While on a book tour to northern California last month, I chanced to stay with Preevia Tramiel, president of one of the synagogues I was speaking at. As luck would have it, she is a blogger for Jewish Women’s Archive and was eager to interview me about women’s place in and exclusion from the Talmud. Here’s the link to the article, and what follows is my comment.
Of course the Talmud is composed by men for men; what else would you expect from the first millennium? But this is the text that underlies 1500 years of Jewish laws and traditions, so feminists who ignore Talmud or say it has no relevance for Jews today do so at their peril. However they may be encouraged to know that Israeli Talmud scholar Tal Ilan is editing a new series, "A Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud." Either five or six volumes have been published and the goal is to have one on each Talmudic tractate.
One of the challenges, and pleasures, of Talmud study is how open the text is to interpretation, or reinterpretation. Minority opinions are presented as valid, and one is free to follow the sage whose opinion one prefers.
The bottom line is that knowledge is power, and women's exclusion from Talmud study has left us powerless to challenge the Halacha that disadvantages women. Preevia mentions my saying that Halacha is made by men in black coats sitting around a table from which we/women are excluded. But at the rate that women, especially in the Orthodox world, are studying Talmud, I don't think it will be long before women in black dresses are sitting around that table too. And I have no doubt that Jewish Law will not only look different, but better.
I am so excited! Library Journal just chose RAV HISDA’S DAUGHTER as Best Historical Fiction for 2012. What an honor – especially considering all the other great historicals that came out this year. Here's the link.
Now the big question: how can I capitalize on this to let the huge number of historical novel fans know about it? And then hopefully widen my fan base beyond the Jewish women niche to the wide world of historical fiction readers.
So how do the Talmudic rabbis justify saying the blessing “… Who commands us to kindle the Hanukah light” when they know very well that there is no such commandment in the Torah? No surprise, we have differing explanations - one from Rav Avya who cites Deut 17:11 [“do not deviate from what they tell you”] and another from Rav Nechemiah from Deut 32:7 [“ask your father and he will inform you, your elders and they will tell you”].
Neither has anything to do with God specifically, but when taken out of context, they’re the best the Rabbis can come up with, which is to imply that “they” in these verses refers to the Rabbis themselves. As far as the Gemara is concerned, Rav Nechemiah’s argument is better [as it comes last] than Rav Avya’s because the former is a positive statement [ask] and the latter is negative [do not deviate]. To quote that unassailable source, Wikipedia, on rabbinic mitzvot, “the divine command is considered implied in the general law to follow any instructions of the religious authorities (Deut 17:11 and 32:7; Shab 23a).”
Interestingly, later scholars had the same problem, but they preferred to use Deut 17:11 as their Torah proof text, despite the fact that it clearly refers to difficult court cases that need to go to a higher authority than the local magistrate. Here’s the passage in question, in its more complete context.
Deut 17:8-11 = “If a case is too baffling for you to decide … you shall repair to the place that the Lord will choose and appear before the levitical priests or judges in charge and present your problem. When they [the judges and priests who decide legal cases] announce to you the verdict, you shall carry out the verdict they give you at the place the Lord will choose, observing scrupulously all their instructions to you. Act according to the instructions given you and the ruling handed down to you; you must not deviate from the verdict they announce.”
Do you see anything in this that tells us that the Rabbis are allowed to invent new commandments? I don’t either.
Apparently Rambam had the same concern, or perhaps his students did, because he discusses this in his Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Berachot 11:3. “Where has He commanded us [to fulfill these commandments]? In the Torah, which states [Deut 17:11]: "Act according to the judgment they relate to you." Based on this verse, the blessing recited before fulfilling a rabbinic commandment can be interpreted as follows: Who has sanctified us with Your commandments and commanded us to listen to these [sages] who have commanded us to light Hanukah candles or read the Megillah. The same applies regarding all rabbinic commandments.”
A modern Orthodox rabbi explains it this way: “Lighting Hanukah candles is not one of the 613 mitzvot of the Torah. Rather, it is a rabbinic mitzvah that was enacted by the Sages. Yet, the blessing we say when we light the Chanukah candles - v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Hanukah - means that God commanded us to light them! How can we say that God commanded us to perform a rabbinic mitzvah? The answer is this: One of the 613 mitzvot in the Torah is the commandment to obey the judges and priests (Deuteronomy 17:11), and since the Sages enacted the lighting of Hanukah candles, therefore lighting the candles indeed becomes like a commandment from the Torah.”
