• Editor’s Note: “He Thought She Was Drunk” by Shalom Carmy
• Towards a Jewish Bioethic: The Case of Truth-Telling by Judah L. Goldberg
• The Limits of Religious Optimism: The Hazon Ish and the Altar of Novardok on Bittahon by Daniel Stein
• The Metaphysics of Property Interests in Jewish Law: An Analysis of Kinyan by J. David Bleich
• Book Review: Fresh Fruit and Vintage Wine: The Ethics and Wisdom of the Aggada by Yitchak Blau, Reviewed by Simi Peters
• Hair Covering and Jewish Law: A Response – Eli Baruch Shulman and Michael J. Broyde
• Communications

• Editor’s Note: A Peshat In the Dark: Reflections on the Age of Cary Grant by Shalom Carmy
• Self Dealing in the Not-For-Profit Board Room: An Inquiry into a Trustee’s Multi-Faceted Halakhic Identity by A. Yehuda Warburg
• On Rationalizing Biblical Tum’a by Shlomo Spiro
• On the Methodology of Jewish Medical Ethics by Alan Jotkowitz
• Short Selling and Jewish Law by Aaron Levine
• Survey of Recent Halakhic Periodical Literature: Sacrificing the Few to Save the Many by J. David Bleich
• Communications: The Flood Story, Torah and Science

- Shlomo Brody

Tradition

Vol. 42, No. 4, Winter 2009

Editor’s Note: Fear of Flesh and Blood by Shalom Carmy

Jewish Philanthropy – Whither? by Aharon Lichtenstein

Is Courage a Jewish Value by Yitzchak Blau

From the Pages of Tradition: Benzion Katz: Mrs. Baba Bathra by Shnayer Z. Leiman

Survey of Recent Halakhic Periodical Literature: Medical and Cosmetic Tattooing by J. David Bleich

Book Review: Created Equal by Joshua Berman Reviewed by Shawn Zelig Aster

Communications: Notes on the Flood Story, The Priestly Blessing, Transforming Identity

Tradition 42:3 (Fall 2009)

Please note that Rabbi Broyde’s article is available for free download by the wider public.

We welcome comments and discussion on these articles within Text & Texture’s comments section.

- Shlomo Brody

Tradition apologizes to Dr. David Shatz and its readers for errors that appeared in the printed version of Dr. Shatz’s reply to letters in vol. 42, no. 2 (Summer 2009). Dr. Shatz was not made aware that changes were made in his reply, resulting in these errors. 

On p. 110, line 13, the dash should be deleted.
 
On p. 111, line 11, the last words should read “who is imputing falsehoods to the text.”
 
On pp. 112-113, the term “Modern Orthodoxy” was mistakenly placed in italics nine times, eight in the top paragraph on p. 113.
 
On p. 115, line 18, “already denied Rambam part of this twofold assertion” should be replaced with “already denied the Rambam part of this twofold assertion” (that is, denied one part of the twofold assertion, namely, the part that referred to Rambam).

The current PDF online has been updated to correct these errors.

It should also be noted that Dr. Baruch Brody’s article was originally delivered as a paper to the Orthodox Forum.

The first article, “A Modern Blood Libel – L’Affaire Shahak“ (Tradition 8:2, Summer 1966) by Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits (who would later become the Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth), accuses Shahak of launching a modern blood libel.  More significantly, however, he analyses and seemingly approves the response to the affair of Israel Chief Rabbi Unterman, who promoted the halakhic notion of “to prevent enmity” as an integral element to Jewish ethics.

The second article, “A Halakhic View of the Non-Jew” (Tradition 8:3, Fall 1966) by Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch (who later became Rosh Yeshivat Hesder Birkat Moshe in Ma’ale Adumim, Israel), was written as a follow-up to Rabbi Jakobovits’ article and tried to place Rav Unterman’s responsum in historical and theological context.  In his conclusion, Rabbi Rabinovitch writes,

The more they suffered, the deeper did Jews penetrate to the meaning of the Halakhah about man and the more truly did their day-to-day practice reflect the highest response to God’s imperative. Compassion and mercy for all men are the mark of the Jew, just as they are of God. As Rabbi Akiva said, “Beloved. is man for he was created in the image of God. . . . Beloved is Israel for they are called ‘children of God.’ “

Readers are invited to respond to these fascinating articles (as well as Rabbi Rothstein’s post) in our comments section.  As always, featured archive articles are accessible to the wider public. (I would remind everyone, however, tha now is a great time to get complete access to our archives through our special subscription offer, which will expire soon.) 

For more on the broader topic, see Rabbi Gil Student’s response to the Shahak affair (written after Shahak’s death) and Rabbi Binyamin Lau’s article in Akdamot 13. 

