady alternates between the fierceness of her role as Marat’s executioner, and the slow, sad reality of her morbid psychosis. Marat, himself, seems unconcerned with his lines at times (requiring prompting in one instance from the Marquis), and settles instead for long periods of staring into space. Another protagonist, Monsieur Duperet, is forcibly restrained during part of his performance after having attempted to molest the leading lady, and in the film’s saddest moment, one of the unnamed characters breaks from his role and crawls around the floor, declaring that he is a thousand years old, “a mad, mad animal“;

4. The Play Within a Play (“Content”):

• Secondly, there is the content of the play itself: the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat. Portrayed as a man out of touch with the reality of the revolution, the play invites us to sympathise with Marat’s executioner and to welcome his death. Many of the lines that condemn the regime that survived him, as well as those that condemn the church as an instigator of bloodshed and as a crutch for the weak, were removed in advance by the asylum’s director, but kept in by the seditious Marquis. As such, there is more than one instance in which the director intervenes and the Marquis is forced to pause his play and change his players’ lines. In some instances, the actors persist in calling out those lines in any case, to the consternation of the asylum’s director who apologises to his audience.

The manner in which the director of the asylum, François Simonet de Coulmier, interacts with both the Marquis and his audience is but one of three ways in which the content of the play and its form are inextricably linked. In addition, there are a few occasions in which orderlies need to interfere with the proceedings, to wake up the leading lady, to restrain any growing disquiet, or to threaten an actor who is close to accosting the asylum director’s wife or daughter, both of whom sit within the large cage that houses the director, the orderlies, the Marquis and his cast. In addition, there are the instances in which the Marquis needs to interact with his players, either to restrain or to encourage them, and a visually striking scene in which he participates in the play’s production, narrating the events of the revolution on his knees, while he is mercilessly whipped with a woman’s long hair.

Consider, then, how layered is this production. On the one hand, we have the literal content: politically seditious, supportive of revolution, critical of Napoleon’s regime and condemnatory of the church. To appreciate its impact, we have the setting: an audience of powdered French aristocrats in 1808, who believe that the revolution was a thing of history and who dislike any intimation that the popular struggle continues. At the same time, however, we have the additional level on which the play is being performed, in which the asylum’s director need worry about more than just the feelings of his audience. Here we must consider the play’s form, with its cast of erratic and occasionally violent lunatics, all brought under the control of a man obsessed with torture and pornography.

On a third level, we must remember that this play was written, not in 1808 by the Marquis de Sade, but in 1963 by Peter Weiss. A witness to Nazism, Weiss utilised his play in order to remark upon the connection between artistry and resistance. At a time when the conflict in Vietnam was escalating (against which Weiss was later to demonstrate), the themes of madness and political disquiet, presented before an audience of silent onlookers, says much for Weiss’ opinions of the age in which he lived. Indeed, I get the feeling that he identified with the Marquis in this production, trying desperately to communicate something to his disaffected public, while at the same time remonstrating with the authorities who disliked any encouragement of sedition or dissent.

And then, on the fourth and uppermost level, there is the structure of the film itself. A homage to the likes of Artaud and his Theatre of the Cruel, Peter Brook invites us to participate, again, as spectators. Sitting in the seats of those in 1808 who watched the Marquis’ fictional production, so recently vacated by an audience of 1963, our intentions as viewers have not changed. Whether the content of the film remains politically or ideologically apt is of little import. It is the simple fact of our desire, as voyeurs, to watch it that Brook grapples with. When we subject ourselves to a film of this nature, we are not only asking to be entertained, nor to be educated. We are asking, on some level, to be shocked. As a statement, that is no less profound than the statement made by Weiss, nor that which Weiss put into the mouths of his madmen, torn between their two directors: the sociopathic Marquis de Sade, and the politically naive Abbé de Coulmier.

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Categories : Film

Rabbit Season

6 04 2012

Some years ago, a friend of mine bought me a beautiful facsimile of a Haggada from Prague, originally printed in 1527. After a few pages, the Haggada features an odd illustration: a man, mounted atop a horse, blowing a bugle while his dogs chase a group of rabbits. Although the picture is small, it would appear that the rabbits are about to reach a fence, and so I assumed that the drawing was designed to convey the theme of persecution, the threat of annihilation, and the possibility of redemption.