For more on the other seven rabbinic mitzvot, see this link
The second Hanukah text we studied at Sinai Temple was from page 23a, where we have two short debates about the blessings said at Hanukah. First comes a disagreement over whether one blesses when kindling a Hanukah light or if one blesses while viewing it burning [btw: the answer is yes]. Rav Yehuda elaborates by declaring that on the first day, the person who kindles says 3 blessings and the person who sees says 2, but after that the former says 2 blessings and the latter only one.
My students were rather confused at this point, since the Gemara has not revealed the blessings’ texts. It merely asks which blessing the kindler omits on subsequent nights and then replies that the “season” blessing is not said. At this point, when Rashi discloses them in his commentary, I handed out the texts of the three Hanukah blessings. However this is little help as two of the blessings end in ‘zeman hazeh’ [this season].
Before this can be sorted out, the answer is challenged by declaring that the blessing that mentions nes [miracle] be deleted. But this objection is rejected by pointing out that a miracle occurred every night, not merely the first night. At least we now know that the nes’ blessing is the second blessing and ‘zeman hazeh,’ what we now call the ‘Shehechiyanu,’ is the third.
Here, finally, the Gemara tells us what the first blessing is [… Who has sanctified us with His mitzvot and commanded us to kindle the Hanukah light], only to immediately question where in the Torah did God issue such a commandment? A very good question indeed, since Hanukah never appears in the Torah. The Rabbis explanation is rather complicated, so I’ll get to it in my next post.
Shavua Tov.
My previous post is an example of what happens when I work too fast to try to come up with something before Shabbat interrupted me [no, I was not trying to see if anyone actually reads my posts]. As several readers pointed out, Shammai kindles eight lights to start and decreases, while Hillel does what most Jews do today, which is to start with one light and increase each day.
Interestingly, this soon leads to the important question that one might think the rabbis would discuss first: What/why Hanukah? Scholars differ over what exactly the rabbis are asking here, but the essential problem is that since the Torah never mentions Hanukah, where did this festival come from and how is it that Jews are commanded observe it?
Today we have access to the Book of Maccabees, but the Talmudic rabbis show no indication that they knew about these apocryphal texts. Hanukah is clearly already being celebrated by Jews kindling lights, so the Rabbis have to justify it. This they do by informing us of [inventing?] the miracle of the one small jar of oil that lasted for eight days to keep the rededicated Temple’s Lamp burning until more oil could be found.
Most of my students at Sinai Temple had no idea that this Talmud passage is the origin of the “miracle oil jar” story, and like nearly everything else in the Talmud, is not verified in any other contemporaneous sources.
Last night I taught the first of a 3-part introductory Talmud class. I’m not such a great classroom teacher, as I much prefer speaking about the research behind my novels rather than explaining a set text. But the folks at Sinai Temple in Westwood insisted, and it turned out that I had some materials from Tractate Shabbat that I created about 10 years ago and haven’t used since.
Normally I would not recommend that beginning students start with Shabbat; many of its discussion are convoluted and arcane, dealing with an agrarian lifestyle that has little application to modern life today. But the sugia I planned to teach, pages 21-23, is different. In the middle of a dense argument over what kinds of wicks and oils should be used in the Shabbat lamp [since unlike weekdays, a Jew cannot relight the lamp if it goes out on Shabbat], the Gemara abruptly asks about Hanukah lamps. This begins a 4-page section that pretty much presents how the Babylonian rabbis observed Hanukah – a holiday that is mentioned nowhere in the Torah. And since my Talmud class will end just as Hanukah is starting, I thought it would be a good one to study as preparation for the holiday.
The first thing we learned is that while the basic mitzvah is one lamp each night for the eight-night festival, those who wish to hidur [beautify, embellish] the mitzvah have two ways to do so. Shammai says kindle eight lights the first night and gradually decrease each night, while Hillel says to start with one light and increase the number. The Babylonian rabbis don’t know why Hillel and Shammai kindle differently [other than they seem to disagree about everything], but they have two traditions about this – which I will detail in the next post.
According to the NY Times , Penguin and Random House are merging.
Wow! [or perhaps I should say OY]. I agree that while this merger may be good for publishing, it might not be so good for agents and mid-list authors like myself. I have a 2-book contract with Plume, a Penguin imprint, for my RAV HISDA'S DAUGHTER historical series, but who knows what could happen with the 2nd volume?
Monday, my editor emailed me a letter from the CEO’s, reassuring everyone that the new company’s “culture will be a passionate commitment to authors.” That sounds encouraging, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it plays out, not that we have much choice. At least Penguin isn’t being bought by Newscorp; I’d rather not be making money for Rupert Murdock.