- Shlomo Brody

Table of Contents:

Editor’s Note:  You Taught Me Musar and the Profit on it by Shalom Carmy

A Tale of Two Men in One City by Judy Taubes Sterman

Doctors and Medical Knowledge in Tosafist Circles by Aryeh Leibowitz

Kol Yisrael Areivim Zeh Ba-Zeh by Reuben M Rudman

Our Poor and Their Poor:  Philosophical Reflections by Baruch Brody

A Note on the Introduction to the Priestly Blessing (Birkat Kohanim) by Ben Zion Katz

Survey of Recent Halakhic Periodical Literature:  In the  Wake of Birkat Ha-Hammah 5769 by J. David Bleich

Communications:  Judith Taylor Baumol-Schwartz, Baruch Alster, Shalom Carmy, Benjamin Hecht, Maier Becker, Shubert Spero, David Shatz

A couple of years ago, Tradition dedicated several months to scanning our entire achives into PDF formats and placing them on the web. Subscribers receive unlimited access to the 50+ years of archives with their subscriptions, while non-subscribers may purchase single article downloads for $2.00.  (Don’t forget our special subscription offer)

Some of the major gems of the 50 years of archives – articles penned by Rabbi Joseph B Soloveitchik – remain entirely free to the wider public. You can access these articles – including a flash version of The Lonely Man of Faith (7:2), ”Confrontation,” and the famous Spring ’78 issue - by visiting the bottom of our archives page. 

One article which we also included that did not appear in Tradition itself, but did appear in A Treasury of Tradition (1967), was the Rav’s important addendum to his article “Confrontation,”  in which the Rav specified in greater detail which topics were appropriate and inappropriate for interfaith dialogue.

Enjoy!

- Shlomo Brody

Mordechai Breuer, Pirqe Miqraot, Tvunot Press – Herzog College, Alon Shvut, 2009.  362 pages.  [Hebrew]

The ‘Aspects Theory’ of Rav Mordechai Breuer:  Articles and Responses ed. Yosef Ofer, Tvunot Press – Herzog College, Alon Shvut, 2005.  369 pages. [Hebrew]

Megadim 50 (Tamuz 5769), 268 pages. [Hebrew]

In 1999, Tradition (33:3) published an essay by Rabbi Meir Eckstein about the innovative (and controversial) approach toward Tanach interpretation and Bible criticism advocated by Rabbi Mordechai Breuer z”l, who passed away in 2007.   The piece, which is currently our featured article from our archives and can be accessed for free here, focused on Rav Breuer’s Pirqe Moadot (p. 1986), essays on the Bible’s presentation of the holidays.   Subsequently, Rav Breuer published Pirqe Breishit (1998) on the Book of Genesis.

These most recent volumes significantly contribute toward our understanding of Rav Breuer’s novel approach to Torah study.  The first volume, Pirqe Mikra’ot, covers various aspects of the last 4 books of the Torah that were not covered in Pirqe Mo’adot.  Although it has been published posthumously, Rav Breuer himself wrote and edited the articles, with his son bringing the project to completion.  As always, there are a number of thought-provoking essays in this volume, which will surely raise interest from admirers and critics alike.

The 2nd volume includes a collection of essays (spanning several decades) written by Rav Breuer to explicate and defend his methodology, as well as several responses to his approach (and others like it) written by a number of distinguished Tanach teachers, including Professors Uriel Simon, Shmuel Hugo Bergman, and Amos Chacham as well as Rabbis Yoel Bin-Nun, Shalom Carmy, and Mosheh Lichtenstein.  This collection is an extremely important statement on the differing approaches taken by Orthodox thinkers who take both the study of Tanach and the challenges of Bible criticism seriously.  Particularly enlightening is an interview conducted with Rav Breuer in his later years in which he describes the reaction that his shiurim and methodology initially received, including from distinguished rabbis like Rabbi Yehuda Amital, Rabbi Eliezer M Schach, and Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Melzer. He further contends that he never had a “crisis of faith” when responding to Bible criticism.  He explains,

“No man, even as great as Moshe, is capable of writing as great and monumental of a book as this [the Bible].  In this the Bible critics are correct.  The entire problem is whether you believe that God can write a book.  If you believe so, then he can write the Torah anyway he likes, even if the Torah appears as if it was written by many different people in different eras.” (p. 355, loose translation). 

Read the book and his critics, and decide whether you find his approach intellectually or theologically compelling. 

As Rav Breuer laments toward the end of that interview, even many of his closest students have not adopted his approach, even as they have utilized other tools from the world of academic Bible study.  The 3rd book, a special volume in honor of Megadim’s 50th issue, provides several examples of the “literary-theological” approach adopted by several of Rav Breuer’s students, as well as a thorough index of the first 50 volumes of Megadim.  To read more about this approach, see Hayyim Angel’s article in Tradition 40:3, available here as well. Yaakov Beasley’s review of two recent English works that adopt similar approaches can be found in the current edition of Tradition. 

For more information on these works, click here for the website of Tvunot Press. 

- Shlomo Brody

For more books of interest that recently appeared on the Tradition website, please click here.

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