All things told, it’s an odd way to convey this theme. Rabbit hunting was never a popular sport amongst European Jews, with hunting for any purpose other than the utility of animals (food, clothing, etc) being halakhically forbidden as “צער בעלי חיים”: [causing] suffering to living creatures. Does this illustration merely testify to the appropriation of a non-Jewish trope, refashioned into a Jewish message? Are the rabbits supposed to represent Jews, fleeing from their non-Jewish persecutors? If the horseman is a wicked tyrant and his dogs the means of his oppressing Jews, then why do the rabbits not have a leader of their own? Is not the message of Pesach the liberation that occurred under Moses in particular? No matter which way I choose to configure it, this picture causes me consternation.

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, in his remarkable Haggadah and History, presents pages from printed Haggadot over the course of the last five hundred years. Second only to the Torah itself, the Haggada has gone through more reprintings than any other Jewish book, and the variety of different editions over this last half-millennium alone is fascinating. Surprisingly, the image of the rabbit hunt is one that recurs. Here, for example, is an illustration from the Augsburg Haggada of 1534. As you can see, the rabbits are making their way under the fence, but are very close to being devoured by the dogs that follow immediately behind them:

Later within the same Haggada, the image reappears. This time, it is clear that the rabbits have escaped, that the fence now lies between them and their hunters, and that the theme of liberation is the one that is being conveyed:

Still, this doesn’t explain the origin of the motif. Why a rabbit hunt in particular? As Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi points out, it is actually an allusion to a sugya in the Babylonian Talmud, which appears in Pesachim 102b-103a. In that discussion, the issue is raised as to the order in which one must make the various necessary blessings, in the event that Pesach coincides either with the onset of Shabbat (as it does this year) or with Shabbat’s conclusion. The relevant section, which truly testifies to the fact that every Jew has his own opinion, reads as follows:

גופא יום טוב שחל להיות אחר השבת רב אמר יקנ”ה ושמואל אמר ינה”ק ורבה אמר יהנ”ק ולוי אמר קני”ה ורבנן אמרי קינ”ה מר בריה דרבנא אמר נקי”ה מרתא אמר משמיה דר’ יהושע ניה”ק שלח ליה אבוה דשמואל לרבי ילמדו רבינו סדר הבדלות היאך שלח ליה כך אמר רבי ישמעאל בר רבי יוסי שאמר משום אביו שאמר משום רבי יהושע בן חנניה נהי”ק אמר ר’ חנינא משל דר’ יהושע בן חנניה למלך שיוצא ואפרכוס נכנס מלווין את המלך ואח”כ יוצאים לקראת אפרכוס מאי הוי עלה אביי אמר יקזנ”ה ורבא אמר יקנה”ז והילכתא כרבא

When the festival occurs at the conclusion of Shabbat, Rav says [that the order of blessings is]: wine, kiddush, the candles and then havdala;
Shmuel says: wine, candles, havdala and then kiddush;
Rabba says: wine, havdala, candles and then kiddush;
Levi says: kiddush, candles, wine and then havdala;
The other rabbis say: kiddush, wine, candles and then havdala;
Mar, the son of Ravina, says: candles, kiddush, wine and then havdala;
Marta, in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua, says: candles, wine, havdala and then kiddush.
Shmuel’s father went to Rabbi [Yehuda haNasi] and he asked him, “How did the rabbis teach the order of havdalot?”
He was told, “Thus said Rabbi Ishmael the son of Rabbi Yosi, who spoke in the name of his father, who spoke in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah: candles, havdala, wine and then kiddush.”
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah likened this to a king who is leaving while a governor is entering. We escort the king, and only afterwards do we go out to greet the governor.
What is the conclusion?
Abayyei says: wine, kiddush, “time” [a reference to the previously unmentioned blessing of thanksgiving - "שהחינו" - over enabling us to reach this season], candles and then havdala.”
Rava says: wine, kiddush, candles, havdala and then “time”.
The halakha is like Rava.

In this sugya, we have no fewer than eight different opinions and two different conclusions, each one of which is expressed by means of an acronym for the words wine (יין), kiddush (קידוש), candles (נר), havdala (הבדלה) and time (זמן). The resulting halakha, given in the name of Rava (which is a slight modification of the first opinion, given in the name of Rav) is thus conveyed by the acronym יקנה”ז, or yaknehaz. And as it is not uncommon for liturgical texts to feature halakhic information, there were many haggadot that were printed with this acronym, somewhere near the various blessings themselves.

Of course, a picture tells a thousand words, and as יקנה”ז (yaknehaz) sounds an awful lot like יאגן האז (yagn haz), which is Yiddish for “rabbit hunt”, the pictorial mnemonic in question came into existence. Although Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi doesn’t suggest as much, it would appear that this is another instance in which the metaphor is mistaken for the message. The development of the illustration into a motif that conveys the theme of escape, rather than merely a rabbit hunt with the word יקנה”ז beneath it, evidences both a distaste for the hunting of animals, as well as a certain confusion over why the Haggada appears to be advocating such a thing in the first place.

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Wishing you all a festive season of liberation, whether you identify with the rabbit or the hound. For my part, I’m still sitting on the fence.


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Categories : Jewish Tradition

Kosher Blood

27 02 2012

In July of last year, Allan Nadler (Professor of Religious Studies at Drew University, and author of The Faith of the Mithnagdim) wrote an article for Jewish Ideas Daily, in which he discussed the correlation between vampirism and Judaism. Nadler’s post is a review of a book by Sara Libby Robinson, entitled Blood Will Tell: Vampires as Political Metaphors Before World War I.

In Nadler’s article, he indicates the fact that Dracula is nowhere described as having been Jewish himself, although he does remark upon the similarities that he has to Jewish stereotypes:

“Rootless, of East European origin, dark-complected, and lustful for the money and blood of others. Assessing a wide range of themes in which blood and vampirism were evoked in late-19th-century European “scientific” thought (Social Darwinism and criminology in particular), Robinson argues that Stoker’s depiction of Dracula exploited widespread anxieties about the dangers posed by the flood (and the blood) of Yiddish-speaking immigrants to Great Britain.”

Is it a coincidence, then, that the individual whom Dracula enlists to assist him in his escape from England be none other than Immanuel Hildesheim: “a Hebrew of rather the Adelphi Theatre type, with a nose like a sheep, and a fez. His arguments were pointed with specie – we doing the punctuation – and with a little bargaining he told us what he knew” (Bram Stoker, Dracula, XXVI). Is it a coincidence that Dracula’s facial features may appear stereotypically Semitic, that his greatest concern lies in his accent divulging his East European origins, or that the vampire motif had long been employed for the characterisation of Jews as usurers? Nadler, in his review of Robinson’s book, seems to think that it is not. In fact, he even notes with interest the connection that Robinson creates between the fear of kosher slaughtering in the ethnic German population, and the ineradicable blood libel.

In the 1880s, for example, there was a widespread campaign in Germany to forbid any form of animal slaughter that was not preceded by electrical stunning. As Robinson notes (and I quote from Nadler’s review), “Jews supposedly took pleasure in their method of slaughtering, which strengthened their insensitivity and brutality. Propaganda depicted them as a “blood-drinking people,” erroneously positing that Jews drank the blood of their slaughtered animals.” I am sure that it goes without saying that animal blood is not something that religious Jews have ever consumed, and it is an unfamiliarity with Jewish religious law that strikes at the heart of such a depiction, as unfamiliarity strikes at the heart of all racial prejudices.

And yet, while it has long been contended that this same consideration automatically falsifies that version of the blood libel that is of greater antiquity – that Jews slaughter Christian children and use their blood for making food – such is not to be the case. While the libel is most certainly that, the reason that religious Jews would shun such a practise is the more commonplace aversion to murder, together with the fact that drinking human blood – if not necessarily unkosher – just sounds a little bit off.

With the approach of Purim, it is customary to deliver a “Purim Torah”: an halakhic or Talmudic exegesis, designed for the purposes of mockery. This year, I would like to share one of the most enjoyable halakhic exegeses (of this genre) that I have read: Yitayningwut’s discussion of kosher blood for Jewish vampires, found on his The Beis Medrash Blog. Rather than reproduce it below, I encourage you all to have a look at it in situ, for there are many other posts there that are also very interesting. For my part, I don’t think that I’m about to avail myself of this surprising leniency any time soon, but it pleases me to know that my options are open.


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Categories : Jewish Tradition, Purim

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